''Dalit Voice'' was a political magazine published in

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

. The current full title is "''Dalit Voice: the voice of the persecuted nationalities denied human rights''" and it appears fortnightly in both internet and print formats. It was founded in 1981 by V.T. Rajshekar, a former journalist for the ''

Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language India, Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932 by P. Varadarajulu Naidu. It is headquartered in Noida, owned by the Indian Express Limited, ''Indian Express Group''. It was later taken over by Ramnat ...

'', who was also its editor. It was the largest circulated Dalit journal in India.Human Rights Watch Article
/ref> The magazine and its website closed in 2011.

Positions

The magazine is described by the

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

library as

"characterized by strong anti-Brahminist, anti-caste and anti-racist stance, advocacy of liberation from Brahminism, and polemical tone. Self-proclaimed as "the sole spokesman for the entire deprived, dehumanised lot of India...", – Dalits, Backward Castes, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, women – "all victims of the Aryan Brahminical racism."

The magazine published articles that attacked

Hinduism Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...

Zionism Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...

Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...

Communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...

and

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

neoconservatism Neoconservatism (colloquially neocon) is a political movement which began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist Democratic Party along with the growing New Left and ...

. Its

anti-Brahmin Anti-Brahminism is a term used in opposition to caste based hierarchal social order which places Brahmins at its highest position. Initial expressions of Anti-Brahminism emerged from instances of pre-colonial opposition to the caste system ...

rhetoric frequently follows to further

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

with claims of

Brahmins Brahmin (; ) is a ''Varna (Hinduism), varna'' (theoretical social classes) within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the ''Kshatriya'' (rulers and warriors), ''Vaishya'' (traders, merchants, and farmers), and ''Shudra'' (labourers). Th ...

in India being related to

Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

and deriving their "fanaticism" and "arrogance" from "Jewish Zionist Racism", the magazine calls Brahmins "the Jews of India" and says that Jews and Brahmins are both races and Brahmins are blood brothers of Jews though on many occasions it contradicts itself, calling Brahmins as Aryans and saying that they elevated

Krishna Krishna (; Sanskrit language, Sanskrit: कृष्ण, ) is a major deity in Hinduism. He is worshipped as the eighth avatar of Vishnu and also as the Supreme God (Hinduism), Supreme God in his own right. He is the god of protection, c ...

to godhood and built the sex-filled story of Mahabharat round him, to

co-opt Co-option, also known as co-optation and sometimes spelt cooption or cooptation, is a term with three common meanings. It may refer to: 1) The process of adding members to an elite group at the discretion of members of the body, usually to manag ...

the rebellious

Yadavas The Yadava (), not to be confused with Yadav, were an ancient Indian people who believed to have descended from Yadu, a legendary king of Chandravamsha lineage. The community was formed of various clans, being the Satvatas, Andhakas, Bho ...

. V.T. Rajshekar was arrested under the Sedition Act under the Indian Penal Code for creating disaffection between communities. He was released only after a written apology. ''Dalit Voice'' also made various Brahmin-Zionist conspiracy claims and touted 'Zionist conspiracy theories'. The magazine claimed that

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

and all communist leaders were Jews and communism was a Jewish conspiracy to destroy

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

and establish Zionist

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. The editor V.T. Rajsekhar has treated the hoax text ''

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multip ...

'' as legitimate and has accused Brahmins and Zionists of a conspiracy to "join hands (with Hindus who he says are only upper castes) to crush Muslims, Blacks and India's Dalits." ''Dalit Voice'', in addition to publishing articles about "Zionist conspiracies" regarding

Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

and the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

, have also supported the

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

ian government and

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born Mahmoud Sabbaghian on 28 October 1956) is an Iranian Iranian principlists, principlist and Iranian nationalism, nationalist politician who served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. He is currently a mem ...

denial Denial, in colloquial English usage, has at least three meanings: * the assertion that any particular statement or allegation, whose truth is uncertain, is not true; * the refusal of a request; and * the assertion that a true statement is fal ...

of the

holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

. It also claimed that the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

in USA were covertly executed by Zionists controlling America and used to attack and destroy Muslim nations. He has also published articles in ''Dalit Voice'' that call for shifting the Jewish state of Israel to the United States. ''Dalit Voice'' expressed praise for

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

and praised

suicide bombing A suicide attack (also known by a wide variety of other names, see below) is a deliberate attack in which the perpetrators knowingly sacrifice their own lives as part of the attack. These attacks are a form of murder–suicide that is ofte ...

, calling it the art of dying and the supreme sacrifice and claims to be the first in the world to predict defeat of U.S in the War on Terror.

Reception

A scholar,

Vijay Prashad Vijay Prashad (born 1967) is an Indian-born American, author, journalist, political commentator, and Marxism, Marxist intellectual."I came to Marxism against my self-interest. Born into affluence, I was raised in an revolutionary city (Calcutta, ...

, has written of the links between a group of authors including V.T. Rajshekar, Ivan van Sertima and Runoko Rashidi and writers in the Afrocentric movement. He called this a "submerged network of Afro- Dalit literature". He mentioned Rajshekar's editorship of ''Dalit Voice'', saying that its pages had "welcomed African American scholars for at least a decade". He criticized the views of this group of writers as "epidermal determinism" (seeking solidarity on the basis of skin colour alone rather than on the experience of oppression). The writer

Koenraad Elst Koenraad Elst (; born 7 August 1959) is a Belgian author, known primarily for his adherence to the Hindutva ideology and support of the Out of India theory, which is rega ...

has criticised the publication for having anti-Hindu views.

Leon Poliakov Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fr ...

writes that the

exhibited by ''Dalit Voice'' is a fairly recent and unrepresentative phenomenon among India's

Dalits Dalit ( from meaning "broken/scattered") is a term used for Untouchability, untouchables and Outcast (person), outcasts, who represented the lowest stratum of the Caste system in India, castes in the Indian subcontinent. They are also called ...

. Poliakov, Leon (1994). Histoire de l’antisémitisme 1945-93 (p. 395). Paris. ''Dalit Voice'' has also been criticized for "buying into anti-Jewish conspiracy theories" by the

far-left Far-left politics, also known as extreme left politics or left-wing extremism, are politics further to the left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left. The term does not have a single, coherent definition; some ...

'Maoist International Movement' though they praised the ''Dalit Voice'' for having "some good information on caste and other problems in India".Dalit Voice
Google Cache of the Maoist International Movement article

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Anti-Brahminism Antisemitic publications Dalit culture Dalit politics English-language magazines published in India Biweekly magazines published in India Holocaust denial Political magazines published in India Magazines established in 1981 Magazines disestablished in 2011 Defunct magazines published in India Defunct political magazines Antisemitism in India Anti-Zionism in India