THE GLOBAL DALIT, THE INDIAN BLACK

“We come together as voices, as figures, as persons who are willing to live and to die for that quest for truth, beauty, goodness, and justice.”

Indian scholar Suraj Yengde and his mentor, the African-American philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West, come from a long and robust tradition of DalitBlack solidarity. They come together here, speaking about their ideas of a future freedom, its possible shape, structure…and colour. Edited transcripts from a video conversation, in response to questions from Sunil Menon. The first was, in light of the fact that the present epoch exhibits a strong reactionary trait globally—as if the emancipatory ethos of the last century is being forfeited and reversed—what could be the way forward?

Suraj Yengde: Prof West, you are in Princeton right now and I am here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, two institutional locations which wield a kind of power, their own cultural, social and economic capital. How would we discuss this issue in this age of polarisation that we have created, in light of the George Floyd protests in the US and the multiple crises in India that impinge on the Dalit movement?