It’s monsoon. Estha might be returning home again. And Rahel might again play with the fresh cow dung. Will she be punished again? Anyone living outside of this world’s biggest democracy might be surprised! Punishment for what? In India in the last ten years, we are not surprised by anything anymore. Punishment is punishment. Reason has been eclipsed. Akhlaq was punished for being a name – Akhlaq. Zunaid is punished for being Zunaid. The victims of Delhi in March 2020 were punished for being in Delhi when a fanatic had absolute impunity to shout goli maro salo… I can’t write or utter the prelude words of Goli Maro…I am afraid. I am afraid of my name.
After a 45-day marathon event of fighting for the life of democracy, that is the election, we got a breathing silver bullet – the not-so-bad election result. A revival of the old horse Indian National Congress and other regional parties. And the flattening face of aap ki baar charso paar euphoria. Many think the war is over. It’s breathing time! Some again are relapsing into Estha-like withdrawn solipsism. The always not-so-hard working upper middle class concerned and not-so-concerned voters who are neither bhakt nor atheists who have a fickle moral conscience like the residue of food in an empty bowl but not the courage to be a part of change are jovial enough at the 4th June result. They are once again preparing their ultra-size XL popcorn packet for a check-in balance show in the democracy’s sacred house. They are/were thinking the job is done, if not full then at least half. They are carefully wiping the last trace of water from the Che Guevara coffee cup to pour the relaxing coffee. Now, they feel they are safe. At least the nagging constant lingering but not excruciating middle-class feeling of a megalomaniac autocrat doing go-as-you-like practice in the sacred parliament and they are mere helpless spectators has been subsumed to an extent after 4th June. Now they have a cocktail opposition.
Meanwhile, they missed the lynching of Guddu Khan alias Mohamed Tehsin (35) and Chand Miya (33). The 4th June hangover was not over. So they missed the lynching news. They are complacent with a mild version of the same cocktail they find distasteful.
But now again at their doorstep has come the news of the prosecution of Arundhati Roy whose works for some particularly the urban elite middle class are precious revolutionary show-offs. Roy’s works are the revolutionary paraphernalia on their bookshelves. What will they do now? Will they look up to the cocktail opposition? Or will they walk for her? What will be their strategy?
I don’t want to know the answer. I only know they don’t dare to change. Arundhati Roy has never been their comrade.
So the 3.0 fascist regime has begun to work. It’s all up to us now. I know we all the wretched of the earth have never believed this soft – mild – not so hard – hard type of cocktail, mocktail narrative can defeat fascism. We know we have lost Hasdeo Arand, and we know we are on the verge of Uttarakhand-catastrophe with Teesta chained by numerous dams. We know very few have ever dared to ask questions about our vanishing forests and rivers. Arundhati Roy is one of the stars of this few. Arundhati Roy is our comrade. She is not our upper-class revolutionary for whom resistance is always a choice. We know who did Operation Green Hunt and how Arundhati never stopped writing about it. It’s our war. A war between the wretched, the oppressed and the fascists. And we will win it 3 – 0.
It’s not a war we, the wretched, leftover people will fight with bombs or guns. Rather we will fight it with patience, fortitude, our relentlessness and our words. Who has more patience than us? Over the years living in an utterly partial democracy where 10% percent of people gobble up the largest share of the wealth, we have acquired the art of patience. Standing in a queue for hours for water to shitting, we know what patience means. This same patience becomes our perseverance towards the attainment of justice. So we won’t let this fascist 3.0 win in their attempt to silence the intelligent brain, brilliant mind and empathetic tongue of Arundhati Roy. She is the unbudgeable tongue that can’t be snapped. How can the fascist snap the tongue of inks?
She will keep asking about the birds, butterflies and the mining barons. And she has infected us too with his questions. For speaking up for the oppressed, for the victims, for the have-nots can’t be a crime in a democracy. Arundhati Roy’s word echoes in our ears,
“In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.”
When all the institutions which are supposed to uphold the democratic values and ethos have systematically been weakened over the last few years, ours is almost no way to return situation now. But when you have no way to go back, the only way left is to look forward.
The climate is on the rocks! A part of India is on the edge of extinction due to flood and some parts are thirsty to the extent of a drought. But still, we have hope. And we, the wretched, leftover people will resist till we get Azadi. And we will sing the song of freedom:
Azadi
A
Z
A
D
I
is that all we want
till we will find
every bird and
every river
and every
tree and
every
man
back
We want…
a
z
a
d
I
until our waters are free from poison
until our tongue is free from concertina wire
We want Azadi
It’s not a crime
Let the chains beat in the void
Let our men return home again.
Let Arundhati Roy write
The night is not over yet
And we need more words.
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection, The Musings of the Dark was published in 2020. The book has about a hundred poems written in protest against the humanitarian crisis from the abrogation of article 370, the Delhi riots, and the Shaheen Bagh movement to the unbearable sufferings of the migrant labourers due to the unplanned COVID-induced lockdown. Her second poetry collection, Poems At Daybreak has been published by Red River Publications. The Telugu translations of her poems have been published in a collection titled, Poems That Should Not Be Written. The Tamil translations of her poems have been published in a collection titled I Am A Muslim Woman And I Am Not For Sale. It’s a bilingual collection.
Links to my published works.
https://www.outlookindia.com/author/moumita-alam-3432
https://livewire.thewire.in/author/moumita-alam
Her poem I AM A MUSLIM WOMAN in Protest against the Bulli Bai deals has been published by many webzines and has been translated into five languages. The Malayalam rendition of the poem has found space in the leading Malayalam weekly magazine Madhyamam(https://www.readwhere.com/read/m5/3352884#issue/19/1)
