FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ART-005-2008
May 9, 2008

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

Human Rights and Culture - Issue 5

This is the 5th issue of Human Rights and Culture. This issue contains an essay K.G. Sankara Pillai, Dalits and Negroes: The same blood of pain and poetry, which is followed by several poems, an essay, Contending Nationalisms and Sri Lanka’s Poisoned Freedom by Rajan Hoole, and finally a poem, A Son’s Tale by Basil Fernando.

You may view the previous issues at:  http://www.ahrchk.net/pub/mainfile.php/hrculture/.

Your contributions and comments for future issues can be sent to ahrc@ahrc.asia.

Dalits and Negroes: The same blood of pain and poetry
K.G. SankaraPillai

(Please also see a news report beneath this brief note on the Dalit predicament).

The condition of the Dalits in India is as bad as ever.
this reasserts the truth of wrath and pain in the Dalit poetry;
the truth and relevance of a poetry for justice and human dignity.
see the sources of the themes and images in Dalit poetry are not any land of dreams;
they are still the raging veins , the burning soil , and the flaming feet.
words spill out of the wounds like blood with stormy life in.
forms of their poetry is determined not by any divine  call,
but by the bitterness of the sunlight
and by bursting the suffering silence of the nights.
it seeks the truth and possibility of the untold history of the man unkind.
it is not an experiment with  the compassionate  alternatives;
it is the explosion of  the agonized soul with an insatiable quest for freedom and justice.

creating a new breed of poetic art.
creating a new aesthetics of resistance.
rediscovering the jungle of fear , pain , and protest in between words.
and rediscovering
the silence and desert lying in between two responses/two opposite actions.
a move towards a counterculture , creating a new one,
questioning the old and inhuman values of the ruling class.

lives of many poets in the Dalit poetry movement
are central forces of the dalit's struggle for justice.
(life of Namdeo Dhasal ,one example).

they have to be studied in close comparison with the
lives and works of the Negro poets of 20th century.
they range from self awareness to self sacrifice for the cause of justice.
(Aime Cesaire ,Leopold Sedor Senghor, Dennis Brutus, Langston Hughes,
Kensaro Viva , and many others )

they have added a new sense of meaning and beauty to poetic art;

a new politico-spiritual strength of humanness to the ideology of the aesthetic
and to the agenda for cultural action.

redefining tradition and modernity in reclaiming  a democratic culture.

We Indians have an Africa in our hearts when we are tortured and murdered.
We Indians have an Africa in our expressions when we resist injustice.
this kind of a deeper parity is there in the histories of the Negroes and the Dalits.

Dalit siblings thrashed by landlord
Staff Reporter
http://www.hindu.com/2008/05/05/stories/2008050550590100.htm

NEW DELHI: Three Dalit siblings living as tenants in Mukherjee Nagar here were allegedly beaten up and abused by their landlord's family on Saturday apparently after they learnt of their Scheduled Caste status.

Two sisters and a brother living on the third floor of 165 Mukherjee Nagar claimed that they were beaten up and punched by their landlord Om Prakash Grover, his wife, their son and daughter in-law on Saturday after one of the sisters, Kanaklata, went downstairs to fill water.

"They did not let her fill water and instead started beating her with a slipper. My brother Chandra Bhushan who tried to intervene was also beaten up. On hearing the commotion, I rushed downstairs. They tried to tear my clothes and one of the sons of our landlord punched me. They hurled abuses at us. A number of people had gathered outside the house but no one came forward to help us," claimed Manorama, the other sister, on Sunday.

When the victims called their brother Vijay Bahadur, who stays nearby in a separate accommodation, and a friend, they too were allegedly thrashed by Mr. Grover and his family.

However, the police said that as per preliminary investigations it appeared to be a case of quarrel between the landlord and tenants over water distribution since there was an acute scarcity in the area. "Nonetheless an inquiry into the allegations is on and a case would be registered under relevant sections on the basis of its findings,' said the police.

Kanaklata is doing her M. Phil. from Delhi University, while Manorama is a teacher and Chandra Bhushan is studying MCA from Amity University. Apparently, the siblings have been living as tenants for more than a year.

"A few months ago, when Mr. Grover's daughter got married, we gave him five months' rent in advance so that he faced no financial hurdles. We even cooperated with them and participated in the ceremonies like family members," recalled Manorama.

The relations between the two families apparently soured, when about four days ago Mr. Grover found out that the siblings were Dalits. "They began asking us to vacate the house. They started harassing us. They stopped providing water to us," said Manorama.

After the police were called in on Saturday, both the parties were taken to the Mukherjee Nagar police station. The siblings claimed that they were "pressurised" by the police to strike a compromise with their landlord.

Dalit Poetry

Masjid –Mandir are hindi words , means Mosque –Temple .
This is part of an oft quoted Hindi secular song in times
Communal violence.

Dalit poetry is a poetry of  deep , anti romantic , anti nostalgic
Cultural memory of the lower/oppressed castes-dalits- poets .
These poems are written in  colloquial dialects of the poets.
They are dialogic in imagination 
and in its patterns of expression .
Their poetic ancestors are the folk poems of their grandpas,
Who burned their lives in the open fields  and roads and jungles
For the minimal livelihood .

Dalit Poetry is straight poetry .
‘Personal is political’ is true to the core in these poems.

Dark divisions

(from a popular anti-communal song Mandir-Masjid)

In temples, mosques, gurudwaras
God is divided .
Divide the earth , divide the sea,
But don’t divide humanity.
The Hindu says ,
“Temple is mine ,
Temple is my home.”
The Muslim says,
“Mecca is mine,
Mecca is my loyalty.”
Two fight , fight and die,
Get finished off in fighting…

Dalit poems

Which language should I speak?

Arun Kamble

 Chewing trotters in the badlands
my grandpa,
the permanent resident of my body,
the household  of tradition heaped on his back,
hollers at me,
‘You whore-son, talk like we do.
Talk, I tell you .!”

Picking through the Vedas
his top-knot well-oiled with ghee,
my  Brahmin teacher tells me,
‘you idiot, use the language  correctly!’.
Now I ask you which language should I speak ?

Translated from Marathi by Priya Adarker

The search

W. Kapur

What bird is this that sings a song
Filled with such sorrow
Such aching notes
In the dead of night
When my hut in its yard of densest dark
Is drenched to brim of its heart ?
Nor can I,
Wanting to follow him ,
Find my voice
Or his direction
Will some one tell me his name
And the branch where he makes his home ?
Or are you all like me, strangers?
have you like me, lost your light ?
Atleast my hut  holds its warmth
Perhaps I could give him some ,
Put embers in his voice .

Translated from Marathi by Santha Gokhale

Mother

Waman Nimbalker

Daylight shoud die. Darness would reign.
We at our hut’s door. No single light inside .
Lights burning in houses around.
Kitchen-fires too. Bhakris beaten out.
Vegetables gruel s cooked .
In our nostrils the smell of food.
In our stomach darkness.
From our eyes , welling up, streams of tears.
Slicing darkness , a shadow heavily draws near.
On her head a burden . Her legs a- totter .
 Thin dark body.. my mother.
All day she combs the forest for firewood.
We await her return.
When she brings no firewood to sell we go to bed with hungry.
One day something happens .How we don’t know.
Mother comes home leg bandaged, bleeding.
A long  black snake bit her, say two women.
He raised his hood.
He struck her.
He slithered away .
Mother fell to the ground.
We try charms.
We try spells.
The medicine man comes.
The day ends .So does her life.
We burst into grief. Our grief melts into air.
Mother is gone.
We, her broods , thrown  to the winds.
Even now my eyes search for mother..My sadness grows.
When I see a thin woman with firewood on her head,
I go and buy all her firewood.

Translated from Marathi by Priya Adarker.

K.G. Sankarapillai, is a contemporary Indian poet writing in Malayalam. He has won the National Award for Poetry in India on two occasions. More about this author may be found at http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=8636

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Contending Nationalisms and Sri Lanka’s Poisoned Freedom

An Article by Rajan Hoole

“...you are that beautiful spirit of fire, which burns the home to ashes and lights up the larger world with its flame. Give to us the indomitable courage to go to the bottom or ruin itself. Impart grace to all that is baneful.”

This invocation of the spirit of nationalism which appears in Tagore’s The Home and the World rings true to life for those of us who witnessed the Tamil struggle from within. The destructive impact of nationalism, its brutalising intoxication and unscrupulous use of the impressionable young were witnessed with alarm by Tagore in his contact with the Swadeshi Movement of the first decade of the 20th Century. In the final accounting of the Tamil struggle, one might say, we burnt our home and lit up the world for the migration of a privileged section of our people, to feed in turn the flames for those struggling at home against inhuman odds.

The universal truth expressed by Tagore is voiced powerfully in the work of his admirer and contemporary, the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats. Yeats, like many of us Tamils felt the first thrill, mixed with foreboding, when the oppressed and humiliated took up armed resistance. The ambivalence is evident in his Easter 1916:

“All is changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born”

Three years later in 1919, the same year when Tagore’s Home and the World was released in English and Europe was in ruins after the First World War with revolutions in Ireland and Russia, Yeats gave voice to total disillusionment with revolutionary violence. In his Second Coming he saw the times as:

“When the best lack all conviction and the worst Are full of passionate intensity”

Having completed 60 years of freedom from colonial rule, we are a sick nation finding it hard to come to terms with what happened in the past 100 years. Warnings about excesses of nationalism largely went unheeded in this country, even though the elite of this country paid nominal obeisance to the Indian struggle. The painstaking research of Kumari Jayawardena shows that our so-called national leaders were from the 1920s, laying the basis for Sinhalese exclusivism and in turn for chauvinistic divisions to engulf this country.

In place of celebrating Independence with some generous, unifying gesture in keeping with the higher principles of man, the leaders rushed, by a vulgar sleight of hand, to deprive the Tamil plantation labour of their rights of citizenship and franchise. The house had been set aflame. The same spirit of playing tawdry games with the rights of the people persists to this day.

The ICCPR

The Supreme Court in September 2006 ruled out of the blue that ‘the rights under the ICCPR are not rights under the Constitution of Sri Lanka.’ The Defence Ministry continued its rampage of murder and displacement in the North-East as though the minorities had no rights. With the European Union threatening to remove crucial trade concessions granted in the wake of the

2004 tsunami, President Rajapaksa felt a sudden longing for the ICCPR and called for a determination by the Supreme Court. And hey presto, the Supreme Court, presided over again by the Chief Justice discovered that the rights under the ICCPR are fully, if tediously, enshrined in the country’s legal system. If these rights could be toyed around with at the whims of the Executive and the Supreme Court, they are dead indeed for the people of Sri Lanka.

School children in Jaffna were taught by their peers to venerate Gandhi, Tagore and Bharathy well into the 1960s. But the gravity of their struggles and dilemmas lasting several decades were not then part of our living experience. While Sinhalese extremism had to be challenged, the cowardice, moral and intellectual failures of many that enabled the LTTE to set their home on fire endures to their shame.

Non-violent

In retrospect we are left to marvel at Gandhi’s leadership in liberating India by means. It was a truly revolutionary departure in the history of man that would have earned the derision of many. In place of violence that came naturally, hundreds of millions were led to face violence and humiliation passively. Had the flames of violent revolution been fanned in India with its bewildering divisions, there would not have been the proud nation of India today. There would only have been ashes.

Behind Gandhi’s achievements lay the confluence of some of the great minds of his time. Prominent among them is Leo Tolstoy with his memorable words, “There is no greatness where simplicity goodness and truth are absent”.

Despite being the unquestioned leader of the Indian masses, Gandhi was open to the ideas of others who differed while sharing the same concerns of social and economic upliftment of the masses, bridging Muslim-Hindu differences and emancipation from caste.

Tagore saw the alienation of Muslims during the 1905 Swadeshi Movement, for which he blamed the Hindus, and dropped out of it after an impassioned youthful bomber killed two English civilians in 1908. He remained a strong voice against taking others for granted in one’s enthusiasm for a cause.

To him any message, any symbol used, should appeal to humanity as a whole, including the English, and if not, should be left aside. Subramaniya Bharathy was a strong voice against all forms of sectarianism from the South. They all contributed to enrich the Indian struggle. These values and achievements need to be rediscovered by every generation and should not be taken for granted. Gujarat, which gave us Gandhi, has also given us Narendra Modhi seeking to undo the Mahatma’s work. When would we rise to be a nation from the slime of our mytho-histories and the ideologies they inspired?

Rajan Hoole is a reputed academic, writer and human rights activist. He won the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2007. He is a prominent member of the Jaffna Teacher’s Union which has extensively researched and published documents particularly relating to the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka criticising the government of Sri Lanka, the LTTE and also all other militant armed groups that have contributed to the violence in the country. This essay was distributed by the Sri Lanka Freedom Forum.

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A Son's Tale
Basil Fernando

It was a crowd of twenty or so
Many not so young and some old
One among the not so young rose
This tale he told

Blame not for what I say
I am worried and this I thought
I should loud say
For years now it bothers me

My father had father
Him my father dearly loved
Humble gentle a man was he
I was told

To a landlord's family
A tenant farmer was he
Working hard earned but little
With respect he served the masters

Hurt in his heart he hid
To his son he said
Never a tenet father be
Get away from here and study

To a distant place my father fled
With someone’s help books he read
To make my story short
After study some fortune he amassed

During that long time
Of his father he did hear
That the master revenging son's departure
Had beaten his father dear

Some revenge my father had in mind
Brought lands next to the masters
Furious was this landed lot
Seeing servant's son their equal

This way some years had fled
A day when we all were gone
He was left alone
In the big house now he owned

Some from the old master house
Like wolf had enter and pounced
Beating him hard shouting words so foul
Thinking him dead had happily left

Returning home I saw my father dear
Thinking him dead was full of tears
With neighbours help to hospital went
Found him unconscious but not dead

Doctors did him well treat
His heart did better beat
All the story he did with names repeat
Police and lawyers were upbeat

Here my friends my worries start
My father in fact breathed his last
In court three were sentenced to death
I must say, I had my revenge

Now do not blame when you this hear
Give me your forgiving ear
When my father was still not dead
Here is something that doctor said

It is possible to prolong father’s life a little
But a serious surgery he need
Risk there is that his memory
He may fully lose

I loved my father and his father too
Wanted him alive with memory or not
But with honestly let me say
A lawyer I did consult

Briefly this is what he said
Your father had told what happened
If he dies or live to tell his tale
To death or jail those villains will go

If he lives but cannot tell his tale
I asked this lawyer and this he said
Then these villains will free go
A profound problem in me arose

Whole night sleepless I thought
Justice to him, his father, I did want
But to let him go
That I did not want

Tell what you wish or forgive if you can
The risk of loss of his memory
I did not take
Soon peacefully he was gone

Now my secret I have said
Not so old man said and sat
There was silence all around
No word any one uttered.

Basil Fernando is a Sri Lankan poet and has published several collections of poems. An anthology of his poems entitled, Sundramaithry, has been translated into Malayalam by Dr. Dhanya Menon, and published in 2008. This is the first anthology of Sri Lankan poetry translated into any India language. His writings may be seen at www.basilfernando.net under literature. This poem was first published in Channels Vol. 12 No. 1 – The English Writers Cooperative of Sri Lanka, October 2004.

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The Asian Human Rights Commission is regularly issuing this article series on Human Rights and Culture in which various cultural expressions, poems, stories, pictures and other forms of cultural expression that are based on the theme of justice, will be published. 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.

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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.