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Mainstream, VOL LVIII No 6, New Delhi, January 25, 2020 - Republic Day Special
Pardon Me For Writing
Monday 27 January 2020, by
#socialtagsPardon me for writing
For you have wrenched
The tongue of the students
And used their pens
To impair their legs,
Forcing your way
Into their library.
About entering the mosque
I will not say,
For now it is the norm
To break mosques
And to say your God
Was born right here.
I say your God
Because mine is everywhere,
Omnipresent,
But you have reduced Him
To a historical figure
With birth pangs and waste,
While you forbid menstruating women
To enter the Sabarimala temple
As they defile the celibate place.
Make haste,
For our people
Reeling under a crisis for jobs
And fobbing off hunger,
Are now feeling the pain
Of being robbed of their identity;
Citizenship is about feeling good,
Having a sense of brotherhood
And a space in the sun,
But have your merciless fun;
Stop the metros, the internet
Charge us all with sedition,
Is this a limited edition
Of jackboots and shoelaces
Across our face,
As you place
The police dressed in riot gear
Jerking tearing, gassing shells
Against us?
What’s the fuss;
This is not India,
This is you with a manufactured majority
But see how the students and the young
Mock your authority;
Your marigold colour,
Your detention camps,
Your counting at the NRC,
The Citizenship Amendment Act;
Your act is now exposed,
Take a break
Afterwards the show will go on.
Meanwhile give them medals of gallantry
Wrapped in porn,
To go on and on,
Erecting barricades painted yellow
Against our own fellows.
Pardon me for writing,
But I have seen
Ahimsa hand over roses
Across these barricades
To the khaki brigade,
I have seen satyagraha shivering
But valiantly receiving the blows;
All this I have witnessed, I know.
Pardon me, for writing
About the soul of India.
Sagari Chhabra