Gau Maata Ki Jai!

Amidst the silence of the rich and powerful

_ And the burgeoning of the lotus,

_ There must be more.

_ Beyond the clamour,

_ The onslaught of the hammer

_ Pulverised all that was sacred

_ Into dead meat;

_ What an amazing feat!

 

Black is the colour of the day,

_ A face smeared with ink,

_ By men in orange, who declare,

_ We are in the very pink,

_ Of health.

 

Watch, how with stealth

_ They enter the Press Club

_ And smear Rasheed,

_ For hosting a party with beef.

_ Did anyone ask them to take a leaf

_ Out of the Constitution of India?

 

Watch, as they protest with ‘non-violence’,

_ Smearing a face at a book release,

_ And as they give Mohammad Akhlaq

_ A release,

_ From his life.

 

Watch the strife

_ Of a man

_ Who sweats by his brow,

_ Then settles down to eat

_ A meal in his kitchen,

_ With a diya lit low.

 

It turns out to be

_ His last supper,

_ As they enter his home

_ Armed with the upper,

_ Hand of ideology.

 

They lynch him,

_ Calling him cow-slaughterer,

_ But don’t seem to blink over manslaughter.

 

They scream ‘Sangh Parivar ki fateh’

_ But Akhlaq merely said,

_ ‘Bharat Mata ki jai!’

 

They say, they have so many places to live,

_ But this is Hindu-stan, but

_ Wasn’t the idea of India

_ A rainbow,

_ Arched across the globe,

_ That strove,

_ For ahimsa within diversity?

 

They painted Hinduism black;

_ Who will meld with this colour,

_ Or take it back?

 

But now,

_ I fear for the cows

_ And how!

_ No one is being heard

_ We are part of the herd.

October 22, 2015      

Sagari Chhabra

(Poet, playwright, author and film-maker. Her latest book is In Search Of Freedom)