Watch The Watchdog!
[This post is by a guest contributor who goes by the pseudonym Cyberpsyclone - 1/f))]
Lead stories in national dailies scream out random arrests of those with alleged links in the Mumbai bomb blasts. From wage labourers struggling to eke out a living to former members of SIMI... if you are a Muslim, you are under scrutiny. And the rest of us – the non-Muslims watch on. The indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon by a US-backed Israel leaves in its wake hundreds of dead civilians including children... and the world leaders watch on. Farmers’ suicides in debt-ridden Maharashtra while the rest of the country watches, even as the Congress makes sympathetic noises and announce relief that has yet to reach them.
Have we turned watchers, or we just in denial that if it has not happened to us, it is of no consequence. So focused we are on our comforts, so assured of our reasoning on ‘what not to do’, easing our conscience with a mandatory contribution to a welfare fund, that we will not question a system that reinforces injustice. Two immortal poems penned by revolutionaries of their time and age and which has an uncanny relevance to the phenomenon of social chaos that we live in today…
Apolitical Intellectuals
Otto Rene Castillo
(Gautemalan revolutionary and poet)
One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total life.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"
Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
First they came
Martin Niemöller
(German pastor and intellectual)
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Lead stories in national dailies scream out random arrests of those with alleged links in the Mumbai bomb blasts. From wage labourers struggling to eke out a living to former members of SIMI... if you are a Muslim, you are under scrutiny. And the rest of us – the non-Muslims watch on. The indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon by a US-backed Israel leaves in its wake hundreds of dead civilians including children... and the world leaders watch on. Farmers’ suicides in debt-ridden Maharashtra while the rest of the country watches, even as the Congress makes sympathetic noises and announce relief that has yet to reach them.Have we turned watchers, or we just in denial that if it has not happened to us, it is of no consequence. So focused we are on our comforts, so assured of our reasoning on ‘what not to do’, easing our conscience with a mandatory contribution to a welfare fund, that we will not question a system that reinforces injustice. Two immortal poems penned by revolutionaries of their time and age and which has an uncanny relevance to the phenomenon of social chaos that we live in today…
Apolitical Intellectuals
Otto Rene Castillo
(Gautemalan revolutionary and poet)
One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.
They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea
of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total life.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?"
Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.
First they came
Martin Niemöller
(German pastor and intellectual)
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
