No

No Muslim was killed in Gujarat

No Muslim is being killed now

The vendor* was not selling fruit

No one vandalized his cart in Karnataka

 

No

No bird is dying from drying rivers

The rivers are not being throttled to die

The Yamuna is not full of toxic foam

 

No

No politician is spewing hate

Yati Narasinghanand is not calling for genocide

Babri was never demolished

No prime minister has blood in hand

 

No

No farmer has committed suicide

No crop is rotting in storage

No peasant is poor here

No small businessman has closed shop

 

No

No girl is being raped in India

No chief minister has shamed the victim*

No charred body has been found

 

No

No bulldozer is bulldozing houses in Jahangirpuri

No Muslim house has been destroyed  in Khargone

 

All is fine

All is joyous in Hindusthan

 

Don’t write a poem with your blunt pen

and dead conscience

Say Proudly

Jai Shree Ram.

*A Muslim vendor’s cart was vandalised by a group of right-wing mobs in Karnataka, a southern state of India.

** The chief minister of West Bengal did victim-shaming while a girl was brutally raped and later lost her life due to heavy bleeding in Hanskhali, West Bengal

           2

   Jahangirpuri

Bulldoze us

Bulldoze our houses

Bulldoze the shanties

Bulldoze the buses

Bulldoze our mosques

Bulldoze our dreams

Bulldoze our bones

Bulldoze our hymns

Bulldoze our mothers

Bulldoze our sisters

Bulldoze the monuments

Bulldoze the miners

Bulldoze our lands

Bulldoze our children

Bulldoze our breaths

Bulldoze our vision

Bulldoze twenty crores

 

But we will still be here.

Listen to the azan in the mosque

It’s still calling for love.

And in the dark cells of the prison

Umar, Imam  and Miran

Are singing songs for a new dawn.

 

Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal.  Her poetry collection The Musings of the Dark is available on Amazon


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One Comment

  1. Abu Siddik says:

    Very poignant poems, kudos

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