FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ART-001-2008
April 11, 2008

An Article Series on Human Rights and Culture by the Asian Human Rights Commission

The Asian Human Rights Commission is pleased to announce the start of the Culture and Human Rights column. We will regularly publish various cultural expressions, poem, stories, pictures and other forms of cultural expression that are based on the theme of justice. A pivotal issue in modern literature is justice, particularly the enormous unleashing of injustice under fascist, communist and other authoritarian regime including those that pursue an unbridled market economy have generated responses from created writers. This search for justice is at the very essence of being human. Human beings are part of nature and part of each other. Perhaps the lines of John Donne are most relevant: “…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;”

Contemporary mass culture promotes violence and destruction. There are those who are opposed to mass culture and want to reclaim the best traditions of human culture within which justice remains a core issue. This column will provide space for those who wish to share their creative initiatives.

Your contributions and comments for future issues can be sent to ahrchk@ahrchk.org with the subject "Human Rights and Culture".

The first issue of Human Rights and Culture

This issue contains four poems. The first, ‘No Man is an Island by John Donne and the second, At One Time, by John Clancey. The third offering is a poem by the Indian poet, Aditya Shanka, entitled ‘Rashomon’. The fourth is a poem by Basil Fernando entitled ‘Ekalaya the Low Caste Archer’. Finally there is an essay by E.V. Ramakrishnan (taken from the wedsite: poetryinternationalweb) entitled, ‘Poetry as a Radical Discourse of Demystification’.

‘No Man is an Island’

Olde English Version
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne

A poem about the Sri Lankan New Year

At one time:

She was a beauty:
Her attractiveness charmed all those who met her.
She was admired by all;
Adored by some;
Envied by a few.

During New Year’s celebrations,
All her children,
Praised her beauty;
Lauded her assets;
Acclaimed their good fortune.

Then:

Her daughter’s face was brutally cut by the jealous wife of a rich merchant.
There was an outcry,
But no arrest.
Her son was tortured by six police officers.
People were frightened and shocked,
But did nothing;
There was no prosecution.
Her granddaughter was raped by a politician’s son.
Reports stated people were horrified,
But soon kept quiet;
There was no conviction.
Her grandson was blown to bits by a bomb.
Onlookers expressed disgust and dismay,
But only watched.
Accusations announced, but no serious investigations undertaken.

Now:

Celebrations tinged with sorrow;
Joy stained with tears;
Festivals circumscribed by grief.

Jack Clancey*
10 April 2008

*Jack Clancey is a resident of Hong Kong and has written poems and reflections on various issues.

Rashomon 1950
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Rashosmon (1950) is a Japanese crime drama directed by Akira Kurosawa that is produced with both philosophical and psychological overtones. An episode (rape and murder) in a forest is reported by four witnesses, each from their own point of view. - Who is telling the truth? What is truth?

In ancient Japan, a woman is raped and her husband killed. The film gives us four viewpoints of the incident-one for each defendant -each revealing a little more detail. Which version, if any, is the real truth about what happened.

rashomon

While walking through a forest,
the miracle is always elsewhere.
By the time you reach,
Walkways would grow new ends and evidences
And spread like the period of error in an idea.
Sometimes,
They would take us beneath the wooden roofs of
doubtful men
Where illusion would leak like a bad dream:
Luring would be the narrative of the absent,
Misleading the image of the dominant.
Like the entry into the canvas of a movie from the Dim-lit theatre seat,
Hope would create hideouts for every action.
At the time of deceit,
They would have hundred blind eyes.
While walking through the forest,
Grim would be the grand finale,
Where intention would slowly, climb to truth,
Like the heavy trucks on the steep roads of
Kuthiran.
Aditya Shanka*

*This poem was taken from the book, After Seeing by Aditya Shankar, a young poet from Kerala. His book consists of a number of poems which are reflections on films.

Ekalaya the Low Caste Archer

Art of the arrow
Can't be borrowed
From Guru to guru
The law said in a narrow line
This be imparted

He was young
Of eternal laws ignorant
Dreamed day and night
To be a swift dispatcher of arrows
To heavens and the hell

Not for us my son
This art
For Vedas has made us low caste
Archery is for higher caste
Mother told the boy

Besides gurus' demand Dakshina
Only rich can give
Those who steal knowledge
They do not forgive
Mother told the boy

From afar the boy watched
Hiding often on trees
How the guru taught his boy
Secretly doing the same
OH, what a joy

Soon it was a simple play
Every move he could display
An image of the guru
Of wood he made
Before playing prayed

Once when meditating
Heard a dog barking
Send a small arrow
To where noise was
Lightly closing dog's jaws

The Guru and trainee prince was passing
Marveled at what they were seeing
Was some god in jest
Their hard learning belittling
Guru sadly wondered

Looking around saw a boy praying
Before an image so like his
The Guru in a flash saw what's happening
"If I be your guru
My Dakshina now give" he demanded.

Money and gold I have none
Great sir, but even my life
I will give to learn from you
The Art of the arrow
Unwise boy said

For generations learned in cunning
The Guru smiled promising
"Your left thumb be the Dakshina
In exchange I will teach
The art of the arrow".

Swiftly guru gave the knife
Swiftly boy obeyed
The thumb he accepted,
And quickly he departed
Having protected his art

Old tale here ends
But may I add
If I was that lad
A different end
This tale would have had.

Basil Fernando*

*Basil Fernando is a Sri Lankan poet and has published several collections of poems. an anthology of his poems has been published in Malayum, which is fact is the first anthology of Sri Lankan poetry translated into any India language. This poem was published in mynews.in.

Poetry as a Radical Discourse of Demystification

Essay by E.V. Ramakrishnan

March 1, 2007
K.G. Sankara Pillai’s poetry unsettles idiom and ideology, combining self-doubt with social criticism, says E.V. Ramakrishnan.

One of the defining features of Malayalam poetry in the 20th century has been its concern with social issues. With modernism in the 1960s the focus shifted towards greater linguistic experimentation, as can be seen in the vibrant tones and resonant images of poets like Ayyappa Paniker and K. Satchidanandan. The formalist phase of modernist Malayalam poetry soon gave way to a politically aware and socially sensitive idiom in the early 1970s. K.G. Sankara Pillai’s poetry played a crucial role in renovating the poetic idiom of Malayalam during this phase, curbing its romantic and nostalgic excesses as well as its insular, hermetic tendencies.

His poetry can only be understood against the backdrop of the shifts in the sensibility of Malayalam poetry in general in the post-1960s period and the internal dynamics of its modernist poetry in particular. In turning away from the constricted and narcissistic idiom of aesthetic modernism his poetry retained the liberating potential of modernism and welded it with the social and critical responsiveness of the dominant tradition of Malayalam poetry. His poems address the ethical problems of living in a turbulent society. This is as much a problem of language in poetry as its treatment of socio-political themes. For him radicalism is not a matter of sloganeering but a self-critical attitude that requires a continuous re-evaluation of one’s relation with oneself as the self’s relation with the world. His ability to assimilate an interior realm of self-doubts within a larger discourse of social criticism makes him an exceptional poet.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, K.G. Sankara Pillai (KGS) had affiliations with some political movements which enabled him to participate in the social life of the masses. He has observed from close quarters how ideologies become mass rituals and how radical minds turn regressive with time. Poems such as ‘Baldness’ and ‘The Gecko’s Tail’ are attempts to diagnose the moral crisis born of the death of ideology in our times. In the former poem he says that there is a crocodile living in the swamp of our brains, feeding on us. It is this erosion of inner spaces which reduces language to a mere instrument of concealment. Reality is finally reduced to mere spectacle. ‘Photos in Various Poses’ analyses photography as the ritual of a society that substitutes images for reality. ‘Trees of Cochin’ traces a trajectory of loss which is as much cultivated amnesia as a willed state of aphasia. Ecological concerns point to deeper ethical problems that cannot be resolved within the realm of art. This is where KGS, even as he documents the crisis of our times, communicates the need to renovate the very apparatus of poetry. His interest in art, particularly painting and sculpture, and cinema has deeply influenced his art of poetry. He is one of the few Malayalam poets who has closely followed developments in these fields and internalized the creative possibilities of these media in poetic discourses.

The poems of KGS often investigate intersecting points of politics, history and culture. The bird in ‘Between Nectar and Poison’ moves between different domains of experience, because it can simultaneously evoke multiple worlds. KGS has consciously constructed a polyphonous idiom in his poetry which can invoke the lost worlds of poetic traditions through subtle phrases and images. It is his use of irony that lights up the page and transforms what reads as a statement on the mundane into a deeply felt experience of anguish about contemporary life. His brand of irony becomes a tightrope walk along the manifestations of contemporary culture, recovering a critical sense that can see through the games of everyday life. Kerala is a land of excesses, where positive indicators of social development that match with developed countries co-exist with dark areas of violence and oppression. KGS is particularly concerned with the slow erosion of the secular and humanist ideals, painstakingly built during the progressive phase of social struggles. His poems warn that behind the glitter of the neon-lit cities are demons that can drag us back to an age of barbarism.

He has been closely associated with many organizations working in the fields of human rights and legal aid. Some of the villages in Thrissur could be declared ‘litigation-free’ through the dedicated efforts of organizations like Jananeethi for which he edits a periodical. This commitment to the cause of the larger common good translates itself in his poetry as a tone of resistance against the neo-colonial tendencies in our contemporary culture. The narcotic gaze of the market can paralyse us into mindless complacency if we do not retain our critical sense. His poetry, above all, is a reminder to re-examine our constructions of reality which increasingly resemble the nightmarish fantasies of a dazed somnambulist.

KGS is one of the few Indian poets who have interpreted modernity consistently in his poetry. He hardly uses traditional metre in his poetry but retains the music of everyday Malayalam in all its complexity. As a professor of Malayalam he is definitely well-informed about its intricate history. But he knows that traditions of Indian poetry are not monolithic. There is a strong centrifugal impulse in Malayalam poetry, as elsewhere in other traditions in Indian literature, which looks towards the peripheral and the quotidian. He combines the aphoristic simplicity of traditional poetry with the subversive irony of everyday speech in his best poems.

His poems are political in the best sense of the term, since he demonstrates how ideologies shape us and also contain us. Poetry cannot but be political in an age when the ideological permeates everyday life through subterfuges. Poetry can easily lose sight of its greater responsibility of renovating the sensibility of an age and a living society by becoming a prey to what it should track down and conquer. In an age when poetry has become increasingly dissociated from the moral fulcrum of the social imaginary, KGS has unwaveringly held on to a critical gaze that unsettles our ritualistic habits of thinking. That he has sustained it over three decades, against all odds, resisting the temptation of becoming a popular and prolific poet, makes his achievement all the more remarkable.

January 2007

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About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.