A celebration is due.
More than 700 farmers have given their lives to mark this historic moment.
So fierce has been the resolve of the farmers at Delhi’s borders (supported by their compatriots across the country) that their place of protest has turned into a sustainable township in itself. They had come there to stay, and they will fight till their demands have all been met.
But for now, I want to hold on to this moment, I want to savour it. I want to fill my entire being with the joy of the dancing farmers at Tikri, and those distributing jalebis at Ghaziabad. This morning when I heard about the announcement (a joke in itself), I had this mad urge to preserve it, take a mental picture lest I forget how it felt. So I framed it with this song, that, for me, since childhood has been associated with victory earned after great struggle.
Modi’s announcement of the repeal of the 3 farm laws has already generated a lot of cynicism, and analytical commentary about election optics, and the road ahead, among other things. I’d like to quote Orijit Sen on this fallacy of ‘urban commentators’:
I had already fallen into this trap when I read this- I was wondering what the small print of this announcement would be. In fact, I remembered that this is only an announcement, they are yet to actually do it. This made me realise how little we expect from our administrators. We have been conditioned by the two beards to imagine the worst. This is the symptom of a country thrust into years of collective trauma. In this context, it is important to note that the farmers movement has brought about a humiliating defeat. This is precedent. Sen is right - let us not belittle the achievement of the farmers.
Here is a poster that he made and shared on social media as a tribute:
(Orijit Sen can be followed on instagram here)
I cannot think of anything that comes close to what I am feeling at the moment. I want to mark, in some small way, the enormity of this sentiment, the sheer magnitude of what the farmers have achieved. So forgive me, old readers of this newsletter, I am sharing a set of poems that I have shared before.
I have no doubt that I think this revolutionary Punjabi poet would have been at the forefront of these protests, on ground zero, writing things that would rip from our activists’ tongues, and poking the collective conscience.
Presenting Pash’s ghaas in devnagri, hindi (in Roman), and in Gurmukhi. I haven’t shared an English translation, but I have shared Carl Sandburg’s ‘Grass’ as well. This was written before Pash’s Ghaas and you can read the original post shared almost a couple of years ago on Poetly, that discusses these two poems, here.
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