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(*please see
Princess notes below before reading)
Since the first modern humans (Homo
sapiens) were of African birth, the African presence globally can be
demonstrated through the history of the Black populations that have
inhabited the world within the span of recent humanity. Not only are
African people the aboriginal people of the planet, however, there is
abundant evidence to show that Black people created and sustained many
of the world's earliest and most enduring civilizations. Such was the
case in India.
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India
The Associated Press(1),
“Scientists from the University of Padua in Italy
examined
hereditary material in cells found that modern humans followed a
migration wave from Africa to Asia thousands of years ago after an
earlier exodus to the Mediterranean and Greece. Blood samples of people
from east Africa and India showed close genetic similarities indicating
a common African ancestor.”
The Italian study was reported in the December 1998 issue of the
Journal Nature Genetics.
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Exceptionally
valuable writings reflecting close relationships between
Africa and early India have existed for more than two thousand years.
In the first century B.C.E.(2),
for example, the famous Greek historian Diodorus Siculus penned that,
"From Ethiopia he (Osiris) passed through Arabia, bordering upon the
Red Sea as far as India.... He built many cities in India, one of which
he called Nysa, willing to have remembrance of that (Nysa) in Egypt,
where he was brought up."
The literary work of the early
Christian writer Eusebius preserves the
tradition that, "In the reign of Amenophis III [the mighty Dynasty
XVIII Egyptian king] a body of Ethiopians migrated from the country
about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile." And still
another document from ancient times, the Itinerarium Alexandri, says
that "India, taken as a whole, beginning from the north and embracing
what of it is subject to Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the
Ethiopians."
(1)
the world's oldest and
largest news organization.
(2)
BCE stands for "Before
the common era." It is expected to replace BC, which means
"Before
Christ." BC and BCE are also identical in value. Most theologians and
religious historians believe that the approximate birth date of Yeshua
of Nazareth (Jesus) was in the fall, sometime between 4 and 7 BCE.
The term "common"
simply means that this is the most frequently used calendar system: the
Gregorian Calendar. There are many religious calendars in existence,
but each of these are normally in use in only a small geographic area
of the world -- typically by followers of a single religion.
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In Greater India, more than a thousand years
before the foundations of Greece and Rome, proud and industrious Black
men and women known as Dravidians erected a powerful civilization. We
are referring here to the Indus Valley civilization- -India's earliest
high-culture, with major cities spread out along the course of the
Indus River.
The Indus Valley civilization was
at its height from about
2200 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. This phase of its history is called the
Harappan, the name being derived from Harappa, one of the earliest
known Indus Valley cities.
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In
1922, about 350 miles northeast of
Harappa, another large Indus city, Mohenjo-daro (the Mound of the Dead)
was identified. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were apparently the chief
administrative centers of the Indus Valley complex, and since their
identification, several additional cities, including Chanhu-daro,
Kalibangan, Quetta and Lothal have been excavated.
The
decline and fall of the Indus Valley civilization has been linked to
several factors, the most important of which were the increasingly
frequent incursions of the White people known in history as
Aryans--violent Indo-European tribes initially from central Eurasia and
later Iran. Indeed, the name Iran means the "land of the Aryan." (we
will discuss the Aryan Nation in the next section)
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It is
safe to say that when we speak of the Dravidians as a people we are
speaking of the living descendants of the Harappan people of the
ancient Indus Valley who were pushed into South India as the result of
the Aryan invasions. This is certainly consistent with Dravidian
traditions which recall flourishing cities that were either lost or
destroyed in antiquity. The term "Dravidian," however, encompasses both
an ethnic group and a linguistic group. The ethnic group is
characterized by straight to wavy hair textures, combined with Africoid
physical features. In reference to this Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop stated
that:
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"There are two well-defined Black races: one has
a black skin and woolly hair; the other also has black skin, often
exceptionally black, with straight hair, aquiline nose, thin lips, an
acute cheekbone angle. We find a prototype of this race in India: the
Dravidian. It is also known that certain Nubians likewise belong to the
same Negro type...Thus, it is inexact, anti-scientific, to do
anthropological research, encounter a Dravidian type, and then conclude
that the Negro type is absent.”
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From at least the third century C.E. three major Dravidian kingdoms
existed in South India: the kingdoms of Pandya, Chera and Chola. Pandya
was the southernmost Dravidian kingdom.
In 1288 and again in 1293 the Venetian
traveler Marco Polo visited the Pandyan kingdom and left a vivid
description of the land and its people. Polo exclaimed that:
"The darkest man is here the most highly esteemed and considered better
than the others who are not so dark. Let me add that in very truth
these people portray and depict their gods and their idols black and
their devils white as snow. For they say that God and all the saints
are black and the devils are all white. That is why they portray them
as I have described."
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Birth
of the Untouchables
The
White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there
are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors
to the Blacks but they were aggressive, developed sophisticated
military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of
years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating
most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid,
caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of
conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the
Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their
White conquerors.
This vicious new world order was
cold-bloodily racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the
middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very
bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status
and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or
complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is
still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his
1970's visit to India was a turning point in his views on the
superiority of the White race."

Caste
law in India, based originally on race, regulated all aspects of life,
including marriage, diet, education, place of residence and occupation.
This is not to deny that there were certain elements of the Black
aristocracy that managed to gain prominence in the dominant White
social structure. The masses of conquered Black people, however, were
regarded by the Whites as Untruth itself. The Whites claimed to have
emerged from the mouth of God; the Blacks, on the other hand, were said
to have emerged from the feet of God. This was the ugly reality for the
Black masses in conquered India.
Servitude to Whites became
the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation
after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this
brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the
foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India.
This is the religion known as Hinduism.
The
existence of Untouchability has been justified within the context of
Hindu religious thought as the ultimate and logical extensions of Karma
and rebirth. Indus believe that persons are born Untouchables because
of the accumulation of sins in previous lives. Hindu texts describe
these people as foul and loathsome, and any physical contact with them
was regarded as polluting.
Untouchables were usually forced
to live in pitiful little settlements on the outskirts of Hindu
communities. During certain periods in Indian history Untouchables were
only allowed to enter the adjoining Hindu communities at night. Indeed,
the Untouchables' very shadows were considered polluting, and they were
required to beat drums and make loud noises to announce their approach.
Untouchables had to attach brooms to their backs to erase any evidence
of their presence.
www.public.asu.edu/~ntsmith1/india/Index.htm
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Untouchables Today
The basis status of India's Untouchables has changed little since
ancient times. On August 10, 1991 six Untouchables were shot to death
in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. On August 16, 1991, an
Untouchable woman was stripped in public and savagely beaten in the
southern state of Andra Pradesh.
On September 6, 1991, in the western state of Maharastra, an
Untouchable policeman was killed for entering a Hindu temple. Official
Indian figures on violent crimes by caste Hindus against Untouchables
have averaged more than 10,000 cases per year, with the figures
continuing to rise. The Indian government listed 14,269 cases of
atrocities by caste Hindus against Untouchables in 1989 alone. However,
Indian human rights workers report that a large number of atrocities
against Untouchables, including beatings, gang-rapes, arson and
murders, are never recorded. Even when charges are formally filed,
justice for Untouchables is rarely dispensed.
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The Black
Panther Party and the Dalit Panther Party
Possibly the most substantial percentage of Asia's Blacks can be
identified among India's 160 million "Untouchables" or "Dalits."
Frequently they are called "Outcastes." Indian nationalist leader and
devout Hindu Mohandas K. Gandhi called them "Harijans," meaning
"children of god." The official name given them in India's constitution
(1951) is "Scheduled Castes." "Dalit," meaning "crushed and broken," is
a name that has come into prominence only within the last four decades.
"Dalit" reflects a radically different response to oppression.
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The Dalit are demonstrating a rapidly
expanding awareness of their African ancestry and their relationship to
the struggle of Black people throughout the world. They seem
particularly enamored of African-Americans. African-Americans, in
general, seem almost idolized by the Dalit, and the Black Panther
Party, in particular, is virtually revered. In April 1972, for example,
the Dalit Panther Party was formed in Bombay, India. This organization
takes its pride and inspiration directly from the Black Panther Party
of the United States.
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This
is a highly important development due to the
fact that the Untouchables have historically been so systematically
terrorized that many of them, even today, live in a perpetual state of
extreme fear of their upper caste oppressors. This is especially
evident in the villages. The formation of the Dalit Panthers and the
corresponding philosophy that accompanies it signals a fundamental
change in the annals of resistance, and Dalit Panther organizations
have subsequently spread to other parts of India. In August 1972, the
Dalit Panthers announced that the 25th anniversary of Indian
independence would be celebrated as a day of mourning.
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In 1981, in Bangalore, India Dravidian
journalist V.T. Rajshekar published the first issue of Dalit Voice--the
major English journal of the Black Untouchables. In a 1987 publication
entitled the African Presence in Early Asia, Rajshekar stated that:
"The African-Americans also must know that their liberation struggle
cannot be complete as long as their own blood-brothers and sisters
living in far off Asia are suffering. It is true that African-Americans
are also suffering, but our people here today are where
African-Americans were two hundred years ago. African-American
leaders
can give our struggle tremendous support by bringing forth knowledge of
the existence of such a huge chunk of Asian Blacks to the notice of
both the American Black masses and the Black masses who dwell within
the African continent itself."
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Princess Notes:
I found this
particular reading to be somewhat disturbing but because it is a part
of this world's history, I could not leave it out. It is my
sincere
hope that our red blood will one day be basis for unity in our
world.
However, if you would like to read more indepth on this passage please
visit the link below.
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/india.html

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