Aaj Bazar Mein Pa-ba-jaula Chalo | Walk through the bazaar today with feet in chains

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

January

Children’s fingerprints
On a frozen window
Of a small schoolhouse

An empire, I read somewhere
Maintains itself through
The cruelty of its prisons

- Charles Simic

How is it that entire discourses of resistance can be launched in a few precisely chosen words, haiku-like in their delineation of the landscape? Entire systems of oppression can be brought to their knees by the utterance of truths that are juxtaposed with the raw nakedness of sight. When I first shared Simic’s lines on this platform, I did not speak so much about their revolutionary power. I spoke about sparseness, and how the world could be compressed into words that in their singularity, convey, not only image, but movement, and a complex interplay of ideas beyond the static frame of the poem itself. Simply, through juxtaposition, Simic lays bare what education can become, how ‘empire’ tightens its grip through the prisons it creates, even for its children.

Last Saturday, newspapers reported that verses of Faiz (among other allegedly ‘incendiary’ posters and content) were removed from 10th standard CBSE Social Science Textbooks. Among other quotes, the translation of a passage from this poem was excluded.

The translation I have done is culled and recreated from different sources including the version used in the Merchant Ivory production ‘In Custody’, and Rekhta.

Can empire erase memory? Can it rewrite history? It is attempting to, and even creating versions of it to suit its thorny project of colonising the present, with imagined pasts. The thing that the empire fears the most is love. It fears openness of expression, empathy, and calls for unity. It fears the surging ocean that laughter can bring. It fears irony, and the upturned head of a man walking through the bazaar with shackles on his feet. It fears defiance, and the refusal to accept humiliation and punishment.

Faiz’s landmark poem was written when he himself was being taken to jail in chains, for his defiant stance, and his open satire, and critique of fascist policies. ‘Walk past the gaping crowds’, he says. Let the fetters shine in the sun. Let them see you laugh, and ‘dance in ecstasy’ - no shackles can imprison the imagination.

This is what the empire fears - that its subjects can ride on the wings of imagination, something that they cannot control. What fake imagery, and violent rhetoric will you thrust in ‘hands filled with stars’? Fascists require the slate to be clean, that children can be conditioned into their limited fantasies of purity. They see children as the footsoldiers of their vision, and they use the double-edge sword of censorship and propaganda to aid this endeavour. Their anti-intellectualism is marked by the threat of the creation of ideas, of curiosity. They want to quell individuality, and the possibility of realities that do not suit their agenda, imaginations that they cannot regulate.

Sometimes, I feel, that the best thing that a government can do a text is ban it. I remember the sudden interest that was garnered around A. K. Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” which was removed by the UGC from College syllabi. I was a student, at the time, and was perplexed by the logic of that removal. The fascinating essay propelled mythology as multi-faceted, open ended, and constantly evolving - more retelling, than sacrament. Ramanujan opened up a world of colourful, diverse mythologies for me, and made me love the changing narratives of gods and people, in a manner that was not restricted, and that taught me about the complex scripts of culture. Faiz’s words have done this too, for many, even years after they were written. They have the power to gather crowds.

What a state cannot understand, it attempts to decimate, but the shard of light that is knowledge, shines through the crack, always.

I share these verses in solidarity, today, and in the hope that our young may learn of the constant attempts to kill ideas, and the value of equality.

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