My Poems

Suraj Badtiya Poems

History - 1

History is never dumb
It may become a bonded slave sometimes
or, possibly turn out simply to be the annals of slavery
rendered speechless and abandoned,
may lie in a corner
and ceaselessly sob and wail,
and your tongue, your story
may become
history’s tongue, history’s story
but
this is not always so
history cannot for ever
remain your handmaid or mistress .
It has the tongue of a Socrates, a Jesus
a Luther
and will sing
songs of liberation of the Blacks
and sometimes may issue forth
from Marx’s pen
as the blood of the downtrodden ,
may seep into the words of weaver Kabir
or gently waft in the bhajans of Raidas
but historians of your ilk
turn history into a zero
and sing the songs of death
roaring Hitlerian laughter
setting out to bury deep
the races of mankind.
you plan to make history
your mistress
and exalt Shankaracharya and Tulsi
as figures of history
you bring in the savarna crowd
of Rammohan, Gandhi and Dayanand
to belittle Kabir, Raidas, Phule
and call it the dawn of a new age.

Translation:RK Shukla




History – II

You
persistently peel off history
because for ‘you’
it is nothing more than a savarana brothel
where you bear bastard progeny
and your shameless smritis
you have enthroned Bapu
so as to belittle Baba
as the redeemer of dalits
but now
history has broken its silence
refusing to be debauched and defiled
now it speaks
writes its own account
and when it does so
then Joothan, Tiraskrit
Akkarmashi, Uchakka
and Apane, apane Pinjare
script a parallel history.






History – III

Today history
looks restless, perplexed
terribly wounded and bleeding
its forehead wrinkled and lined
its hair dishevelled and dry
its clothes tattered and torn to shreds
and
all its ideas, values
terminally thrown in the sacrificial fire.
It’s lonely as of now but
wants to speak, say a thing or two
it has recovered its tongue, its speech
and is determined to seek justice
in the past
in the present
in future
and keen to enlist loyal and true wayfarers.





Freedom

Hear friends,
the fragrance of freedom
now runs in our veins
it has pulled down Bapu,
his songs of ‘Harijan uplift’
and enthroned Baba Saheb’s ‘dalit emancipation’
the fragrance of freedom released in ‘47
was locked in the harems of the imbecile children
of caste- proud merchants before it could float in the air
and made infertile.
That fragrance now wafts across the parapets of the Red Fort.
Now we wish to proclaim
that we have written a new chapter of freedom.
Harmu has said no to the zamindar
and thus has written a new book of labour
Hear, friends,
the reign of Shankaracharya’s offspring
is about to end
the dalit quarters are turning into Buddha vihars
Hori has turned out the priests
from the village temples
Dhaniya runs schools in them
to train new soldiers of the vanguard
labour has been defined anew by baba saheb
Budhia has now discovered to her surprise
the dharmviri lesson of illicit sex is only a new version
of the injunctions of Manu and Vedic seers
set in motion by the modern-day Manu
and that’s why
the broom in Shanti’s hands has become a gun,
that has changed the cosmetic socialism
into dynamite
and there in the harem
impotent children of saffron legislators
are writing a new grammar of assault .
Do not fear, friends
it’s the time when history changes sides
time of the last groans of
the dying flames of sacrificial fires.
the vanguard soldiers of dalit youth
are chanting the song of freedom
hear this song, learn it by heart
this is our freedom’s anthem
a new lesson of our hard, protracted struggle
Hori,Dhania,Harmu,Shanti have refused to hold in their hands
the three-coloured cloth
wrapped in a brittle lathi
but the violet colour of our skies
the song of our dawn
which has reached their hands
the colour is new and so are nouns and verbs
come, friends
this is the crop of our own hard work
which our ancestors had sown
and the time has come for us
to harvest it.