Predatory Prosecution: The Infamous Iyer-Kompanella-Narsude Case

Sundar Iyer, Ramana Kompella, and Chetan Narsude…

If these names are not familiar to you, congratulations, you’re just like the thousands of blissfully ignorant Hindus, rating your lives by where your kids go to college, but not by what they learn in college about themselves.

That’s represented by the California Civil Rights Department’s (CRD’s) choice about their religion, such as dominant, hostile, oppressive, bigoted, tribal …. and inherently violent to the lowest castes. Obviously, these statements are vicious colonial lies.

Civil Rights or Civil Prejudice?

This is precisely how CRD described Hinduism[1] when a Dalit Cisco employee, Chetan Narsude (originally “John Doe”), sued [2] Cisco Systems, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella for alleged caste discrimination. The Hindu American Foundation joined the case[3], arguing that the US Constitution did not allow CRD to define a religion. The case against Iyer and Kompanella was so weak that it hung in limbo until the defendants sued for sanctions against CRD for prosecutor overreach and fabrication of evidence. Then, it was thrown out of Court with a token fine of $2000 against CRD. Significantly, the Court also refused to admit a key piece of CRD’s evidence  – the activist “survey” of Caste by Equality Labs.

What the case alleged was laughable. There was no caste discrimination because another Dalit person was hired instead of Narsude and because Narsude profited handsomely from stock options. Sundar Iyer is an atheist and doesn’t believe in caste. Yet, comically, CRD described him as a Brahmin “upon information and belief .”Note that this wasn’t standard media tripe; it was a declaration under oath by a major state government. There are, in fact, hundreds of such transgressions by the  CRD in many other cases. Indeed, CRD’s lead attorney pursuing this case was fired for incompetence in another case.

The CRD was so flippant, careless, prejudicial, and unprofessional in this case that one is forced to coin a new term—predatory prosecution. That’s the prosecution determined to teach a lesson—not just to an individual but an entire ethnic minority. It’s a prosecution with the arrogant belief that evidence does not need to be vetted or validated. It’s a prosecution determined not to see, hear, or smell any facts that contradict its fantasy.

The Anatomy of Government Lies

Predatory prosecution isn’t just a paper exercise. Even if the case is false, there are real victims and long-drawn-out consequences. Sundar Iyer, the main accused, lost his job at Cisco and suffered career, financial, and reputational damage—besides the psychological and emotional costs of being hounded by his own government over pure fabrication.

Why did the CRD entertain such lies about Hinduism with enough confidence to sue a major Corporation? Why did they omit basic fact-finding, not expecting to be challenged? Why did America’s largest state weaponize ignorance and prejudice against its citizens? Indeed, why did this great state repeat the lies against Hindus on the Senate floor, and why did it pass a Caste discrimination bill with massive margins that the Governor vetoed?

Because the very root of knowledge about India is infected. The standard narrative of India believed far and wide in the West, hasn’t changed in 300 years. It is still derived from colonial trash about India, published in 1817 by James Mill, depicting Hindus as superstitious and primitive people little different from forest dwellers. In their groundbreaking monograph on Colonial Discourse[4], Singh and Maheshwari show how Mill’s imperialist hate fiction became fact through generations of repetition. The Nazi mantra, “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth”, comes to mind. They probably got it from the Raj.

The point is that colonial lies about Hinduism pass for accepted “scholarly” “truth .”They have metastasized like Stage IV cancer through all the arms of academia, government, and media. In India, the cancer has taken over the country. We have to leave it there for lack of space, but the success in this case should be small comfort.

Concluding Remarks

Much more about this case is available on castefiles.com (Richa Gautam, founder) and in several articles by Abhijit Bagal and others. Fortunately, the anti-Hindu guillotine SB 403 was arrested. Sundar Iyer remains dedicated to avoiding similar harassment of other Hindus. He is lucky this didn’t happen in India, or he would have been in jail without bail. Indian laws about caste discrimination are Draconian. The militant Dalit movement, apparently, is trying to bring them to ignorant America. Will the truth win?

Citations

[1] DFEH_Complaint_10_16_2020.pdf (castegate.org); https://castegate.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/DFEH_Complaint_10_16_2020.pdf

[2] The Publicly Known Timeline Of The Cisco Caste Discrimination Case – Caste Gate; https://castegate.org/the-publicly-known-timeline-of-the-cisco-caste-discrimination-case/

[3] California’s case against Cisco Systems is unconstitutional: Hindu American Foundation; https://www.hinduamerican.org/press/california-cisco-case-violates-religious-freedom

[4] Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children, Kundan Sigh and  Krishna Maheshwari, Palgrave Macmillan 2024; https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-57627-0