From the Los Angeles Times, this is Asian enough.

Each week on this podcast, we talk to one Asian-American guest about the joys, the complications,

and everything else that comes along with being Asian-American.

I'm one of your hosts, Johanna Bulya.

And I'm your other host, Suhana Hussein.

Today, we're joined by Thinmori Senderarajan.

He's a musician, Thalith Wright's activist, and the executive director of Equality Labs,

an organization that aims to end cast discrimination directed at South Asian religious and cultural minorities.

We're going to talk more about cast later in this episode.

But if you're unfamiliar, cast is an ancient system based in Hinduism that set up divisions

in society based on wealth, rank or privilege, occupation, and race.

There is no logic to the reasons why someone might be at the top of the cast system,

or someone who might be cast out, put into the very bottom of the system,

simply because of the accident of their birth.

To think of this like spiritual system that operates very similar to race,

that assigns spiritual purity, your job, where you live, who you marry and who you love,

and your proximity to structural violence and discrimination.

But the spiritual component is the piece that's so difficult,

because to imagine that someone is spiritually defiling, you know, in front of God,

that's actually what it meant to be untouchable within the cast system.

Untouchables, now more commonly known as delits,

have been at the bottom of India's social hierarchy for centuries,

...