There is a lot in common between the racism faced by African Americans in the US and the caste discrimination faced by the Dalits in India. This was recognised by Dr Ambedkar when he spent time in the US studying at Columbia University in New York establishing contacts with Black rights activists there. But this ‘sibling solidarity’ was never as much in prominence as during the radical Dalit upsurge of the 1970s, when the most radical post-Ambedkar organisation of the Dalits— the Dalit Panthers— named themselves after the Black Panther Party of the US. In this article, Dr Shridhar Pawar traces the organic connection across continents of these two powerful subaltern movements.
Sridhar Pawar is a doctor by profession who writes poetry and translates authors like Lu Xun, Lorca, Brecht, and Pash into Marathi, much of which has been published. He recently authored and published a book on the history of the Black Panther Party of the US.
