But You Don't Look Like a Muslim by Rakhshanda Jalil

Author:Rakhshanda Jalil
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Essays on Identity and Culture
ISBN: 9789353029319
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2019-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

10

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO

‘JAI JAWAN! JAI KISAN!’

THE PRESENT APATHY TOWARDS THOSE who, quite literally, give us our daily bread seems strange given our ethos and civilization that has traditionally celebrated, even valorized, the tiller of the land. In an age when most mainstream newspapers either shuffle the news of phenomenally large gatherings of irate farmers who congregate from the hinterland or disregard their presence altogether in our midst when they make the long march to our cities to voice their anguish, we are reminded of a time when we as a people were less blithe and our writers, thinkers, poets less fearful at best, and less blasé at worst.

From culture to literature to fairs and festivals, the farmer has held a place of pride in the popular imagination. Across the length and breadth of India, many of our festivals have their origins in older, agricultural rites and rituals. Given that we are a largely agrarian society depending on seasonal monsoon rains for irrigation, the land and those who till it to fill our food baskets have always featured in the Indian literatures from the various bhashas. And be it folk song or high literature, the farmer has never been as beyond the pale as now, nor so pushed to the margins of our collective consciousness as at present.

In the early twentieth century, with large-scale land reforms happening in different parts of the world and the Russian Revolution opening a window into a world of immense possibilities, Hindi and Urdu writers, led by Premchand, began to write robust, socially purposive literature located in India’s vast hinterland. Village tales such as ‘Sadgati’ (Salvation), ‘Poos ki Raat’ (A Winter’s Tale), ‘Do Bailon ki Katha’ (The Story of Two Oxen), ‘Sawa Ser Gehuun’ (A Quarter and One Ser of Wheat), ‘Kafan’ (The Shroud) among others feature arrogant Thakurs, bhang-drinking pundits, hard-working but often landless labourers, and portray a world of stark poverty and inequality. But the villains, and there are plenty in Premchand’s oeuvre, are usually products of a rigid social order and caste inequalities in most of these stories.

It was not until the spectacular flowering of the literary grouping known as the Progressive Writers’ Movement from the 1930s onwards that the focus shifted to government policies, need for land reform and urgent redress of the farmer’s genuine problems. Until this point, writers and poets were content to draw attention to agrarian distress without linking it specifically to policies at the apex that would trickle down to the farmer at the lowest rung of the food pyramid. Some such as the poet Iqbal were content to write rousing, even inflammatory poems, addressing the peasants struggling under the yoke of imperialism in ‘Punjab ke Dehqaan ke Naam’ (To the Farmers of the Punjab):

Butan-e-shaub-o-qabail ko torh

Rasoom-e-kuhan ke salasil ko torh

Yehi deen-e-mohkam, yehi fateh-e-baab

Ke duniya mein touheed ho be-hijab

Break all the idols of tribe and caste

Break the old customs that fetter men fast!

Here is true victory, here is faith’s crown –

One creed and one world, division thrown down!

And

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