One of Bharat’s enduring vulnerabilities lies in its complex caste system, with its multitude of castes and sub-castes. Both internal and external forces have long exploited this social fragmentation. With the Bihar elections spotlighting issues like the caste census, caste narratives predictably emerged under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership. However, the central government pre-empted this by announcing that caste data would be included in the general census. Still, Rahul and others will likely revive the caste divide with other demands. The deeper agenda of Rahul and the forces backing him is to perpetuate caste narratives to weaken Bharat from within and outside, a strategy that anti-Bharat elements have pursued for decades. Rahul is merely their latest shovel.
Dalitstan: The First Foreign Plot to Divide Bharat
A notable early example was the 1990s campaign by Antioch Christian missionaries in the US to create a Dalit homeland in Bharat. In 1999, they established a movement and website called ‘Dalitsthan’, founded by white Americans Helen Eklund, Kermit Northcutt, Debra Schwartz, George Schwartz, and Andy Moore, members of the Antioch Christian Academy, part of the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Lucedale. The Antioch Church itself originated in ancient Antioch (modern-day Antakya, Turkey).
The missionaries behind Dalitstan sought Indian collaborators and found one in an Indian Express journalist, V. T. Rajasekhar. In 1981, he launched the magazine Dalit Voice in Bangalore. His controversial writings prompted the Rajiv government to confiscate his passport in 1986, and he was later arrested under the TADA Act and for sedition. Following the Mumbai train bombings of 2006, the IT Department banned the Dalitstan website alongside 17 others to curb terrorist propaganda. Although this temporarily derailed the missionaries’ plans, they continued to seek alternative methods.
Resurrecting Dalitstan through Equality Labs: The New Generation with a Darker Agenda
The previously defunct Dalitstan initiative found new life in the US under ‘Equality Labs’. Here, figures like George Soros replaced Christian missionaries, and groups such as Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood joined the effort with a larger aim of an Islamic Caliphate. A new generation of activists replaced Rajasekhar and gained the political support of Rahul and Congress, who advocated for a caste census. Thus, caste, Bharat’s long-standing faultline, has been co-opted by US-based activists and pseudo-philanthropists.
Equality Labs’ central campaign was its ‘2018 caste discrimination survey’, authored by Thenmozhi, Maitreyi, and Natasha. It was conducted over eight months, using 47 questions, and targeted the Indian diaspora across the US. From 1534 initial responses, 1200 were deemed valid. The 2018 caste survey conducted by Equality Labs marked a significant moment in the weaponization of caste discourse against Bharat. Backed by foreign funding and ideologically aligned institutions, the report was widely circulated in global and domestic platforms, serving as a foundation for a growing narrative that portrays Bharat as a deeply caste-ridden and oppressive society. This narrative dovetailed neatly with the Congress-led INDI Alliance’s push for a caste census and caste-based political mobilisation, strategies designed to divide Hindus both within Bharat and among its diaspora by using caste as a wedge, thereby weakening national unity.
Thenmozhi Soundararajan, an American of Tamil origin, founded Equality Labs in 2016. Though initially operating as ‘Dalit Nation’ from 2016, it was formally registered in Delaware in March 2022 and California in July. Thenmozhi had previously worked on projects for Soros’s Open Society Institute in 2014. She co-founded Equality Labs with Sharmin Hossain, a Bangladeshi-American and daughter of Muhammad Hossain, leader of Bangladesh’s Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD). Sharmin was also an Open Society Youth Fellow in 2015 and served as the founding political director of Equality Labs before resigning in March 2021. Another co-founder is Aruna Lohitakshi Sanghapali, who co-organised the 2018 protest “Breaking Brahmanical Patriarchy, Ending Caste Discrimination” with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s legal chief Vijaya Gadde and Journalist Barkha Dutt. Dorsey, accused of censoring non-liberal ideologies under the Biden administration, later had internal documents, the “Twitter Files”, released by Elon Musk that revealed illegal content moderation practices. Gadde was dismissed from Twitter in 2022 and summoned before a US Congressional Committee in 2023.
The fourth co-founder is Marie Zwick Maitreyi (a.k.a. Valli Karunakaran), a Dalit activist and journalist who previously worked with Dalit Nation. She is now Equality Labs’ research director. She heads the news portal TwoCircles.net, backed by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), both organisations with links to the Pakistani Jamaat. Another key member is Natasha Dar, of Pakistani origin, who acts as Equality Labs’ bridge to Pakistan’s ISI and Jamaat networks. She is the daughter of Huma Dar, a University of California professor and vocal advocate of the Kashmir-Khalistan (K-2) project. Huma’s father, Colonel Bashiruddin, was involved in the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. She heads ‘Stand with Kashmir’ (SWK), which carries out anti-India propaganda in the US. Huma also took part in the 2017 Khalistani rally in San Francisco and is a central figure in the ‘Boycott India’ campaign led by Muslim brotherhood and Al-Jazeera. Natasha and Huma have played key roles in Equality Labs, especially in its controversial caste survey project.
The Architects of Equality Labs
Equality Labs owes its mainstream entry to support from US-based Pakistani Jamaat-linked groups like ‘Justice for All’ (JFA) and ICNA. Since 2017, they have received substantial funds from pseudo-philanthropic entities, including Soros’s Open Society Foundation, the Luminate Group, New Media Ventures, and the Ford Foundation. Seed funding came from Pierre Omidyar’s Luminate Group during the survey project. Omidyar, an Iranian-American entrepreneur and founder of eBay, created the Luminate Group in 2018 to support ‘progressive’ causes. In 2017, his Omidyar Network channelled $50,000 to Equality Labs through Fractured Atlas Inc., under the project “Ending Caste Apartheid, Fighting Islamophobia and Religious Intolerance”.
Soros’s Open Society Foundation funded Equality Labs with $25,000 in 2018 via Fractured Atlas and later added another $477,025 in three instalments between 2018 and 2020, making Soros one of its biggest backers. The Ford Foundation contributed significantly, starting with $125,000 in 2019 and another $250,000 via Fractured Atlas to enhance digital security for civil society groups. In 2021, a further $150,000 was granted for digital security in marginalised communities. By 2023, Equality Labs had received $525,000 from the Ford Foundation alone, surpassing Soros’s contribution.
Although the amount was undisclosed, Equality Labs received funding from New Media Ventures (NMV) in 2018. NMV is indirectly supported by Soros’s Open Society and Omidyar’s Luminate through the Tides Network. The NMV received $2.29 million from the Open Society Foundation and others from 2016 to 2021. While Equality Labs hasn’t declared any direct sum from this, its inclusion in the NMV ecosystem is telling. Additionally, the San Francisco Foundation gave them $124,000. Excluding the undisclosed NMV sum, Equality Labs received over $1 million in confirmed donations from 2016 to 2022, all under the guise of charity and human rights.
Christophe Jaffrelot, The Pen Behind the Caste Census and the Rahul
Central to this caste discourse campaign has been Christophe Jaffrelot, a French academic who has emerged as the principal intellectual voice fuelling caste-based sentiments in Bharat. Since 2010, and with heightened focus from 2021 onward, Jaffrelot has consistently worked to deepen caste divisions through his prolific writings, social media commentary, and public engagements. His articles on the caste census, in particular, gained wide traction in Bharat, sparking a wave of derivative content across media, academia, and online platforms.
These caste-based arguments were swiftly adopted and amplified by the Congress party and the INDI Alliance, especially in the northern states. The Congress integrated the caste census into its election manifesto and stoked fears that reservations might be dismantled if the NDA were to secure 400 seats. These claims, supported by intellectual circles aligned with Jaffrelot, became potent tools in the opposition’s political strategy. The caste census has emerged as a powerful and potentially damaging political weapon against the BJP.
The intensification of caste-centric rhetoric fractures the Hindu vote base, which in turn benefits the Congress and its allies. By reinforcing the narrative that the BJP is an upper-caste, Hindu-dominant party, they aim to consolidate minority voters, particularly Muslims, under an anti-BJP banner. This narrative strategy has borne fruit in recent elections. Notably, the portrayal of the BJP as an upper-caste party has its roots in narratives crafted over the years by Jaffrelot. His research projects on Bharat have received funding from organisations such as the Henry Luce Foundation, which is linked to George Soros in the United States, raising further questions about the international backing behind these caste-based political campaigns.
Thus, what began as activism for Dalit rights has evolved into a powerful tool for Rahul and Congress in domestic electoral politics, reshaping discourse, influencing voting patterns, and challenging the cohesion of Bharat from within. This is part of a broader campaign to bleed Bharat with a thousand cuts. The only antidote lies in Hindu unity and the complete rejection of casteism.
