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
