1857: The Recall Poem by Asad Zaidi

So distant once, the battles of 1857
have drawn ever so close to our daily lives.

Strange that in these times of remorse and regret
when mistakes appear like misdeeds, all our own,
one can hear at all the sounds of revolution,
the din of beating drums, the crackling polyphony so utterly Indian,
the hushed whispers of power brokers and their petrified agent,
while turncoat opportunists restlessly pace up and down.

It is possible, though, that one is only imagining things
under the spell of fiction and commercial cinema of recent times.

But, surely, this could not be just a clamour
created with the help of 1500 crore rupees, assigned especially by the Govt. of India
for the celebration of India’s “First War of Independence” 150 years later.
Or this could not be the ripple effect of enthusiasm
shown suddenly a Prime Minster who is otherwise embarrassed
by all struggles for freedom, profusely apologetic, he is keen to sacrifice all it takes
to achieve the ‘national goal’ of cultivated slavery.

No, none of that. These have to be the memories now striking back,
despite all attempts to erase them made by the Indian middle class intelligentsia:
Amichands and Harishchandras ensconced in their comfortable seats,
and their progeny that yearned for nothing but refined slavery.
These have to be the memories of that ’57 for which there was nothing
but quiet contempt in the minds of the Mool Shankars, Shiv Prasads, Narendras, Ishwar Chandras,
the Syed Ahmeds, Pratap Narayans, Maithili Sharans and Ram Chandras;
it took Subhadhra. and the genteel literature of Hindi eighty years to reminisce.

This is a Recall, made real by the suicides of peasants and weavers of this land.
Reduced now to statistics for the indices of famines and national development,
sad and clueless, they march out of Special Economic Zones towards collective burial and cremation grounds.
Who is responsible for their turning so helpless and lonesome?

This filth and squalor was perhaps human destiny in 1857;
Today is nothing but a horrific crime.

Battles often remain unfinished, to be fought in another age with different weapons;
Sometimes, however, the dead too can rise to resume the battle,
questioning those who look alive but are more lifeless than the dead,
wanting to know the name of their platoons and commanders
or sharing in the tone of a confidante that they are headed for to Nazafgarh
or stopping suddenly to ask for the way to Bakhtawarpur.

The dead of 1857 ask us to forget they died for
feudal leaders and the recovery of their lost estates.

Tell us, they say, is there no injustice left in today’s world?
Or is it merely that you know no better?