Affirmation (Guest Post)

Assata Shakur

Today’s guest post is by a friend of Poetly who wishes to stay anonymous. This person had shared this poem on Independence day, and after reading the poem, and seeing how it was located within our own political and cultural climate, I reached out. I’m grateful for this personal and eye opening commentary that narrates a reality that we all fear, and live in. Do write back if you have comments, responses, as always.
I’m happy to pass them on.

I looked for a poem by Assata Shakur on 15th August, 2021. The same day my undergrad college had shared on it's official Instagram handle a video consisting of faculty members and some students sharing words of praise for akhand bharat, the RSS manufactured vision of an India marked primarily by being Hindu, a Hindu identity.

For anyone who reads the news and does not live under a very large rock, India's present fascist climate is well-known. That India has begun to exercise its version of the Nuremberg laws is covered in the news. Islamophobia has existed in India for a very, very long time but to be Muslim in India today is to be a body marked as Lesser Than. To be reduced to a body. I recall my friend writing that the bar to be a "good person" in India now is so low, it only requires that you don't hate a Muslim.

India is a country today where the dignity of a Muslim person is not respected. Where a Muslim person does not have the right to be alive. Where there is implicit and explicit state sanction for a Muslim's life to be taken. 

As for my college, even though it has consistently mirrored the opinions of the ruling party, this is the first time it has gone out of its way to share media that is embedded in principles of Hindutva supremacy. 

I wondered here about Muslim students in the college; about how formative a person's undergraduate years are. How much a teacher who truly cares for their students makes a difference to how you think about the world. And what it means for the people who owe you a fundamental duty of care to be actively involved in denigrating your identity. What it means for a figure of authority to proclaim very loudly that they do not believe in your and your community's right to exist. 

I think that this type of isolation causes abandonment and pain whose roots end up being intergenerational in nature. And I believe that these actions are unforgivable on several levels. 

When I looked up Shakur's poem I was experiencing different intense feelings. Anger, fear, sadness, pain. A loss of faith in ideas of compassion and common humanity. 

And I did not have the words. I still don't. Which is probably why the poem acted as a salve, shield, a call to action. A validation where I was not able to access a space that would not gaslight the reality of this violence. 

My very close friend once shared this about her experience of reading Shakur's autobiography, she said that sometimes when she finds herself in a very difficult situation she asks herself "What would Assata Shakur do?". And this talisman acts as a compass when our own minds and limited realities are far from enough when engaging with larger questions. 

I don't know what love in the face of hatred means. And to me it sounds like an empty thought, an ineffective thought. 

So maybe the reason Shakur's poem works is that it lays claim to anger, and values it as a vital political tool through which to wield the chisel of community-building. 

The video shared by my undergrad college's Instagram handle made me want to scream into a void. And Shakur's poem on this day became my scream actualized through her powerful words. 

To quote this line from her other poem 'Love', "The hacksaw has two blades/ The shotgun has two barrels (...)". It reminds me of a few lines by James Baldwin. Paraphrased, he said that when the ruling class/gentry ghettoises the black body it can't do so without also harming its own self. And to ghettoise another, to treat another as alien, as something to be caged was to render yourself inhuman in ways you don't even realize. 

I shared this poem primarily from a place of despair. And in solidarity. These are the skeins available to people when a joint is fractured and a person's worth reduced to their name and religion. 

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P.S. A shoutout to Shanti, here, for the generous contribution. Thankyou, again :)

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