-Brian Mendonça
Weep India
For thy daughter is
slain
The grief, the horror
The sadness, the pain.
Were we not from a
land of peace?
Of benevolence,
of Buddha
Of compassion, not
caprice?
Scion of the Mahatma
What noble ideals do
you invoke?
Will history forgive
What you now provoke?
Mowed down in cold
blood
A woman unarmed
Save for her pen,
her panache, her
poise.
Fie on thee,
Locusts of the night
Who do prey
Like the werewolves of
evil.
The earth shudders
‘neath the weight of
your deeds.
No face, no land
can hide you now.
Teacher’s Day
Is drenched in your
blood
A country-made pistol
A blot on the country.
Many have fallen
In these dark days
The crimson tide
Flows unabated.
The silence of a
billion
Behoves not its leader
To wage proxy war
Against scribes
unfurling.
Weep India
Thy flag at half-mast
Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Shantih, Shantih, Shantih.*
Words fail
me as I write. To me this is an epitaph on India. Or rather, the India that I
know. The cold-blooded murder of an activist and senior journalist leaves us
speechless. We do not know where to
turn.
It is the
duty of the Fourth Estate to be a watch dog for the public. But when freedom of
speech is muzzled or so brutally suppressed, one wonders how one can continue
to presume a mandate for governance.
Journalists
have been on the front line to bring social change. Some have paid with their
lives.
Much news,
if not all, is manufactured. Powerful
lobbies sieve information to curate it for the public. Which is why there is no
real news anymore. Soft journalism has made us a vegetative society, unable or
unwanting to know the truth.
I look up
the website gaurilankesh.com. The
Kannada website proudly proclaims the issue date in English as 6 September 2017
– the day after Gauri was shot. So the struggle will go on. The battles in the
vernacular are not the battles in the English press. Which is why Gauri chose
to be an independent journalist with her own website to speak out her mind.
Killing
Gauri seems to be a pyrrhic victory. The goons who did her in have done her a
favour. The groundswell of support for her has evinced a keen interest in her
outspoken critique of government. More people are aware of her work through
social media and through her website. Her championing for the cause of the
minorities is well-known.
An
assignment for undergraduate students showed how deeply the youth feel alienated
by recent events. One queried the violence in India. Another called for ramping
up security for women journalists, and a third decried the dictum of death for
dissenters. Gauri’s greatness was that she could traverse the world yet chose
to throw in her lot with the poor, the marginalized and the voiceless. From
Bengaluru she could reach out to Dadri.
She lived a life of conviction. On her own terms.
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*’From Darkness Lead Me to Light.' Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I. III.28. Published in Gomantak Times Weekender, St. Inez, Goa on 1 October 2017. Pix courtesy firstposthindi.
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