The death of Jharkhand’s tribal activist Father Stan Swamy sparked a slew of protests and charged memorials in the last week. Friends and family along with the Jesuits of India held a memorial meeting in the 84-year-old’s memory soon after his death.

However, the grief of what is popularly being called “institutional murder” continued, as people in Ranchi, Mumbai and other cities held rallies and meetings to condemn Fr. Stan’s death at the Holy Family hospital in Mumbai.

On July 9, 2021 the West Zone Jesuits announced another virtual meeting at 6 PM to remember Fr. Swamy, and to discuss the need to immediately release the rest of undertrial prisoners still suffering behind bars during an ongoing pandemic. Speakers such as human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, Goa Archbishop Felip Neri and others will address the group.

Ranchi

Prior to this on July 8, a silent resistance march was observed in Jamshedpur followed by a condolence meeting in Ranchi to decry the custodial death. Over 100 social activists, academics, trade union activists and tribal leaders participated and vehemently demanded the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) under which Fr. Stan was arrested.

Later, during the condolence meeting in Bagaicha, the social research centre at Namkum where Fr Stan lived, members of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and several human rights organisations resolved to submit a memorandum to Chief Minister Hemant Soren demanding the same. Attendees also agreed to month-long prayers in memory of Stan.

Similar condolence meetings took place all across the state and cities like Mangalore in Karnataka. In Ranchi, supporters also decided to gherao Raj Bhavan on July 15 to demand a judicial inquiry into Fr. Stan’s death among other demands.

It may be mentioned that on Friday, the Indian Express reported that the Maharashtra prison department confirmed a magisterial inquiry following the registration of an accidental death report as per procedure.

Mumbai

Meanwhile in Mumbai, dozens of people assembled outside the St Peter’s church holding banners that mourned Fr. Stan’s death and asked, “How many more deaths of Bhima Koregaon detainees?” While the group was small due to social distancing guidelines, many individuals attended the protest condemning the death in their individual capacities. According to Newslaundry, members of social activism organisations like the Bombay Catholic Sabha, Hum Bharat Ke Log, and Jamaat-E-Islami Hind also came to pray for the activist’s soul and light candles.

Similarly, the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice (JACSC) decried the NIA and demanded judicial acquittal of the Bhima Koregaon accused at the Chaityabhoomi in Dadar on Monday and Wednesday, said media reports.

According to the Times of India, the JACSC said Fr. Stan’s death should serve as a wake-up call for India’s criminal justice system. Students from IIT Bombay attended the event.

Student action

Similarly, the youth wing of Archdiocese of Bangalore on Wednesday organised a zoom meeting in Fr. Stan’s remembrance. Around 1,000 people also attended an in-person candle-lighting event.

Friends of Democracy also organised “Who Killed Stan Swamy? Repeal UAPA” virtual event on the same day where Setalvad spoke about the institutional murder and the urgent need to release undertrial prisoners during times of health crisis.

On Tuesday, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) started an online petition addressed to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) N. V. Ramana demanding an inquiry into why Fr. Stan’s health worsened in the jail as it did. Further, they questioned why his bail application was repeatedly denied “despite his ill health and full cooperation with the investigation.”

Hunger strike for Fr. Stan

Not just free citizens but even the 10 people accused in the Bhima Koregaon case showed their anguish at the institutional murder. Fr. Stan repeatedly spoke of how he wished to spend his last moments with his family. Yet he died in custody.

According to NDTV, Rona Wilson, Surendra Gadling, Sudhir Dhawale, Mahesh Raut, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Gautam Navlakha, Anand Teltumbde, Ramesh Gaichor and Sagar Gorkhe observed a one-day fast in the Taloja jail on Wednesday.

In a statement, they accused the NIA and the Taloja jail’s former superintendent Kaustubh Kurlekar of constantly “harassing” Fr. Stan with “ghastly treatment” inside the jail, delay in transferring him from hospital to jail and protesting his possession of items like a sipper. Fr. Stan suffered from Parkinson’s disease.

Many such protests and meetings will also take place in the future. Notably, a “Jail Is The Rule: Bail Jurisprudence Under The UAPA” webinar is being organised by the Law and Society Committee on July 10 to discuss the legal status of ongoing detentions under the UAPA and contextualise recent developments in UAPA bail jurisprudence.

Related:

Jesuits of India, journalists and academics bid Fr Stan Swamy an emotional farewell
The institutional murder of Father Stan Swamy
Fr Stan Swamy’s death highlights the need to repeal UAPA
Bhima Koregaon: The Truth
Stone quarrying, development projects threatening Jharkhand’s sacred groves

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July 5, 2021 will go down as another dark day in the history of the world’s so-called largest democracy. It was then that an 84-year-old Jesuit priest Stan Swamy died in the custody of the Indian state, while waiting for his bail. He was moved to a hospital after contracting Covid-19 and died of cardiac arrest.  

Swamy had worked among the Adivasis or indigeous people in Jharkhand and was vocal against their repression, as they faced eviction from their traditional lands by the extraction industry, allegedly with the backing of the government. He was arrested under trumped up charges after being accused of terrorism for merely standing up for the marginalised. 

His health had deteriorated in the jail during the pandemic, and yet the authorities remained adamant not to release him even on humanitarian grounds. He was one of those scholars who were arrested on malicious charges to suppress any voice of dissent at the behest of the current right-wing Hindutva nationalist regime led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.  

Swamy’s demise coincides with the 51st anniversary of the extra-judicial killing of an 82-year-old former Indian freedom fighter Bujha Singh, who had died in police custody on July 28, 1970. Singh who had participated in the struggle to rid India of the British occupation, was instead murdered by the police for his association with revolutionary communist movement sparked by an uprising of landless tillers, who’ve been fighting against the rich and the elites since the 1960s.

Following an uprising in the Naxalbari village of West Bengal by poor farmers, who claimed a right to the land, there was a campaign of police repression. People like Singh joined the radical movement. All reports indicate that he died in a staged shootout by Punjab police under a different regime.  

Half century later, the history of Singh was repeated in the form of what many have called as an “institutional murder” of Swamy. It is pertinent to mention here that an 81-year-old Telugu poet and political activist, Varavara Rao continues to be incarcerated under brutal conditions even as he was recently tested positive for Covid-19. Like Swamy and Singh, Rao had also dared to question the power and stand up for the Underdog.  

All this only reflects poorly on India’s democracy, and flies in the face of Modi who had called for fighting Corona with Karuna (compassion). After all, his government remained indifferent to a petition seeking unconditional release of political prisoners due to the spread of the pandemic in Indian jails.  

Rather than trying to get to the bottom of the problem of social unrest caused by systemic injustice and inequality, the state is going after veterans such as Singh, Swamy or Rao, to instil fear in the minds of political dissidents. And to achieve that end, Indian officials can go to any length.

It’s a shame that Indian society claims to be respectful of its seniors, but remains insensitive to these horrific stories. The tales of these two men shows that the Indian system’s brutal side remains unchanged even as the disparity between the rich and the poor has grown over the past 50 years. There is no respite to the most underprivileged and underserved, despite tall claims of development and progress. 

Related:

Father Stan Swamy passes away waiting for bail
Covid-19 a virtual death sentence, new persecution tool against Bhima-Koregaon accused

The post From Bujha Singh to Stan Swamy: A story of institutional apathy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Poor health conditions in Taloja prison amidst a raging Covid-19 pandemic, lies fabricated by the authorities (valiant efforts by the Jesuit-Human Rights Community and advocates like Mihir Desai and Krithika notwithstanding), form the vicious cycle witnessed closely by some of us in the tragic case of our beloved Father Stan Swamy (and other fellow inmates) over the past several months.

Fr Stan suffered painfully before he succumbed. His illness and death could have been avoided. Arguably, it was the inherently pathetic conditions at Taloja jail, followed by an obdurate web of deceit woven by the jail bureaucracy and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that simply did not admit to this condition.

Fr Stan Swamy was gravely ill and afflicted by the dreaded virus since about May 15, 2021, when the second phase of the Covid-19 pandemic raged across Maharashtra, not sparing the Taloja prison where he was lodged. The death of Fr Stan is nothing short of an institutional murder by the NIA and the Taloja Jail authorities.

It was just minutes past 1 P.M today (1.14 P.M), Monday July 5, that Father Stan Swamy, 84-year-old fiery Jesuit priest, suffering not just from Parkinson’s Disease but also Covid-19 virus, breathed his last. He had been on a ventilator since Saturday, July 3, cared for by the sisters and doctors at Holy Family Hospital, Bandra, Mumbai. Concern for his deteriorating health since he was put on a ventilator on the evening of Saturday July 3 spanned continents and oceans. Anger, anguish and despair are the governing emotions of all those who worked with and deeply respected Fr Stan.

Suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, yet dedicated as always to the battle for land, dignity and the Constitutional Rights of India’s Adivasis and Indigenous peoples, Fr Stan Swamy was not just a voice of the voiceless, here was a Priest who “leapt out of the walls of the Church and made the people his religion.” Organising Adivasis around their Constitutional rights for decades, he had filed a path breaking Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Jharkhand High Court (High Court, WPC (PIL) No 4212 of 2017) exposing the incarceration and praying for the release of about 4,000 tribal youth languishing in prisons of Jharkhand. Rulers of the India of today see this as the greatest threat, citizens who believe in the Constitution, communities who organise, individuals who refuse to be silenced.

Raided first in August 2018 in the accursed Bhima Koregaon case[1] (then again on June 12, 2019), thereafter interrogated at his precious Bagaicha at Ranchi in Jharkhand on multiple occasions — July 25, 2020 (when he gave a written statement), July 27 (two hours), July 28, (five hours), July 29 (three hours), July 30 (two hours), August 6 (1 ½ hours) — before his arrest on October 8, 2020, Fr Stan bore this ordeal with calm and a stoic equanimity.  [2]

“I have been writing and supporting the struggles for the implementation of the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitutions, implementation of the provisions of Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996 and the Samata Judgment by the Supreme Court of India, and promoted the concept of ‘Owner of the land will be the owners of Minerals therein,” stated Father Stan Swamy to the NIA in his written statement (July 25, 2020). He also describes the extensive research that facilitated his PIL in the High Court and his being targeted in dual FIRs relating to the Pathalgarhi movement.

“In the meantime, in Jharkhand, the government headed by the BJP, filed an FIR against me and 19 other activists based on a Facebook posts relating to Pathalgari movement in Khunti district, Jharkhand (CC.No 124 of 2018, dated 26.07.2018). The FIR accuses us of inciting violence through Facebook posts during the Pathalgari movement. Though this FIR was filed in the month of July 2018, it was never pursued. But, suddenly in the month of July 2019, it was activated, after the second raid in my room by the Pune police. Since the case against us was merely based on our Facebook posts, we appealed to the Jharkhand Hight Court to quash the case against us (Cr.M.P No 3183 of 2018). However, the Khunti police have submitted an annexure, received from the Pune police, to Jharkhand High Court to support the Khunti police’s allegations against me. This annexure contains materials to the effect that I was one of the accused in Bhima-Koregaon case. To my surprise, during the hearing in the High Court, the Advocate General referred to me as a ‘dreaded criminal’. Such actions reveal collusion between the BJP governments, in both Jharkhand and Maharashtra to bring about the confluence of both cases. In the meantime, the Khunti Court had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against me. The Police in Khunti conducted the “attachment of property” in the month of October 2019; it took away two tables, a steel shelf, three plastic chairs, a mattress, and a pillow! The Jharkhand High Court, on 6 December 2019, declared that proper procedures were not followed as per Code of Criminal Procedure. When the non-BJP government in Jharkhand was formed by the end of December 2019, it announced that it is withdrawing all cases relating to Pathalgari. The procedures for the same have not yet been completed,” he stated further.

Father Stan Swamy’s dignity and calm has been matched with venality by the NIA. In the 13-page long affidavit filed by the NIA’s Superintendent of Police, 41-year-old, Vikram Khalate, opposing medical bail to Fr Stan Swamy in early May 2021, the officer goes to base lengths even questioning the medical documents that are proof of Fr Stan’s suffering from Parkinson’s Disease demanding that he put to ‘strict proof’ to this claim! (Para 32 of the Affidavit). The officer also states categorically that there is no health threat to Father Stan Swamy and goes on to blithely assert that those such as Father Stan Swamy, charged with the committal of heinous offences have no rights to claim under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Khalate alleges that there is every danger that the 84-year-old priest would abscond or tamper with evidence if allowed bail.

Father Stan Swamy’s life has been taken away in pain and illness at 84. His words of calm strength and conviction must guide us as his loss consumes us and exposes the depth of cold cruelty of the Regime. While the NIA directly under India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is the agency that has been particularly venal in this case, the conduct of Maharashtra’s jail authorities and bureaucracy that has laced their defence of prison conditions with falsehoods not borne out by fact, needs special focus.

Prison conditions, absence of autonomous monitoring, the intermittent gaze by the Judiciary are all issues that come to the face and fore. If Stan Swamy’s death is not to be in vain, each and all of these need to be made into a vivid people’s campaign. The begin muct come with an unequivocal demand for the Repeal of the UAPA.

To a Living Saint, Now Dead.

Related:

Stand with Father Stan Swamy

Stan Swamy: The oldest activist to be targeted by the government

The post The institutional murder of Father Stan Swamy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Indian Express

“When nobody gets equal opportunity, who are they deceiving by saying single exam for all..?.”
-S. Anitha

Anitha, a 17-year-old dalit girl from Kuzhumur village in Ariyalur district, Tamil Nadu, daughter of a daily labourer in Trichy’s Gandhi market, committed suicide at her home on 1 September. Unlike Rohith Vemula, she has not left a suicide note for the shameless establishment to take advantage of, and claim that she has not blamed anyone. Anitha has made an eloquent statement by her silence; and in doing so, blamed the neoliberal-hindutva agenda being pushed forth by the Modi government. What is left behind is her video clip asking for help in fulfilling her legitimate ambition of becoming a doctor. She urged everyone to notice how she worked hard for it, scoring 98% marks in her plus-two exam, and standing first in the school. But she apprehended that her father’s poor financial condition may come in the way of her higher studies. Anitha, like Rohith, represents the plight of the dalit students in this country and shames India with her death.

Who killed Anitha? In the face of it, her failure to qualify in the NEET examination, and consequently, in getting a seat in the medical college caused her death. What is this NEET — National Eligibility and Entrance Test? Like any other anti-people policy, this one was also born during the Congress regime. The announcement to introduce NEET-UG in 2012 came from the Medical Council of India. This announcement was opposed by several states including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, stating that there was a huge difference in the syllabus proposed by the MCI and the state syllabi. Initially, the NEET was conducted in two languages: English and Hindi. But this language bias was later resolved, and nine more languages were included for the 2017 examination. 

NEET was declared illegal and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India in 2013. However, it was restored on 11 April 2016, after a five-judge Constitution bench recalled the earlier verdict, and allowed the Central Government and the Medical Council of India (MCI) to implement the common entrance test until the court decides to take a fresh decision regarding its validity. It is this NEET that failed Anitha and led her to kill herself. 

The NEET, it may be understood, is a part of the neoliberal reforms, first started by the Congress government, but now being zealously pushed by the present dispensation under Modi. There is a qualitative difference between the Congress and the BJP: While the Congress has also served the capitalist class by virtue of its composition of a broad spectrum of ideologies right of the centre, it tried to strike a balance between them, and thereby, made them durable. But the BJP is ideologically homogenous and represents the extreme right, working towards a specific goal of building a Hindu Rashtra while relying on fascist methods for policy implementations. Therefore, it does not have any qualms, and presents itself as far more decisive than the Congress. Homogenisation of every sphere of the country is informed by its ideal: One nation, one language, one leader, one people akin to ein reich, ein volk, ein fuhrer of the Nazis. This is intrinsically unconstitutional because it is against the diversity of India under the federal structure mandated by the Constitution. But who would challenge them? The NEET is formalised and implemented by the same fascist regime.

Is the NEET justified? The NEET is justified on the grounds that it will eliminate admission-related corruption in private institutions, and will provide relief to students giving multiple entrance tests; lessen corruption in the admission tests due to the supervision of MCI and CBSE and, finally, drive towards a common syllabus. All of this is assumed to be desirable. Consequently, it assumes that it will ensure that the same standard of physicians is produced all over India. It does not realise the mess created between input and output in such an assumption; an entrance exam does not determine the standards of the doctors who have passed out, unless the process, their education is also standardised.

Similar things can be said about each of the arguments proffered in its justification. For instance, most major states have their own state medical entrance exams. States like West Bengal and others have nearly four decades of experience in organising medical entrance exams. Is there any evidence of corruption there? It is a question of private medical colleges charging capitation fees for the seats in management quota. Who asked them to start these private colleges in the first place? If they indulge in corruption, they can be closed down or can be taken over by the state. In any case, the problem of capitation fee is the problem of the upper-middle class and the super rich, and should not influence the common policy of the government. The simple solution to this problem would have been to admit students through already existing state medical entrance exams.     

There are many students who might be seeking admission in other state medical colleges and have to, therefore, take multiple exams. Generally, students take their domicile state’s exam, try getting admission in more prestigious central institutions and appear for their exam, and then, when all the options are exhausted, they appear for the examinations conducted by private colleges. In any case, the central medical institutes like AIMS, JIPMER, etc., have been excluded from the NEET. Hence, students will anyway appear for examinations a second time despite NEET. Then what is the argument? Without any evidence of which exams are being eliminated by the NEET, they have implemented it. 

The common syllabus aimed at by the NEET is disconnected from the reality of school education in India. The NEET is based on the CBSE syllabus. The CBSE exists in the major towns and cities of India, started primarily for transferable central government employees. It stands as a minority among the state boards. Maharashtra state board alone has more Class XII students than the total strength of CBSE students all over India. Why, the question arises, is this minority consideration allowed to override the vast majority? With regards to the standards, do they imply that the standard of science in the CBSE syllabus is superior to that of the state boards? Again, there is no evidence. Rather, the evidence is the contrary: A rigorous study published in Current Science, 2009, shows that, in terms of science-proficiency of students, some of the state boards like West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh have done much better in all science subjects than CBSE. But when the NEET exam was conducted in 2013, both these states underperformed. Maharashtra may not have the best science education, but cannot be dismissed as the worst either, as the NEET results had indicated. The Delhi-based CBSE board syllabus is being imposed as the best. Scores of students from the state boards like Anitha are placed at a disadvantage because of this unreasonable policy of the NEET. 

What is more damaging is that the NEET is discriminatory towards students from rural areas; the urban poor and those belonging to the lower strata of the society. The CBSE being urban-centric completely excludes the rural areas. The devaluation of the Class XII exams gives rise to coaching classes. The institutionalisation of entrance exams at the state level has resulted in the mushrooming of coaching shops, resulting, in turn, in the marginalisation of school education. The students don’t attend classes in the eleventh and twelfth standards. As a result, they merely comply with, and sometimes barely meet the minimum requirements for sitting in the exams to pass. 

In the state level exams, for which the syllabus is the same for all, poor students who cannot afford expensive coaching classes can also hope to take the exams and perform as well as those who attend coaching classes. But in the NEET, their training and hard work is compromised. As it has already happened with the IIT-JEE (Kota being the hub of IIT-JEE coaching), this centralised exam will directly lead to more coaching centers. 

The government has already offered higher education to WTO-GATS. This was done for the first time under the BJP-led NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and a second time in 2005, under Manmohan Singh. Once the current Doha Development Round is concluded, this offer will become an irrevocable commitment; and the higher education sector of India will have to be thrown open to international traders’ in higher education. All subsidies, a plethora of reservations, scholarships, and all social justice measures that characterised the education sector in India would go away, as they may be termed barriers to free trade. There was a strong apprehension about the conclusion of this round at the Tenth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation held at Nairobi, Kenya in December 2015. Fortunately, it did not conclude. But we must remain aware of, and alert to the fact that the Indian government, through its so-called education reforms, has been preparing itself to adopt the GATS agenda in education. These include the four-year undergraduate program (FYUP), the choice-based credit system, the cutting down of the non-National Eligibility Test (non-NET) fellowships, and research funding. All of this has been met with fierce opposition from the student community and educationists, but the government has haughtily ignored it so far. 

Poor Anitha is the victim of this neoliberal-hindutva agenda of the government.

The post Anitha is Killed by Modi’s Homogenizing Obsession appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The suicide of a 17-year-old Dalit student, Anitha Shanmugam in Tamil Nadu has raised outrage against the controversial National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). Large scale protests and solidarity rallies are being held across the country. Anita had challenged the imposition of NEET in the Supreme Court. The Central Government kept Tamil Nadu Government’s ordinance exempting government colleges from NEET on hold for a year. The NEET Counselling was expected to end on September 4 and as the medical aspirant saw no light at the end of the tunnel, she hanged herself on September 1. The tragic death has sparked debate on repercussions of NEET on students from marginalized communities and state board schools.

Like all other national entrance examinations, NEET only favours those students who come from elite and strong economic backgrounds and can afford coaching centres. In the various petitions opposing NEET, it has been alleged that this common entrance test for admission into all undergraduate medical and dental colleges is biased against students hailing from state board schools. It is reported that CBSE students have bagged most of the seats in top medical colleges in Tamil Nadu.

The Central government wants to improve the standard of medical education, bring in uniformity in the admission process and ensure that the capitation fee system was removed. None of these objectives would be addressed by NEET, opined A Saravanan, a practising advocate at the Madras High court. Last year, Bengali academic and activist Garga Chatterjee wrote that NEET creates an urban-rural divide, based on the boards they are studying in, and gave suggestions on its drawbacks.

India remains a poor performer when it comes to making policies in the health sector. According to the Economic Survey, the country’s public spending on health is just “little over” one percent of the GDP. On the basis of the data collected from the Global Burden of Disease report, 2015, India ranked 154 out of 195 countries in terms of access to healthcare, which is lower than poorer nations such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Ghana and Liberia.

Some experts are comparing the policy of NEET imposition with the mandating the Sanskrit language as an eligible condition for admission into medical colleges, that was prevalent nearly hundred years ago. This implied that only Brahmins were eligible to become doctors. The South Indian Liberal Federation (SILF) had then become the forerunners of Dravidian Movement and had led the protests when knowledge of Sanskrit was made compulsory for admission into medical colleges. The ongoing protests in today’s Tamil Nadu, demanding to declare NEET redundant, have raised concerns about the discrepancies in Indian education system.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

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The Centre for Translations at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, organised a translation workshop on February 8, titled ‘Know in your Language, Communicate in your Voice: Translating the Works of Rohith Vemula’.  The invitation to the workshop read:

Rohith Vemula’s suicide note has rocked the political imagination of our republic, because it points to the hollowness of the promises we as a people set out to deliver for each of us.  His writing demonstrates how we are already at the dead end of language, a situation necessitated by the ethical vacancy of our actions.  Translating the work of this exceptional writer, bearing him across to one’s own socio-cultural and linguistic givens, is a step that can make us realise the limitations of knowing and awaken us to actions.  This event proposes to sit around and translate Rohith’s poems into regional languages and then read them aloud to others for them to feel the vitality of it.

Whatever be your language—Tamil, Assamese, Kashmiri, Hindi, Gujarathi, Marathi, Bengali, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Telugu, Urdu, Manipuri, Punjabi, Kannada or Oriya—if you feel for the cause of social equality, if you are outraged by the way Dalits have been systematically rejected by the centres of higher education in our co​untry, if you feel for the millions who are oppressed and exploited by casteist mindset and its machinery, you might want to come for this afternoon of making sense through collective translations…

The following poems written by Rohith were given to the twenty-nine participants, who spoke thirteen languages: Hindi, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Bengali, Telugu, Kashmiri, Urdu, Odiya, Tamil, Nepali and French:

From Unpublished Pages
She collects hearts.  And she never cares for them afterwards.  Like footsteps in wet sands, like smiles of children.  She attacks lives.  Like a breezy rain on a lonely night, a soothing that burns.  Everyone knows that she takes off lives, ripping the sense out of your life, yet no one has ever escaped her.  Like death, like love.
Some say she has an agenda, like saving the world.  How to tell her that I am also a part of world?  Some say she loves everyone.  Why am I not in everyone’s part?  Every lip I kiss tastes like loneliness.  Every hug I make is shrinking me further.  Every glass of alcohol seems like an elder with an advice I need to decode.
Should I be sorry that I didn’t friend her in this life?  Or should I be happy that I got a reason for one more life?
 
One Day
One day you will understand why I was aggressive.
On that day, you will understand
why I have not just served social interests.
One day you will get to know why I apologized.
On that day, you will understand
there are traps beyond the fences.
One day you will find me in the history.
In the bad light, in the yellow pages.
And you will wish I was wise.
But at the night of that day,
you will remember me, feel me
and you will breathe out a smile.
And on that day, I will resurrect.
 
Prof N.P. Ashley, coordinator for the workshop, writes: ‘The poems were first read aloud in English.  Afterwards, participants divided into language groups and translated the poems.  The translations were then read aloud to other participants in the workshop.  Thus the event gave a sense of a pan-national reality in regional languages, bringing out the thick texture of languages within India. It drove all of us into the complexities of “understanding” life experiences and the need to work with them for making it one’s own as an ethical responsibility in however limited a manner.  It was a rewarding time of engaging with the social content of Rohith’s poetry for all of us!’

The Centre for Translations has also prepared this short, beautiful video of the poem ‘One Day’ being read aloud by workshop participants in twelve languages:

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

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