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 21st 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.
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.
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
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
---
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
---
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
----
