A Shared History of Struggle Should Unite India’s Dalits and African Americans in the Fight for Equality

For more than 4,000 years, the Dalits of India were called “the untouchables,” the lowest of the low. The Dalits are at the bottom of the Indian caste hierarchy and are currently the oldest surviving oppressed group in the world. They suffer the worst of human miseries and were once deemed impure and polluted human beings.

Even though they are separated by geography, the Dalits and African Americans have a similar story in the struggle for equality. Like African Americans during slavery, Jim Crow and today, in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Dalits are outcasts who continue to bear the brunt of being born in the wrong social order.