EMPRESS WITH A PEN!
Fountain pen unfurling from the curls
After the blood carpet why history never unfurls
Everyone makes a full stop with decoration
To declare how it's “The End of Imagination”
Millions think of the magician thinking above
Her pen thinks how he bluffs wearing a glove
Curating the structured Homo sapiens
To validate that they work on the poem of sins
Baffled acronyms of humans mark their territories
With blood flowing from the sandwiched valleys
Arrests for the Mao-Tse-Tung brigade
To let Godse and Savarkar work on the grenade
Bits of this cosmos carry a thousand graves
Each one of the killers bluffed by money waves
Spraying the dogma of “What can and cannot be
said”
Letting the Constitution to fade!
Birsa Munda flies like a simple God of small
bits
Working on the revolution, not for the outfits
Traitor has been tagged over Netaji and his parades
Just like money brings war on the Comrades!
One grasshopper listens to the other
Squeaky sound working on its hymn as eraser
Peter England waits to capture the art of Adivasis
To rot away the embroidered babies!
Summing up the ‘a’ and ‘b’ of algebraic
injustice
Obtaining a result which fulfills the regal
fantasies
Puffing off the crescent smoke from raw lips
She walks on the jungle smiling over the tulips
After the rich buckets have worked on Harry
Potter
Ignoring the Gujarat riot and Kashmir shutter
Disturbing reality structures the Empress
To make the world see “The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness”
From banning to death threats to be named as traitor
Her words live for the brush never leaves the painter
She still walks to settle the blood from flowing
And to keep the sun glowing!
Arundhati Roy -- Shyama Golden
Arundhati Roy won the 1997 Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 for "The God of Small Things," the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. Nonetheless, a 1996 Booker Prize judge called the novel "execrable," and she had to answer charges of obscenity in Kerala, her home state. She donated the $30,000 prize and all the book's royalties to Narmada Bachao Andolan, a social movement consisting of indigenous adivasis, farmers, environmentalists, and human rights activists against the construction of large dams across the Narmada River which flows through Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. In the course of the government's war against the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in about 1/2 of India's 29 states, she has called the rebels "Gandhians" and blamed the government for making "war on the poorest people in the country." The following year she collected 5 of her books of essays (mostly on political subjects) as "The End of Imagination." In 2015 she returned her 1989 National Film Award for Best Screenplay (for "In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones") in protest against religious intolerance and the growing violence by right wing groups in India, and in 2006 "in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by 'violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalisation'" she declined the Sahitya Akademi Award from India's Academy of Letters for another collection of essays, "The Algebra of Infinite Justice." Her second novel, "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness," was chosen for the Man Booker Prize 2017 Long List and was nominated as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in the US.
ReplyDeleteBefore his death at 25, Birsa Munda had founded a new religion and led a tribal guerrilla war against the British in Bihar and Jharkhand in the late 19th century.
ReplyDeleteWhile in prison (1910-1921) for revolutionary activity Vinayak Damodar Savarkity coined the term Hindutva to define India's national identity. Later in the decade he became president of the Akhil Bhāratiya Hindū Mahasabha (All-India Hindu Grand-Assembly), a right wing Hindu nationalist political party, and became an intense critic of the Indian National Congress and its policy of trying to garner Muslim support. After Pakistan split from the rest of India, one of his followers Nathuram Godse assassinated Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Savarkar (who may have approved the murder in advance) was arrested for complicity but release due to insufficient evidence.
Netanji ("Respected Leader") was the name given to Subhas Chandra Bose by soldiers in the Indische Legion (the Legion Freies Indien -- later the Indische Freiwilligen Legion der Waffen-SS) and by officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin. The unit was composed of 3,000 Indian soldiers captured in North Africa by general Erwin Rommel, as a potential force in a proposed German invasion.After transferring from Berlin to Singapore he formed the Provisional Government of Free India in the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar islands; his India national Army was decimated in the Japanese invasion of India, and he tried to flee to Manchuria but died from 3rd-degree burns when his plane crashed in Taiwan.
Peter England is an apparel brand owned by the Aditya Birla conglomerate, India's 3rd-largest private sector group, with interests in viscose staple fibre, metals, cement, viscose filament yarn, carbonblack, chemicals, fertilizers, insulators, financial services, telecommunications, financial services, and information technology.
In 2002 Hindus in Gujarat rioted against Muslims over 3 days, leading to 1,044 killed (including 790 Muslims), 223 missing, and 2,500 injured. The state's chief minister, future prime minister Narendra Modi, was accused of initiating and condoning the violence, though he was officially cleared of the charges in 2012. In 2013 Roy called his nomination for the
prime ministership a "tragedy" and called him the "most militaristic and aggressive" candidate. He belongs to the right wing Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its parent paramilitary organization the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
The territory of Kashmir (Kasheer) has been disputed by India, Pakistan, and china since 1947. In 2008, after India and the state government of Jammu and Kashmir reached an agreement to transfer 99 acres of forest land to set up temporary shelters and facilities for Hindu pilgrims, over 500,00 Kashmiri separtists in Sringar protested in favor of independence. Roy supported their demands in an interview for "The Times of India," and she was charged with sedition in 2010 due to her support for separation.
The same year that Roy won the Booker, J. K. Rowling published the 1st in her series of Harry potter books. The 7 novels have sold over 500 million copies and spawned film adaptations of the original novels as well as 5 prequels.