By Horen Tudu
Pan Africanism today can be thought of in terms a popular children's fable. A drifting soldier traverses a shanty village full of famished families on the brink of survival. He decides to take a rest stop and declares to the village-folk that he will make a great soup by boiling a cauldron of water containing only a mere glistening stone. Although everyone in the village is welcome to join him, the village-folk are initially unconvinced but shortly after bring small contributions: a head of lettuce, pounds of potatoes, pieces of meat, and much more. Towards the end, the cauldron was overflowing with enough hearty soup to feed everyone in the village for weeks.
Consequently, the moral of this fable is that cooperation can produce significant achievements, even from meager, seemingly marginal contributions. As a perfect analogy to this children's fable, most black populations throughout the world are so occupied with their individual struggles, that a pervasive cynical sentiment prevents any effective attempts at worldwide black socio-political-economic unity. Additionally, most African centered scholars and activists in the Western Hemisphere have been skeptical about the inclusion of black Sudroids into the Pan-African political spectrum. They have dismissed these claims of solidarity as being so inconsequential to their plight that they have neglected this eastern black community completely. Furthermore, an even larger segment of North-American and Caribbean blacks are unaware of the rise of black nationalism from within the Indian Sub-Continent extending back to the last decade, pioneered by Periyar Ramasamy, Kancha Illiah, Uthaya Naidu, Dr. K. Jamanadas, V.T. Rajshekar, Runoko Rashidi, and Hadwa Dom.
For most African American and Afro-Caribbean intellectuals, the most common experience with South Asians has been limited to the upper caste Hindu, Sikh, and Pakistani immigrants of the major cities. This brown Caucasoid community has candidly expressed anti-black, anti-African sentiments and a seemingly perverse fondness for white Anglos and Europeans, of which derives from a cultural lust for white skin. At present, the large-scale immigration of Black Sudroids out of the Indian Sub-Continent is an extraordinarily arduous feat. Consequently, the direct collaboration with their counterparts in America has been the major obstacle for South Asian Pan-Africanists.
On the other hand, recent advancements in technology have brought forth optimism. The Internet has blossomed into an inexpensive and efficient medium of communication and information dissemination, playing a crucial role in the unification of the world's fragmented, oppressed, and destitute masses of Blacks. In spite of this perceptual communications barrier, Pan-Africanism must be redefined to include the Sudroids. This is an essential adjustment to accommodate recent changes in South Asia's political environment, for there are close to 300 million Blacks in South Asia alone. The motivation arises from the preceding fable's premise, that the transnational, cooperative efforts of the world's black populace can produce monumental achievements.
Modern Pan-Africanism was created in the western hemisphere; conceived and developed by the celebrated, Jamaican born intellectual, Marcus Garvey. His unique brilliance identified a leading factor responsible for the destruction of classical Black civilization and the emergence of global Indo-European tyranny. That factor has been the indigenous Black society's lack of a collective political identity. It follows that the existing condition of the Black race is drastically worsening. The European motivated wars and interethnic conflicts in Africa along with the ubiquitous deterioration of African health, economic development and infrastructure have wreaked disaster and confusion upon most post-colonial African nations.
It is a painful fact that within every nation across the globe, Black people occupy the lowest rungs of the socio-economic hierarchy, without exception. In order to ensure our continued existence it is imperative that we abide by certain principles: Blacks worldwide must stay united as one people. As the Dalit author Hadwa Dom has pleaded " From the US South to South Africa to South India, Blacks have been oppressed by white races. More understanding of our common racial bonds is necessary for our survival."
In the 19th century the Black Tasmanians experienced a complete case of genocide. The Aeta negritos of the Phillipines, the Nicobarese, and the Australian Aboriginals are expected to disappear within the next couple of centuries. Today, in the USA, the African - Americans have been shaped into a permanent underclass by the machine of institutionalized racism. It is evident, that the Redefinition of Pan-Africanism is the need of the hour.
