Untouchables Amongst Us
Investigating Caste Discrimination in Australia
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Untouchables Amongst Us is an investigation by Raymond Selvaraj and Kulasegaram Sanchayan, journalists with SBS Tamil, into a form of discrimination rarely discussed in the Australian context: the persistence of caste and so-called “untouchability” within South Asian diaspora communities.
The investigation asks a confronting question: what happens when people migrate to a country built around an egalitarian ideal, but deeply entrenched systems of social hierarchy migrate with them?
Through extensive interviews with Dalit Australians, academics, religious and community leaders, advocates and others, Selvaraj and Sanchayan documented how caste could continue to shape people's lives in Australia — sometimes overtly, but often through less visible forms of exclusion.
The story explores discrimination in workplaces and social relationships, religious institutions and community organisations, as well as the role of caste in marriage and family life.
Particularly powerful is the testimony of people who believed migration might allow them to escape caste, only to encounter it again in Australia. One interviewee describes caste as a “state of mind” that can follow people across borders regardless of their economic or professional position. Another describes the social and psychological isolation created by subtle exclusion from community events, festivals and networks.
The investigation also examined a significant institutional question: what protection exists when discrimination does not fit neatly within Australia's established legal categories? At the time of the reporting, the Race Discrimination Commissioner explained that caste was not specifically covered by federal discrimination law, exposing a potential gap for people experiencing caste-based discrimination.
The story was pitched, investigated and produced by Selvaraj and Sanchayan themselves. Its significance also lies in what their journalism demonstrates about genuine multicultural reporting. Rather than simply reporting about a culturally diverse community from outside it, the journalists used their linguistic knowledge, cultural understanding, contacts and editorial judgement to investigate a difficult issue within their own broader community.
That is a very different proposition from journalism that treats cultural diversity primarily as celebration or representation. It requires independence and courage: being prepared to scrutinise practices within communities journalists know intimately, to challenge powerful or accepted norms, and to give voice to people whose experiences may otherwise remain invisible.
The investigation was developed as part of the five-year investigative journalism program I ran within SBS's Multilingual and Multicultural division (internally known as ALC). The purpose of that program was to create the editorial space, methodology and support for multilingual journalists to develop original investigations emerging from the communities they knew best — while applying the same standards of evidence, verification, fairness and public-interest journalism expected of any major investigation.
Untouchables Amongst Us is an example of the particular value that multilingual and multicultural journalism can bring to Australian public-interest reporting: not journalism about diversity, but journalism made stronger by the knowledge, access and perspectives that diversity brings into the investigative process.
Original piece produced and broadcast in 2015, re-published in 2023.
Listen and Read: https://www.sbs.com.au/audio/article/untouchables-amongst-us/3bfqh7epc