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Dalit Voice is a political magazine published in Bangalore, India that claims to express the views of the Dalit movement. The current full title is "Dalit Voice: the voice of the persecuted nationalities denied human rights" and it appears fortnightly in both internet and print formats. It was founded in 1981 by V.T. Rajshekar, a former journalist for the Indian Express, who is still its editor.
Positions
The magazine is described by the Columbia University library as
"characterized by strong anti-Brahminist, anti-caste and anti-racist stance, advocacy of liberation from Brahminism, and polemical tone. Self-proclaimed as "the sole spokesman for the entire deprived, dehumanised lot of India...", -- Dalits, Backward Castes, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, women -- "all victims of the Aryan Brahminical racism."
The publication attacks Hinduism, Jews, Zionism and American neoconservatism. A reviewer in the magazine dismissed the attempt of a Christian theologian to distinguish between Hinduism as a religion and the Hindu nationalist ideology of Hindutva:
"One cannot save Hinduism and destroy only Hindutva. The idea of difference, though it may be perceptible theoretically for the highly intellectual, is useless for the masses and needs to be abandoned. Let all Bahujans consider that Hindutva and Hinduism is one and the same thing and the Bahujans need to oppose and fight against both."
An article of 2005 contained praise for Adolf Hitler as a "patriot".An article in January 2006 by the same author stated:
Israel is their national name. Zionists mean that corps of the political-minded, most mischievous, most tricky, richest manipulators among the Jews who struggled for and achieved the state of Israel by a novel method of over-populating the state of Palestine by shifting innocent, vulnerable lot of poor Jews from all over the world to Palestine and throwing bones to them after slicing the flesh for themselves. They plotted to rule the world through their money power by creating dissent between the rulers and subjects, communities and factions, bribing and financing dissenters in all the countries which they desired to conquer and rule from behind the curtain.
It said that "the so-called Holocaust of the Jews at the hands of Hitler is the greatest lie and the most highly propagated concoction of history" and offered for sale by mail order the antisemitic hoax text Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The article was followed by a statement by the editor (V.T. Rajshekar) referring to the 2005 article as having created "a minor flutter" and describing this article as "a fitting reply to critics".
Articles have praised Nazi Germany, claiming that "Zionist Jews" have "deliberately mis-portrayed" him as a villain. They have also praised Hitler's Mein Kampf on their website.
Its anti-Brahmin rhetoric, frequently follows to further anti-Semitism with claims of Brahmins in India being descended from Jews and deriving their "fanaticism" and "arrogance" from "Jewish Zionist Racism" .
Dalit Voice has also made various anti-Semitic accusations and touted "Jewish conspiracy theories". The editor V.T. Rajasekhar has treated the hoax text Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion a legitimate and has accused Indian Jews of a conspiracy to "join hands (with Hindus) to crush Muslims, Blacks and India's Dalits"
Dalit Voice, in addition to publishing articles about "Zionist conspiracies" regarding Hitler and the Third Reich, have also supported the Iranian regime and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the holocaust.
It has also claimed that the September 11, 2001 attacks in USA were a "total falsehood manufactured by the zionists controlling the Bush Administration".
Responses
Yoginder Sikand, who writes on Muslim-Hindu relations, has criticized the publication, referring to it as "radical" and asserting that its rhetoric does not help alleviate the Dalit situation:
"Far from alleviating the prevailing situation the militant rhetoric of the writers of Dalit Voice offers nothing substantial and instead create even more disunity. One writer calls the Ulema as the ‘progeny of iblis’ and appeals to the Muslims to stop reading their literature at once."
A scholar, Vijay Prashad, has written of the links between a group of authors including V.T. Rajshekar, Ivan van Sertima and Runoko Rashidi and writers in the Afrocentric movement. He called this a "submerged network of Afro-Dalit literature". He mentioned Rajshekar's editorship of Dalit Voice, saying that its pages had "welcomed African American scholars for at least a decade". He criticized the views of this group of writers as "epidermal determinism" (seeking solidarity on the basis of skin colour alone rather than on the experience of oppression).
The writer Koenraad Elst has criticised the publication for having anti-Hindu views. , counter-claiming that claims of racism in Hinduism are a "crank ideology".
Leon Poliakov writes that the antisemitism exhibited by Dalit Voice is a fairly recent and unrepresentative phenomenon among India's Dalits
Dalit Voice has also been criticized for "buying into anti-Jewish conspiracy theories" by the far-left "Maoist International Movement". While praising the Dalit Voice for having "some good information on caste and other problems in India", they suggest that:
"We hope to see Dalit Voice drop its conspiracy theories about Jews that underestimate the oppressiveness of oppressor nation people in the United States and Western Europe and take up Marxism-Leninism-Maoism."
References
- Columbia University Library entry for Dalit Voice
- K. Jamanadas, "Is it possible to destroy Hindutva without harming Hinduism?", Dalit Voice, Vol.25, No.1 undated
- Iqbal Ahmed Shariff, "Hitler not worst villain of 20th century as painted by zionists", Dalit Voice June 16-30, 2005
- Iqbal Ahmed Shariff, "A Reply to Critics of D.V. Article on Hitler: Jews & the "Jews of India", Dalit Voice, vol.25, No.1 undated
- "D.V. and Foreign Affairs", Dalit Voice, vol.25, No.1 undated
- Dalit Voice - The Voice of the Persecuted Nationalities Denied Human Rights
- Dalit Voice - The Voice of the Persecuted Nationalities Denied Human Rights
- Brighter side of Hitler : DV to reveal facts suppressed by history
- Heuzé, Gérard (1993). Où va l’Inde moderne? (p 87). L’Harmattan.
- Rajshekhar, V.T. Brahminism (p 28). Dalit Sahitya Akademy.
- etext.org
- Google Cache of etext.org
- Dalit Voice, 1-12-1991##
- Dalit Voice, 16-1-1993##
- dalitvoice.org
- Google Cache of Dalitvoice article See "Abuse of History" Hitler not worst villain of 20th century as painted by "Zionists"
- Defeat in Iraq & fall of Bush: India warned to quickly adjust to big changes in West Dalit Voice Article
- 9/11 was a hoax. Dalit Voice. September 2007.
- ^ Sikand, Yoginder (2004). Islam, Caste and Dalit-Muslim Relations in India. Global Media Publications, New Delhi Pg. 98.
- Vijay Prashad (2000). "Afro-Dalits of the Earth, Unite!". African. 43 (1): 189–201.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help); Unknown parameter|quotes=ignored (help) - Ayodhya and After, Koenraad Elst (Chpt 14)
- Poliakov, Leon (1994). Histoire de l’antisémitisme 1945-93 (P.395). Paris.
- ^ Dalit Voice, Google Cache of the Maoist International Movement article