1857: Search For Material Poem by Asad Zaidi

Wars of 1857, which were very distant wars
Are wars that are nearer these days

In this age of shamefulness and crime when
Every wrongdoing appears to be self-inflicted
The rumblings of the drums of rebellion and
A very native Hindustani racket and commotion
Panicky middlemen and informers’ murmurings
Anxious wanderings of landholders waiting to jump sides
Can be heard

Perhaps this is the influence of novels written in the past
And commercial cinema

But this is not the racket of those 150 crore rupees which
The Government of India has sanctioned to celebrate
150 years of India’s ‘First War for Freedom’
By the pen of that Prime Minister who regrets
Every war for freedom and apologises to the whole world for them
He, who is ready to sacrifice everything for
The national goal of better servitude

This is the memory of that Fifty-seven which
Was wiped clean by a Pan Indian Elite
Bankims and Amichands and Harishchandras
And their descendents parked comfortably on their cushions
They too who never wanted anything but better servitude
It is that Fifty-seven for which
Moolshankars, Shivprasads, Narendranaths, Ishwarchandras, Syed Ahmeds,
Pratap Narayans, Maithali Sharans and Ramchandras
Had nothing but silence and disdain
And which was finally remembered only seventy-eighty years later by Subhadra
In Hindi’s officially polite literary canon

This is the memory of that tradition which is
Kept alive 150 years later by suiciding farmers
And weavers of this land whom
It is even difficult to call rebels and who are just crunched as numbers
In the statistics of National growth and poverty line(s)
Like a sad, dirty and anarchic procession
They exit Special Economic Zones towards mass graves and crematoriums
Who has made them so forlorn?

Perhaps in 1857 common people were fated
to be dusty and dirty – every one accepted it then
But has become a serious crime now

Usually wars remain unfinished, to be finished later
In some other age with some other weapon
Sometimes as it happens those dusty and dirty dead get up and attack again
Challenging the undead who seem more dead than the dead
Dead ask them the names of their battalions, brigades and commanders
Or maybe thinking of them as sympathisers start telling them
Now I shall move towards Najafgarh
Or in confusion start asking for the route to Bakhtawarpur

Dead of 1857 say Forget about our Feudal commanders
Whether they fought for the return of their influence
And how we died for them

Say something for yourself

Is there no injustice left in your world
Or it is you who can not imagine its end

(1857: Saman ki Talash)
Translated from the Hindi by Tarun Bhartiya