PHOTO/AMBEDKAR KING STUDY CIRCLE
SAN JOSE, CA — Around 120 people gathered at Ambedkar King Study Circle’s 2nd annual conference held on September 7 in Cupertino, California. Dr. Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd inaugurated the conference with a keynote address on “Ambedkar and Martin Luther King. Jr: the Giant Epoch Makers”. Dr. Ilaiah is Director of the Centre for Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), Hyderabad, India.
Dr. Kancha Ilaiah has revolutionized the psyche of people in oppressed classes with his historical outlook. He said that non-Brahmins are the producer class who developed agriculture by working in fields and developed various technologies in ancient India to meet the needs of the common people, whereas the priestly class exploited the producers by chanting slogans. He appealed to de-politicized Indian Christians to learn from American Christians, especially the black Christians who combined spiritual and political emancipation through religion.
The conference was organized with three panel discussions followed by a question and answer section. One panelist, Mr. Kunal Shankar (Columbia University) delivered a speech on “Jobless Growth and the General Lack of Unionizing in the Age of Digital Monopolies”. He stated that just as the big tech industries freely move their capital and technology across borders, the IT workers too should organize on a global scale. He explained the ‘Platform Cooperative’ model in which the software is owned by a community. Fairbnb is a successful cooperative model against the corporate-owned Airbnb, and Green Taxi Cooperative, the largest taxi company in Denver, USA, is an alternative to Uber and Lyft.
Ms. Sabiha Basrai (Coordinator, Alliance of South Asians Taking Action) narrated her experience in working with ASATA on social issues, including important interventions such as the Lakireddy Bali Reddy case in which a restaurant owner was convicted of trafficking and sexual offenses for his exploitation of immigrant workers. Mr. S Karthikeyan of the Ambedkar King Study Circle called on the class conscious activists in social organizations to work with the socially conscious activists in class-based organizations, in order to develop a collective consciousness against both class and social exploitation.
Another panelist, Dr. Suraj Yengde (Harvard University) explained the religious sources of Brahminical supremacy as mentioned by Dr. Ambedkar. People who are fighting against social oppression should have social and political understanding. We need class and caste solidarity to defeat discrimination. He exposed the savarnas in the American diaspora who fight against racism in America under the umbrella of ‘people of color’ while remaining silent on existing caste oppression and discrimination both in the United States and back in India. He said that the Dalit question and African American question are basically human questions and need to be solved as human questions.
At the conclusion, fraternal organizations expressed their willingness to build a strong coalition against the casteist, racist, fascist and fascist religious forces.
Ambedkar King Study Circle (AKSC) was started in October 2016. It’s aim is to challenge caste, class, race, gender and religious oppression and oppressors on ideological, political and social fronts. https://akscusa.org/. Contact us at iamsjkk@gmail.com.
