Other Indians

Chapter 3 builds on the previous two chapters to bring together an anti-caste analysis with anti-settler colonial critiques to illustrate the intersections of race, caste, and Indigeneity. It argues that while caste may not be an obvious factor in the analysis of settler colonialism, any comprehensive understanding of Indian diasporas is incomplete without critiques of brahminism. Drawing upon my fieldwork in Fort McMurray, I argue that for dominant caste Indian hindus the Indigenous Other is constructed through colonial and caste processes that allow for the dominant caste Indian-self to recognize the latter as the caste Other. The subsequent discussion shifts the focus to the U.S. to illustrate the different ways hindu nationalist right-wing hindutva forces, an extension of brahminism, are organizing in the diaspora and how notions of Indigeneity are often invoked by these players drawing upon Indigenous frameworks from Turtle Island. In this chapter, I bring together caste and settler colonial technologies from Canada, U.S., and India to foreground the fact that brahminism is a transnational project. It is critical to understand how caste supremacy functions in tandem with other global projects of settler colonialism, anti-Muslim racism, white supremacy, fascism, and neoliberalism.