What is poetry that does not save nations or peoples? At best, it is a collusion with official lies.
-Cheslaw Milosz
Perhaps, after one of the worst massacres in human history, Gujarat is still lucky to have its fair share of committed activists working relentlessly towards peace and justice. A state ripped down the middle by none other than the state itself is celebrating poetry because there are people who have the courage and conviction to stand up for democratic values and human dignity after facing perhaps one of the worst instances of organised violence in modern India, the night of long knives. That night did not end with February and March of 2002.
Twenty-four months have passed, and injustice continues and so does partisan treatment and de-recognition of Muslims as legitimate citizens of the land. The ghastly communal violence of Gujarat, which started in February 2002, is still manifesting itself in the plight and faces of the more than 200,000 internally displaced Muslims. The scar on the psyche of the community runs deep, having been so effectively marginalised, terrorised, stigmatised, ghettoised and immobilised. The government and establishment have been gloriously ineffective in reaching out to the victims with a healing touch. Relief and rehabilitation has been a far cry; compensation has been embarrassingly inadequate. As if apathy was not bad enough, the state-engineered violence against the minorities continues – the basic 'right to life with dignity' has in a way been taken away from the entire community.
Can there be a rights discourse when the state is indulging in subversion of the rights of its own citizens?