The need to use an intersectional framework when addressing the intersection of race and religion extends across multiple settings, such as cultural safety in the workplace or educational environments. Incorporating intersectionality in this way acknowledges the interdependence of religion and race in generating individual social identities, and articulating distinct forms of discrimination that cannot be easily broken down as either ‘racial discrimination’ or ‘religious discrimination’. Caste We emphasise that casteism is an intersectional system of discrimination which includes but is not reducible separately to either of skin colour, religion, gender, ethnicity, nationality, ancestry/descent, work or occupation. … there is a need to recognise caste as a protected category in anti-discrimination legislation and policy. — submission from Humanism Project, NARF project, May 2021 – April 2022 The Commission heard that race can also be experienced through the category of caste. Though its precise form and content varies with time and place, caste is a strictly codified, socio-religious hierarchical system made up of classes and sub-classes that are ranked based on underlying ideas of purity and pollution.99 This system is hereditary, with caste often assigned to individuals patrilineally, at birth. Casteism is a form of social stratification, found across South Asian cultures and religious communities, and carried into other nations through diasporic movement. 100 It often finds expression by seizing upon racialised, quasi-biological attributes and differences, such as associations of dark skin with lower castes.101 If an individual member of a caste moves to Australia, for instance, their caste comes with them.102 The Commission heard about the wide-ranging and severe impacts of casteism, and the need to recognise caste as a protected category in anti-discrimination legislation and policy. Casteism affects all aspects of life – including the exercise of basic civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights – and takes form in interpersonal, institutional, and ‘structurally invisibilised’103 ways. Entrenching social and economic exclusion and inequalities, this includes impacts on housing access, denied or restricted access to services and education, as well as exclusion from community and religious activities.104 Occupations are also restricted under the caste system, thus affecting labour and employment. Even when an individual moves to Australia, the Commission heard the impacts of casteism can still be felt in day-to-day life.105 For example, a Nepali Dalit man (Dalits form the lowest tier in the Hindu caste system) was evicted from his rental accommodation in Brisbane after the owner, an ‘upper caste’ Nepali, found out that he was a Dalit.106 Similar experiences can also be found in employment decisions.107 Casteism also arises interpersonally, expressed through verbal, physical, and online abuse, including violent threats and assault. 108 National Anti-Racism Framework Scoping Report 2022 | 73