📋 Editor's Update — June 2026
✅ New York Caste Bills AB 6920 & SB 6531 Failed to Advance
This article was published in May 2026, when both bills were active in committee and community action was urgently needed. The Hindu American community responded — and it worked. As of June 2026, New York Senate Bill S.6531 and House Bill A.6920 did not advance this legislative session, a significant win for civil rights and principled advocacy.
The Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) and Hindu American Foundation (HAF), which led the grassroots effort — including meetings with legislators, community education, and direct outreach to all 213 members of the New York State Assembly and Senate — called it "a win for advocacy and civil rights in the face of immense pressure."
The original article below remains published as a record of the community's organizing effort and the arguments that shaped this outcome. The fight is not permanently over — vigilance remains essential.
Read CoHNA's full statement → Read HAF's full statement →The Caste Bill Comes to New York.
What Hindu Americans Must Do Now
New York's AB 6920 and SB 6531 are the next front in the caste bill fight. Hindu Americans won in California. Here is what the community must do to win in New York — and why the stakes are even higher this time.
Hindu Americans have been here before. In 2023, a California bill sought to add "caste" as a protected legal category — a term that every major dictionary and California's own Education Code defines as specific to Hinduism. The community organized. It fought — with facts, with dignity, with peaceful protests, with legal arguments, with business coalitions, with temple networks. And it won. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed California's SB 403 on October 7, 2023.
Now the same fight has come to New York. And the stakes are even higher.
The bills seek to prohibit discrimination on the basis of "caste" in employment, housing, and access to public accommodations — by inserting the word "CASTE" directly into New York's Human Rights Law.
"A class in a graded social hierarchical structure that assigns individuals social status, roles, privileges, and disadvantages based on birth and typically enforces hereditary status."
If passed, New York would become the first U.S. state to explicitly enshrine "caste" in state anti-discrimination law. The bill is currently in committee. Its supporters held a rally in Jackson Heights, Queens on April 13, 2026 — deliberately kept unpublicized on social media, because organizers feared disruption from Hindu American advocates who had mobilized against previous caste bills.
That detail alone tells you something important: the proponents of this bill know the Hindu American community will fight. The question is whether we are ready.
The Same Flaws. The Same Playbook. A New Battleground.
The flaws that doomed California's SB 403 are present in New York's AB 6920 in equal measure. As Puspita Prasad of CoHNA stated on ABC News Live: "We object to this word caste. The word caste is in the Western lexicon. It's a Hinduphobic term. It is not a neutral term."
Legally, educationally, and culturally mapped onto Hinduism by every major dictionary and California's Education Code. Embedding it in law singles out Hindu Americans by definition.
A visibly Hindu American — wearing a bindi, displaying a diya at their desk, bearing an Indian surname — could be identified as a potential discriminator. State-sanctioned religious profiling.
NY Human Rights Law already prohibits discrimination on national origin, ancestry, and creed — categories legal experts confirm already encompass caste-based discrimination.
The Equality Labs survey cited by proponents has been widely criticized as methodologically unsound. The only caste lawsuit in California was dismissed by the courts.
Caste is not a neutral term and there is no universal definition of caste. If passed into law, this bill would unfairly target people of Hindu descent or origin, subject them to additional scrutiny, leave them vulnerable to bullying in schools, and deprive them of their fundamental civil rights.
— Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA)Why New York Is a Higher-Stakes Fight
New York is home to one of the largest Hindu American populations in the country — concentrated in Queens, Long Island, Westchester, and upstate cities. A caste bill passed in New York carries national weight in a way that even California could not match. If New York falls, every other state becomes easier. This is why the fight must be won here.
The Way Forward — A Playbook for Hindu Americans in New York
Every Hindu American in New York needs to know what AB 6920 / SB 6531 says, and who their Assembly Member and State Senator are. Find them at nyassembly.gov and nysenate.gov. Call their offices. Write emails. Request meetings. Make your voice part of the legislative record.
Attend public hearings on AB 6920. Organize community delegations to visit legislators in Albany. The California fight was won in part because hundreds of Hindu Americans showed up at the State Capitol — peacefully, organized, and visible. New York Hindu Americans must do the same.
Mandirs in Flushing, Richmond Hill, Hicksville, Edison, and across the tri-state area are community anchors trusted by thousands of families. Temple leadership must be engaged now — to inform congregations, pass resolutions in opposition, and coordinate legislative outreach.
The Hindu Business Network, AAHOA's New York chapter, and Indian American chambers of commerce must make clear to legislators that this bill threatens the business environment that Hindu American entrepreneurs have built. Their economic contributions deserve protection, not profiling.
Reach out to journalists covering civil rights and the Hindu American community. Write op-eds for the New York Times, Daily News, and Gothamist. Frame the story correctly: this is a principled civil rights objection to a bill that embeds religious profiling in state law. The community's message: we are for anti-discrimination — we are against discrimination disguised as anti-discrimination.
CoHNA's constructive counter-proposal: add "ancestry" to New York's Human Rights Law rather than "caste." Religion-neutral, legally precise, consistent with federal law, and genuinely protective of everyone. A community that comes to Albany with an alternative solution is harder to dismiss.
The Hindu American Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America are carrying the institutional weight of this fight. They need financial contributions, volunteer time, and community members willing to testify at hearings. These organizations are the tip of the spear. Support them.
A Word on the Narrative Battle
The proponents of the caste bill will attempt to frame the Hindu American community's opposition as protecting caste privilege, silencing Dalit voices, or representing a "vocal minority." This framing must be confronted directly, factually, and without defensiveness.
Hindu Americans opposing this bill are not defending caste discrimination. Caste discrimination is wrong wherever it occurs — in any community, under any religion, in India or in America. The opposition is to a specific bill that uses a religion-coded term to create legal exposure for an entire community based on their faith identity.
The Hindu American community includes people from across the caste spectrum — including those who have personally experienced caste-based prejudice and who nonetheless oppose this bill because they understand that bad law does not fix discrimination; it compounds it.
And the community's record speaks for itself. These are the same people who built temples that welcome everyone. Who drove through the night to flood zones in Texas. Who serve in hospitals, schools, and laboratories across New York every single day. They are not a community that needs to be profiled. They are a community that deserves equal protection under the law.
What Every New York Hindu American Should Do This Week
Take Action — Links & Resources
The community that built temples, served in hospitals, and drove through flood zones is the same community that defeated SB 403.
New York is next. And we are ready.
Satyameva Jayate · Truth Alone Triumphs DharmikAmerica.com · Dharmic Life. American Soul. 🙏