Part II: Excerpts from Birthmark
Khadar Mohiuddin
I could not let Khadar Moinuddin’s impassioned poem be confined within a single post. I would like my readers to read the poem in its entirety. Unfortunately the constraints of different mediums means that I can only share excerpts but do read the full poem here.
When Khadar says-
My blood becomes the auspicious dot
on Mother India’s forehead
the red lotus to be worshipped
I do not know what to tell him. With what face can I hide the irony of the enforced exile that he and countless other Muslims in this country have faced? The subtext of Khadar’s furious language is betrayal. This is what makes his account even more compelling. India is his own, the mother that he sought care, acceptance from. Like many, we see the journey of one who believes fervently in a secular, democratic notion of this country. His is not an outright rejection of the country that he calls his own, but an assertion of his place in the grand narrative. It is a kind of nationalistic sentiment carved out with the blunt chisel of a fierce connection with the soil. This is the sentiment of “I am here to say” . Imagine what it must take for someone who was born here, and has lived all his life here, to be forced to reiterate this!
What I find enlightening in his poem is his seamlessly blend of the rationality of anti-establishment discourse (Article 370, personal law, citizenship) with a deeply emotional plea of discrimination and suppression. The last lines of the poem should be the political anthem of our resistance today.
Yes my birthmark is me
my existence, my citizenship
It’s my ancestral property
inherited from the earth
the sky the air
the surroundings I live in
It’s a wound that never heals.
