Dalits from almost last one century have been trying to build solidarity among discriminated communities across the world. Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had written to Du Bois in 1946 to collaborate with Afro-Americans to raise the issue of caste discrimination at the United Nations. It also can not be denied that major Afro-American leaders from Martin Luther King Jr. to Malcolm X had limited information about the condition of untouchables in India and the caste system. Recently, I came across a short audio clip of Martin Luther King Jr., in which he talks about the untouchables of India and compares their situation with Afro-Americans. Below is the transcription of that short clip. You can find the clip at the end of this post. 

When I was in India, one afternoon I went down to speak in the southern part of India in a school that was attended by large by young boys and girls who were children of former untouchables. And I remember that afternoon that the principal got up to introduce me. As he came to the end of his introduction he said I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.

For the moment I was peeved, I was shocked that I would be introduced as an untouchable. But pretty soon my mind ran back across to America and I started thinking about the fact that there were so many places that I could not go because of the colour of my skin. I started thinking about the fact that my 20 million brothers and sisters in the Negro community of America, still at the bottom of the economic ladder, deprived of adequate housing conditions, unable to live in numerous neighbourhoods because of the colour of their skin. I started thinking about the fact that my little children were still judged on the basis of the colour of their skin rather than the content of their character and I had to say to myself that I am an untouchable and every negro in the United States is an untouchable.

Segregation is evil and sinful because it stigmatizes segregated as an untouchable in a caste system and this is why I am convinced that we have the moral edik and moral mandate the work to get rid of this unjust and evil system and we must make it clear all over America that we are through with segregation. Now, henceforth, and forevermore if the American dream is to be a reality.

– Transcribed by Pardeep Attri