The Shadows Series III - Paradigms of Power

Recently the pet dog of the Police Commissioner of Delhi got lost. The dog- a 12 year old Daschund went missing last Saturday and sent the establishment into a tizzy. But Toto is one lucky thing for its master wields a lot of power and so the police establishment swung into action to find and restore the pet to its delighted owner, who had announced a reward of Rs10,000( out of the Commissioner’s own pocket) for the dog.

Looking at the time available to the Station House Officer of the Nizamuddin Police Station and others to track the dog, one could perhaps safely assume that Delhi is a crime free city where the police find diversion in looking for lost pets but the facts are that Delhi is not just the political capital of the country but also the Crime capital of the nation too. “3,244 criminal cases - including 467 murders, 581 rapes, 1764 dacoity and other heinous crimes - were registered in the city during the 2007 .During the last year, the capital also emerged more bloodthirsty compared to 2006 when 462 murders had taken place” .

Further, according to the National Human Rights Commission, the capital records the maximum number of cases of missing children. In India more than 44,000 children of all ages go missing annually and Delhi has topped the list with 6.7 percent of the total cases. I The NHRC report goes onto say that of the missing children, only about 80 percent are eventually traced. Given the pay hike given to the “public servants” so that they can serve bettter, it is possible now that senior bureaucrats will now cultivate more exotic and extravagant pets which if lost can be tracked.

But this is not a reflection on dogs or police commissioners or the pay commission- but on power. Power on the face of it has nothing shadowy about it – if you have it, you flaunt it- if you don’t , you moan sitting in a corner and cringe before those who have it. One would have you believe that if you don’t parade it, you don’t have it. And lest there be any doubt, you display it blatantly - be it in the red beacon on your car or the gun toting security guards by your side or the slap that an MLA administers on a hapless commoner.

It looks graceless when people with the power which only their position gives them use it so coarsely – whether it be by slapping a liftman or using the hapless, over worked people under you to look for a missing pet ( for a report on the working conditions of the Delhi Police look here) or raping a woman or through in any of the innumerable ways in which we demonstrate our power, not to lift up the weak but to further crush those who are already trampled.

There is a sad anachronism about the society we live in that people who are paid hefty salaries to serve exhibit raw muscle power at its most base or use it for various forms of gratification. Anachronistic because grand old men like the late Baba Amte who died recently, at the ripe age of 92, felt the call to serve and with problems of the spine which rendered him bed ridden and problems of the heart which a broken pace maker could not repair used to trundle through Anandwan in a bullock cart. The sad paradigm of power is that the truly powerful seem to be frail of body like broken reeds like Gandhiji or Baba Amte or Nanaji Deshmush or Mother Teresa while their shadows flaunt a caricature of power through golden cages of glitzy cars or the grandeur of Lutyen’s bungalows displaying vain glory in the guise of the emperor’s new clothes as in Hans Christen Anderson. Truely Gandhiji in his loin cloth was far better clothed than those in resplendent robes of office unaware of their nakedness.

Urdu Poetry at a Funeral

“Isliye rah sangharsh ki ham chune/Zindagi ansuon me nahae nahin/Shaam sehmi na ho, raat ho na dari/Bhor ki ankh phir dabdabai na ho”

(We must choose the path of struggle, so life shouldn’t get drowned in tears. The evening shouldn’t get enveloped by awe and night shouldn’t be fearful. And the dawn shouldn’t crack with tears welled up in its eyes)

I like revolutionary poets for some reason; especially the Urdu ones. The Urdu revolutionary poets were giants – Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and all the rest. I don’t know what it was in that generation that produced so many giants in progressive poetry; but their sheer power, beauty and idealism is itself awe inspiring, even if some of their Persian rich vocabulary is a bit difficult for those of us for whom Hindustani is not the first language.

I do not know who out of these eminences composed these verses that activists sang at the state funeral of Baba Amte the other day. The Indian Express does not report this, but I am amused and also touched that activists and the State who rarely sleep on the same bed ever, got together at the funeral of the giant that Baba Amte was. If I am correct, it was the first State funeral of a private citizen in a long time – perhaps the first after Mother Teresa. And while the Baba looked grand wrapped in the Tricolor, it is a bit ironic that no one thought in the establishment seems to be have thought of honoring him with the Bharat Ratna while they were squabbling abut other octogenarians who were in the race.

“Haath lage nirman me, nahi marane, nahi mangane (let’s use our hands to create, not beg or beat)”

I don’t know who wrote that piece either. I read those lines about not using our hands to beg or to beat with supreme irony. While Baba Amte’s body was being lowered into a pit in Anandwan in Maharashtra, in the state’s capital of Mumbai; North Indians who had come to work in the city because they did not want to beg were being beaten into submission and occasionally into death and destruction.

Aggression is every where and those Urdu poets had it all wrong. They wrote poetry to inspire revolutions and willed struggle for themselves, so that there would be no tears for the others to drown in. but we have turned the phrases all upside down. We are in more and more moving towards a society where the others struggle and it is our design increasingly that if it is possible at all to live a life that is free of tears , than that life should be ours.

It is ironic that the last movement that Baba Amte was involved in was called the Bharat Jodo or the Knit India movement. Pity that he was too old by then for the movement to benefit much from his leadership and there isn’t any one it seems who will effectively take over that piece of the Baba’s work. For in the midst of a Bharat todo movement, a Bharat jodo movement is much more needed than ever. As discordant voices and slogans rend the air and people talk of distributing sticks and swords, Baba Amte must be turning over in his grave. Very literally.