How Did They? Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

How, how did they come to feel it, view it then,
How the villagerly rustics and the uncouth people,
The countrified folks speaking vernaculars,
Provoking them, instigating with inflammatory statements
And they committing suicides, self-immolations,
Did it suit them morally!

O, talk you not about the sense of morality,
They are not at all the literate people,
They are the blunt men,
The rough and tough fellows,
Living in villages,
Backward, underdeveloped and impoverished!

Had they the sense of morality, and ethics,
They would not have troubled somebody’s feelings
In such a way,
Had they, they would not have hurt in such a way,
The blunt and bogus men of Indian politics!

A democracy of the fools, by the fools and for the fools,
The stuntmen as politicians,
Rural and uncouth,
Foolish and illiterate,
Just not with the tikki and the tikka now,
Without the pagadi and the linen towel!

They are the same persons,
The same people,
But not with the clamp of hair hanging from the crown of the head,
The turban around the head,
The thin towel on the shoulders
And a lathi in the hands.

Actually, the clamp of hair was for some other scholarly purpose
And Brahminical thinking,
The turban as for protection from sunlight and covering and prestige too,
The towel as for to bring in or wipe out the face and mouth,
The lathi to save from the wild animals,
But they grew up otherwise,
The pistolmen, lathimen and the blunt men,
All going to be leaders, the makers of Indian democracy.


The backwards of politics did they politics as for bargaining power,
Coming into power,
As for sitting on the chair,
Trying to divide between Backward India and Forward India,
Marking self-immolations,
The young and unemployed boys and girls in fire,
Setting themselves on fire by pouring over kerosene.

The small-small countryside men
With the olden, age-old clothes,
Century-old, somehow given or collected coats
And wearing those abandoned, outmoded clothes clothes,
Planning to go to the assembly house and the Parliament house.

The bullock cart stationed near the halt to take him back
And the cartman waiting to take him away
To the native village
Wherefrom is he, a son of the soil,
A rustic, a native
As a politician,
Whom the townsmen saluting
And he saying it,
It’s my style.

And if this could be, how could they be as such inhuman,
Immoral and unethical and unsocial
That they would see the youths,
Simple and jobless,
Committing suicides in public places,
If this can be as such!

And how can it be that the topiwallah
Sitting on chair
And calling himself a Buddha,
But ridiculous it is to compare
As the Buddha had not been as such,
He was Peace, Peace Divine, Peace Befitting!

Oh, the illiterate and foolish folks from the countryside,
Marching towards, getting their luggages and bundles packed
As for going to the house,
Oh, the Indian fools and blockheads,
Dullards and rustics as leaders
Of the People’s Government,
Seeing the self-immolation of the jobless and unemployed youths
As the idiots, but how can man be cruel as such, viewing tearlessly!