Toronto school board becomes first in Canada to recognize caste discrimination
Toronto`s college board has turn out to be the primary in Canada to understand that caste discrimination exists withinside the metropolis’s faculties and has requested a provincial human rights frame to assist in developing a framework to cope with the problem The Toronto District School Board on Wednesday voted in want of a movement to that effect, which changed into added via way of means of board trustee Yalini Rajakulasingam. Sixteen trustees voted in want of the movement and 5 voted in opposition to it.
The flow addresses an problem critical to the area’s South Asian diaspora, in particular the Indian and Hindu groups. It comes weeks after Seattle have become the primary US metropolis to outlaw caste discrimination after a metropolis council vote. India’s caste gadget is most of the world’s oldest sorts of inflexible social stratification.
“This movement isn’t always approximately division, it’s far approximately developing restoration and empowering groups and presenting them more secure faculties that scholars deserve,” Rajakulasingam said. Rajakulasingam known as for a partnership among the human rights fee of Ontario, Canada’s maximum populous province, and Toronto’s college board.
The caste gadget dates lower back heaps of years and permits many privileges to higher castes however represses decrease castes. The Dalit network is on the bottom rung of the Hindu caste gadget and were dealt with as “untouchables.” Caste discrimination changed into outlawed in India over 70 years ago, but bias persists, consistent with numerous research in current years, which includes one which discovered human beings from decrease castes had been underrepresented in higher-paying jobs. Even aleven though India has banned untouchability, Dalits nevertheless face enormous abuse throughout that country, in which their tries at upward social mobility have at instances been violently placed down.
Debate over the caste gadget’s hierarchy is contentious in India and abroad, with the problem intertwined with religion. Some human beings say discrimination is now rare. Indian authorities regulations booking seats for decrease-caste college students at pinnacle Indian universities have helped many land tech jobs withinside the West in current years.
Activists opposing caste discrimination say it’s far no extraordinary from different sorts of discrimination like racism and as a result need to be outlawed.
