Ronoko Rashidi speaks on, "India: through African Eyes"

Okay thank you very much I'm not going to take very much of your time so be it and so it is anyone else having anyone else having announcements all right Dr P guess I was right on time how's everybody doing right y'all know they kicked uh vibe off the show simbads gone Show's cancelled over it's over I was there I know everybody's very depressed and they got the new show Magic but Magic was terrible I got to tell you and he tried to go with this Rainbow Coalition thing they got one of I've been there

everybody works there they try to make it where everyone's welcome more than that I want to thank him for that impassion plea for the bird family and also for all the work that Jamal has been doing for us for a long time you know Jamal doesn't make a whole lot of money you know last night brother KY Told everybody about my plight but Jamal is mostly doing this because he wants to do it and because he believes that it's important you know there's that old expression in Egypt and I use it frequently brother Charlie likes

to quote me on it ignorance is evil ignorance is evil because with know in in this country the opposite of that is the case they say that ignorance is Bliss ignorance is happiness ignorance is joy I love to be ignorant because when knowledge comes responsibility once you get an inkling of some of this you always have to probe your conscience and say I know better and therefore I cannot pretend that the problems that we are addressing do not exist and not do anything about it and I don't just come to the talking drum form every

Friday night and testify and in the other six weeks do Little or nothing before I go any further it's traditional to ask an elder for permission to speak so I'd like to acknowledge all of the elders tonight and request your Collective permission to begin the formal phase of the program do I have your permission thank you uh before we go any further I'm in a good mood and I'm in a very relaxed mood I don't think I'm going to do too much holler in tonight uh but I do in plan to give a Very informative

presentation and hopefully you will enjoy but before I do that um two or three things before we get into the heart of the program I was in Oakland last week and uh there's some brothers up there that are brothers and sisters uh who have a program called well I don't know the name of the organization but it's basically there two Flyers I'm going to pass these out Charlie will help me one is called save Nubia from a cultural inheritage cleans cleansing and others called appeal to save Nubia perhaps I can get somebody else all right

nice to have volunteers like that hey so let me read one of these flyers cuz I haven't read it myself y'all know what nubie is right nubie is Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan and a lot of people believe that ancient ktic civilizational Culture was developed by people that today are identified as Nubians on the yellow fly it says uh from save nuia from a cultural inheritance cleansing and appeal to the Free World yeah that's itic puts everything in doubt doesn't I wonder who they addressing I guess that's us for nearly a century Nubians have been

subjected to hardship and insecurity by the inundation of their Villages and towns and their historical and archaeological Sites the systematic procedure to abolish Nubia and the Nubian civilization should be dealt with seriously the Nubian one of the Great greatest African civilizations had contributed to the formation of humanity and now they must employ the Free World implore the Free World to contribute and save their endangered culture and Heritage the Nubian Exodus of 1960 was a climax of all Nubian sufferings the consequences were tragic as they lost a Precious part of their Homeland rich with world and

human civilization my name is remains now another part of Nubia I hope y'all are follow me now this is important with the wealth of monuments that have attributed to nban and World Civilization is a subject of abolishing by inundating the proposed kbar Dam Waters will wipe out all of these monuments all of them doesn't say a few surely there Are numerous ways to provide Power and develop the nuban province without submerging any more of this land police help General Nubians and pro protest the construction of this stand by participating letter writing campaign to the following

and the other briefly the sudin government has this is the most important one I should have read this first the Sudanese government has contracted out the Chinese government to construct a dam known as the kajar dam project for the purpose of bringing hydroelectric power to the Nubian area of Mah if this project is implemented the flooding Waters of the dam will emerg the most densely populated area of the Nubian mahaz which is considered the richest in archaeological sites and monuments in spite of proven alternative energy sources that could prevent this Catastrophe and genocide and regardless

of the repercussions involved with the building of this Dam the sud sudanes government is proceeding with business as usual so here you can fill this out if you're interested and there's a lot of email stuff on here and websites to follow up this is very important and we can allow these things to just happen without our intervention this is as important as The James Bird Thing because we need to be involved in things like this all over the world now one of the problems with this is and again I'm just reading this is that some

Muslims we going start controversy Kitty already some Muslims believe that nothing is really important before the time of the Prophet Muhammad and so that anything that happened before that is known as the age of ignorance so that if you go to Egypt Today and I've had the opportunity to go there five times now and hopefully go back again in a couple months including Nubia you will see these Arabs exploiting Africa in Antiquity they'll sell anything that's right it doesn't belong to them right and they see that it really has no relevance because it's before the

time of the Prophet that's the kind of ignorance that we're dealing with Now brothers and sisters uh tonight's presentation is called looking at India through African eyes and I would imagine a lot of you excuse me can I get that drink down there than you thank you very much I think a lot of people um heard one of the radio programs excuse me on either KJLH on Wednesday morning and thanks again to Jamal for Hooking that up or uh in Visions on Tuesday night now I just got to town Monday afternoon and Monday I had

a free day with my family always got to do that and then on Tuesday I stayed up didn't take a nap to do the interview at 11:00 and then I didn't have an alarm clock you know I'm in my mother's house and they go to bed like at 9:00 right everything is quiet I'm lonely over there y'all just let you know and so I Decided that instead of going to sleep and taking a chance of oversleeping I would stay up for the other interview at 4:30 in the morning and I still don't know how Jamal

and Carl do that so consistently 4:30 in the morning but there were all kind of sounds going on in the studio that morning so maybe y'all aren't as smooth as I thought I mean in no disrespect and then I was groggy and sleepy so I don't hardly remember Remember what I said Ojo gave me a tape so I get a chance to listen to it but basically tonight what I'm going to do is to divide this talk up into I think five parts now the first part the biggest part will be an overview of my

recent trip to India I was in India I'm happy to say from March 31st to April 21st by myself 21 days on the other side of the world with most people who have never seen a black person from outside India Before brothers and sisters who spoke several different language none of which I understood and the person who was supposed to escort me after two days said he had to go to another part of the country but he was sure I would be okay so I'm going to tell you about that and then I'm going to

show you some slides some of you have been following me for years and you will have seen some of these slides but I would imagine some Of you too and it's refreshing to see new people uh will be seeing them for the first time and there'll be slides from um work I've been doing on the African presence in India for since 1980 as well as a few new ones um from from the trip and then I'm doing one of the reasons I went over there in fact perhaps a major reason is to um set the

tone and iron out the rough edges for an African Center tour Avenue that will take place in March 1999 it'll be the first one and naturally my ego insists that I'll be the one to coordinate that trip okay I'm going to do that so that's next march and I'm going to tell you about that and hopefully even some people will be able to go and then we'll have a discussion period if we have the time I'd like to know what you think about all this information now India is obviously very important to me because it

has a largest concentration of black People in any one country in the world but I want to know if are we connecting there do you see see the significance of that when I first started to do this presentation way back around 1980 or 81 no a little earlier than that about 1983 a sister uh angrily said don't we have enough problems over here why you want to be looking at black people in India okay so we'll talk about that and then the last bit of business you got the flyers I hope you'll respond but of

Course we have to do something to uh Finance this cuz we are working for each other so let me tell you what we have tonight now brother KY Obi aadu who is a remarkable young man he's a couple years younger than me so I call him a young man uh I did this presentation very similar to what I'm going to do in a few minutes at the African cultural center Long Beach last night I think Charlie was there Jetta was there Kitty was there anybody else there oh wow Dedicated Souls thank you sister Mar recognize

her um and this is a presentation in this tape right here now Kitty they just taped the thing last night I didn't get in until about midnight and here I am he comes to me with a bag with the videotape labeled roko rashidi the only flaws in it roko is spelled with one wrong letter Roga Rashid black and touchables Of India African cultural center of Long Beach and this is a cover isn't that nice beautiful is that excellent work so I'm very grateful to you K I don't know where you are there you go brother

give him a round of applause one more time you other things now one of the things I like about it is because it corresponds to this book that I'm promoting you see no that's excellent it really is good work so the tape is $20 Only 20 bucks slides and everything basically I'm gonna do tonight so if you have to run out or something or if you want to get the tape that I'm doing this evening you can take it with you we do have a few of these and only five of these books okay and

then from India itself are two lecture presentations one in a uh city called nopur in the center of the country and another in a place called trandum where I was with the Carolot dollet Panthers who named themselves at the Black Panther Party and one last presentation called great African historians that I did in New York with Dr John here and Clark just in March anyway that's the business now book is 10 these are 20 and these are $5 and last but not least we have the distinguished editor who is also my dear friend Jetta Parham

a rhythm of the drum and this is one other thing you can pick up if you Like you see the photograph right here the sister is fine isn't she beautiful she's a black woman from South Central India okay and this is a photograph that I yeah South Central always got to be and uh always man and I just how I felt when I was over there too um this is one of the photographs I collected when I was a student at UCLA in 1980 and it's in this uh article here called the African presence in

India a Historical overview and this is basically what I'm going to talk about tonight so if you want to purchase one of these These are only $3 I think that's almost like giving it away you can frame the photographs it's very nice and again I used to be like Jamal I used to have problems you know promoting these things but I don't anymore because if we are going to change the world we got to finance it and if we don't somebody else is going To subvert it and you can't get away from it all right

you know what's all this about I threw your magazine over there I was um March 31st I went to India and this is a trip that I have been dreaming about for some time I developed an interest and y'all with me so far one last thing give a good life a good Round of Applause for letting us have this program Um I took an interest in India way back about 1977 actually before that and uh I met L Grand clay and before that I been reading um destruction of civilizations by Chance Williams in particular and

the thing that the Young Brother L Grand had and the old brother Dr James had for some reason we never called George uh chanc I'm sorry we very R called chor Williams Dr Williams but he's Dr Williams Dr Clark Dr Ben but uh Chancellor Williams Dr Williams um they talked about a time in history before the Advent of the slave experience is all too often is is asserted that that is where our history begins with chicken George on a slave ship or in a jungle and I certainly believe that I went for it I was

just as brainwashed as anybody growing up I went school right here I grew up in Los Angeles went to Washington High School and then I went To Cal State North Bridge and then I went to UCLA and I grew up with a strong sense of inferiority I grew up with a Shackled mind and to some extent it's still there because we have to work on those shackles all the time this is a deeply embedded process that we're going through and it takes a while to rid ourselves of its impurities and for me I admit it's

a day today struggle and uh chancell Williams would talk about black People in all over the world Palestine Mesopotamia and India I never heard of anything like that and then LR who is a dear friend of mine in the City attorney of Compton and just outstanding brother and somebody I really learned a lot from did a more comprehensive work and finally around 1980 um the Grand myself ASA hilard Richard King uh inzinga head Ru we all formed an organization called Ementa and it was a California white black Think Tank and we were told and I

was about uh I guess in my late 20s at the time I was full of energy full of enthusiasm and uh I was told that everybody in the group would have to take a special area and focus on that and become an expert in it so uh I was collecting information about black people all over the world particularly in parts of the World about which we didn't know a whole lot like Australia and the islands of the South Pacific so the grand says where we noo you're going to have to have a focus what are

you what is it going to be and I said well may India why not that he said why India he says I said because first of all I've been collecting these pictures like that and it's blowing everybody's mind I mean look at this that sister right there and I hadn't seen anybody really do anything On it comprehensively there have been people who wrote a chapter about it here or there but no book and so I decided that I wanted to be the first person to write a comprehensive book on the black presence in India and

I wanted it to be very similar to Chancellor Williams book destruction of black civilization cuz that book changed my whole life a bold powerful sweeping work and I wanted to do something on India so I began to research it and then about 198 5 I Edited a book called The African presence in early Asia first edition and somebody that I been in a political organization with 10 years prior to that took the book over to India and gave it to the author of this book BT rashar and rashar got very enthusiastic because I was writing

about untouchability and cast and he was an Untouchable he was working for The Untouchables and these are the people that now call themselves the doll term dollar means crushed Broken and oppressed and that's a little better word than Untouchable so rashak car wrote an enthusiastic letter to Ivan vanera saying who is this guy Roka rashidi and how can I get in contact with him and vanera forwarded the letter to me I got excited and wrote rakar and we've been tight ever since so around 1987 I was beginning to be a bit more prosperous and uh

I wanted to travel abroad so I went to Brazil in February and then in October I went to India and I went there not just to Humbug and be a tourist but I went there to meet with the Untouchables the dollet and not only that but to participate in a historic conference called the first all indan dollar writers conference for the first time in history literally history doll writers activists poets journalists and what have you came together at this one spot a place called Haider rad to voice their Grievances and to Express solidarity and I

was a part of that I inaugurated the conference and I gave I think a very good speech right naturally probably a little Prejudice just a little bit and um and I had a big impact I got marriage proposals people were calling me or sending me letters saying can you give my son in such and such a school and this and that and the other and most people have never met a black person from outside of India before so I kept Saying I was going to come back every year every year every year and then I

decided I was going to organize a tour but that's not an easy either because for most people they don't understand what the significance of India is what's the deal you meet Indians over here in this country and they just as racist as most white folks they don't identify with us they don't look like us they exploit us so you figure what I'm going go over there For and so finally this year I said I'm going back to India and if I have to go by myself I'm going to do it I'm not going to let

anything stand in my way so I decided to to plan a trip after February our month Black History Month you know which is where I make the both of my income and also I wanted to plan it after the national elections in India the elections I think were from the 1st of March to about the 14th of March and during this time you have a new Political power and unfortunately a new political phenomenon on the scene and that is called the BJP the BJP is a right-wing Hindu fundamentalist party it's as though uh Ronald Reagan

and new gingr were Hindus so that's an analogy and um very conservative very racist India is what some people call the original home of racism a lot of people refer to Hinduism as Sanctified Racism so what we're talking about is looking at India through African eyes from our own perspective that's what it means to be African sener to view things through your own perspective and not other people's in our own best interest and so the BJP won and I I came to India right after that also after the ascat conference I'm a active dues paying

member of the association for the study of classical African civilizations and they had their 15th annual convention in New York City a City College of New York in uh I think March 13 14 and 15 so the week after two weeks after I I left and uh the last Friday in March I was in the United States uh I got a letter I got a call from London from one of my Publishers and he said um after him and and ha you know and telling me he was calling to see how my latest book was

coming along uh which I Wasn't happy about cuz I ain't got two royalty checks from this guy in five years I wouldn't let him publish a postcard don't even know how he got my phone number he called me back this is from London now and he proceeded to say rco the real reason I called is because I talked to a spiritual person a Elder and and during the course of the conversation and this startled me this is not what you want to hear when you get ready to go on a long trip he said Um

all at once we were talking and the guy says rashidi do you know anyone named rashidi and the publisher say yeah I know somebody named rashidi his name is Jano Rashid lives in the United States call him immediately and tell him he is in grave danger and he must be very careful now this is not what you want to hear when you're getting ready to go by yourself to the other side of the world strange country so I got malaria stuff I Tried to get a shot for Hepatitis A and typhus I got these two

ANS I got a a necklace with Osiris on there and I had a Buddha in my pocket okay A friend of mine said lady all that what you need is a knife what you need but nothing was going to scare me so I leave I go through New York and then I fly to London and then I fly to Delhi on to Delhi then as they say in the movies and I flew over Iran and turkey and Pakistan and I get there late On the evening of March 31st and the editor of the of a

publication called dollar voice and the author this book V rashar is there at endir Gandhi airport to meet me yeah was I never been in Delhi before so we stay in a youth hostel you can cter rashley cter find something cheap okay we stay but it was clean it was economical no point wasting money right um and this is right near the all the embassies American Embassy Norway Sudan China and what have you and The next morning we toured all these areas and we had breakfast with uh a doll who is actually a Cabinet member

his name is doll Zim and he stopped everything he was doing it's been about 3 hours with me welcome you to the country after that I'm just going to give you the highlights of the trip cuz believe me I can talk till next march about what happened wow it was a tripal lifetime and I want you to come back with me next year now uh met with a lady Who was a seek when you see a seek man these are the people with the turbin and usually long they usually pretty big and if you go

to India they dominate the taxi industry and they're also dominant in the military and had a wonderful lunch with her and then purchased a ticket and flew East to the state of bear when I made plans to go on a trip I told rashik car look man I'm counting on You to develop my itinerary I want to go to Bear in the far Northeast and I want to go to carola in the far Southwest opposite ends of the country I want to go to Taj Mahal I want to go some other temples and I want

to go into some Villages and I said other than that you can PL anything you want for me so he pled a meeting from me with all the subscribers to this publication a Publication called dollar voice I'm the United States Representative of dollar voice okay the voice of the persecuted nationalities denied human rights and uh so he planned a meeting for everybody who read dollar voice to come to this city called nagur which is in the very heart of India a historic City ancient city dominated by orange girls and by the way notp is where

this incident took place with the sister's Husband was murdered I went to the exact spot and uh so there we go so we're in partner we stop off in from Delhi in a place called luk now luk now is the capital of the of a state called utar Pradesh and uh you can look out in the skylines and you can see the Himalayan mountains or they call them the halalas there and finally we get in partner and it's just like partner but if you were speaking ion partner and partna is the capital of Vhar it's

about 600,000 people and the moment we got there I said boy I know I'm in it now cuz rashik car told me this is the real India you could look out and you can see and you could smell fires from people's uh homes they're heating their houses and cooking their food and they use charcoal and wood in the big cities you don't find that happening no lighting and this is the capital of the state there are no taxis at the Airport all they have were Rick Shaws and private cars and Rick Shaw is about as

big as this right here that's you fit about this many people in know we got luggage and stuff so we check into a hotel and I had brought over there with me a fifth of vodka to help ease my nerves and also I knew that rikar was a bit of a drinking man so I figured we'd sit up all night and talk and rashik car would take the little drink and he said well I'll see you in the morning Basically okay so the next morning and it turned out to be good because the trip is

about to get full the next morning there's a delegation to me there's a delegation of Muslims there's a delegation of Buddhists there's a delegation of Hindus and there's a delegation of people that are called tribals this is a tribal person and these are the clearest example of what the first people in India look like in India you have three components of black People historically one the first people over there are black Africans and then number two you have those who developed to civilization they also the same thing and then you have those of us who

like many other parts of the world like us were caught up in the slave experience and came to India volunteer slaves didn't come from Africa you know the rest Africans were captured in Africa and enslaved and taken all over the world if you look at those three things That's what counts for the defusion or the dispersal what some people refer to as the diaspora of black people all over the world India has all of those and they were all there in that room to meet me and they were delighted they were probably more excited about

meeting me than I was about meeting them because few people over there even the educated Elite have ever met a black person from outside India nobody that I met had had any interaction with one and for the Most part most people had never even seen one not even on television now there a lot of black people even in North India so how and I always ask this question when I travel abroad could they distinguish me from them first of all the hair then have straight to wavy hair and it's not always black sometimes it's reddish

and blonde natural and then I figured the other part must have been the the wristatch you know the bracelet the Sneakers the jeans all of those things set me apart and so from the very beginning I I was a real curiosity piece I was interviewed I think in that City Alone by three or four newspapers and I was taken all over the city the first uh day we went to uh visit the ganes river but more important than that on the following day I had a chance to tour the slum areas of pner and this

is where the Untouchables live and just to review Quickly The Untouchables are those not all The Intouchables are black and I don't want to mislead you but most of them are The Untouchables are largely the people who built the early civilization of India and whose descendants were ultimately defeated by the Aryans the white people IND Europeans that's right the first white folks to enter into India are called Aryans the term Aran is the epitome of White supremacy isn't interesting that those animals that kill that brother in Jasper Texas and I live in San Antonio which

can't be that far were members of the Aryan Brotherhood or the Aran Nation so when you hear that word Aryan that's a buzz word for white supremacy the Nazis consider themselves arens right so the arens is the name the term Aron is the name of the white people who invad they are truly barbarians Savages in the truest sense Of the word and I'm not here to bash white people that's not necessary but I'm talking about Savages had never seen a city largely homosexual women with few rights children who are abandoned they cremate the dead but

one thing about them they are aggressive Warriors they aggressive militarists so they conquer all of Northern India and ultimately the whole of India either Physically or culturally and impose a uh social order called Barna v a r na a that in their language means color and this is a system that today is known as the cast system it is originally based on color and the more white blood you had in in you the more advanced you were so it would be an intermediate thing white folks what they call the intermixed people and then the masses

of black people who had been conquered and then outside of them The Untouchables Who themselves were black but who were even slaves of the slaves and just to briefly uh review these people were not allowed to enter a village in the daytime and it was started their Shadows the sounds of their voices or their mere presence will cause pollution ritual pollution to other members of society they were kept on the lowest rungs of the social ladder they were outside of social ladder in fact they're often times called Outcast which means outside The cast system which

basically means outside the realm of humanity and in this state of bear cows have a higher status is in true now cows have a higher status than Untouchables and most of them are black and most of them are poor bear I wanted to go to Bear kind of person I am because I had always heard that bear was the most corrupt backward poorest and oppressive part of IND what the antal had at the Worst so naturally that's where I wanted to go and they took me through these slums and I went to three slum communities

in the city lots of homeless people the city is dirty it stinks you know there are cows there are water buffalos horses chickens donkeys goats and I was quite surprised to see and dogs of course uh I was quite surprised to see a lot of Pigs and the ugliest pigs you could ever imagine I saw one at night and I said Man what is that right I said that's a pig I said well should we go this way and he said no he won't bother you I used to seen no Pig just wandering around at

random anywhere and everywhere all over the city and people are desperately poor it is a decaying City a very ancient city so we tore the slums brothers and sisters it was horrible and and that is too kind of work I went in one area on three consecutive slum areas one morning and plus it's hot close to 100° and it always makes a difference people live tightly packed together so you might have a Hut with corrugated roofing or just thatch on top maybe this big in a depth of maybe here maybe slightly bigger to the wall

and in that area you might have six people living and maybe a cow and a goat all in there flies mosquitoes this one area held 2,000 people and there was one well to service everybody they did their washing Drinking water you name it cleaning and I went over and took a picture of them and it's filled with you know green slime and mold on the side for 2,000 people everybody's barefooted snotty nose hair [Music] uncombed spitting defecating urinating publicly I saw one person I said how old is that person he said I said he what

is he about 70 say he's 35 so this is horrible you know they took me to what they called a school and it's really just like a a bench with a side of a shed that has statch on top no textbooks no notebook paper no ink pen no pencils none of that so I walked all through this and you know nobody asked me for any money now when you go to Egypt by it's a way of life begging is a way of life people don't beg because they're hungry it's cultural over there In spite of

everything that happened to these people I sense this time would ever before today still maintain their dignity a lot of women have been forced to turn to prostitution not to get crack cocaine but to feed their family for one more day so I asked the the people that took me I said um how are they viewed are they look down I said no these women are doing what they have to do and people accept that so I was impressed by that and so I walked through this area Hot sweltering a whole crowd of people following

me I was told they were told that I was a journalist United States uh African-American scholar name rova rashidi who had gone over there and that sound kind of like a Muslim name Rashid is is or Muslim so I had one of the little caps on because the people that took me there were Muslims one day I'd be with the Muslims one day I'd be with the Buddhists and then the Hindus every now and then and every now and then a Christian would pop up and then a tribal person would present himself from time to

time now the one tribal person that I met in partner and I don't remember his name he was from a group called The santal y'all still with me um he was the supervisor of police because they have an affirmative action program over there too that the government is trying to dismantle just like over Here and so um he wanted he wrote me he wrote a letter to the police department so that I could have an armed escort all the time so that no matter what happened they were going to protect me so most of the

time I would go a place there' be six or seven men around me some who would never literally take their eyes off me and that can be unnerving too so we go in this area and finally uh it's hot now and this is my first full day in Partner in Bear and uh I'm ready to go and they show me the school and they asked me to sit on this bench and a whole group of people crowed around me and it's kind of cute you know you like attention it's not a bad thing all the

time and uh one guy came up to me and started Fanning me and uh he was the teacher he had a of $2.50 a month 250 a month Tony till how about that 250 my brother and uh so I said man can you know can I give you Some money I had to ask them I said I'd like to donate I'm not much $50 or something to the school but for them that's a phenomenal amount of money you know they gave me a receipt they s wrote the receipt I still hav it see I wasn't

used to anything like that and then they asked me me to take tea with them now I have described a community and uh my inclination was to say you know I'm really not thirsty it's Hot and it's much too warm a day to be drinking tea but brothers and sisters these people have been told for the last 3,000 years that they are filth and my attitude was no matter what I'm not going to reinforce that I saw myself as a visiting Ambassador wonder who represented all of you wonderful and I was going to represent you

well and I'm fairly confident that for most of the trip he'd be very proud of the brother I quitted myself very well So I said uh all right I I'll have a cup and they handed me the cup and I didn't really want to look at it and my attitude was the water was boiled so I guess it's okay and I drank it and it kept Fanning me and everybody's grinning at me and taking pictures and uh so I finished it and gave it back to him said how about another cup I said okay give

me one and I think I might have drank one more so finally get out of there and we walk to the edge of this slum area And all these people are gathered around the Jeep now I don't know what they're saying but they're talking in a very animated fashion so I just get in the Jeep and I I was washing my hands with his hand sanitizer to tell you the truth I don't want anybody to see me uh so finally after about 10 minutes everybody crowded in and they were riding like about eight or n

deep and uh I said what were they saying he said they're talking about you I said What are they saying he said man they were trying to figure out who you are and I said well how did they act he said literally they were astonished that's the word they use and I said what did you tell them I said you were from America I said did they understand that not many of them that most people don't even have a concept of what America is India is composed largely of 800,000 Villages that's where the masses of

People live almost 950 million people and probably that 950 probably 700 million live in villages and some of them are very far removed so I told him I wanted to go in villages and he took me into plenty of them and he said I was a Hopi he say they would never understand african-amer but Hai they understand Hai is a term for black people who were captured in Africa enslaved converted to Islam and Won their freedom and Rose to very High positions so Hopi are like dignitaries so I was a Hopi then he took me

to another area and this is dominated by the lowest of The Untouchables see there are even different categories of Untouchables these people are forced to attach a broom to their back to erase any evidence of their presence and much of India Today dolled women or untouched women cannot clothe themselves from the Waste up it's not uncommon to uh take a doll woman there was a case where the sister in the north the same state where they designated the nuclear devices um sisters Sons stole some vegetables they're hungry you should see some of these people so

M Nur so they sto from vegetables and so this lady was accosted stripped and beaten paraded naked Through The Village at noon and then made to have sex with their two sons in Front of everybody this is how our people are cheated there the first people the descendants of the first people the people built civilization over there this is how they dealt with so the next group is a area of people called The Dome D oom and these were dark skinned people with reddish uh hair and every now and then you find somebody with blonde

hair I had never seen anything like that except Australia where I plan to go in November and they Were happy to see me too and I was a strange sight now this area was even worse than the group prior the first group is called the Metar and I don't expect you to remember all these names when I tell you anyway and then you have the Dome and I gave them a little money too and then finally I was taking into another area which was even worse than the first two and fin I said man I

had enough I walked past as one sister she was Sitting in a pile of garbage sitting in it and just a cloud of flies all over her and she's picking through the garbage looking for anything she could eat or use and this is day-to-day reality when you would leave these areas you left you left with a sense of relief but also with kind of a sense of guilt like it was like you were leaving prison but they didn't have a ke unlocked the door no schools no sanitation they had these latrines that were just backed

up With feces for months you can only imagine what it's like when it really gets hot or when it rains because there's no drainage system there's no electricity there's no lights and these other two areas didn't have a school so they walk me through this area and then that was it for that day I had two interviews with two big time newspapers and I was just furious and I Was saying things like how could the government allow this to happen and they said well we're doing what we can we're making great progress and I'll would

be just furious and you you can't eat or it's hard to eat after that and really brothers and sisters you question your faith in God there were times when I felt like I was just in a nightmare and I couldn't wake up you want to cry but tears wouldn't come so that was that the next day it got Worse and we went to a village uh in a district called the jehanabad District and once again we bunch of us piled together and they just like us we said we're going to leave at 8 and we

leave about 11: and we drive all day and then every few minutes somebody has to stop and use the bathroom so that was the way that trip was and we go to this place called jehanabad now in in December 65 men women and children were Murdered in Johan late at night about midnight a private Army of 300 gunman came into this Village and just shot anything and everything I think they killed 26 children uh under the age of 10 one a twoy old one 6 months old one person 80 years old they shot everything mostly

women and children now the idea behind these things is to keep the dollars terrorized keep them in a Perpetual state of fear go in and rape all the women shoot the men so and then If you protest who you going to protest to because all the government officials the head of the army the head of the police all the priests the head universities are all of the upper cast and those are the ones who are ordering the killings so they took me to this District not to that specific Village but one very close to it

and these people were messed up they were just like the Dome except they lived in the country the Dome are known as scavengers they clean latrines with their hands and I'm not talking about with gloves with their hands that's their job as scavengers they take the filth and they put it in a bucket and then you put the bucket on top of your head and then you walk to the outskirts of the village and you dump it and you can see the exren streaming down the back I mean this is Horrible I called a group

of them together to see if I could take a picture of them and they ran I pulled out my camera they thought it was a gun he thought I was going to shoot them and it's almost funny but it's tragic I talked to one sister she had glaucoma and last year she had nine of her sons who were murdered by upper cast Hindus and then one lady had two of her sons murdered and naturally what did I do the American thing can I give you Some money I had asked them and they took it and

I finally got my pictures and they walked me around it was just pathetic so we go back to PNA and spend one more evening with rashik car and we go to a restaurant this little hotel and uh we both had I think a couple of beers and we were all sitting around eating this restaurant and rashar is very funny he has a quite a sense humor he's 63 Years old and I love to be around him I think if if there's such thing as reincarnation in a past life he must have been a king because

he just has a very Regal bearing and he likes me right uh so we were sitting there talking and EA our food and all on a rat ran right down through the middle of the restaurant and rashiki says roko did you see that R I said no where is it and it's over there I said man if you see it again let me know so sure enough a few Minutes later the rat came out again and the rat wasn't moving the rat was just chilling he know wasn't moving fast he wasn't worried and you got

the impression the rat was very secure because everybody was laughing and S rashik car says I will not have this you have rats here you will not have me tomorrow oh I was in stitches because nobody else seemed to even take notice of the rats so the next day I checked out of the hotel somebody insisted that I stay in his house a Muslim doctor named Dr M Ali treated me like a prince never took a scent and I said look man I'm really comfortable in this hotel it's all right it's not bad I'm it's

cool they said no it won't do you're too far away from us we want people to have access to you 24 hours a day I said well all right then let's go so he says I want you to stay in my house but he doesn't even stay in the house you got all these strange people and I had a Room and they had to clean it up and spray for mosquitoes and close all the windows and they had a separate room for a toilet and a shower and I said well at least that's not bad

they had this I don't know what you call these toilets where you have this container on top that holds the water and then you have a little hole they call them squatter literally a hole in the ground and you pull the chain I said well I guess you know I I guess I could deal with that I Can cook I can do that so I took care of my business I'm down there squatting and I get up and I pull the chain and nothing happens I said wow wouldn't you know it maybe it's out of

water maybe I don't understand how to fill it up so I started moving this thing around and a big lizard about that either lizard or roko was leaving the bathroom so I mean I would from time to time be in somebody's house and I just See a lizard up on the side of the wall and nobody's noticing and I'm eating and I'm looking at the lizard all at the same time you know I'm not squeamish or anything but I ain't crazy about lizards and snakes when you can't see them it kind of gives you the

creeps so we leave for a place in the south of bear called buaya and before we get to buaya we stop at a place called Nanda Nanda is the site of an ancient Buddhist Monastery and University it covers 62 Miles imagine that a university covering 62 miles all made of brick and we stopped there and we walked over the ruins and then we went to a place calleda agaya is important because this is the place where the Buddha is supposed to have received Enlightenment they actually have a branch of the original Bodie tree that's what

the bookstore is named after the B they planted a branch and now it's a big massive tree and they have a big Temple There built by a Buddhist King and they have a black Buddha inside it natur I took a picture of it and I went and sat under the bod tree thinking that maybe the Buddha sat in this very spot and I was ready to go after that but the guy who I was with a guy named buddh and Hans uh insisted that I meet the monks who were running this place who themselves were

Untouchables although they were Buddhist so we chatted they so We're very familiar with your work I was shocked these guys are telling me they knew the name Roka Rashi in that part of India so it was an honor but unfortunately we talked too long and we couldn't get back that night you can't drive some places at night because on the road you have these big craters you have donkeys horses cows chickens goats water buffalo buffalo ax people motorcycles motor scooters little cars big cars in trucks and there are no Lights so was decided we can't

go we can't leave tonight which was a disappointment to me because this was not the sort of place I wanted to stay and we finally stayed in a place called a circuit house in the outskirts of the city you couldn't see anything all you could hear was crickets cricket and uh mosquitoes just swarming all over you so the guy says are you going to be comfortable here I like what else we going to do we sleep in the car So they put me in a room with a big mosquito net and the big lizard on

the wall and ants all in the bathroom but I'm saying that's all right I'm in India this is what I paid my money for I was ready for this I'm a soldier in the army of African Liberation and Redemption nothing was going to turn me around so I'm getting ready to go to bed I'm under the mosquito net I hear big knock On the door now who could this be so Buddha Hans comes and says roko real Stern I said wonder what happened you were called a minute ago this is roko under no circumstances are

you to open this door for anyone we leave at 5 a.m. and I don't care what they say don't let anybody in this room how you think I slept that night I'm looking for somebody to break in I got both eyes open I couldn't wait to get out of there now as it happened When we got back to PNA the next morning without mishap there's the Physicians waiting for me roko where you been he said man we went to Bulgaria we stayed overnight says I'm ready to take you to a tribal area I said really

now this is like 350 km away these are the people I'm going to show you in the slides tribal people black people and I never thought I would get a chance to go to one of these places in my lifetime I said we go he Says yeah 2 hours so we get a driver who drives literally like a demon foot all the way down and every time every now I say man why don't you slow down he would just what do you think you are telling me how to drive I said just go ahead do

what you got to do nobody hard he speaks English the doctor couldn't go with me and I heard him say before I left he says he is to experience no discomfort pointing to me I said how much is the chip going to Cost he said, 1500 rupees I offered him the money said man I wouldn't take any money from you you're on tour if you get a chance when you come back to United States send some for the school I'm going to help build that school we're going to help build that school so finally after

about 8 hours we get to the tribal area and we supposed to been there in 3 hours 3 hours passed we ain't anywhere close well how close are we another two hours two hours pass well we Should be there by now probably another two hours another hour p man where we at man we're on the way you want to stop for tea do you want a cold drink you want call I said I want to get to the tribal area he said which tribal area I said the Munda he said you sure you don't want

to go see the santals I said the Munda you mean the Orion the Munda so he said okay I'll get you there how long is it going to take about another two hours now by this time the sun is Starting to set and and I don't want to get stuck out there I don't want to be in another one of those circuit houses so I'm looking at the sun like you do in a vampire movie when the sun is going down and you want to get in before Dracula starts to hang so finally I said

ancestors if you just let me see these people I won't bother you for a long time this is something I I implore you I must say and you know it seemed like the ancestors must have been with me on that Trip cuz right after that we found a Village and black people start streaming out of the village poor dirty just like the Dome and just like the people in the village but this is a tribal area called hazari Bach one brother came out of a Hut with a monkey around his neck I said man this

is India and they walked me all around and they some of them started crying not because they were Overjoyed to see me they weren't crying for tears but they Were crying of anger because they were showing me just how they had been abused and mistreated how the women have been so sex actually exploited so these I gave some more money to and they didn't they didn't resist at all but they weren't begging they weren't demanding they said anything I gave them and I gave all the children in the Villages pencils I brought plenty of those

I learned that from Dr Ben so that's the highlight of bear the next day I took a 28 hour train ride it was miserable to the center of the country and you can see two things in particular one is you can look outside and see small shrines called satis s a TI a Sati is a woman who has committed suicide she has set herself on fire in order to and when your husband dies now this is a society where is totally male oriented India is only one of two countries in the world where there are

more men than women because if they fight they will murder Girl children in a minute they'll abort a girl child once they find out often times if it's a female that's right and it said in India in ancient times that a female is never independent when she is a child she belongs to her father and when she out lives her uh when she grows up she belongs to her husband and Sh Liv her husband she belongs to her son so she can't inherit any property so committing to saki was an honorable thing to do it

Was taught and this is exploitation of women now they would had a funeral p and they put the body on it and uh put flambo liquids on it particular a liquid called ghe G he e e and uh the eldest son will take a torch and light the fire now when the fire when the flame starts to burning high it's the Widow's function to jump on the flame jump on the fire and that way she continues to serve her husband and she saves both souls in St for 35 Million years and she's becomes a goddess

so all over the landscape you can see these little shrines it's a horrible exploitation of women sometimes children they have these arranged marriages and I read about a girl who was four years old who was married now you married a foury old child Four Women in India so um also you find a a tree called they call the flame of The forest this is a beautiful tree big tree with bright orange leaves never seen anything like it absolutely breathtaking and finally get to a place called Jan which was even uglier than potna but I couldn't

wait to get off that train I couldn't wait to get off the train and we take a a taxi and then a bus to a hotel near a place called aant have you ever heard of aant yeah they have these magnificent caves there temples and uh all hell broke Loose the guy who was my escort had kept asking me for money and rashik car had assured me that I told him don't ask you for any money and he was doing it anyway and I said okay no problem I need money for train tickets this that

another so finally I gave him $200 American I said I got to go to the bank and exchange said I'll do it for you don't worry about it and I should have known by his enthusiasm that this was not going to work so I'm hot and miserable and he Says we're going to stay in this hotel today and this is a hole in the wall like a dollar a day I said man I'm not staying there and by the way where's my money he says what money I said $200 he said Oh you mean that

$50 I said no the2 200 he said I forgot it I said man how you going to forget my money I'm speaking of boning now he said I'll give it to you in the next city I said I want it this moment so he starts going through his pocket And he pulls out about $50 said man and this isn't exactly what I said but this is for the good life I said man you better give it up he says brother you misunderstood I will manage everything I said I don't want you to manage my money

I'm a grown man give me my money Jamal couldn't done it no better give it up and he says I don't have it so I called him everything that I could think of in English and a little bit of Hindi I know and I really wanted to hit This guy I'm not a violent person but I really wanted to strangle this dude but I said if I hit him first of all he'll probably hit me back and I don't really want to deal with that he's a pretty big guy and more than that I said

if I do that and I really alienate this guy then I'm really stuck here I am in the middle of nowhere nobody never seen another black person like me before and I am quote unquote an American I a couple Grand in my pocket Cashier checks in in cash nobody speaks the language I said well I just better better deal with it I learned that there are certain situation in there where you can't lose your head and just do something impulsive and let your temper carry you away then you get in trouble so I went to

this cave complex and the cave naturally was closed where the temples were so a guy Ted me into climbing up a Mountain to get to the water to get to a waterfall so naturally climbing up there I fell in a stream I'm soaking W and I came down on my wrist to break my father I had this big wrist watch on the thick band and it literally exploded that's the only thing that kept my arm from breaking I'm sure so I'm wet I'm scratched up my watch is gone my money is gone it's hot the

temple is closed and to get to the top the waterfall was dried Up so finally I do get in the temple I see the temple and to make a long story short I finally paid somebody about $120 $100 to drive me 500 kilm away to a city called NGP now I hoped that I would be able to find the hotel I hope these guys were going to drive me someplace and murder me they could have easily have done it and nobody would have ever known the story it was Jamal was what happened to no I

heard he went to India he never did Get back did he we better do a lecture for the brother so uh I finally got there and naturally they wanted some more money I just looked at them like and the vac and the hotel had vac this was a fabulous festar Hotel they sir we have plenty of vacancies here's my credit card show me a room they showed me a room I looked at the menu it had chicken and fish they even had Kentucky Fried Chicken on the menu it Was purely American I said this is

the place for me they had CNN TNT I started even say bet but they didn't have that then I would be lying turn glass movies but I needed that at that time just to regr so I stayed in this hotel and I was taken while I was there to visit a criminal triy and they called a criminal triy because they uh fought the British and now they earn most of their money through distilling liquor they they make moonshine And they took me into their their Community one lady took me into her house me and the

brother that took me there and I was told she was the leader of the community and while I came while I was there her husband came in I said oh you and your wife are the leaders of the community said no she is in the tribal areas and among the dollars themselves women are very important and most of the time they are in the leadership positions and the men are Very secure with that in traditional Hindu Society the women are literally no thing they don't have any status at all and I spoke at the conference

conference went well about 150 people came from all over India to hear me speak it was historic remember of the government came and um but interestingly enough there were only two women who were there two women delegates out of 150 people I have the speech right here you youall to get is $5 you hear the whole thing why said In America if we had a program like this it' be at least half people be women what's up and people be quiet people are taught just to be docile and to accept oppression I went to where

this lady's husband was murdered and then nobody 100 people killed this day her husband was trampled to death and there she is crying and uh no protest no demonstration they said what would you do if that happened in America I said You know there was a guy named Rodney King and Rodney King had a trial his white folks set the people who beat him free I said they burn a whole city up think about that right because these people have been taught to be doile to accept oppression because they believe that it's karma because of

something that you did in a previous lifetime you are born on this level today now the idea is if you do your Dharma your cast Duty then in another Lifetime you will be born on a higher level now for those that get out of line you know they have guns prisons what have you 95% of the prison population India are Untouchables 95% AIDS is proliferating dramatically and I know some people say there's an AIDS hoax I haven't done the research but I do respect brother KY on that but there was a a report that came

out in the newspaper that on at one Truck stop alone one route that 30,000 people have been tested for HIV and of that 30,000 27,000 tested positive and the age is being spread or Whatever It Is by young black women because black women over there women are black women are fine everywhere including right here tonight but there they have these women who are just viciously exploited because of the poverty and the ignorance so while I was at the thing a tri another tribal brother met me I met him and his Name is LK madawi I

use a lot of their initials LK madawi and um he was what you call a g g o n d and he took me one to come and take me from the hotel to his little village I said all right I'll go with you no problem come through about noon tomorrow so he comes and he's got this little bitty motor scooter I man I'm not riding on that he said sure brother no go no priz I ain't riding on that natur I rode On it and he took me to his village walked me all around

and then he took me in his house he's a scholar has all these books and uh you know his wife fed us and he start and his and his daughter started playing some music now what you think they they play this song I got the power you heard that song I couldn't believe it they playing R&B black music in the middle of India and the tribal people have a strong African I could not believe it so Finally that night I I was leaving the next morning and I'm to check out of the hotel give me

my my bill and he gave me the bill I said you know this is extremely reasonable I only about $30 a night food I said this is great you know I could have stayed here a week they said but sir we did not include your telephone bill I said well knew was too good to be true give me that they gave me a bill it was over $600 the telephone bill for four nights I made three calls in the United States and three calls inside I said man I'm not going to pay this you got

to be joking I took the bill Bal it up threw it right in his face I wouldn't even do that in the United States this is a hotel on my these up C I said I'm not going to pay it you can call the police you can call the Army you can do anything I am not going to pay this bill you must be joking I had no idea when I made those Phone calls it was going to cost this they said well sir I assure you that in your room there is a note saying

what a phone call I said man ain't no note in my room and I'm not going to pay it so I ran up in my room pissed off and naturally I started packing my bags and I'm thinking of what I'll [Laughter] do just to sneak out and not really I was going to sneak Sister I was packing the bags and figuring out how I was going to do this yeah I had three suitcases right and I'm going sneak through the lobby they got all these doormen and go to the airport and spend a night at

the airport and I said you know if I do that even if get out of here they'll probably have the police waiting for me at the airport really I said I don't want to pay this money I really don't want to pay it and for the second time I said I wish I was Back in the United States right now that's a horrible thing to say but when you get a and again you buy yourself you know anybody talk to and you know they're screwing you so finally I said okay use my head this government

official gave me a thick package of of of stuff photographs that have been taken of him and newspaper articles written about him he and I had posed for pictures and what he was a member of the government minister of Health and Family Plan big office so I went downstairs with this portfolio and said look I'm an author I came over here to write a book about the dollars and black people in America I am a guest of the government this man and just as that happened a newspaper reporter from the biggest newspaper in the city

of nagpur came to interview me I'm just like the ancestor C I said look man these people are ripping me off they want to make me pay this bill I'm not Going to pay it I've been cheated I've been abused I'm a foreigner I want you to write a column on the front page of tomorrow's paper Now by this time everybody in the hotel is checking me out and the manager saying sir if you calm I don't want to calm down I'm not going to pay the bill sir well he just I don't want I

told you I don't want to be calm and I'm not going to pay you can call the police if you want to so naturally they Drastically reduced the bill and I was able to get out there I fly south through a city you know I figur I might as well push it now I wasn't I was angry but I was in control but I wanted to let them know that I was a raving lunatic cuz they don't know anything about us so I fig I was going to push it to the max and I gave

them a idea as to what we are all about right we don't take no crap like that come on now I wouldn't do that In a hotel in the United States cuz they would call the police on in a minute I'd be in jail so I down south to a city called trandum city of a million people and naturally I'm flying by myself and I get there and there's nobody to meet me damn you I came on the way IND St people going to treat me so I get my luggage here's the Ambassador now and

I walk outside the airport and there's about 40 guys all of them black with their fists up in the air like that With a television crew and a big signed in Black said hearty welcome rokar rashidi African-American scholar and human rights activist oh it was good I said I'm finally at home cuz these people seem like they were delighted to see me they were members of the carola doet Panthers they are named after the Black Panther Party for self-defense and they are black people in Northern India I would see individual groups of black folks or

single black People but they obviously was no black Consciousness you would think if you go to another part of the world and you see somebody that looks like you you going to say hey brother what's up you're going to express some form of solidarity but it wasn't like that but in the South these people conscious they had this was the birthday this is April 14th the trip is two weeks old I got one more week left and it's the birthday of a man named BR ambed car Dr amicar is a great National leader of do

he's the baddest dollar ever he's all our great leaders in rolling to one and it's his birthday so they're going to have a big uh program and I'm the keynote speaker which of course was an honor and I was met by the chairman of the K doll pan his name is k initial k u Jackson U Jackson is his name everybody call him U for sure U Jackson a black man and you sisters would love this brother you know he's very black and He's articulate and he's just a real hardworking brother he says how old

are you man he said I'm 32 are you married no he says I just dedicated my life to the struggle I said well I got some sisters I'm going to bring over there for you man all y'all sisters say you can't find a good black man you can go and import one and they got a bunch of them over there in the dollar Panthers they had a demonstration there were 5,000 People 5,000 people they marched through the city with their fists in the air and a big sign and I got they got me holding the

sign up front and the sign says I don't know what the sign says but they were saying black must I'm sure was good POS they saying we salute no what he say black is proud black is strong we salute the blacks alone and then sometimes they would just say black salutes black salutes black salutes all hell with NOA Rashidi was very flattering did you get to the place and they introduced me and they're speaking a language called malayal in the north is Hindi in the central por of the country is morachi and in the south

is Milan Lon none of which I know three words of all together so they had it translated and I started off by and this is a text uh produced in a knowledge broker I hope you get a chance to get one and I said uh Jim that means black salutes that's their version Of Hotel I bring you greetings from the black people of America and they went off they love us they admire us they think that we are Trailblazers and forerunners of revolutionary struggle it is nice to be in a place where people think so

highly of you when most of us don't even think that highly of us in America these people are familiar with Malcolm they don't know much about Martin Luther King although Martin Luther King went to India in February 1959 they know about Bobby Newton Bobby Newton Bobby seal UI Newton they know about Mike Tyson in the north there was a newspaper with a mik Tyson said well you guys got iron mic in there cuz he's one of us yeah so I got up and spoke and I did this thing and every time I would say something

about black people about Africans and AD dos being one people they would just light up very enthusiastic in other words brothers and Sisters I stumbled on or the ancestors led me to a place where they have a black Consciousness movement that's rapidly expanding into an African Consciousness movement I literally expected to see Ste eveno walk out of the Shadow anytime and I'm right in the middle of it Wonder in this city trandum of a million people the dollars do not own one business establishment they don't own anything but the carolot dollar Panthers have put all

their resources together and they rented a building for 6 months and it's their headquarters so I uh inaugurated it and I did a speech there and then that evening I spoke in a YMCA and there were about 150 people from all over the community the whole Spectrum and we had what in the United States might be called a town hall meeting and we talked about our common situations so that was wonderful next day winding down But this is important this doesn't happen every day so I want to give you at least the highlights um went

to the birthplace of a person named Ian Kali Ian k was one of the greatest leaders of dollars had too he built a school and then went North to a place called COA also in the state of carola Caroline is the only state in India perhaps in the world with the freely elected communist government it's a Marxist government but they're just as racist as The other Hindus and the doll Panthers and um the Communists they they go at it all the time and they're like struggling for the supremacy of the city so I was taken

North By The Carol doll Panthers and I met with a group of doll Christians now these people were lying to me they schemed they told me they would cover all my expenses and I could have they don't know anything about it Let them have it you don't want to get ripped off I don't care what you call it you know people lying doing all that kind of stuff so I go there and the next morning I was taken to another tribal area and this is one of the highlights on the trip this is literally in

the rainforest or the jungle hundreds of kilometers into the jungle and I'm saying most of the time man we are going too far I don't want to get stuck out here I don't see how this Car is going to get over these roads roads that's a river we have to cross let's turn around and they would just ignore me and finally we get to this area and I see this little bitty black lady with blonde hair and this little bitty brother look like he come just out of Australia and they looking at me funny and

I'm looking at them funny and then finally we drive a little further and there's another little black lady with Blond hair and she's walking with a staff in her hand and she's smiling and grinning and making all these gestures towards me so I asked the translators what is she saying and we don't know exactly what she's saying but she's obviously very glad to see you so I was taken from Hut to Hut we had to excuse me we had to go give permission of the village Elder to visit the area and we did and all

the time this little old lady is following us up This mountain literally thick Force these people lived on the products of the forest bamboo tapioca coconut honey and a couple other items but gradually little by little everybody stopped doing sto what they were doing and started following me around and I you know took pictures with these people I took a picture of one couple and I ain't a very tall brother I wish I could lose some weight I a very tall brother and these people stood About this High wow yeah little bitty black people and

uh so I go from Hut to Hut and and they all offering me stuff tea by this time I've gotten used to drinking the tea I just don't look at it I said give it to me and I let it cool off and then down I wasn't going to be rude I don't care what I wasn't going to reinforce these Notions of untouchability that I'm better than you that I can't sit with my Brothers and sisters I came here to be with you that's right so I did all that and finally somebody gave me a

large cup of raw honey he said try and this time I did look at it there were ants and bugs in there I said well maybe I'll just take a sip okay I get it back and finally we walked away again and a group of of people follow me walk by one guy cutting bamboo he says I want you to stay a week and I will take you all over the Mountain I said brother I would like to come but uh you know I have a family in the United States I'm about ready to go

back said well go then but come back and I asked him I said how often do you all have visitors from outside never nobody ever comes here and sometimes people try to come but they get discouraged and go back so by this time they're taking coconuts cutting coconuts from trees and they like us now and see this guy must be all right we don't know where he's From but he seems cool and they tap a hole in and put a straw in there and give you a coconut and you just drink the coconut milk a

bunch of bees started following me around and I was ready to go by that time and by this time after an hour this little old lady with the staff has finally caught up with me she just smiling and grinning and making all these signs and I said man uh asked her what her name is and she told me her name long name I couldn't remember if You paid me and um I said what is she saying they said man she's just delighted to see you this a little black lady she says um in the best

translation she says I know that you are not from here and that you must be from some place far far away but I feel that you are a part of me and I'll never forget you that was one of the highlights of the trip I still get a little Miss ey when I think about that Finally in coaching the dollar Christians and the Caroline dollar Panthers are ready to come to blows over me they are competing with each other they both plan programs with me at the same time so you know it's was going to

be a disaster to begin with they're cursing at each other they're hollering and I said well man I don't want to be in any of the programs I said what you do is combine the programs into one so you said okay program is supposed to Start at 8:30 it starts qu to 10 I got 11:30 a.m. flight if I can get the ticket and then the guy who introduced me I'm bu Jackson spoke for 45 minutes I thought he was out in MX man Al MX is an attorney in New York that when you come

to his place he introduces you and he speaks longer than you do introduction and I was sitting there like come on man be cool when you go stop and he literally gave my speech he said basically everything I I was really Mad and it's hot again no air conditioning and I said well brothers and sisters it's my pleasure to be here and coaching I've never been here before you know I want to salute you for your efforts and since my speech and then I I'm Jackson has basically been already given do you have any questions

and nobody said anything for about a minute I said Okay I want to thank you very much and I packed my tape recorder and my camera and my and got them walked Out and they were just stunned they followed me out of the building they followed me to the airport they waited in the heat on the asphalt in on the pavement for me to get one more speech yall was touched and I tried to give them the most inspirational speech I'd ever given and they all waved let me goodbye very touchy finally back to Delhi

where I started and uh uh once again nobody's there to meet me at the airport but a Brother shows up lat his name is promode coral promode Coral and he insists that I don't stay in a hotel now I want to stay in a hotel by this time cuz i' I've stayed in 11 places in 21 one days I stayed in a Salvation Army youth hostel an American youth hostel three different hotels I slept on the train I stayed in people's houses when I got back to San Antonio for the first few days I would

wake up and I didn't know where I was in my own house in my own bed so this guy Says well brother roko it won't work because a lot of times tourists who come over here by themselves are robbed in these hotels so I want you to come stay with my family more lizards the whole nine all over but promos really looked after me wouldn't let me spend any money so for every person I met who tried to rip me off I would meet a person who who was a prince or princess who just bend

over backward to be kind to me and that means So much in a situation like that so I met with a person who will probably be the first dollar prime minister of India did some shopping in New Deli in Old Delhi went to the National Museum met another journalist and finally got out of there um March 21st I mean April 2 by that time I'm wearing Indian clothes I'm thinking of myself as a dollet I've got an attitude I despise all the members of the upper cast and they send me few Changes at the airport

they searched all my luggage and they looked at my passport they saw my outfit and they saw I've been to Egypt a couple times in the last what were you doing in Egypt I said I went there to see the pyramids you know anybody over there no and by this time I've got an attitude I'm calling people idiots and I'm frequently using the FW cuz I'm getting ready to get out of there so I figur I would get it all out Of my system nobody and well they got the gist of it believe me so

that's my trip now I'm going back next year I'm not going back to all of those places so some of those places I'm going bypass my trip was largely a political tour the tour will be an educational tour of the African presence in India that will include the B tree tribal areas Taj Mahal the temple called aora time on the most beautiful beaches in India meeting with Carol dollar Panthers the Chip's going to cost about $3,500 it'll be 18 days I me the first African Center tour of India in history and I would like for

you to be a part of that so for those of you who are interested uh sister Jetta in addition to the magazines of books and The Taste and I hope you will purchase some because a lot of those proceeds would be going towards the school and also in the carolot dollet panther Center in trandum I want to build a library because they Love African-American literature they were crazy of Rhythm of the drum they were almost fighting to get Rhythm of the drum I brought 10 and they were upset when I didn't have enough to go

around they're very interested in africanamerican resistance literature so I want to build and I pledge myself to build a library in the center called the kwami teray Pana African Library quam for stok Caro and unfortunately he's battling look like a losing battle Against prostrate cancer I'm told he will not last the end of the year I hope that's wrong but before he becomes an ancestor I want to have that Library established in his name oh wonderful thank you very much brothers and sisters they exploded nuclear devices too I was over there between the national elections

in India and the detonation of of of these bombs I came right in the middle I don't know if I had anything to do with it or What these are the Himalaya Mountains this is China this is Burma this is the country now known as Myanmar right here is that sharp can you see that pretty clear I guess so well let's this is brother I projector ASU is a long associate of mine and a good brother and every time I come here he allows me to use this equipment so I'm grateful this is a collective

effort Requires all of us and I must say I was very impressed by the amount of money that was uh raised tonight and I think it's wonderful you to give yourself Round of Applause that's all right when you do those kind of things it makes you think we can win okay I got a half hour to go through this 5,000 years history flew here into Delhi up here and then you can see partner right here partner and uh this is the ganes river The ganes river runs right through the city of PNA and then uh

I took the train uh I came down here this is uh near kataa that's where Bulgaria is I took a train all the way from here all the way over here I never that again and then I went to the caves over here the temple and then I went back over here by car and then I flew down here this is where chanam is and finally I flew back to Delhi and out of here now This a historical overview with slides these people represent the first people in India little bitty Black Folk some of my

most distant ancestors right there black people in India I doubt if they're 4 foot1 but they look healthy and vibrant and they have a happiness as a couple that I wish we could achieve over here so you right he seemed delighted strong black man and beautiful black woman I love It okay and this is a sister from the same area and a little baby and just is a variation for that and continuation of it have this one right here so it's kind of functional too I don't just think the wrong thing now see there give

you a v y'all going run going to do that all right now you see the size of the people Tarzan King Kong Jungle Gym bottom of the jungle boy any of those Movies you can find this fell right here and these people seem they don't seem the least bit happy okay about being with him especially the sister right here I know they want to cook him for dinner what make it know uh this is from the indis valley and this is just one of the ancient cities that have been excavated at some point in time

I'm going to go there and that I may go there again by myself this is in Pakistan and that's a one-day Trip um this is just an example of the writing system that was used you can see it over the zeu bull and the way this is done this is not natural they take something when the from the time that the animal is very young and they tie it around his back and they shape it like that and their descendants are still all over indiaan you can see the writing system and these are cylinder seals

these were used to stamp private property oh we have an excellent crowd Tonight too good makes you feel glad to be back in LA and don't be too terribly surprised and brother noo doesn't come back here in another few months CU San Antonio is a different vibe all together uh again the writing system a man in the yoga posture is 5,000 years old this is a piece I actually saw the artifact in the ntional museum I've been look looking at this slide for for 18 years yeah come on bro please you're Going to have to

get yourself a chair though and come here with the sisters or you can take this chair right here how you do black okay now we're going to have to go quick brother just focus it and you might even lower it a little tiny bit come on quickly and I will also be at Christ Unity center Tomorrow I think that's at 5:30 or 6 tomorrow Sunday Sunday thanks satday Sunday the 14th all right lower a little bit let's roll quickly all right good now Focus okay now this is a quintessential African woman seems to me and

that's probably a little stereotypical but that hand on her hip and that posture that's the soul sister for sure and you can find them anywhere in the world and you also find women with all these bangal that's very Common in India this are off in the in this Valley focus it bro there we go I saw this piece this is called a priest king they don't know what he is just like that sister's called a dancing girl and she might have been the queen of the whole country but she's called a dancing girl yeah because

people see things through their eyes that's why this called looking at India through African eyes from our perspective to the eyes of Brother Rea Rashid the Ambassador okay now he's eyes his eyes are semi closed and um I guess he's meditating his nose is knocked off now what does that remind you of and I actually saw that that artif fact in the national museum these bones were found in that City and these are the remains of black people who fought against the Indo Europeans when they invaded the country all right yeah this is a tribal

area I Told you tribal area told you went into the jungle now I didn't go anywhere quite like that but close to it and you can see that this is relatively inaccessible it's very hard to get to and they don't have a lot of visitors and I went into places like that this is uh what happens is after the Indo Europeans come into the country there's a resistance movement from about 1500 BC until today Okay but that major battle in the north is from about 1500 BC to about 500 BC and then around 500 BC

the blacks begin to come back to Power again in the north and they are in power in the north for about 700 years and then those Hindus those white people they assumed power and then the Muslims came into the country and they dominated India for a few hundred years they didn't care about the black Untouchables all they wanted to do was maintain their own power then Have the British the British are seen by The Untouchables as enlightened Invaders the intes don't have any problem with the British they see the Indo European Descendants the Brahman as

their real enemies now this is a resistance leader and this is a depiction of the Lord kishna Krishna this is going to cover my book The African presence in early Asia and there's still some copies I saw at esan a few days ago and unfortunately it's About to go into his fourth printing I'm very pleased about that and um this is supposed to be an incarnation of a deity living large kicking B chilling um this is one of the temples I did not go to but this will be on the tour this is a place

called elra and uh you see how big it is you see the little people down there and it's carv from the top down it's carv you stand on top of a mountain and you start digging and after about 25 years This is what you get this is very similar in many ways to an obelis or teeko but it doesn't have the top right so we're going there on a trip I've never been there myself so I'm excited about that you'll also see the T Mahal Taj Mahal has been described as poetry and Marvel and it

was built for a black woman all right so it should be nice it will be okay this is just another Temple complex in the South this was on the trip I photograph that right On the other side is the ocean it's very hot but nevertheless you find very few people bathing for some reason Indians when I've seen aren't Keen about getting into the ocean I don't know why it is I'm not saying they're not clean or anything another cave complex in the same area this is in the state of tunu and I remember running into

either this one or that one and it wasn't the best idea because I was so happy to see It I dropped everything and just took off running to get in there undefined that it was inhabited by mosquitoes flies and bats so I ran faster out coming out than I did coming in this is a god of wealth this is actually at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art this is a representative from What's called the kusan Dynasty and again you can purchase one of these and get everything on the same slides right here And there

just a few of these left and the books and the tapes and stuff uh and again most of the money go to India look at the nose knocked off here and this is from a dynasty called the kushan dynasty k u h a n kushan and it reminds you of kimet and this therefore are is a king from kimet and he is's Daddy this is Aman hot's thei no is gone too and he's important in this context because a Christian writer man named mavius wrote about the 3rd Century ad that in the reign of amus

or Aman hotep the third amop is the Greek rendering in the reign of amop am hotep III a large body of Ethiopians we got some Ethiopians in the house tonight and unfortunately you hear about the conflict between arria and Ethiopia heating up that's a tragedy in the making um the reign of amopa the third a large body of Ethiopians Ethiopian just means black people term Ethiopia in ancient times is not the Ethiopia of Today the word Ethiopia was a broad land encompassing both Africa and Asia and the people in uh Asian Ethiopia had straight hair

and the people in African Ethiopia had uh tidy C brother if you just if it's real brief real quick spoke ethiop guyu alexand Macedonia came over took over time medor they wer able to fight how do you we'll have to deal with that another Time thank you brother anyway you have Ethiopians in both Africa and Asia and um so a body of Asiatic Ethiopians apparently during his time it's around 1,400 BC settled in the Valley of the Nile this is assar by another tradition assar or Osiris remember I have the thing of Osiris just you

know be on the safe side over there and uh he supposed this is a god king from Africa civilized Africa brought Humanity to Africa or Civilization and then he left Africa and went into Asia and he civilized everybody over there he didn't bring an army he took two of his companions his nephew and a flute all right and he by his deeds by his role modelship you know brought civilization this part of African people went all over the world that's right but unlike the white man they didn't go there and kill everybody Slaughter everybody enslave

everybody change the Name of the joint and say we discovered it Africans generally speaking brought bearing gifts and that's why they were well received and considered gods and goddesses iar as an example of that this is the ganes river there's another tradition introduced by J Rogers in particular as supposedly documented in a book around 1600 by a man named Samuel purchased a British fellow that an African king named ganes went to Northern India and Conquered it in ancient times and named the river after him that's a tradition somebody said a guy named Godfrey Higgins wrote

a book called Analyse he said I found something black whenever I approach the origins of Nations and religions and I pretty must believe that's the case and this is a depiction of the Buddha in India now the early depictions all almost allly depictions of the Buddha even modern uh depictions tend to Haveen with tightly curled hair pepper corn hair kinky hair woolly hair uh but he is even more africoid as you go farther east and you see how the blacks expanded into southeast Asia this is another one from India I wonder if I can get

my foot like that I never notic it seriously now this is from the temple wow climbed up the mountain fell broke my watch swarms of bees electricity went Out but I got in there and took some pictures I wasn't going to let anything defeat me all right and you see look at the people in there that's why I took that train 28 hours to come there that's right this is another picture this look now there's one argument that the Buddha was an Egyptian or or or an Egyptian priest they do have the different type of

hair texture than most black people in India have so and this Off America folksy bro now this is really sharp in fact I have to tend to think that this has been actively restored because that just looks too brilliant girl and fine yes we better not go there this is a Buddha from Sri Lanka look at the lips on it Michael Jordan type this is from Thailand and these are from Vietnam you know now southeast Asia is called Indochina and it's called that because of the Confluence of the cultures of India and China we call

it Indochina and you have a strong Indian influence there so these are from Vietnam and these are these reflect black people from India going over there to colonize a place in ancient times again and again look at the nose on him is that a nose or is that a nose that's a v Holyfield nose this is One of the Hopi remember I was called a Hopi this is a Hopi his name is Malik andar bad brother and again this is where we've come from now what we're going to do it's been the next few moments

as we wind down and I regret we have to rush but got to deal with constraints of time we're going to be in the South we're going to be in South and South Central India and these are most of the tribal peoples so I'm just going to go through These quickly a lot of you have seen these but some of you have not so anyway here we go if you seen anybody you know Shout Shout It Out wow wow make sure it's sharp great beautiful now is that a brother or a sister what do you

think think yeah I think it is a brother I just left Oakland San Francisco Um now this is a black man from South Arabia and I just put him in there in in context to show how widespread this physical type is back to India yeah I know yeah down the street PR any given time and uh even got that nose ring uh he could also be from Australia this is the kind of people I met in Northeast India that's a Brother no it's a brother I tell you that man come on down lift it up

man cater boy with chip te see I knew that because I knew the caption on the bottom of the picture that's the only reason I can say for sure one thing I said he just looked black he looks African and we can argue over the gender but he's definitely a black person I don't know if that's a brother or Sister no doubt about that some of we don't even have to discuss it this is a serious looking sister right here we need to get her up in Good Life Next Time Jamal you raise money and

get her to come to the mic these are very interesting now these are the kind of people I was meeting they were clothed a little bit more but basically these are the same type people unfortunately most of the slides I have are pictures many I have not had a Chance to have converted into slides so that'll be a good excuse to get invited back to the good life maybe in late summer or early fall is her hair blond no she's got something wrapped around it okay now this slide this a very interesting slide a friend

of mine insisted that I give to him because it looked just like his wife and child this is s side Baba he's regarded in some circles as a holy man or a God man that's what they call Meaning God man but other parts of regard it as a fake and a fraud and a charlatan he's a magician and the dollars can't stand it he looks like yeah and this is one of my earlier slides I got this when I was at UCLA and this is what led me on this Odyssey of Discovery in the sense

of dealing with the black president looking for a photographs like this now you can't get any more African than that and this is from South Central India and on the tour you get an opportunity to go to one of these tribal areas same uhuh so many different she's [Music] younger there it is again you can't get that we're souvenir I'll autograph it she's a bride I don't how she is I would imagine she's about 15 I heard estimates she's anywhere from 10 to 20 I say she's about 15 come On come on what in what

in those botles um this is a sister from South Central India and she looks very much like a massai from Kenya yes ma'am the last sister that you showed she looked very much like the turana before this one back with oh I know what you're talking about she look like from Kenya the tribe yeah this probably going to make your mom mad let me show you one More her she look like a t well there's one person who looks even more like that I'm trying to find it her you think so I believe that side

yeah definitely and again it shows the range of African people I always like to say we range the complexion from snow to Crow wind it down tomorrow five more minutes man all right you say that like you don't Believe me man all right you see the little sister again and the the Bangals represent wealth oh yes there a better picture of s to sidea right I didn't meet it no maybe another time is he black or what you think so you think he's black and that's the class one right the brother that I saw going

in the Domino's Pizza as I P large th CR Pizza straberry yeah strawberry silver you got to have that And this interesting looking brother yes he represents that black man is the original man on the planet find us everywhere including China and this is from the cover of the this in the book this is Gandhi sergeant major MK Gandhi okay the man Martin Luther King loved and idolized and he was a a vicious killer of doubts he supported the supression of the dollars and you see he's in a South African military Uniform so why therefore

is he credited with being an apostle of nonviolence he fought in two Wars to Siege land from black people wow there he is and one of these is here somewhere and this just described to gani Millo recruited an ambulance Corp of over 1,000 Indians as part of the British army during the B war in 1899 there he is again and that's clearly Gandhi this is a medal he won fighting against Black people and here this I guess is typical of you know how some people perceive him uh most of the dollars look at Gandhi like

a Jew would look at Adolf Hitler Al together different than most of us do Gandhi as a monster killing of 20 villagers in bear I went to bear that's what I encountered bodies piled on the trailer H I was out in that Field wow the private Army of landlords targeted women and children in the man which the crime was committed was particularly gruesome you don't want to know the details and that's the kind of stuff I saw this is a statue of Dr BR Amar the great national leader of the Dolls the headquarters of the

Maharashtra doll Panthers named after the Black Panther Party for self-defense this is yours chuly on my First trip I think I've changed very much and this is Mr VT rash car I'm interviewing him in a hotel in Hyderabad the Presidente hotel and this is us now a few months ago we both a little older a lot more gray here is that very handsome fellow in the middle the a r rashidi this is Mr VT rash car and this is the cabinet minister I referred you to and we're in his office and I tell you that

really was saving to me when he gave me that packet that got me out of That hotel cuz I wasn't going to pay that $600 now last but not least this is just two or three three slides left tomorrow we're out of here and after they buy some stuff this is Mr Silla dun hon got to praise our ancestors even our recent ancestors because she's the first person not the first black person the first person to write comprehensively about black people in India okay and she happens to be a Sister and that work was published

in a volume called wonderful Ethiopians in the ancient kushad empire it was published in 1926 you should get a copy of I in Oklahoma City Oklahoma black woman D Sil dung houseing tough sister and these are three of the men in my life uh this is John G Jackson who I knew personally and uh I would sit and talk to we talk about India we talk about everything a remarkable man and um he's an ancestor now and also an Ancestors Dr chancell James Williams I never met Chance Williams but I talked to him over the

telephone we corresponded a little bit and he's the author of course of destruction of black civilizations and my current favorite Mrs the great John Henry Clark now I did a presentation and the tap is over here too just a little audio tape in New York City before I went to India for the ascat conference and they gave me a plinary session they gave me an hour and A half at City College New York at 1:00 on the opening day of the conf Prime Time The Joint was packed and I help I felt I was at

my best I did a presentation on great African historians profiles of of character and I dedicated my remarks to Dr Ben and Dr Clark now Dr Ben was in Egypt at the time and I'm pretty close to Dr Ben too I saw him a couple weeks ago in New York he's lost a lot of weight and uh and I said where's Dr Clark nobody knew well I dedicated my remarks to them anyway so halfway during the presentation somebody handed me a note and they said Dr Clark is in the audience and he wants to come

on stage so I said okay everybody we're going to stop John and Clark's going come on stage and they wed him up ly Jeff in a wheelchair and I did this presentation and Dr Clark sat right behind me that whole presentation and after it was over he Left he never came back to the conference I thought hey I was honored that was a big deal Dr Clark always encouraged me I said man well some of these people don't seem to perceive themselves as Africans he said don't worry about it he said when Africa becomes strong

going to be a whole lot of people a been identifying as Afric don't worry just keep on doing your work so he's 84 now and last I Always in my slide presentation with I don't care what slide presentation is what the subject matter is with this little bitty black girl ain't she from Gambia in West AFC I don't know her name friend of mine was in Gambia she took a picture this little girl was beg and she took the picture from right outside the bus window it came out remarkably clear she gave me a a

print and I cropped it and I had to convert it into a slide now what is that little Girl looking at us and saying she saying black people what y'all going to do she saying you got all this information you got Jamal you got roko you got KY stainu jaella all these folks talking that talk editing magazines now we got all this information what are we going to do with it that's right it's not enough to leave it in the good life all right I want you to leave here tonight with a new sense of

mission and Duty and purpose that's how I came back from India this time my first trip I was depressed for 6 months wow but this time I came back fired up because there is a new African in India that is standing up and demanding his rightful place in the world H brothers and sisters e e for e e