Connection between black, Dalit lives: Angela Davis

There is an inter-connection between the lives of African Americans in the US and the Dalits in India, prominent US thinker and political activist Angela Davis said here today.
She gave the 8th Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Lecture on 'Black lives, Dalit lives: Histories and Solidarities' here this evening.
"I would like to link the collective predicament of black people in the US and the Dalits in India," she said.
"We in the US can learn from the long struggles of Dalit people in India," Davis said.
She recalled that Mahatma Jyotirao Phule, the pioneering social reformer from 19th century Maharashtra, dedicated his book 'Gulamgiri' to the anti-slavery activists in the US.

She also referred to Dr B R Ambedkar's statement that he had been a student of the Negro problem.

Many black people in the US encountered the black struggle through Dr Martin Luther King. King wrote about his trip to the land of Gandhi, she added.
The Dalit Panthers was formed in India in 1972, six years after Black Panthers party was formed in the US, she noted, adding that it was not surprising that Dalits would identify with the Black Panthers.
Referring to victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election, she said, "We will remind the world that we are not ready to accept the future that Trump has described.

"We were quite shocked at the US elections last month. We have a President-elect who causes us to regard George W Bush in a better manner," she quipped.
Davis emerged as a prominent counter-culture activist and a radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.