The Sanskari Rapists

 

                        A Poem

The Sanskari Rapists and the Raped

 

They raped, yet they did not

even if they did, as they certainly did,

they didn’t.

They murdered, yet they didn’t.

They smashed a child to the ground, yet they didn’t.

That’s why they were garlanded

feted with sweets, the sacred ladoos

by their men. By their women too!

How can the Sanskari brahmins be guilty?

What they do is beyond reproach.

Their deeds are not subject to human scrutiny.

The courts had no right to arraign them.

That’s why the celebrations

to honour their missionary heroism.

 

What about the raped?

Of what consequence

is the life and honour of a woman of the other race!

And her pain

that has pierced her innards

each cell, each pour and settled there

like pulsating, stabbing poison

that doesn’t let her live, let her die

let her forget!

 

The silence all around tells all.

---   

 

 

 

Jawahar Lal Nehru on the National Flag , the Tiranga

 

 

 

 

                   Jawahar Lal Nehru on the National Flag, the Tiranga

 

Here is Jawahar Lal Nehru’s speech in the constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947 when he moved the resolution on adopting the tricolour as the national flag.

 

Mr. President, it is my proud privilege to move the following Resolution.

Resolved that the National Flag of India shall be horizontal tricolour of deep Saffron (Kesari), white and dark green in equal proportion. In the centre of the white band, there shall be a Wheel in navy blue to represent the Charkha. The design of the Wheel shall be that of the Wheel. (Chakra) which appears on the abacus of the Sarnath. Lion Capital of Asoka. The diameter of the Wheel shall approximate to the width of the white band, The ratio of the width to the length of the Flag shall ordinarily be 2:3.

This Resolution, Sir, is in simple language, in a slightly technical language and there is no glow or warmth in the words that I have read. Yet I am sure that many in this House will feel that glow and warmth which I feel at the present moment, for behind this Resolution and the Flag which I have the honour to present to this House for adoption lies history, the concentrated history of a short span in a nation's existence. 'Nevertheless, sometimes in a brief period we pass through the track of centuries. It is not so much the mere act of living that counts but what , one does in this brief life a that is ours; it is not so much the mere existence of a nation that counts but what that nation does during the various periods of its existence; and I do venture to claim that in the past quarter of a century or so India has lived and acted in a concentrated way and the emotions which have filled the people of India represent not merely a brief spell of years but something infinitely more. They have gone down into history and tradition and have added themselves on to that vast history and tradition which is our heritage in this country. So, when I move this Resolution, I think of this concentrated history through which all of us have passed during the last quarter of a century. Memories crowd upon me. I remember the ups and downs of the great struggle for freedom of this great nation. I remember and many in this House will remember how we looked up to this Flag not only with pride and enthusiasm but with a tingling in our veins; also, how, when we were sometimes down and out, then again the sight of this Flag gave us courage to go on. Then, many who are not present here today, many of our comrades who have passed, held on to this Flag, some amongst them even unto death. and handed it over as they sank, to others to hold it aloft. So, in this simple form of words, there is much more than will be clear on the surface. There is the struggle of the people for freedom with all its ups and downs and trials and disasters and there is, finally today as I move this Resolution, a certain triumph about it a measure of triumph in the conclusion of that struggle. Now, I realise fully, as this House must realise, that this triumph of ours has been marred in many ways. There have been, especially in the past few months many happenings which cause us sorrow, which has gripped our hearts. We have seen parts of this dear motherland of ours cut off from the rest. We have seen large numbers of people suffering tremendously, large numbers wandering about like waifs and strays, without a home. We have seen many other things which I need not repeat to this House, but which we cannot forget. All this sorrow has dogged our footsteps. Even when we have achieved victory and triumph, it still dogs us and we have tremendous problems to face in the present and in the future. Nevertheless, it is true I think hold it to be true that this moment does represent a triumph and a victorious conclusion of all our struggles, for the moment. (Hear, hear).

There has been a very great deal of bewailing and moaning about various things that have happened. I am sad, all of us are sad at heart because of those things. But let us distinguish that from the other fact of triumph. because there is triumph in victory, in what has happened. It is no small thing that that great and mighty empire which has represented imperialist domination in this country has decided to end its days here. That was the objective we aimed at. We have attained that objective or shall attain it very soon. Of that there is no doubt. We have not attained the objective exactly in the form in which we wanted it. The troubles and other things that accompany our achievement are not to our liking. But we must remember that it Is very seldom that people realise the dreams that they have dreamt. It is very seldom that the aims and objectives with which we start are achieved in their entirety in life in an individual's life or in a nation's life. We have many examples before us. We need not go into the distant past. We have examples in the present or in the recent past. Some years back, a great war was waged, a world war bringing terrible misery to mankind. That war was meant for freedom and democracy and the rest. That war ended in the triumph of those who said they stood for freedom and democracy. Yet, hardly had that war ended when there were rumours of fresh wars and fresh conflicts. Three days ago, this House and this country and the world was shocked by the brutal murder in a neighbouring country of the leaders of the nation. Today one reads in the papers of an attack by an imperialist power on a friendly country in South-East Asia. Freedom is still far off in this world and nations, all nations in greater or lesser degree are struggling for their freedom. If we in the present have not exactly achieved what we aimed at, it is not surprising. There is nothing in it to be ashamed of. For I do think our achievement is no small achievement. it is a very considerable achievement, a great achievement. Let no man run it down because other things have happened which are not to our liking. Let us keep these two things apart. Look at any country in the wide world. Where is the country today, including the great and big powers, which is not full of terrible problems, which is not in some way, politically and economically, striving for freedom which somehow or other eludes its grasp? The problems of India in the wider context do not appear to be terrible. The problems are rot anything new to us. We have faced many disagreeable-things in the past. We have not held back. We shall face all the other disagreeable things that face us in the present or may do so in the future and we shall not flinch and we shall not falter and we shall not quit. (Loud applause).

So, in spite of everything that surrounds us, it is in no spirit of down heartedness that I stand up in praise of this Nation for what it has achieved. (Renewed cheers). It is right and proper that at this moment we should adopt the symbols of this achievement, the symbol of freedom. Now what is this freedom in its entirety and for all humanity. What is freedom and what is the struggle for freedom and when does it end. As soon as you take one step forward and achieve something further steps come up before you. There will be no full freedom in this country or in the world as long as a single human being is unfree. There will be no complete freedom as long as there is starvation, hunger, lack of clothing lack of necessaries of life and lack of opportunity of growth for every single human being, man, woman and child in the country. We aim at that. We may not accomplish that because it is a terrific task. But we shall do our utmost to accomplish that task and hope that our successors. when they come, have an easier path to pursue. But there is no ending to that road to freedom. As we go ahead, just as we sometimes in our vanity aim at perfection, perfection never comes. But if we try hard enough, we do approach the goal step by step. When we increase the happiness of the people, we increase their stature in many ways and we proceed to our goal. I do not know if there is an end to this or not, but we proceed towards some kind of cosummation which in effect never ends.

So I present this Flag to you. This Resolution defines the Flag which I trust you will adopt. In a sense this Flag was adopted, not by a formal resolution, but by popular acclaim and usage, adopted much more by the sacrifice that surrounded it in the past few decades. We are in a sense only ratifying that popular adoption. It is a Flag which has been variously described. Some people, having misunderstood its significance, have thought of it in communal terms and believe that some part of it represents this community or that. But I may say that when this Flag was devised there was no communal significance attached to it. We thought of a design for a Flag which was beautiful, because the symbol of a nation must be beautiful to look at. We thought of a Flag which would in its combination and in its separate parts somehow represent the spirit of the nation, the tradition of the nation, that mixed spirit and tradition which has grown up through thousands of years in India. So, we devised this Flag. Perhaps I am partial but I do think that it is a very beautiful Flag to Look at purely from the point of view of artistry, and it has come to symbolise many other beautiful things, things of the spirit, things of the mind, that give value to the individual's life and to the nation's life, for a nation does not live merely by material things, although they are highly important. It is important that we should have the good things of the world, the material possessions of the world, that our people should have the necessaries of life. That is of the utmost importance. Nevertheless, a nation, and especially a nation like India with an immemorial past, lives by other things also, the things of the spirit. If India had not been associated with these ideals and things of the spirit during these thousands of years, what would India have been? It has gone through a very great deal of misery and degradation in the past, but somehow even in the depths of degradation, the head of India gas been held high, the thought of India has been high, and the ideals of India have been high. So we have gone through these tremendous ages and we stand up today in proud thankfulness for our past and even more so for the future that is to come for which we are going to work and for which our successors are going to work. It is our privilege. of those assembled here, to mark the transition in a particular way, in a way that will be remembered. I began by saying that it is my proud privilege to be ordered to move this Resolution. Now, Sir, may I say a few words about this particular Flag? It will be seen that there is a slight variation from the one many of us have used during these past years. The colours are the same, a deep saffron, a white and a dark green. In the white previously there was the Charkha which symbolised the common man in India, which symbolised the masses of the people, which symbolised their industry and which came to us from the message which Mahatma Gandhi delivered. (Cheers) Now, this particular Charkha symbol has been slightly varied in this Flag, not taken away at all. Why then has this been varied? Normally speaking, the symbol on one side-of the Flag should be exactly the same as on the other side. Otherwise, there is a difficulty which goes against the rules. Now, the Charkha, as it appeared previously on this Flag, had the wheel on one side and the spindle on the other If you see the other side of the Flag, the spindle comes the other way and the wheel comes this way; so, it is not proportionate, because the wheel must be towards the pole, not towards the end of the Flag. There was this practical difficulty. Therefore, after considerable thought, we were of course convinced that this great symbol which had enthused people should continue but that it should continue in a slightly different form, that the wheel should be there, not the rest of the Charkha, that is the spindle and the string which created this confusion, that the essential mitt of the Charkha should be there, that is the wheel. So, the old tradition continues in regard to the Charkha and the wheel. But what type of wheel should we have? Our minds went back to many wheels but notably one famous wheel, which had appeared in many places and which all of us have seen, the one at the top of the capital of the Asoka column and in many other places. That wheel is a symbol of India's ancient culture, It is a symbol of the many things that India had stood for through the ages. So we thought that this Chakra emblem should be there, and that wheel appears. For my part, I am exceedingly happy that in this sense indirectly we have associated with this Flag of ours not only this emblem but in a sense the name of Asoka, one of the most magnificent names not only in India's history but in world history. It is well that at this moment of strife, conflict and intolerance, our minds should go back towards what India stood for in the ancient days and. what it has stood for, I hope and believe, essentially throughout the ages in spite of mistakes and errors and degradations from time to time. For, if India had not stood for something very great, I do not think that India could have survived and carried on its cultural traditions In a more or less continuous manner through these vast ages. It carried on Its cultural tradition, not unchanging, not rigid, but always keeping its essence, always adapting itself to new developments, to new influences. That has been the tradition of India, always to put out fresh blooms and flowers, always receptive to the good things that it receives, sometimes receptive to bad things also, but always true to her ancient culture. All manner of new influences through thousands of years have influenced us, while we influenced them tremendously also, for you will remember that India has not been in the past a tight little narrow country, disdaining other countries. India throughout the long ages of her history has been connected with other countries, not only connected with other countries, but has been an international centre, sending out her people abroad to far-off countries carrying her message and receiving the message of other countries in exchange, but India was strong enough to remain embedded on the foundations on which she was built although changes many changes, have taken place. The strength of India it has been said, consists in this strong foundation. It consists also in its amazing capacity to receive, to adapt what it wants to adapt, not to reject because something is outside its scope, but to accept and receive everything. It is folly for any nation or race to think that it can only give to and not receive from the rest of the world. Once a nation or a race begins to think like that, it becomes rigid, it becomes ungrowing; it grows backwards and decays. In fact, if India's history can be traced, India's periods of decay are those when it closed herself up into a shell and refused to receive or to look at the outside world. India's greatest periods are those when she stretched her hands to others in far off countries, sent her emissaries, ambassadors, her trade agents and merchants to these countries and received ambassadors and emissaries from broad. Now because I have mentioned the name of Asoka I should like you to think that the Asokan period in Indian history was essentially an international period of Indian history. It was not a narrowly national period. It was a period when India's ambassadors went abroad to far countries and went abroad not in the way of an Empire and imperialism but as ambassadors of peace and culture and goodwill. (Cheers.)

Therefore, this Flag that I have the honour to present to you is not, I hope and trust, a Flag of Empire, a Flag of Imperialism, a Flag of domination over anybody, but a Flag of freedom not only for ourselves but a symbol of. freedom to all people who may see it. (Cheers). And wherever it may go-and I hope it will go far, not only where Indians dwell as our ambassadors and ministers but across the far seas where it may be carried by Indian ships, wherever it may go it will bring a message, I hope, of freedom to those people, a message of comradeship, a message that India wants to be friends with every country of the world and India wants to help any people who seek freedom. (Hear, hear). That I hope will be the message of this Flag everywhere and I hope that in the freedom that is coming to us, we will not do what many other people or some other people have unfortunately done, that is, in a newfound strength suddenly to expand and become imperialistic in design. If that happened that would be a terrible ending to our struggle for freedom. (Hear, hear.) But there is that danger and, therefore, I venture to remind this House of it , although this House needs no reminder-there is this danger in a country suddenly unshackled in stretching out its arms and legs and trying to hit out at other people. And if we do that, we become just like other nations who seem to live in a kind of succession of conflicts and preparation for conflict. That is the world today unfortunately.

 In some degree I have been responsible for the foreign Policy during the past few months and always the question is asked here or elsewhere: "What is your foreign policy? To what group do you adhere to In this warring world?" Right at the beginning I venture to say that we propose to belong to no power group. We propose to function as far as we can as peace-makers and peace-bringers because today we are not strong enough to be able to have our way. But at any rate we propose to avoid all entanglements with power politics in the world. It is not completely possible to do that in this complicated world of ours, but certainly we are going to do our utmost to that end.

It is stated in this Resolution that the ratio of the width to the length of the Flag shall ordinarily be 2:3. Now you will notice the word "ordinarily". There is no absolute standard about the ratio because the same Flag on a particular occasion may have a certain ratio that might be more suitable or on any other occasion, in another place the ratio might differ slightly. So there is no compulsion about this ratio. But generally speaking, the ratio of 2:3 is a proper ratio. Sometimes the ratio 2:1 may be suitable for a Flag flying on a building. Whatever the ratio may be, the point is not so much the relative length and breadth, but the essential design. So, Sir, now I would present to you not only the Resolution but the Flag itself.

There are two of these National Flags before you. One is on silk-the one I am holding-and the other on the other side is of cotton Khadi. I beg to move this Resolution. (Cheers.)

                                                                                  xxx

Comments

I wish the little people, many of them philistines and neophytes, who are cawing like crows about the national flag should recollect and carefully read this speech by going to the debate in the Constituent Assembly that is the mother of all what people have to say about the national flag. This speech presents a vision that connects India’s past present and future in a string of continuity, its failures and successes, and its aspirations and great challenges as a new nation. And also, Nehru connects the living of his own day and the dead of the past with successions of the generations to come. He also delineates India’s role in the international arena and the nature of the role he hopes India can play. There is much more in this speech than I have tried to show.

    It is sad to note that the small-minded people fussing over the importance of the national flag, monopolizing proprietary rights over it, seem to believe as if it is they who invented the national flag and are also trying to become the surrogate parents of the freedom movement ( believing that India became free with their arrival on the national scene) paying lip service to the greatest peoples’ movement in India’s history, in which lakhs of people, big and small, participated playing different roles sacrificing their lives and fortunes, about which the neophytes either know very little or are pretending ignorance about it.

T C Ghai 

Remembering Bhagat Singh and Pash: March 23

 

 

Remembering Bhagat Singh and Pash: March 23

March 23 is a memorable day, certainly in Punjab but also elsewhere in India. On this day in 1931, Bhagat Singh, along with his revolutionary companions, Rajguru and Sukhdev, was executed by the British Indian government. Pash (Avatar Singh Sandhu), a revolutionary poet, was shot dead by militants, along with his friend Hans Raj, also on March 23 in 1988. For Punjabis Bhagat Singh remains, after the Sikh Gurus, the most admired figure. And Pash, himself a great admirer of Bhagat Singh, has become an iconic figure in modern Punjabi poetry and literature.

   I believe it is not inappropriate to use this memorable occasion to showcase on this blog a few poems of a Punjabi Dalit poet, Madan Veera. who carries forward the revolutionary message of Bhagat Singh of social equality and rejection of religious bigotry, and the revolutionary poetic tradition established by poets like Pash, and Lal Singh Dil.

   Madan Veera is one 21^st century face of that message and literary movement. His poetic world is the one in which the Dalits have moved out of the ostracized world, similar to an animal enclosure, through education and social awareness. A number of them have, after moving out, joined the mainstream, leaving the rest behind. Veera writes primarily about those left out. He can also relate himself to non-Punjabi Dalit figures like Phule, Periyar, Dalit Panthers. He does not restrict himself to the Dalit issues limited to Punjab but relates to the Dalits and the marginalized all over India, including women. He is by and large in agreement with the agenda of the progressive writers. He is angry, assertive, aggressive, and rebellious, loud and bold. The titles of three of his four collections of poetry show it clearly: Bhakhiya 2001 (Smouldering); Nabaran di Ibarat 2009 (Writings of the Rebellious), Khara Paani 2018 (Brackish Waters).

   His poetry is almost one of total alienation from the great ancient Indian civilization. He distances himself from its foundational basis ‒ the Vedas, Upanishads, epics, puranas, its gods, goddesses and heroes, the Varna Dharama, the Law of Karma, Manu Smriti and all else. He rejects its claims of a glorious past. He even rejects its present dispensation, its freedom movement, its leaders including Gandhi and Nehru, its constitution and democratic pretensions based on the parliamentary system, elections, its economic planning, its politics, its arts and literature. He recognizes the influence of Buddha and Nanak only reluctantly because for him their followers have refused to live by their teachings. The reason stated by him is very simple. The total absence of Dalits and tribals from the mainstream civilization, and their presence there only as victims . The promises made in the constitution and the benefits accorded to the lower caste communities and tribes are nothing more than charity based on compassion reserved for the lowly and the poor, not for an equal.

   Thus, it is a turning away from the Indian state, the Indian civilization since its inception up to the present time. Veera talks of a different world hidden by the media not much visible in the progressive secular literature. He claims that he derives his world view from the lived experience of the wretched, including his own, both in the village and the Mahanagar, rather than from any books or literary sources because their existence is recorded nowhere. He even denies any direct influence on him of Marx and Ambedkar.

   He brings the Dalit to the centre of his poetical act, the pain of being a Dalit as the central fact. But he goes beyond Dalits to include all the poor and marginalized, including women. He rejects the upper caste world altogether, its success, its affluence, upward mobility, its literary aesthetics, eroticism and romance. He keeps in mind the larger world of the marginalized India and presents a comprehensive image of the rural Punjab.

  In his poetry ‘the pain is as deep as the hurt’: Jitni gehri chot utni gehri dard.

How you respond to his poetry is up to you, but listen to him in the words of Pash, in one of his poems.  

 

  LISTEN 

 

Listen to the music of our hearth

Listen to our cry laced with pain

Listen to my wife’s requests

Listen to my daughter’s demands

Measure the poison in my bidi

Listen to the drumbeat of my cough

Listen to the cold sighs of my patched trousers

Listen to the heartache of my worn-out shoes

Listen to my silence

Listen how I express myself

And gauge the depth of my misery

Listen to the arithmetic of my rage

Here is the corpse of my civilized behaviour

Listen to the music of the beast in me

Listen to the song of the literate

Sung by the illiterate and the barbaric

Whether you like it or not

Listen to what we have to say

---

[A poem by Pash from his collection: Ud-dian Bbajan Magar (1974)

(After the Flying Hawks), translated by me in Pash, A Poet of Impossible Dreams, Published in 2010.}

 

 

A few poems by Madan Veera translated by me from Punjabi. Please bear with me for the poems may need further honing, even changes.

 

 

 1.     Nameless (from Bhakhiya p11)

 

The application form in my hands

is shaking like a dry leaf

and my heart

is searching for my own self

in my own courtyard

 

The official wants to know:

The soil I have sprouted from?

My caste?

My colour?

My religion?

 

Another column says:

Are you Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isaai

Boddhi or Jaini bhai?

 

I’m a resident

of this raggle-taggle world

divided in colours and races

splintered into castes and religions

yet I’m not its citizen

 

I have eyes, features

yet I am faceless

Written on a soiled form

with an address

dirty and smudged

I have a name yet I am nameless

---  

 

2.     Rebellious (from Nabaran di Ibarat p 46)

 

O brilliant men of learning

drenched in knowledge

great scholars!

Let me remain ignorant, unlettered

Let me be an illiterate pumice stone or just stone

I’m happy to be artless

bereft of colours and swings

 

 Keep it to yourself

your Kav Shastra

principles of Rasa, rhyming tricks

your brand of arts

I don’t need your sea of aesthetics

the earth divided into pigeonholes

the sky the size of an umbrella

 

So don’t propose to me

new themes for poetry

don’t suggest

untouched and virgin metaphors

I don’t need

the uniqueness propounded by you

your frigid and frightened originality

 

You high and mighty!

The words that don’t smell

of my sweat

are meaningless for me

The speech that does not

exude the heat of my blood and its warmth

is for me empty

lowly and worthless

 

I don’t set beauty in words

I fight for beauty

Words are not just words for me

They are jehadis

fighting in the battlefield of life

Words are a weapon for me

a shield

arrows

a sword

questions

Poetry for me is

not just poetry

but a mission

----

3.     Gritty Irritant  (from Nabran di Ibarat p79)

 

If chairs are deaf

so what

If the officer is blind

so what

You have a tongue

words

a voice

wings and flight

 

 

You are neither a tutored

gangaram

nor a willing

slave

You are a smouldering fire

filled with lava

 

Before you are swallowed

by your house’s four walls

or stricken by the bollworm

of demands and duties

before the soil of your selfhood

 is eaten away by salinity

before it melts away bit by bit

come and speak out

become a roar

resound like a conch into the deaf ears

become a gritty irritant in the squinting eyes

---  

4.      Fully Fledged Man’s Tale (from Nabaran di Ibarat p 48)

 

When there was talk of hunger

many bellies were empty

When there was talk of nakedness

many a stark naked came forward

When there was talk of livelihood

there was a miles-and-miles long line of the unemployed

When there was talk of a shelter

footpaths became crowded

 

The answers to all my questions

were right in front of me

When the arrows of questions

pierced through my body

in a burst of passion I said:

I’m one of you

your very own;

enroll me

in your ranks

 

They said:

First tell us

are you the head or torso

legs or feet…

I kept on saying

I’m a man

whole and complete like you

not a head

or a torso

nor legs nor feet

 

I am shouting

from the depths

of a bottomless well

waiting for a response

but the peddlers of pure sanskriti

followers of Manu

heirs of Baba Nanak

remain deaf to my appeals

and the words of Kabir –

Allah above all ‒

are blown to smithereens

      ---

   

 5.     Brackish Waters (from Khaara Paani p 84)

 

I have returned

from my ancestral village

just as the shadow

returns with the body

A hundred doubts resurface

together with

an army of worries

Unfulfillable demands call forth

Incurable maladies

lacerate the soul

A few coins to some one

False promises to another

some cold some brackish

I am playing strange games

having returned from the village

How should I tell the village ‒

how should I

that the city for me

is like a beggar’s begging bowl

or the stale weary and forced laughter

of a sleep-starved girl in a call centre ‒

A bit of sugar candy in brackish waters?

                             ---

6.     Faceless ( from Khaara Paani p72)

 

It’s true

a man does not die

under the weight of joblessness

He does drown

in the waves swelling

from home to the employment office

like the catastrophic tsunami

but does not dissolve

 

The sun and the moon and the stars

inside him go down the horizon

even before they rise

Joblessness sucks bit by bit

every drop of longing

in the wretched stomach

Like the little girl walking on the rope

life’s string begins to wobble

 

The look on the face

fades and hollows out

The shine in the glassy eyes

dims and disappears

Fine feelings drown somewhere

when the partridge-winged clouds of hope

neither become a shade

nor a drop of rain nor a shower

Life then becomes

a faceless image.

--- 

 7.     The Poet and Poetry    (from Khara Paani p 86)

 

Today the poet looks

helpless

like a grandmother

tired broken exhausted

begging, not for life, but death

deep in depression.

He is stringing together a garland

of sterile stinking words

There is no warmth in them

There is no energy in their meanings

Today the pen is not a sword

shining with a sharp edge

yet he is writing a poem.

 

Just as a mother

battered by poverty

is piecing together a shirt

for her elder son

out of his father’s worn-out shirt

that would have come to him

as a gift

but one that the younger one

has rejected and thrown away

refusing to wear it

 

The poem and the shirt

are so alike

how alike

may be unravelled by an expert…

 

Now or later

a reader would perhaps cast away

this shirt-like poem

pieced together with tired worn-out words

after reading or without reading it

If he finds

no warmth no heat in it

he would find here

skilful use of words

in which the poet is absent

  ----  

8.       

Identity  (from: Madan Veera di Kavita da Kav Shastra p130)

You are searching for my past

in books

on stone inscriptions

in ruins

so that you can redefine

my existence

my identity

my ancestry…

You are scanning books

that I have neither written

nor read

you are looking at stone inscriptions

that contain neither my defeat

nor my victory

you want to know about me from the ruins

but I am a builder

how would the ruins know me?

 

Janab

Remove your eye glasses

Come out of libraries

forget the inscriptions

forget the ruins

Come, I will show you

the splendour of my blood

the fragrance of my sweat

the magic of my hands:

Look at the smooth roads

dams on silver-coloured canals

singing crops

brightly lit nights

milk white cities

neat and clean homes ‒

this has been my journey

from the Middle Ages

till today

 

But I

or my identity…

 

On the ration card or voters’ list

my name is found there, you can see,

as someone special something singular

I am an S C or an S T

for religion on the fifth step lower down

unworthy of the society or a word of abuse

an animal or a bumpkin or a thief

a terrorist, a Naxalite, or some other

 

But I…

What about me?

before I was trapped in the crisis of identity

I have been undone by the struggle for life

and in your words

I have walked out or been cast out

from the so-called ‘mainstream’.

---

 

9.     Rising India (from Nabran di Ibarat p 58)

 

India is rising

in newspapers

in sarkari advertisements

in the few smooth shining faces

While crores of people in the country

are sinking

India is rising

 

The minions of Rajdhani

are digging up mountains

sprucing up places

by hiding garbage and filth

A cocktail of slogans

is being cooked up

a crowd of promises has descended

like a swarm of locusts

How can promises

change the fortunes of the poor

There is darkness

in the houses of the poor

the dawn is miles away

yet India is rising

 

The army of dyed jackals is on the march

having had fun for five years

stealing tears from crocodiles

hiding their crookedness

under titbits

yet India is rising

 

Old players who have to play

a long innings

are on the move

with folded hands

The game of pulls and pushes is on

but India is rising

 

The knives’ edges would shine

The bloody daggers would flash

Forces are being readied

for the decisive battle

for the chairs

to rob people

to defeat them

yet India is rising

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10.  MY India-Your India (from Nabran di Ibarat p 91)

 

That India was yours not mine

only yours

the one that was the golden sparrow

My India

my India even then was

a bog of sufferings

a land of hunger

a kicking footpath

writhing-yearning for relief

a mud street of a village

 filthy lane a broken broom

 

That India is not mine but yours

only yours

that has inherited glory

honour and pride

where every page is brightly lit

each word is filled with light

My India

my  India is the tip of a thorn

a bed of spikes

sullied dignity and a baffled mind

a branded forehead

a document printed in blood

 

That India is only yours not mine

only yours

the one that is a haven for Rishis

playground for fairies

the court of Indra

the conclave for thirty-three crore gods

 drenched in fragrance

resplendent in colours

 

My India

my India is the tale

of broken homes

and woodworm eaten doors

a building that crashed

before it was raised

 

That India was yours not mine

only yours

on whose chest

the firangis had ridden

the ruler of the times was blind

was deaf

and the wound on the chest was deep

 

I have been pulled and pushed

from generation to generation

by those inside and those from outside

have been robbed at every step

and used and abused…

 

That India was not mine was yours

only yours

that became free in’47

it was uprooted

but it was rehabilitated

 

My India still bears chains

on its feet

bears lines of tears on its face

is dressed in rags

like beggars

Its Ranjhas have been exiled

from Takhat Hazara to the mound of Balnath

Its Heers

have been forced out

from their homes in Jhang and among the Khedas

 

The darling star in the eyes of the world

the lighthouse to enlighten the world ‒

that India is only yours

My India

My India is still

a dark and terrifying night

For the high castes it is low caste

Helpless at every step

desperate at every turn

an unanswered question longer than life

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