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โ€œHindu-Phobicโ€: Google Cancels Dalit Activistโ€™s Talk, Employee Resigns In Protest

Dalit activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan was scheduled to give a talk at Google News. The Company, however, cancelled the talk after employees claimed she was โ€œHindu-phobicโ€ and โ€œanti-Hinduโ€ in emails to the companyโ€™s leaders. Senior manager at Google News, Tanuja Gupta, who had invited Soundararajan for the talk, resigned over the incident.

This move by Google led employees to wonder if the company was โ€œwillfully ignoring caste biasโ€, an article by The Washington Post said. 

Soundararajan, who runs a nonprofit organisation called Equality Labs, works for causes of Dalits, or members of the lowest-ranked caste. Companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, Airbnb, Netflix, and Adobe have previously hosted Soundararajan for talks. The activist, reacting to the move by Google, said: โ€œMost institutions wouldnโ€™t do what they did. Itโ€™s absurd. The bigoted donโ€™t get to set the pace of conversations about civil rights.โ€

Gupta, in her resignation email, said she questioned whether Google wanted its diversity efforts to succeed. โ€œRetaliation is a normalized Google practice to handle internal criticism, and women take the hit,โ€ she wrote.

Shannon Newberry, a spokesperson for Google, wrote in a statement that caste discrimination has no place in the tech giantโ€™s workplace. โ€œWe also have a very clear, publicly shared policy against retaliation and discrimination in our workplace,โ€ she added.

โ€œWe also made the decision to not move forward with the proposed talk which โ€” rather than bringing our community together and raising awareness โ€” was creating division and rancour,โ€ Newberry further wrote.

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