Global Bahujan Movement – Dr. Manisha Bangar’s North America Tour April – May 2017

Round Table India

Dr. Manisha Bangar has just returned from a trip to the US and Canada, where she gave a series of talks about Ambedkarism, and the state of the caste struggle in India. Dr. Bangar is a leading organizer of Mulniwasi Bahujans of India (the Indigenous majority population). Currently serving as National Vice President of BAMCEF (Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation), she is former National Vice President of Mulniwasi Sangh and National President of Mulniwasi Mahila Sangh the mass based offshoot wings of BAMCEF.

A good orator, freelance writer and poetess, she has continued to speak for more than a decade at Universities, Civil/Human Rights and Phule Ambedkarite Organizations, both Nationally and Internationally (USA, UK, Europe and Middle East) including the United Nations on issues of Caste, Gender Equality, Health and Education rights, Comparative Religious thought and Phuley, Periyar, Ambedkar ideology. Even as global organizations and foreign governments are taking cognizance and condemning India’s shameful caste system, India is reeling under recent spate of caste atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis.

Mayor Pro-Tempore of the city of Manteca, California, Gary Singh presenting Dr. Manisha Bangar with the “Global Bahujan Award”

Dr. Bangar’s month long tour of North America included speeches at various universities, religious institutions and private residences in Canada and USA. She was joined by other thinkers and human rights activists at various events, where they discussed the caste system of India and the effects on the population.

The Mayor Pro-Tempore of the city of Manteca, California, Gary Singh presented Dr. Manisha Bangar with the “Global Bahujan Award,” which read: “For her exemplary work in uplifting the downtrodden, defending the oppressed, and carrying forward the caravan of freedom in India.” The award from OFMI was presented by Gary Singh in conjunction with OFMI affiliates Pieter Friedrich, Gurneel Singh Boparai, and Bhajan Singh.

Some quotes from Dr. Bangar’s talks:

“The caste system is against love. It is against fraternity. It is against every human sentiment.”

“The Caste/Varna system of Indian society is not difficult to understand as it is deliberately made out to be by academics. It’s not complex. It’s rather simple. The results it has produced on the Indian society are so obvious and visible.”

“India is only in the form of a political democracy, where you get to vote, but there is no social democracy. There is no representation, and so there is no economic democracy in the country. The upper-caste are only three percent. They have been able to bind up the majority in the fallacious and fictitious name of Hinduism — of Hindu identity. The minority Brahmans have super-power and super-control of all the institutions of the country.”

“Guru Gobind Singh and other Gurus were able to bring about the Sikh Revolution by associating with Shudras and Ati-Shudras and by disassociating from upper Varnas and Brahmans”

“There is no true democracy in India. Through nefarious means, three percent of Brahmans have betrayed the policies of the Indian Constitution to gain total control of 90% of the country’s resources. They have done this by denying the rightful representation of 90% of the population who constitute the Backward Classes and religious minorities. Democracy means nothing if there is no equality of opportunity, but even after 70 years of self-rule, the existence of the caste system as an overarching social law has denied this right to the Mulnivasi Bahujans [original people in the majority] despite it being a fundamental right.”

“The argument given by mischievous Brahman pseudo-historians that the caste/varna system is a British or Western construct or, at best, was created by Muslim invaders, is untenable and seeped in falsehood. If that is true, then against what social order was Siddhartha Gautama Buddha fighting over 2,500 years ago? What were Kabir and Ravidas and Guru Nanak speaking against when they exposed caste discrimination and called for a society of equality?”