ABSTRACT
The presence of South Asians in the UK, and the story of their contribution to the nation, is well documented. 1 Research on South Asian communities in the UK shows that caste is a feature of diaspora society, regardless of religion, and that caste has played a role in the construction and maintenance of internal divisions among South Asian communities since the 1950s, despite insistence by some actors that neither caste nor caste discrimination exist in this country. This chapter discusses caste’s history in the UK from 1950 to 2009 (the year of the Equality Bill) and places in context the demands of British Dalits for legal regulation of caste discrimination – demands which gathered momentum around the start of the new millennium.
