Futile for Indians to believe they are ‘Aryans’: How Gandhi inspired Du Bois to reimagine the world

In 1936, the African American scholar and activist WEB Du Bois wrote an article for The Aryan Path, a magazine published out of Mumbai that advocated Theosophical views but also carried articles on contemporary political events and philosophical ideas. The magazine was edited by BP Wadia, a Theosophist and a trade unionist.

The editors had asked Du Bois to write an article about the special features of African American culture. Du Bois asked if he could instead write about “The Methods of Increasing the Interest and Knowledge between Indians and American Negroes”. He titled the article “The Clash of Colour”.

Nearly a century later, his observations sound very contemporary. The difficulty in establishing any relationship between Indians and African Americans, he argued, lay “in the almost utter lack of knowledge which these two groups of people have of each other”. American schools taught very little of Indian history, and educated Indians tended to believe American and English propaganda about African Americans.

That is why, Du Bois said, it was important for Indians and African Americans to meet and know each other. He knew that Howard Thurman, a theologian, philosopher and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr, was undertaking his tour to India at that time.

Du Bois also observed that Indians...

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