The remarkable development in relationships between the two communities of African Americans and India’s Dalits reached the pinnacle in the recent years. Their association and solidarity is natural as they share the same history of oppression and liberation. The continuous association and communication between these two great civil rights movements are converging into much bigger a reality that has a power to democratise the world around.

Both these communities are fighting in the “democratic” spaces and they have the similar challenges in their respective countries in terms of political systems, but they must fight their battles together is an interesting development.

Last year, the son of Martin Luther King Jr, declared in Bangalore that his father and Babasaheb Ambedkar are the “revolutionary brothers”. These brothers in revolution did not know of each other and it almost shows the success of India’s upper castes and their media to put an iron curtain around the great struggle of Babasaheb Ambedkar and plights of his people. Black America was unfortunately not informed about the plights of Dalits in India. The situation has changed recently due to Dalits becoming more vocal abroad.

While paying respect to Babasaheb Ambedkar, Kevin Brown saw shades of great leaders in the Black movement in the life of Babasaheb Ambedkar: as a jurist, he compared him with Thurgood Marshall, as an educationalist with Booker T Washington, and the educated erudite scholar with WEB DuBois, as the civil rights activists with Martin Luther King, and as an advocate power with Malcolm X.

Though influenced by provisions in the Indian Constitution, Martin Luther King was not told about Babasaheb Ambedkar by the leaders he met during his visit to India. But he was told that he was an untouchable as far as India is concerned and as far as Indians are concerned besides being casteist, the religion teaches them to discrimination on the basis of colour.

“Non-violence” is dangled before the world when it comes to Gandhi, but in practice, Gandhi used force, which he qualified as “Soul force and Truth Force”, but never entered into a discussion about “truth”, which was personal to him and his privy and soul a complete misnomer. Gandhi did not see the discrimination of the untouchables when he was growing up but was so egoistically hurt when he was treated at par with the “blacks” in South Africa.

The Blacks throughout the world are beginning to see what Gandhi stood for, but India’s so-called upper castes without fighting discrimination in their own country romanticise Gandhi and hence try to deal with the psychological guilt, the article below is written with that guilt.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale

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