| Politics & Society |
Wagner in Abhujhmaad
By Amit Sengupta
2012-08-01
A massacre at midnight. No one expected it. The stars sent no prophetic signals. If they were Maoists, they would know from distant distances of miles of dense camouflage when the armed forces arrived— the jackboot footsteps would tell, howsoever trained and softened, the forest would send them the signals in silence and sound, in whisper and word, with eyes, wind and touch.
Here they were, sitting in an assembly— India’s invisible Parliament of Broken Promises— in collective togetherness under the night sky, in an ancient and contemporary ritual, inside the unfathomable, incomprehensible, invisible remoteness of Abhujmaad, the twilight zone of Indian democracy. Little children, boys, women, men: they just could not understand why the bullets were suddenly flying all over like quick messengers of death; they had no shield, human or armoured, they had no bombs, no hand grenades, no automatic guns, no AK-47s. Or even bows and arrows. They had surprised voices, crushed whispers and screams vanishing into the blue.
Can you hear them in Delhi? At Jantar Mantar, outside Parliament, outside the PM’s house or 10 Janpath? Can you hear their staccato screams?
First shot in cold blood, then kicked, smashed, axed and hacked in a superbly executed (Mossad style) commando operation of the Mighty Indian State, this is open, bloody, diabolical militarism against innocent, unarmed, helpless citizens of India, the poorest of the poor, the forest dwellers— the marginalised silent spectators of a super power’s spectacular growth story. The massacre at midnight moved in slow motion like a dense Richard Wagner symphony of surrealism, chasing the dense longings of Nosferatu’s insatiable desire for human blood in an unexplored expanse, where neither democracy nor justice follows a code of democratic conduct, or a principle of constitutional hope. It’s like the Vietnam War, the embedded war in Iraq, the eternal bombing of Palestine, the massacres at Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Gujarat.
Blood of emaciated Adivasis flows in Abhujmaad with yesterday’s innocence of ancient indigenous memories and their invisible, unrecorded testimonies. All that remains are their bloodied dead bodies, hacked bodies, the funerals, the mourning, the remoteness of their Indian citizenship, their margins, condemnations, exiles, their brand value as Maoists who are not Maoists, massacred by their own government’s armed forces, for no rhyme or reason, even as they sit under the sky, like a thousand night skies, saying things which no one can hear, no one wants to hear, and few have heard.
So what options are we giving them, except the stoic, relentless resistance of primordial time and space, the grinding of their teeth, the clenching of their fingers, the iron in their soul, the blood in their clotted veins; the indignity of infinite injustice and the dignity of struggle, sensibility and sacrifice; the scream of the forest and the scream of the mined earth with its treasures below, stalked by big business and fat cats?
Did the Union Home Minister in starched white say, with stunning politeness, “I am sorry?” Did he really say that or we misheard him? Did he mean that if he said that?
And then there is the chief minister of Chhattisgarh, BJP’s time-tested anti-Maoist role model, celebrating the public praise of stem-cell research and why we should one day produce tens of thousands of prototypes of fair and lovely, refrigerated, antiseptic Aishwaryas in this country. Oh, Antiseptic Aishwarya! For the CM, you are the role model for the entire womanhood of India! He really has a superb sense of fair and lovely aesthetics.
However, did he even feel anything after the massacre at midnight? Can he ever feel anything, does he even want to? Is he human, or a robotic stem-celled fantasy of clinical insensitivity? Shouldn’t he be subjected to some high quality laboratory research?
If he is so desperately obsessed with antiseptic massacres and clinical cosmetic beauties, does he then hate the rough dark-skinned primordial people of Abhujmaad deeply and intensely?
Does the State’s counter terrorism against Internal Security Threat Number One include all the innocent Adivasis and the poorest of the poor in mining zones of insatiable treasures below the earth? So all those people under the night stars, were they all terrorists? Or were they human shields who deserved a bullet in their skulls and half-empty stomachs?
Thank god the chief minister of Chhattisgarh did not even feel sorry, with or without the human shield. In any case, he has never felt sorry all these years for all the dark memories of underdevelopment; the daily narratives of mass malnourishment, organised hunger and slow death; or, for his work of slow genius, the Salwa Judum, and the massacres on both sides. Even while innocents like Dr. Binayak Sen rotted in his patriotic prisons, condemned with not an iota of evidence.
If this isn’t dirty, black and cold mortuary humour in starched white, what is? Says who that the Indian State lacks a sense of humour or aesthetics?
A massacre at midnight. No one expected it. The stars sent no prophetic signals. If they were Maoists, they would know from distant distances of miles of dense camouflage when the armed forces arrived— the jackboot footsteps would tell, howsoever trained and softened, the forest would send them the signals in silence and sound, in whisper and word, with eyes, wind and touch.
Here they were, sitting in an assembly— India’s invisible Parliament of Broken Promises— in collective togetherness under the night sky, in an ancient and contemporary ritual, inside the unfathomable, incomprehensible, invisible remoteness of Abhujmaad, the twilight zone of Indian democracy. Little children, boys, women, men: they just could not understand why the bullets were suddenly flying all over like quick messengers of death; they had no shield, human or armoured, they had no bombs, no hand grenades, no automatic guns, no AK-47s. Or even bows and arrows. They had surprised voices, crushed whispers and screams vanishing into the blue.
Can you hear them in Delhi? At Jantar Mantar, outside Parliament, outside the PM’s house or 10 Janpath? Can you hear their staccato screams?
First shot in cold blood, then kicked, smashed, axed and hacked in a superbly executed (Mossad style) commando operation of the Mighty Indian State, this is open, bloody, diabolical militarism against innocent, unarmed, helpless citizens of India, the poorest of the poor, the forest dwellers— the marginalised silent spectators of a super power’s spectacular growth story. The massacre at midnight moved in slow motion like a dense Richard Wagner symphony of surrealism, chasing the dense longings of Nosferatu’s insatiable desire for human blood in an unexplored expanse, where neither democracy nor justice follows a code of democratic conduct, or a principle of constitutional hope. It’s like the Vietnam War, the embedded war in Iraq, the eternal bombing of Palestine, the massacres at Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Gujarat.
Blood of emaciated Adivasis flows in Abhujmaad with yesterday’s innocence of ancient indigenous memories and their invisible, unrecorded testimonies. All that remains are their bloodied dead bodies, hacked bodies, the funerals, the mourning, the remoteness of their Indian citizenship, their margins, condemnations, exiles, their brand value as Maoists who are not Maoists, massacred by their own government’s armed forces, for no rhyme or reason, even as they sit under the sky, like a thousand night skies, saying things which no one can hear, no one wants to hear, and few have heard.
So what options are we giving them, except the stoic, relentless resistance of primordial time and space, the grinding of their teeth, the clenching of their fingers, the iron in their soul, the blood in their clotted veins; the indignity of infinite injustice and the dignity of struggle, sensibility and sacrifice; the scream of the forest and the scream of the mined earth with its treasures below, stalked by big business and fat cats?
Did the Union Home Minister in starched white say, with stunning politeness, “I am sorry?” Did he really say that or we misheard him? Did he mean that if he said that?
And then there is the chief minister of Chhattisgarh, BJP’s time-tested anti-Maoist role model, celebrating the public praise of stem-cell research and why we should one day produce tens of thousands of prototypes of fair and lovely, refrigerated, antiseptic Aishwaryas in this country. Oh, Antiseptic Aishwarya! For the CM, you are the role model for the entire womanhood of India! He really has a superb sense of fair and lovely aesthetics.
However, did he even feel anything after the massacre at midnight? Can he ever feel anything, does he even want to? Is he human, or a robotic stem-celled fantasy of clinical insensitivity? Shouldn’t he be subjected to some high quality laboratory research?
If he is so desperately obsessed with antiseptic massacres and clinical cosmetic beauties, does he then hate the rough dark-skinned primordial people of Abhujmaad deeply and intensely?
Does the State’s counter terrorism against Internal Security Threat Number One include all the innocent Adivasis and the poorest of the poor in mining zones of insatiable treasures below the earth? So all those people under the night stars, were they all terrorists? Or were they human shields who deserved a bullet in their skulls and half-empty stomachs?
Thank god the chief minister of Chhattisgarh did not even feel sorry, with or without the human shield. In any case, he has never felt sorry all these years for all the dark memories of underdevelopment; the daily narratives of mass malnourishment, organised hunger and slow death; or, for his work of slow genius, the Salwa Judum, and the massacres on both sides. Even while innocents like Dr. Binayak Sen rotted in his patriotic prisons, condemned with not an iota of evidence.
If this isn’t dirty, black and cold mortuary humour in starched white, what is? Says who that the Indian State lacks a sense of humour or aesthetics?
