CasteFiles, a Hindu-American advocacy and educational group, filed a civil rights complaint against New Jersey’s Rutgers University and Professor Audrey Truschke, the group announced Tuesday. CasteFiles asserted that the university has failed to protect students from discrimination as required under Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Rutgers University had been advised to add “caste” as a protected category in its Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment following a report entitled ‘Caste Based Discrimination in U.S. Higher Education at Rutgers’ released in August 2024. The report, co-chaired by Professor Truschke, included numerous testimonies detailing caste discrimination faced by students and faculty.
Since 2019, several universities in the United States have moved to prohibit caste discrimination, with Brandeis University being the first to amend its policy to include caste bias.
Richa Gautam, founder of CasteFiles, criticized the Rutgers report, claiming weak evidence and a lack of systematic data proving caste-based discrimination against Hindu Americans. Gautam pointed to a petition written by Hindu students in 2021, which expressed concerns for their safety and condemned Professor Truschke for alleged Hinduphobia.
CasteFiles Director Abhijit Bagal highlighted Rutgers University’s previous failures to protect its students, including lawsuits filed by Jewish students and alleged discrimination towards Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students. Bagal noted that CasteFiles would revoke the Title VI complaint if the caste task force agreed to remove references that could be linked to the caste system, suggesting using a neutral term like “class or social status” instead.
In 2021, Professor Truschke was named a defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), a move later criticized by Hindus for Human Rights as an attempt to stifle criticism of Hindutva. Rutgers University publicly supported Professor Truschke, citing her academic freedom and condemning the “vile messages and threats” directed at her. Support also came from Hindu faculty members at Rutgers.