A Song
Bash them, kick them,
skin these bastards alive!
God is one, they claim
but build a different temple on each street.
We are all God’s children, they say,
yet they shrink from us holeya as if we’re snakes.
No entry for us to their inns, their wells, their houses.
But dogs that lick our shit may share their rooms.
They eat what we grow, take the sweat of our brow.
It’s only us people they shun.
We are not holeya and madiga any more, my brothers.
They call us harijan and laugh, my brothers!
They hold “meetings” about us, draft laws for our sakes;
pat each other’s backs in our name.
They’ll liberate us, they declare in the papers –
how they yell from their mikes!
Yet no ischool for us, my friends, only drudgery.
Nor can we hold our heads up.
They’re playing games with us, these bastards!
So, smash them, kick them, break these whoresons’ bones!
~ Translated by Maitreyi Karnoor
Thousands of Rivers
Yesterday
they came like a mountain,
did my people.
Dark faces, silvery beards, smouldering eyes
tearing day and night apart, kicking sleep goodbye.
Blankets shivered at their waking;
the earth shook under their feet.
Marching like ants, roaring like lions
Down with inequality!
Forever down with
the arrogance of the rich!
Like countless snakes they crawled in
and filled the town;
descended to the lower depths
soared high in the sky.
In the streets and the lanes
under trees and by the fences
in the landlord’s house, on the master’s throne
everywhere they flowed like water,
did my people.
When they opened their mouths
the others fell silent.
Listening to their voices
the other throats dried up.
With their waving arms they stirred up
a storm of revolution,
did my people.
They caught by the neck those
who had beaten them with sticks.
Police lathis, agents’ knives, barrels of guns,
Vedas, shastras, puranas
all floated like dry leaves.
Thousands of rivers
to the sea of struggle.
~ Translated by M Madhava Prasad
My People
They who died of starvation, carried stone on their backs,
They who got kicked around and fell, my people;
They who touch the master’s feet and beg with folded hands,
devotees of God are they, my people.
They who plough and sow and harvest the crop,
They who sweat and fry in the sun, my people.
Empty-handed they came and sat down with a sigh,
and wrapped their empty bellies in cloth, my people.
They who raised mansions, built bungalows
and got buried in the foundation, my people.
They who lay by the roadside and bore their lot silently,
they who wept silently, my people.
They who paid interest and burnt to ashes
in a blaze of speeches;
They who made shoes for their god-fearing,
feasting exploiters, my people.
They who dig up gold and have never seen food,
they who weave cloth and go naked,
hey do as they are told, my people.
They are content to live on air, my people.
~ Translated by M Madhava Prasad
The Dalits Are Here
The dalits are coming, step aside –
hand over the reins, let them rule.
Minds burning with countless dreams,
slogans like thunder and lightning,
in the language of earthquakes,
here comes the dalit procession,
writing [history] with their feet.
Into the dump go gods and gurus,
down the drain go the lawmakers
on a path they struck for themselves.
March the dalits in procession,
burning torches in their hands,
sparks of revolution in their eyes
exploding like balls of fire.
For the thorn bushes of caste and religion,
they were as thorns in the side.
They became the sky that looked down at
the seven seas that swallowed them.
Since Rama’s time and Krishna’s time
unto the time of the Gandhis,
They had bowed low with folded hands.
Now they have risen in struggle.
It grows, it breaks out of its shell
the endless dalit procession.
Bullet for bullet, blood for blood,
shoulder to shoulder, lives bound together.
Under the flag of dalit India
stood the farmers and workers.
Flowers bloom in every forest,
thousands of birds take flight,
the eastern sky turned red,
morning broke for the poor.
The dalits are coming, step aside!
The dalits have come, give it up!
~ Translated by M Madhava Prasad
Song of the Cow
They have set me by the manger,
They have tethered me to a peg.
My owner feeds me handfuls of hay
And compliments himself.
He’s a godlike man, my owner,
Looking at the welts he’s laid on my back,
He swells with pride at his own strength
He’s like a king, my owner,
In the shed they tie me up,
Calling me "Mother, Mother!"
Have words no meaning at all?
To the thick, rich milk I give them,
They add water and sell it.
Before my very eyes they sell it.
Heavy is the wooden cart
But heavier is my owner,
Heavier than Bhima himself,
Move it, they tell me, move it.
At the Sankranti festival
I must jump over fire.
They don’t wash my behind
But deck my horns with flowers,
They push me to the fire, they push me.
~ Translated by Tejaswini Niranjana
Excerpted with permission from From Those Stubs, Steel Nibs Are Sprouting: New Dalit Writing from South India, Dossier II: Kannada and Telugu, Edited and Introduced by K Satyanarayana and Susie Tharu, HarperCollins India.