The Ambedkar-King Study Circle of the United States of America by asking me to give a keynote on the occasion of its Annual Conference 2019, gave me a great opportunity to compare the life and work of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. This gives me an opportunity, particularly, to examine their role in expanding the spiritual democratic space of the Indian Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi (Bahujan) and global black masses, who lived a life of oppression, exploitation, dismemberment and brokenness. I thank the organizers for giving me this opportunity.
The organizers have quoted Paulo Freire, a famous Latin American educationalist to say “the oppressed having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest not by gift”[1]. In the case of historical human mass on this earth, there are no other human beings who internalized the image of the oppressor and exploiter as much as the Dalit/Shudras of India have, and for so long a time that the African American slavery does not compare in intensity and timeframe. The African Americans suffered slavery only for about two hundred years and that too their spiritual realm always remained with them as they owned Bible and Jesus as their spiritual guides. Before Bible and Jesus reached them the Africans worshipped their own tribal deities and after Bible and Jesus came to them through the same colonizers they used God, Bible and Jesus for a full blown knowledge expansion and liberation.
The Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis are spiritual slaves, socially and economically oppressed and exploited for millennia and they continue to be still today in spite of Jesus and Ambedkar being among them. Not that Jesus and Ambedkar did not initiate the process of spiritual liberation in India. They did. Jesus through his Apostle St. Thomas reached India in the first century AD and the church started sprouting in India. But the Church and the Buddhist Vihara get resisted. The Shudras and Dalits have not developed a collective mass consciousness to defeat Brahminism, which is worse than European colonialism. Colonialism brought economic exploitation and spiritual liberation simultaneously. But Brahminism killed the spiritual liberation agenda of the Bible and Jesus in India while they operated as a transformative agent in other parts of the world. Thus, the global blacks are luckier than the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi masses of India.
With Martin Luther King coming from the Church to civil rights movement a new liberative process began in America in the 1950s and 60s and also in the rest of the black world. As we all know with Aambedkar embracing Buddhism in 1956 and also writing the Constitution of India that got adopted in 1950 the lock of spiritual liberation got opened for the Dalit/Shuda/Adivasis. They were locked up in spiritual fascism ever since the Rigveda was written in 1500 BCE.
I am glad Ambedkar and King are united in America because of this study circle, though they were separated by Gandhi in India with a false notion of Hindu non-violence. Unfortunately King had no opportunity to read the history of Hinduism which is the only religion of the world wherein all its Gods are violent forces. There is no ‘Kingdom of God’ of equality in Hindusim. There is only ‘Kingdom of Evil Forces’.
Martin Luther King did not have time as he died by 39 to understand that Ambedkar represented the real Buddhist non-violent heritage and Harappan production and civilization of building villages and cities 1500 years before the Aryan Vedas were written. We, the Shudra/Dalits/Adivasis, are the inheritors of Harappa as the Africans are the heritors of Abraham. Harappa and Abraham come from the same God’s heritage.
We have no Hindu blood in us. We have Harappan and Abrahamic common blood in us. Ambedkar and King are blood brothers, as Buddha and Jesus are also blood brothers who came from the same egalitarian spiritual force. Jesus called it God and Budha called it a Force.
However, the hope at the end of the tunnel looks too far for Dalits, Shudras and Adivasis of India. Brahminism is still in the grip of Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi masses as Faulo Freire rightly said that they ingrained the enemy image so deep in them that it may take long time to separate the ghost of Brahminism from Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi bodies. The false ghost drivers cannot win the battle. We have to depend on the real God to deploy Jesus and Buddha as a joint force against the Brahminic ghost and defeat it.
The Brahminic Non-Resident Indians (NRI) are silently supporting the radical lynch-squads back home in India. The US NRI brahminsm is the leading force in the pro-vegetarian propaganda, which has the potential to spread the lynch squads. They eat beef here in America and support their squads to lynch beef eaters, even meat eaters, back in India. They supply dollars for their organizational networks. The idea is to weaken the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi forces even physically, as their mental growth was controlled for long time without allowing education to them. Now they want to destroy the physical energy of the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis by converting them to vegetarianism. They want to be Vedic beefarians in America and Europe and they want to make India a modern vegetarian slave country because they are deeply in league with Chinese and Pakistani neighbors, as they were in league with colonial exploiters before 1947.
We must make it clear that we oppose the Pakistani or Chinese aggression or Pakistan’s terror designs as we are more nationalists than RSS/BJP forces. Our ancestors built the Indian nation. Their ancestors never participated in the production and protection of the nation as our ancestors from Harappa days to present did. There are no Brahmin-Bania regiments in the army but there are Mahar, Ahir, Jat, Gurkha regiments to protect the nation. Savarkar, Hedgewar, Golwalkar or even Gnadhi, and Nehru’s fathers never worked as soldiers. But Ambedkar’s father, Ramji, was a soldier who protected our borders.
They are anti-national for yet another reason. They want their children to live in English mother tongue lands and oppose the basic teaching of English to Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi children in India. Brahminic hypocrisy is in its highest form of operation in faraway lands in the name of nationalism. Their Sanskritic vegetarian opposition to Pakistan is to see that the beeferian Pakistan wins. Let us not trust their nationalism and patriotism as they never had any. Those who treated production as pollution and tilling the land, cutting the crop, animal grazing, pot making, fishing, brick making, iron-smithing as Un-Hindu tasks, could never become nationalists or patriots. When their religion never allows human treatment of brotherhood and sisterhood outside the boundaries of caste how does the notion of nationalism or patriotism apply to their culture. The notions of nationalism and patriotism were born in civilizations that believe in spiritual democracy. Those civilizations cannot be mapped on the spiritual fascist social structures.
Their’s is a culture of lynch the other but not love the other. Ours is a culture of love the other. We love them also but they keep on hating us. They do not want our youth get jobs in our own nation. In normal course they never allowed education and employment to our youth hence Aambedlkar fought for reservation. Even then they do not allow by practicing all deceptive designs.
Hence I keep on asking God—the Universal God—how to handle this unique category of people called Brahmins. They cannot even be compared with the Pharisees of Israel of Jesus’ time. They are incomparable to any human group of hitherto existing civilization builders. They never built civilization, but only destroyed civilizations built by others, our ancestors. In our own father land (not mother land as they tell us) we are made others.
Even after Ambedkar’s Buddhist reformation, our status has not changed much because Brahminism has not changed in any significant way. Buddha could not fight them before, whether with a new disciple in Ambedkar he would be able to fight them is a question to be examined. The stars are not yet showing strong signs.
But the kind of spiritual liberation that the African Americans have undergone and reached to a stage of socio-spiritual and intellectual excellence, we the Dalit/Shudras/Adivasis can no way compare. Martin Luther King added only to their collective consciousness of liberation that got ignited in the American Civil War of 1861-65. Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln have jointly launched a black-white democratic revolution and it went through King and Obama by now. The Ambedkarites are far behind the achievements of King’s followers. Yet the only way left for Ambedkarites and the global followers of King is to work together, learn together and prosper together.
We, however, must examine what are the strengths and problem areas in Buddhist Ambedkarism and also Indian Lutherianism*. We must also see whether Ambedkar and King could jointly become Indian and international organizational anchors for engendering a force of spiritual liberators. We must see what are the areas in which the Vihara and the Church can co-operate and co-ordinate in future.
Ambedkar by his own statement was born an untouchable in India in 1891, which birth he himself considered to be a Hindu. He says “I had the misfortune of being born with the stigma of an Untouchable. However, it is not my fault; but I will not die a Hindu for this is in my power”[2]. He finally chose Buddhism and embraced it in 1956 just before his death.
How he would have shaped that religion in India would have been clear if only he lived few more years after his baptism into Buddhism. But as of now even the Ambedkarite Buddhism, which is known as the Navayana Buddhism, follows the traditional Buddhist course, which does not seem to differ in core practices that exist in Dallai Lama Buddhism of Tibet in exile in India. Several Dalit educated men and women have embraced Buddhism after Ambedkar’s Mahaparinirvana, apart from those who embraced Buddhism along with him in 1956. However, more number of Dalits and Adivasis got baptized into Christianity not because somebody forced or lured them. They know that if they embrace Christianity they face major problems in using the basic reservation benefits. Ye why did they prefer Christianity over Navayana Buddhism? Is it because they get connected to a high way of human civilization?
In many public activities related to both Buddha and Ambedkar appear as the teacher and the taught, as Thathagatha and Bhukku, together. Ambedkar has replaced Ananda and became his close companion in the Buddhist spiritual thought and practice. In many new Buddhist Viharas built by Navayana Buddhists, Ambedkar’s statue also gets installed within the Vihara, while the Buddha’s being at the inner base.
Ambedkar is emerging as a prophet of Buddhism after Gauthama Buddha. If we examine the prophets who worked for the liberation of slaves, the oppressed and exploited masses of their own times and became the bacon lights of the global human society for ever, Ambedkar stands in the queue of Gautham Buddha, Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammed, Karl Marx. As I repeatedly said he is the fifth prophet standing in the queue after Karl Marx.
King was not a born Christian but a baptized Christian, as there is no notion of being born into Christianity. King, Jr., having been born in 1929 is baptized after Ebenezer’s two-week annual revival, led by guest evangelist Rev. H. H. Coleman of Macedonia Baptist Church in Detroit on May 3, 1936 (King Encyclopedia) when he was 6. His father gave him the present name (his own) on the same day. His original name was Michael. In 1964 he won Nobel Peace Prize and in 1968 he was shot dead. His is a densely filled life and one of the shortest and richest lives in human history after Jesus Christ.
As you all know that by profession he was pastor, that too, a passionate singing, dancing speaking pastor at Dexter Avenue (King Memorial) Baptist Church. It was from the pulpit of his Church, while the black church members were listening to him with rapt attention, he spoke passionately about Jesus sending Kingdom of God for blacks. Ambedkar on the other hand was a Western trained scholar of economics, law and political sociology. As he himself stated that he was born an untouchable (actually Un-Hindu) had no right to become a priest even if he wanted to become one in Hindusim.
If Ambedkar accepted the definition of religion in the broader universal sense of ‘religion’ without getting baptized nobody could be considered to be a member of any religion. In that sense no Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi is a Hindu and that is the reason why I wrote my book Why I am Not a Hindu. I am not a Hindu, though a Shudra, because I was never baptized into that religion nor did my parents know that they belonged to that religion. Religion is not a just a family, or a village or nation to which automatically one belongs to by birth. Religion is an institution through which one’s commitment to God could be fulfilled. In this sense Ambedkar never was a Hindu, nor does any Dalit of India.
The question now is: what is the overall achievement of Blacks in the world after King left a legacy of re-invigorated Christian faith among the blacks of the world and what is the overall achievement of Dalits after Ambedkar gave them the Buddhist legacy?
Christianity as a religion was born in crucifixion of Jesus as he was determined to liberate the Samaritans who were untouchables of his time, fisher folks (Peter, Andrews, Mary Megnadalene and so on, came from that background), carpenters (He and his father were carpenters), shepherds, slaves and so on. Even the history of Bible as Moses recorded starting with the first five books was a history of liberation of slaves from the Egyptian rulers and establishment of Kingdom of God in Israel.
The Church worldwide so far has liberated millions of slaves and educated millions of illiterates. Martin Luther – the 16th century greatest reformer – built only on that history of March of liberation and education and empowerment of the poorest of the poor, meekest of the meek by Jesus, Bible and Church. Not that the Church as an institution did not commit blunders in the process of building the modern civilization. It did. But its liberative role was more overweighing than destructive role. Whenever the Church went astray Jesus and Bible brought it back to humanitarian path. New visionaries were produced in the process. Martin Luther whose name King bears is one such greatest path pavers and reformers. That is the reason why Martin Luther is most loving name among blacks than whites of the world. Buddhism has no such massively human reform history. The question than is why did Ambedkar embrace Buddhism which has no institutional strength to dismantle Hinduism that he so seriously wanted? Why did he not choose Christianity? He himself gave an answer.
Speaking to Christians at Sholapur in January 1938, Ambedkar declared that he could say from his study of comparative religion that only two personalities had been able to captivate him – the Buddha and Christ”. He said: “from the available religions and personalities in the world, I consider only two-Buddha and Christ for conversion. We want a religion for me and my followers which will teach equality freedom among men, and how man must behave with men and God, how a child should behave with father etc”[3]. He proceeds to express his dissatisfaction and the reason for why he could not think of baptizing into Christianity, apart from his nationalist reason.
He further says:
“Missionaries feel they have done their duty when they convert an untouchable to Christianity. They do not look after their political rights. I find this is a big fault in Christians because they have not entered into politics until now. It is difficult for any institution to survive without political support. We, Untouchables, though are ignorant and illiterate, we are in a movement. That is why we have 15 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Students are getting scholarships, there are government hostels. Such is not the case of Christian students. If an untouchable student getting scholarship gets converted, his scholarship is stopped though his financial status remains same. If you were in politics, things would have been opposed”[4].
I will take up the problem of de-politicized Church in India and how it strengthened Brahminism later but suffice here to say that Ambedkar wanted political rights and reservations in the immediate context to Dalits/Adivasis and OBCs hence he chose a religion-Buddhism – with which Gandhi, Nehru and other secular nationalists were not very uncomfortable. After he made it clear that he would only embrace Buddhism, Gandhi seems to have sent him money for his expenses and Ambedkar, it is said, rejected the offer. If he were not to make clear that he will become a Buddhist he would not have been allowed to become the Chairman of the drafting committee of the constitution. They would not have accepted an already Christian or would be a Christian with a public declaration, to draft the constitution of India. Even such a Westernized Nehru would not have allowed a Christian to head the drafting committee of the Indian Constitution.
I my view Ambedkar made a right choice in a given situation. But the question now is how political is the Navayana Buddhist Vihara? Has it evolved as a spiritual institution that could challenge Hinduism or at least Brahminsm? What was the course of the historical evolution of Buddhism? Whether its systemic institutionalism allows it to dismantle Hinduism or Brahminism as Ambedkar visualized in his classic book Annihilation of Caste?
Buddha was born in a Tribal royal family and felt for the oppressed and disempowered. He established the Sangha that had no liberation agenda but only had the agenda of teaching Karuna. He worked in harmony with the kings, whereas Jesus fought against the rulers, leading to his brutal crucifixion. Jesus hence lived for only 33 years and Buddha lived for 80 years, though in poverty and on alms. The spiritual text became the bedrock of Christ as himself was a scholar prophet (He quoted several of his predecessor prophets – particularly Isaiah, who predicted Jesus’ birth and mission). Buddha had never made a text as the bed rock of his religion. He did only oral preaching. The first ever scholar prophet of Buddhism could be said to be only Ambedkar. There are no great scholar theologians before Ambedkar in that religion’s history. Nagarjuna, Ashvagosha and others were nominal scholars and never had any human liberation agenda. They were either rulers themselves or agents of rulers.
Ambedkar embraced a religion which co-operated with rulers but never conflicted with them for a human liberation agenda. The first liberationist in that religion is only Ambedkar. As I said earlier even Gautham Buddha was a preacher of Karuna but not liberation. As I said in my book God As Political Philospher – Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminsim, Buddha was a greatest political and social philosopher of the ancient world. But he was not a spiritual philosopher, as there was no notion of God in his theoretical realm. He never strongly opposed Hindu idol worship based on the concept of abstract God, as Creator. He was a material dialectician but not a spiritual agent of God like Moses, Isaiah and Jesus. In my view to fight Brahminism and their Hinduism we need God – the God who is spiritual and cannot be turned into an idol, the God who created all humans in his image, the God of justice who will not rest till all the oppressed and poor and victimised find liberation and salvation.
As of now Navayana Buddhist Viharas have no English medium school education agenda which can alone defeat the Sanskrit anti-human literary heritage of Brahminism. Like Brahmins had Sanskrit as a Pan-Indian language of their own the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis should have English as their Pan-Indian language. The Ambedkarites and Navayana Buddhists are not at all interested in making English as Indian language. Unless a language becomes a prayer language at the spiritual place it does not get seeped into human mind frame. The Navayana Buddhists are still struck with Pali as a prayer language. This is not going to help their children in real life nor does it help in defeating Brahminism and Hinduism.
Their monkism operates still in the primitive form. There is no visible equal place for women in preaching/teaching positions in Navayana Buddhism. If only Ambedkar were to live for longer time after he embraced Buddhism, perhaps, he would have given a new direction to the Vihara system. But as of now there is no such direction. For all these reasons Hindus keep saying that Ambedkarite Buddhism is also part of them. The Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) wing of America owns Hindusim, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism as their own religions. They are opposed to only Christianity and Islam.
The Indian Christianity as Ambedkar rightly said has no political agenda as the Black Church has all along. Hinduism is fully political religion. The RSS/BJP operates from the temple structures. In my view the Indian Church could broadly be divided into two categories, apart from the globally known Catholic and Protestant: Dalit Christianity and Brahminic Christianity.
The Indian Protestantism carries lot of Dalit friendly structures, whereas the Kerala Catholicism is Brahminic and hence other Catholic networks whether of Goa or of North East carry many conservative- casteist divisions within the Church. They all operate brahminism as their core character. The brahminic Church for a long time taught English for money to the brahminic upper castes and to the rich. Only after the Protestant Church spread in the country the English education began to spread among the Dalits and Adivasis. The OBCs are still outside the Church educational framework.
The Dalit/Adivasi English education has posed some critical challenges to the Anglicized-Sanskritic brahminism both within India and in America and Europe. The formation of Ambedkar-King Study Circle in America will be seen as part of that challenge. They want to stop English medium schools in the rural areas and tribal areas. The American Hindu Foundation knows that this challenge you are posing from the Silicon Valley is because of your English education. Our challenge is how to take English medium education to every Dalit/Adivasi/Shudra child without fail.
The Catholic Church only recently started allowing a small section of Dalit/OBC/Adivasis into it English education portals. The Indian Catholicism refused to globalize the question of Dalit human rights. They confined to only praying for better wisdom of the oppressor. The Protestant Church, though in a non-political manner, stood by the Dalit rights, on humanitarian ground. They have other compulsion. Most of the victims being Dalit/Adivasis and happen to be their church members they get actively involved. That is one reason why the Hindutva forces characterized this Church as foreign. However, from the days of Ambedkar to present the Church by and large remained apolitical, which is against the idea of church of Martin Luther King.
So far the Indian Church, Protestant or Catholic, has not produced outstanding writers and thinkers who could match the black church writers and thinkers. The Indian Church or the Ambedkar Buddhist Vihara has not produced a single Nobel Laureate. They have not produced musicians who could rally the mass consciousness into a spiritual democratic revolution. But the black church and the black political movements have broken that glass ceiling long back.
So far 15 blacks won the Nobel Prize, including Martin Luther King, Toni Morrison and Obama and so on. Black musicians have changed the colour of the entertainment world. Black thinkers, politicians and financiers, sports persons are likely to change the future of the world. Creative energy among them is hitting the roof in many fronts. Where are we then?
In economic domain there are no visible capitalist entrepreneurs from Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi forces. The so-called Dalit millionaires, all of them, put together, cannot match the wealth of one black billionaire or singer or sports person. If the small imagines that it is big enough to touch the sky we will run the risk of self deception. The Shudra feudalism is now broken and all their accumulation shifted into crony capital of Banias. The Adivasis have neither property nor English education. Hence let us not mistake that a begging bowl is a gold mine.
We the Indian Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis are at the beginning stage of high level spiritual and cultural movements that match the Post-Capitalist democratic world. The Indian Church though has some institutional base it has not yet inspired political imagination like the Black Church did even by the 1950s and 60s wherefrom Martin Luther King emerged. Ambedkar had to prepare a new Buddhist ground which had no institutional base in India by the 1950s. Since he combined spiritual politics with nationalist political movements he could prepare a ground for establishment of a politicized Vihara. The Indian church needs to be politicized by gradually de-brahminzing itself. This is where Martin Luther King plays a critical role in Indian Church.
It is high time that the Sudra/Dalit/Adivasi population of India equally embrace Martin Luther King because his biblical world view revolutionised not just the blacks in America but worldwide and because he was able to make Jesus change the conscience of the oppressor. It is important that the mind of the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi needs to change but equally our goal should be that the brahmanical forces within Hinduism and other religions in India including the church structure should be confronted with Jesus and Buddha. In view of the fact on the essential equality of all humans including women just as the white race was confronted by the Bible through figures like Abraham Lincoln, William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King the Indian oppressors should confront Ambedkar and Martin Luther King as giant epoch makers of the world. The brahminists are living both in India and abroad with a narrow sense of nationalism cut off from universalism. They need to be changed. The NRIs whether Dalit/Shudra/Adivasis or brahminic Hindu foundation sanathanists all must know that both Ambedkar and King cannot be confined to a small patch of land called India or America. Their liberation agenda is universal. The Indian and global church must also engage with Ambedkar along with Martin Luther King. We have to create a spiritual democratic culture of universal equality.
The institutional base of the Navayana Buddhist Vihara is very weak. It does not have a weekly prayer set up where the members of the Vihara can regularly meet and exchange spiritual, social, economic and political knowledge. Without weakly gatherings a coherent educated civil and political society cannot be formed. Even business networks cannot be built. In this respect even the Dalit Church, with all its limitations, is better equipped.
The Indian Christianity and the Indian Buddhism have foundational spiritual democratic ideals. The Indian Islam is still under the control of spiritual authoritarianism, as Ambedkar opined, that the Indian Islam does not seem to be on its way of major reforms. It is still a reform resistant religion. Casteism and untouchability cannot be fought unless their religion is modernist and constantly undergoing reforms. Hinduism is spiritual fascism, we all know that. It is proved beyond doubt it cannot be reformed.
Both Church and Vihara must become places of melting pots of castes and classes. Caste hierarchies with untouchability and non-intermarriage locking up practices are still vibrant and at times violent. Church, Vihara and school should be the places where caste should be annihilated and a great deal of dignity of labour must be inculcated into the mind of every occupational group. The notions of low, high, pure and impure should be leveled. God here must become an agent of social and cultural revolution. The RSS/BJP wants to maintain the status quo from the position of power now. These institutions, on the other hand, should become places of God given equality in all spheres of life.
In this situation we the Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis must walk on our two God given legs—Ambedkar and Martin Luther King. Our nationalism operates broadly in the positive International Post-Capitalist democracy. Now the Indian church does not have to shy away in adopting Martin Luther King as their father of right to religious freedom along with Ambedkar in India. Both Church and Vihara must celebrate both birth and death anniversaries of Ambedkar and King every year.
With Ambedkar-King Study Circle getting formed in America, which is the dream land of the Hindutva and Brahminic forces, we the Dalit/Shudra/Adivasi forces must use the American and European base for the spread of spiritual democracy in India and the world over. For the time being we must work for the social, economic and political liberation in our father land, India.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author of many books, the latest being From Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual—My Memoirs
(This is the text of a Key Note Address Delivered at The Ambedkar-King Study Circle USA Conference 2019, at Cupertino, California, on October 7, 2019 by the author)
Notes:
- I am referring to all the denominations of protestant Church which took their birth in the reform movement of Martin Luther King. The fundamental difference between Catholic Church and Protestant Church is well-known. Martin Luther King is not only bears the name of Martin Luther but also continues the process of reformation of Church in the 20th Century, therefore, I treat the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King as a continuation of spiritual rights movement of Martin Luther. When Martin Luther translated the Latin Bible into Germany and made it available to German workers, peasants, women that act of his played a critical civil and human rights role in the 16th century.
References:
[1] Freire, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury.
[2] An Introduction by Kancha Ilaiah to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (2016). Riddles in Hinduism – The Annotated Critical Selection, New Delhi: Navayana.
[3] Excerpt from the speech delivered to Indian Christians of Sholapur and published in ‘Janata’ on 05.02.1938, reproduced from ‘Dnyanodaya’
[4] Ibid
SIGN UP FOR COUNTERCURRENTS DAILY NEWS LETTER