Two Poems

Freedom at Stake

 

(for Prof Nandini Sundar)

 

Now it is the creed to rape women

And kill the villagers,

Make room for the new India

Steeped in himsa.

 

Gouge hillsides for the mining,

Clear pathways for the felling,

Make way for all the natural resources

To be stripped and shipped,

For the ‘Make in India’ story.

 

The tale gets more gory,

When a few academics

Go to record the voices of the villagers,

They get implicated in a murder

(it matters little that they were fifteen hundred miles away)

A First Information Report is lodged,

And it holds sway.

 

Kalluri the super-cop

Whose writ runs Bastar screams,

‘They will be stoned

If they come here’;

And indeed it is he who will cast

The first stone,

For only he knows

He is not alone,

Backed by the might of the state

And the rhetoric of hate;

Absolved of any burden

In a rape and murder case,

(the witnesses retracted).

 

Believe me, it’s not mica or ore they extract,

But the rights, dignity and lives

Of the tribals;

And this is not abstract,

What is at stake

Is the very idea of India—

The values of Ahimsa, Satyagraha and Freedom.