Build, Rebuild & Consolidate Communities to Bring Real Change: Angela Davis

Delivering the 8th Anuradha Gandhy Memorial Lecture, titled Black Lives, Dalits Lives: Histories and Solidarities to a rapt and considerable audience at the KC College auditorium in south Mumbai, Ms Davis spoke passionately about the moments of promise and solidarities between the Dalit and Adivasi movements in India and the Black resistance in the United States.

Excerpts from the Lecture:
 
“In the aftermath of the Constitutional Abolition of Slavery in the United States, Jyotiba Phule from Maharashtra, in 1873 dedicated ‘Gulamgiri’ to anti-slavery activists in the USA. And, when Phule called upon people from the lower castes and Dalits to unite and defeat the caste system he was making a connection to those battling slavery.
 
“This was a Moment of Promise; the Moments we need to Remember to Build Solidarities. Dr B.R. Ambedkar was in Columbia—and Columbia is in Harlem though often represented as located at the edge of Harlem!—and Harlem is the Capital of Black America.
 
“W.E.B. Du Bois, the prominent African American intellectual and activist[1]was a contemporary of Dr. Ambedkar. The public archive of his works and records lies in an archive in the University of Massachusetts. In the 1940s, Ambedkar contacted Du Bois to inquire about the National Negro Congress petition to the U.N., which attempted to secure minority rights through the U.N. council. Ambedkar explained that he had been a "student of the Negro problem," and that "[t]here is so much similarity between the position of the Untouchables in India and of the position of the Negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but necessary." In a letter dated July 31, 1946, Du Bois responded by telling Ambedkar he was familiar with his name, and that he had "every sympathy with the Untouchables of India."
 
Angela Davis also referred to the relationship of the Dalit struggle and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
“Dr Martin Luther King, in 1959 wrote of “My Trip to the Land of Gandhi” and here he discussed this relationship: the problem of segregation (we call it race; they all it caste: in both cases some are considered inferior and are discriminated against.)”
 
 
Anuradha Gandhy, in who’s memory this 8th Memorial lecture was being held was a committed revolutionary with the CPI(ML), activist and academic. She died in 2008, contracting malaria in the jungles of Jharkand where she lived teaching Adivasi women.
 
She was an integral part and founder of the the Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanghatana that has had 90,000 members.
 
To quote Gandhy, “The history of the caste system can be tracked back to over 3,000 years. It is inextricably linked to the development of the class society. The merchants of the state, the development of the feudal mode of production and the continuous and often forcible assimilation of tribal groups into exploitative agrarian economy. To root out the caste system we must first understand the origin and development and evaluate the various failure successes and failures of the caste struggles.”
 

[1] In 1913, B.R. Ambedkar arrived in New York City from Bombay at the age of twenty-two, on a scholarship to attend Columbia University that Fall and pursue an M.A. in Economics. After returning to India (not before completing a Ph.D. in London), Ambedkar would go on to become the most influential Dalit leader in India in the 20th century, the chairman of the constituent assembly that drafted the Indian constitution, and one of the most incisive theorists of caste and greatest intellectuals of modern India. From the perspective of a researcher, Dr. Ambedkar's proximity to Harlem during his years of study at Columbia has always raised several questions about his experience in the U.S. How might have his experiences in New York impacted his thinking? Aside from his influential mentors at the University (John Dewey, Edwin Seligman, James Shotwell, and James Harvey), who were his personal acquaintances in the U.S.? And did his experience witnessing anti-Black racism in America influence his thinking on the caste question in India? Despite the many allusions to race in the U.S. in his oeuvre, Ambedkar -- as far as I know -- left no first hand account of his time in New York to answer such questions.

An interesting record appears in the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois, the prominent African American intellectual and activist, whose archive is housed at the University of Massachusetts. In the 1940s, Ambedkar contacted Du Bois to inquire about the National Negro Congress petition to the U.N., which attempted to secure minority rights through the U.N. council. Ambedkar explained that he had been a "student of the Negro problem," and that "[t]here is so much similarity between the position of the Untouchables in India and of the position of the Negroes in America that the study of the latter is not only natural but necessary." In a letter dated July 31, 1946, Du Bois responded by telling Ambedkar he was familiar with his name, and that he had "every sympathy with the Untouchables of India."