“A poem… begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong,” wrote American poet Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer, co-founder of the influential literary magazine The Seven Arts, in 1916.
As videos of police lathi-charges and tear gas fired at students circulated online, poets, artists and actors took to social media and protest grounds to articulate the anger and anguish through poetry, old and new.
Much like National Award-winning actor Atul Kulkarni, who recited the aforementioned poem on his social media accounts, lyricist and playback singer Swanand Kirkire also entreated the police forces to be gentle with the children of the nation through the medium of his poetry.
Ae desh ke veer sipahi sun, tu duty apni nibhana
Par sab apne bache bethhein hain vahan,
Zara laathi dheere chalana, zara laathi halke chalana
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(Listen, brave soldier of the nation, you must do your duty,
But all our own children are sitting there,
Please swing your baton gently, please swing your baton lightly.)
— Ek Guhaar, Swanand Kirkire
Kirkire’s poem reminds the authorities that these protesters are not hardened criminals, just youngsters who like memes, sing and dance. The question to be asked, Kirkire says, is why this generation, infamous for being happiest in front of a computer screen, is forced to come out onto the streets in such large numbers.
Actor Rajendra Gupta took to social media to share Hoobnath Pandey’s poem Giro, alluding to the protesters who were hurt during the demonstrations, telling them their efforts were sure to shame the powers that be.
Giro, giro, giro aur girne ki sambhavnayein bharpoor hain
Itna giro ki gurutvakarshan bal bhi sharm ke mare gir pade
(Fall, fall, fall, and the possibilities of falling are plentiful.
Fall so much that the force of gravity itself falls down in shame.)
— Giro, Hoobnath Pandey
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Why poetry, and why now
Many other actors and celebrities used their social media platforms to champion the movement through the words of a variety of poets, mostly from the Progressive Writers’ Movement, featuring Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Sahir Ludhianvi, and Kaifi Azmi.
The new-age movement, novel in its use of a uniquely Gen Z language of memes, songs, and tongue-in-cheek slang, slogans and inside jokes, also drew courage from the words of the poets of yore, whose verses have thrummed in the ears of many a revolutionary, lending an emotional vocabulary that connects multiple generations in one defiant tradition.
Critic and translator Shafey Kidwai, speaking to indianexpress.com, offered context for resurgence of poetry during protest: “Despite its widespread popularity for producing a tantalising articulation of a deep sense of despair that unrequited love and the life of desire produced, and for its vivid portrayal of the inner landscape and the romanticised notion of life, Urdu poetry stood against the status quo and deplored every instance of social and political injustice and bigotry. Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib, and other classical poets questioned tyranny, discrimination, and social segregation and inspired resistance.”
He traced this into the Progressive Writers’ Movement of 1936, arguing that “in line with this tradition, many poets aligned with the Progressive Writers’ Movement made it a point to engage directly with issues of public interest. Hasrat Mohani, Josh Malihabadi, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Sardar Jafri, Makhdoom Mahiuddin, Habib Jalib, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, Fahmida Riyaz and others mobilised collective anger, angst, despair and defiance against the power that be in an easy-to-understand and emotional idiom that could be chanted and performed to inspire collective action against injustice and suffering.”
That same idiom, Kidwai argued, still finds new listeners today: “The captivating rhythm and aural appeal of their poetry capture the heartbeat of the resistance, and it resonates with Generation Z. Their consciousness-changing poetry can reach a global audience instantly.”
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The Progressive Writers, dependent on pamphlets, mushairas, and street rallies, reached only as far as a room or a printing press could carry them, but their Gen Z inheritors have no such ceilings. A couplet recited into a phone camera reaches diaspora and domestic audiences.
For instance, actor Richa Chadha’s recitation of Josh Malihabadi’s Shikast-e-Zindan ka Khwab, written in 1936 in a very different India, brought a nine-decade-old call to break one’s chains into a protest against a very different, present-day form of confinement, all through the power of social media:
Kya Hind ka zindaan kaanp raha hai, goonj rahi hain takbeerein,
Uktaae hain shaayad kuchh qaidi, aur tod rahe hain zanjeerein.
(Is India’s prison trembling? Cries of the greatness of God echo through it,
Perhaps some prisoners have grown weary, and are breaking their chains.)
— Shikast-e-Zindan ka Khwab, Josh Malihabadi
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Actor Shabana Azmi, 75, could be seen passionately reciting the poems of her father, legendary poet and lyricist Kaifi Azmi, alongside Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s ‘Bol Ke Lab Azaad Hain Tere‘, to encourage the protesting youth to remain free in thought and mind despite the pressures on them, almost a century after they were first penned.
Alan e Haq mein khatra e daar o rasan to hai
lekin sawaal ye hai ke daar o rasan ke baad?
(Declaring the truth invites the threat of the scaffold and the rope.
Yet the real question is: what lies beyond the scaffold and the rope?)
Some students held placards bearing these verses, such as Kaifi’s “Koi to sood chukaye, koi to zimma le / Is inqilab ka jo aaj tak udhaar sa hai” (Let someone pay off the interest, let someone take responsibility / For this revolution that still feels like a debt waiting to be paid), or Rahat Indori’s couplet, which has found new currency in modern India.
Sabka khoon shaamil hai yahan ki mitti mein
Kisi ke baap ka Hindustan thodi hai
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(Everybody’s blood is part of this nation’s soil.
India does not belong to anybody’s father.)
Old wine, new bottle
The CJP protests are not an isolated case of the internet generation discovering old poetry for aesthetic reasons, but they are the latest instance of a recurring pattern of poetry becoming the alternative channel when institutional mediums of airing grievance feel closed off.
This is not the first time Indian protests have turned to poetry. During the farmers’ protests, one farmer cycled 400 kilometres from Faridkot to the Tikri border carrying a revolutionary poem by ‘Pash’. At weddings in Punjab, boliyan about the farmers’ struggle were sung in defiance. The anti-CAA protests of 2019 were similarly saturated with Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge.
That same idiom, as Kidwai put it, still resonates with Generation Z today, its rhythm carrying consciousness-changing poetry to an audience far beyond where it was written, across borders, across screens, across the silences that state violence tries to impose.
