Brother Bradford has raised some very sensitive issues which are also often raised by many other African American sisters and brothers. He is right in speaking about the “suspicion “in East Africa about Indian settlers who are oppressing the Indigenous Blacks there. We know it.
The Indian settlers are mostly upper caste/Hindu Gujaratis, Marwadis and Sindhis who exploited the local population and grew enormously rich. In Kenya, these thugs are the main oppressors of the Black Africans. Even the police and govt. machinery are supporting these alien oppressors. So it is natural that the local Africans consider the entire Indians as their oppressors.
Racism as religion: Bradford must note that there are hardly any Black Untouchables (Dalits) in these East African countries and the upper caste oppressors in Africa are also our oppressors inside India. Hindus carry their racism wherever they go because racism (varnashram dharma) is their religion.
The question whether the Dalit movement will Identify with being “Black” and “African” is difficult to answer. The Black Untouchables of India, forming a formidable 20% of the country’s population is a mass of poverty-stricken, illiterate, unconscious but innocent people. They don’t know their own identiry, their roofs. Though they are not Hindus and were never Hindus but victims of Hindus from centuries, they keep Hindu names and observe Hindu customs and manners. Being poor, they are even used as paid agents of Hindus to attack Muslims. How can such an unconscious lot of people know that they are “Black” and “African”? This needs tremendous education. As they are spread all over this vast subcontinent and torn into numerous languages, the task of “eduacting them becomes all the more difficult, if not impossible.
Enemy not Identified: But the concious lot like the readers of Dalit Voice are fully “educated” on this “Black” consciousness and the common origin of Africans and India’s Black Untouchables.
India’s Aryans are fair-skinned but the Dravidian and Adl-Dravidian Dalits are dark-skinned with minor exceptions in both cases. Aryans are racists because they are so concious of their fair-skin. And that is why they hate everything that is Black. Please read our book. Brahminism-Father of Racism, Nazism and Zionism.
When the persecuted Dalit has not even Identified his own next-door Enemy No.1, who is sucking his blood day and night Inside India, how can we expect him to identify his friend and brother-in far away African?
