PayPal issues apology on ‘caste pride’ event in its campus

PayPal has tendered an unconditional apology for hurting the sentiments of certain sections of IT professionals, who were offended by the organisation’s alleged promotion of ‘caste pride’ in its Chennai campus as part of its annual day celebrations.

The Weekend Leader published an article Tuesday titled, ‘PayPal caught in controversy over promoting caste pride in campus.’

IT professionals belonging to ‘Save Tamils Movement’ protesting outside PayPal’s office in Chennai

The article gave details of the controversial event that divided employees under teams that had caste titles such as ‘Iyers of Tamil Nadu’, ‘Banerjees of Bengal’ and ‘Patels of Gujarat’.

Activists alleged that the event promoted ‘upper caste pride’ in the campus and demanded that the organisation apologise for its action and remove all the caste names from its event schedule immediately.

IT professionals belonging to ‘Save Tamils Movement’ gathered outside the PayPal office in Chennai Wednesday morning and shouted slogans demanding an apology from them.

PayPal officials held talks with the activists and later handed over a written apology expressing regret for their conduct.

A person from Perfect Relations, a PR agency in Mumbai, called The Weekend Leader’s Editor over phone and said he was calling on behalf of PayPal and informed that the management had issued an apology and requested the same to be published in the site.

Following is PayPal’s statement that has been issued in the name of Anupam Pahuja, GM, India:

“The Great Indian Wedding theme for PayPal India’s employee Annual Day celebrations was conceived to reflect the diversity of India. The names given to individual teams were aimed to reflect the diversity of our employees and showcase how an important celebration such as a wedding brings us all together.

"However, some of the team names we chose unintentionally referred to the higher castes within individual Indian communities and did not represent the true diversity we wished to express at this important internal annual event.

"We have removed these references with immediate effect and would like to apologise to anyone who was adversely affected or hurt by this oversight.” – TWL Bureau

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PayPal caught in controversy over promoting caste pride in campus