Sunder Iyer, an Indian American tech entrepreneur, was sued by the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) for alleged discrimination and harassment against a Dalit client. The former CEO of Cisco spoke at the Congressional briefing on Hinduphobia organized by HinduACTion.
Despite Iyer having appointed several Dalit candidates to top leadership positions in his company, including the accuser's role, the CRD accused him of low pay and discrimination based on caste. “The CRD has different rules for Indian American managers. For the CRD frivolously accused, my Indian American colleague of caste based harassment by harassing John Doe (the anonymous client), my colleague's most previous crime, but he followed his white boss’orders to ask Doe for weekly status reports,” Iyer said. The CRD accused his Indian American colleague of caste-based harassment, even though the colleague merely followed instructions from his white superior.
The CRD allegedly manipulated facts, backdated documents, and suppressed complaints from various engineers to fabricate caste discrimination allegations against Hindu and Indian Americans, Iyer claimed. According to him, the CRD disparaged Hinduism, making derogatory interpretations and misrepresentations of the religion to advance their agenda.
“These include defining caste as strictly Hindu, making references to Hindu Varna as rooted in violence, and even references to the complete destruction of Hinduism,” Iyer said. “I learned that the CRD can treat an entire ethnicity of Hindu and Indian Americans with utter disdain. They violated the due process and constitutional rights of almost 50 of my coworkers, assigning them all upper caste and accusing them of importing the caste system from India to America,” he added.
Iyer also emphasized that the CRD allegedly violated the DOJ-funded CA vs. Hate charter, working with Equality Labs, an activist group known for making violent stereotypes of Brahmin Hindus. The CRD racially profiled and violently stereotyped Indian Americans, accusing them of assaulting and raping a significant portion of Dalit Americans without evidence or corroboration.
“The CRD states that Dalit Indians in the United States once that caste is revealed, have been under attack and spat upon simply because the caste was known to an upper caste Indian America. No evidence has been presented for this anecdotal claim,” Iyer said.
Iyer urged the Department of Justice to investigate the CRD stating, “An agency that does not represent the truth harms all Americans.”
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