Why Poets Dhumil, Faiz, Nagarjuna Are Rolling In Their Graves

On the basis of his ghazal, famous poet and scientist Gauhar Raza was recently branded ‘anti-national’ by Zee News.

Yeh mat khao, vah mat khao, ishq toh bilkul karna mat,
Deshdroh ki chaap tumhare upar bhi lag jayegi.
Yeh mat bhoolo agli naslein roshan shola hoti hain
Aag kuredoge, chingari daman tak toh aayegi.

(These lines capture the restrictiveness of ‘nationalism’ as it is defined by current discourse. This nationalism is composed entirely out of prohibitory orders – against food, against love – making a cramped affair of human life)

On the basis of this ghazal, famous poet and scientist Gauhar Raza was recently branded ‘anti-national’ by Zee News. He was also charged with being a part of the ‘Afzal Guru-loving’ camp, whatever that means.

Zee News’ indiscriminate and provocative use of this now-dreaded tag is reminiscent of the Dadri lynching. The alleged contents of a person’s refrigerator were announced loudly from a temple dais to provoke a crowd drunk on blind nationalism (which is here synonymous with Hinduism), a crowd that proceeded to bash the offender’s head in with bricks. The aftermath – an aged mother with eyes bruised from the loss of a son and a community steeped in the silence of death. The same spirit of malicious provocation haunts both incidents.

Before we shed blood in the name of nation and nationalism, shouldn’t we at least understand what the two mean?

Nation and love – neither are empty words. These are two essential markers of a person’s identity. One’s country – its soil, water, earth – is as familiar and as dear as one’s mother’s embrace. Love, whether for country or person, demands your all. It also demands thought, care and respect.

There are no half-measures in love. Is it possible, or desirable, to celebrate a mother’s shining face while ignoring her rotting left hand? In the same spirit, how can a person who critiques his beloved country because he wants to address those ills be termed ‘anti-national’?

From the people’s poet Dhoomil to Nagarjuna, from Pash to Dushyant Kumar, each artist has raised his voice in critique of India, with the intention of administering a bitter but necessary medicine.

If Gauhar Raza can be branded a traitor for writing the quoted ghazal, then these poets would have been languishing in a prison under modern law today. Either that or a lunatic asylum.

People’s poet Dhumil, in his poem Patakatha, expresses his desire to see independence, democracy, sacrifice, humanity and peace reign supreme in his country.

These words, Dhoomil laments, have been employed as empty rhetoric by those in power. It is a matter of everlasting regret and pain to him that the India of his vision remains exactly that– a vision.

Isn’t colouring Dhoomil’s regret and anger at the inequality and corruption in India with the hue of anti-nationalism itself a betrayal of the nation?

Dushyant Kumar Writes..

This poem dates back to the days of the Emergency. In those days, some supported the emergency. But, should those who protested its imposition be called anti-national?

A government is not synonymous with the country; it is only a means of administration. Equating the two sounds the death knell of democracy.

Nagarjuna writes...

In this poem, Nagarjuna discusses the woes of India’s poorest, whose lives are a study in deprivation, whether food, clothes or love. Nagarjuna satirically celebrates the convenience of deaths caused by systematic corruption and inequality, bitterly observing that it frees up space in the country’s crowded prisons.

Faiz Writes...

Faiz’s poem registers the ache of disillusionment, of unrealised potential. “This is not the morning we had waited for, or the country we dreamt of,” he croons.

...If These Men Had Lived

It is not hard to imagine the fate that would have met these men and their words, had they existed in the here and now. In a world where the livelihood of poverty-stricken farmers is trampled upon to erect a testament to not ‘culture’ but obnoxious private wealth, do these poems have a place? When rottenness is draped in the tricolor to perpetuate the appearance of patriotism while wounds fester, where are we headed?

Read these poems again, and maybe you will find the answer for yourself.