Two Poems

Farmers’ Mann ki Baat

Sukumaran C.V.

Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know

But leechlike to their fainting country cling …

P.B. Shelley

(sonnet England, 1819).

Two centuries ago, the great poet

Shelley told the Peterloo protesters,

Who were agitating for greater

Reforms and who were confronted

By the charging cavalry of King George:

“Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you-

Ye are many- they are few.”[1]

Oh! Farmers, you feed the nation,

But the nation heeds you not;

If you cultivate not, the doctor

And the engineer will starve to death;

But the doctor and the engineer live

Better lives and you live miserably.

If you cultivate not, the ruler and

The bureaucrat will starve to death;

But the ruler and the bureaucrat live

Better lives and you live miserably.

If you cultivate not, contractors and

The brokers will starve to death;

But the contractors and brokers live posh

And you lead a life in misery.

You feed everybody and nobody

Listens to you and sees your woes.

We are taught to be proud of being

IAS and IPS people; never we are

Taught to be farmers, not even to

Appreciate them and their toil,

Which enables us to have our posh style.

Everybody wants to be bureaucrats;

And nobody wants to be farmers.

Yet, nobody can live without farmers!

And when you walk together to

Meet the Maharajas and tell them

Your woes and your problems,

They dig moats across roads to

Stop you reaching around their City.

They know not you are the children

Of the soil and you can metamorphose into

A placid yet turbulent river whose flow

Their moats and barricades can’t stop.

You left your villages and formed the river,

That flowed and flowed and breached

The moats and barricades and knocked on

Their City gates and put the City under siege.

Then the Maharajas put forth conditions;

And you said to hell with the conditions.

The rulers are not, but the people are

The authority to put forth conditions.

You taught them the bitter truth;

And it will be better for them,

To be wise enough to learn the truth.

And they will be wiser, if they learn it.

I feel proud of you when I see you

Walk and cook and sleep on the roads;

While the north Indian winter is unbearable,

Even if we have a roof above our heads.

I feel proud of you when I see you

Stand united not by caste and creed;

But by your economic woes whose

Creators the corporate-friendly rulers are.

I feel proud of you for telling the Maharaj

You are bored to hear his mann ki baat, and

For forcing him to listen to your mann ki baat.

And I wish to be with you, to flow

With you, to walk with you and

To confront the Maharajas

With you and to tell them that the

World goes on only because you are

There to saw and reap and feed it.

And I wish to be with you to tell you:

“Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you-

Ye are many- they are few.”

Oh, No; We are many, they are few.

[1] Quoted from Shelley’s poem The Masque of Anarchy. [On August 16, 1819, cavalry regiments of King George III attacked the 60,000 protesters who were agitating peacefully for political reforms assembling in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, led by the radical orator Henry Hunt. In the cavalry charge, around twenty people were killed and hundreds were injured. This incident is known as the Peterloo Massacre. Shelley wrote the poem lambasting the authorities. But it was published only after his death. Shelley lambasts the combination of power (God, and Law, and King) that oppresses the people. The fascinating and salient feature of the poem is its eloquent portrayal of non-violent resistance. Timothy Bloxam Morton says in his essay ’Receptions’ included in The Cambridge Companion to Shelley that the poem has played an important role in inspiring Gandhian non-violent resistance. See how beautifully and powerfully Shelley delineates non-violent resistance in the 79th, 84th, 85th and 86th stanzas of the poem:

Stand ye calm and resolute,

Like a forest close and mute,

With folded arms and looks which are

Weapons of unvanquished war. (Stanza 79)

And if then the tyrants dare,

Let them ride among you there;

Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;

What they like, that let them do. (84)

With folded arms and steady eyes,

And little fear, and less surprise,

Look upon them as they slay,

Till their rage has died away. (85)

Then they will return with shame,

To the place from which they came,

And the blood thus shed will speak

In hot blushes on their cheek." (86)

(Sukumaran C.V. is a former JNU student and is based in Kerala. Article courtesy: Mainstream.)

❈ ❈ ❈

Father, We have Sinned

Rohan Deshpande

Father, we have sinned

For you,

The preambular values and Article 21 have been binned.

As a society, we take selective outrage

A journalist, yes

Yet, denial of a sipper and straw is not met with enough umbrage.

Your case may be under the UAPA, with the NIA prosecuting

I say!

Does that justify such a denuding?

Delay defeats justice

Is known to all alike

But for you, the judiciary is cold as ice.

A humanitarian request is not entertained

For want of

A reply to your plaint.

I am instantly reminded of a picture

Adorning the High Court at Panaji

Depicting a chain around legal scriptures.

With anguish, I propose one addition

Nay, an amendment

Clarifying that in our legal system, there’s no place for your kind of petition.

Does no one understand – the only lock that a straw can pick

Is what unshackles

A monster who makes our Constitution and conscience sick.

If this is the way we treat our octogenarians,

I ask myself,

Is there any place for my generation?

However, be rest assured that your struggle for a sipper and a straw

Will not go down in history,

And equate you to a man of straw.

For Father, while we have sinned

In your case,

Only the devil has grinned.

(Rohan Deshpande practices as a Counsel in the Bombay High Court and writes on law and current affairs.)

Janata Weekly does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished by it. Our goal is to share a variety of democratic socialist perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

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