A New Anthem for India?
By Mohajer Ansari
US
Forty years ago, Hum Dekhenge of Faiz Ahmed Faiz debuted as a whip on the back of General Zia Ul Haq’s autocratic reign in Pakistan. It wasn’t ‘a’ poem then, and it certainly isn’t today. Forty years since, it still wields the power to set another generation afire wherever and whenever extreme political anarchy raises its grotesque head. The events of past forty days from coast to coast in India have demonstrated just that.
To some, it is a phenomenon. To some it is an omen - a good one. Whatever it is and wherever it is - be it Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh, Hyderabad’s Chaarminar, Prayag Raj’s Mansoor Ali Bagh or Mumbai’s Gateway - every highway and byway of India is reverberating with it. The ‘candles of hope’ lit by thousands of ordinary girls and women in Shaheen Bagh has taken the entire country by an avalanche.
But the power-that-is cannot fathom the decibels of the crowd’s silent rally, nor can it escape the heat emanating from those tiny flickering candles of unity! Their flames might lit the political funeral pyre of not one but two Raavans of modern India well before the arrival of the next Diwali!
It is this sense of inevitability that has forced BJP’s IT wing to label the courageous and knowledge-empowered women of Shaheen Bagh with the hashtag #BikaoAuraten (women for sale). This misogynist tactic of the allegedly ‘most civilized and articulate’ political party of the country, is reprehensible. This, however, has proved to be counterproductive: hundreds of Shaheen Baghs are propping up with every new daybreak and nightfall!
Seventy-two years after its independence from the British, India seems to have plunged into a second Satyagrah - a Satyagrah for India’s freedom from the shackles of nepotism and exclusionism of her xenophobic domestic occupiers! It is as if the revered Bapu -the sworn nemesis of BJP and RSS, and, Godse and Pratigya - has been reincarnated!
BJP and its right wing cohorts who created the NRC/CAA/NPR Armageddon, view this rare public unity as an unsightly weed that is growing at an unprecedented pace at every gigantic as well as small educational campus across the country. And now, this fully metastasized anger has transformed into the mythical head of Hera, which no concoction of Hindutva Roundup seems able to chop off!
The failed attempt to introduce the question of citizenship in the 2020 US census had the same ulterior motive; BJP should have taken heed of that. Only the other day some twitterati decoded: CAA/NPR/NRC stands for CAANPeR Na RuCkho!
In the midst of current volcanic sociopolitical eruption, something very refreshing is evolving. The rally goers from all walks of life - teenagers to youths to homemakers - have become quite fluent in the impeccable Urdu lingo of Faiz Sahib. Only two months ago, if you had asked people on the street or even campuses about Faiz, you would have been met with a quizzical look: Phayj?? But now, they know and pronounce the words Laazim, Zulm, Haazir, Naazir, Haq, correctly and beautifully! Even people, who never spoke a word of Urdu before, are memorizing, reading and singing this poem with unbelievable perfection, passion and devotion.
No speech, no oration and no devotional rendition could ever bring Indian masses together as has Faiz Sahib’s Hum Dekhenge. This unification is bigger than the coming down of the Berlin Wall or creation of the European Union! What greater good the elements of bias, injustice, intimidation, political bullying, xenophobia and intolerance, can do to people’s psyche and conscience, is on full display in India these days. Though it seems utterly surreal, it is a Déjà vu moment, nevertheless!
Ninety odd years ago, the self-conceited sense of superiority of one race over others had created a demagoguery that gave rise to panic, insecurity, anxiety and hopelessness. That was 1930’s Germany, which led to the creation of infamous concentration camps for the Jews, socialists, gypsies and other marginalized groups. That diabolic fascism is playing full throttle in India today in the guise of NRC/CAA/NPR. Ironically, the retired army General and current chief of defense staff Bipin Rawat has recently proposed the establishment of de-radicalization camps for the Kashmiri youth! Shouldn’t he be pontificating, if at all, on the most prominent traitor DSP Davinder Singh, instead?
How many times have we heard: those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And, how many times have we heard: when history catches up to tyrants, they tend to lose their heads - at least figuratively. The manmade geographical boundaries can never imprison the vociferous demand for justice and equality. So, it is only a matter of time when Faiz will come alive in intolerant Myanmar and China in the East and in France and the Netherlands in Europe too.
When India celebrates its Republic Day on January 26 this year, the most conspicuously missing aspect of the republic would be its secular character guaranteed in the constitution. The touts and underlings of the ruling party would be hard at work to hoodwink its loyal base into believing in BJP’s fake patriotism and deceptive narrative of isolationism garbed in saffron-colored turbans. What would be hidden underneath that charade, though, is the uncomfortable truth that when a country becomes the concubine of corrupt leaders, the brevity of its existence is assured.
If the current public mood is any indicator, it sounds quite fitting that in next year’s Republic Day celebration, Hum Dekhenge be adopted and recited from the ramparts of Red Fort, as the new national anthem of India!
Move over Vande Matram!
It’s time for Dekhenge Hum!!
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