The
Caste Hooligans - Part II
( Jaater
Naame Bajjati Shob
)
Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976)
Translation © Monish R Chatterjee 2020
Blinded
even in daylight, do you see not
How every moment of every day, this
caste insanity
In
the grinding stone of its crushing mill
Is pounding every one of you to
pulp?
The
weight of your caste insanity is killing this very nation
Rejecting cleansing sunlight, you
chose darkness
Knowing
not that your very own Bhagiratha
Channeled the holy waters, washed
over the footwear
Of every caste and
outcaste?
Forget
not that the Rishi Manu is a mere speck next to
The Universal laws- and yet, mocking
those all-embracing
Laws,
it is Manu to whom you offer obeisance.
Alas, thoughtless dupes, know that
Truth is higher by far
Than
any scripture. Yet, you see this not,
beasts of burden
Hence in vain all your towing mountains
of scripture.
All
people on this earth arise from the same Creator
Home this is of the Universal
Mother- to her they are
All
equal, there is not one higher nor lower.
And
here you are, despising her Creation
Irony of ironies, offering worship to
the Creator all your life
That
is, alas, nothing more than pouring ghee
over ashes
Nothing more than milking the cow
while killing the calf!
In
the Creator's Criminal Court, know that caste has no play
Your sacred thread or skull cap,
your hat or your crown-
In
that ultimate court, Brother, they are all the same.
Your vaunted caste will be cast
aside
Your
karma in this mortal life it is will
face judgment
Indeed,
on that judgment day, be it Brahmin, be it Untouchable
Karma
decides heaven or hell for either.
Amplifying
defunct, man-made rituals, to relegate
The call of Conscience, the divinity
within, to nothingness
Know
for sure is the gravest ill, for which night and day
You suffer the swipes of good old Singi Mama!
And
so across the land, have no food, no clothing
Have no honor, no weapon to fight
back-
The
Caste Hooligans, for sure, have untold suffering, I see
Writ large upon their future!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbe2H1VBe5M
(Above is the YouTube
URL to a powerful recitation of the entire poem by Kazi Nazrul's eldest son,
Kazi Sabyasachi, from the early 1970s)
[Commentary: I have designated this Part II of Kazi Nazrul
Islam's powerful anti caste-ism poem/song because it turns out that the portion
typically available in the lyrics composed into music (from the 1940s) is
actually a truncated version of the full poem which has further indictments and
pronouncements, which in their original ring poignantly and persuasively true,
and as I have written earlier, these pronouncements, much as delivered in
Rabindranath Tagore's Hey Mor Durbhaga Desh (My Wretched Country), are just as
pertinent today, just about everywhere grave social injustice, discrimination
and related brutality exist in human society. Thus, I have to set aside particularly the centuries-old history of
abject and brutal racism and classism in the US, currently in open display for
the world to see, or anywhere that fellow human beings are displaced from their
home and homeland, and are relegated to ghettoized life (the predicament of the
Palestinian people immediately comes to mind). Note that in these stanzas, which are most emotionally charged and rhyme
magnificently to add more punch in the original Bengali, Kazi Nazrul, a Muslim
poet highly representative of secular India, admonishes his Hindu brethren for
their caste-based discrimination. He
cites the misuse and actual abuse of the sage Manu's scriptures (whose veracity
may itself be brought to question, being antiquated, and much as scripture
worldwide, more than likely designed to keep patriarchal and feudal control
over society); he also invokes the powerful mythical image of the sage
Bhagiratha who performed great penance for ages to finally be granted the
release of the divine river Ganga to flow down to the earth from Shiva's matted
locks, in order to deliver the souls of his ancestors. Nazrul powerfully maintains that the river
has actually traversed countless footwear belonging to every shade of the caste
and color hierarchy. Hence the
meaninglessness and destructiveness of these discriminatory tools. Furthermore, Nazrul invokes imagery of headgear and holy bodywear of several religions- the sacred thread of Hindu Brahmins, the skullcap or Yarmulke of followers of Judaism, the various hats worn in Islam and Christianity- implying none will have special play in the Courtroom of the Creator. Most powerfully, in fact, he chides his countrymen for their subjugation at the hands of "Singi Mama," a Bengali derisive take on the English colonial occupiers (Singi, the Bengali corruption of Simha, the (English) Lion, which clawed and tormented Indians on a daily basis). MRC]
(Article changed on June 18, 2020 at 05:33)
(Article changed on June 18, 2020 at 05:36)
(Article changed on June 18, 2020 at 18:02)
