Is India Dividing Ploughshares for Arms?

Capitalism or Independence. In my view partition was caused by the former, the latter was self determination, it has no nuclear in its future. India is a nation of sages, this is the time for wisdom. In truth this is the meaning of super-power.

DIVIDING PLOUGHSHARES FOR ARMS

India,
The jewel of South Asia,
Sparkling and alluring,
Sweet lullabies sing from the tablar and sitar,
A magical kingdom beacons from afar,
Calling me to visit mother Gungar,
So soon …
before the monsoon.

I have listened as you sketched,
The social, political, cultural aspects,
Of this myriad of systems,
transformed, resurrected, seeking identity,
The merging of great cultures,
The influencing of minds,
The solving of problems,
Over time.

The traumatic rebirth of the Indian dreaming,
Injustice screaming,
The light of awareness of an ancient song,
The poetic, the mythical, the lines of tradition,
The suspicion of the imperialists,
Living in a world of surrealists,
Foisting the big modern,
With the certainty of a wounded bull,
Ploughing ahead,
Fixing the problem without a thread,
Shifting aside another wisdom,
Discarding as inferior the fools,
Pasting industrialisation in its place,
Economic growth becomes the ugly face,
Foreign fruits give a different taste.

Subsistence yields to insistence of growth,
Large holdings fatten as the farmers bloat,
The green revolution is the solution,
a genetic mutation, a generic invitation,
Sculpting nature to our need,
Yet natural evolution is the seed,
As knowledge informs,
the environment is deformed,
Plundered with a gusto,
On the macho strength of technology,
Railway sleepers never did awaken,
The anthology of transportation,
The culture is shaken into temptation,
out of its slumber another rubber plantation,
as the entrepreneurs start to stampede,
fertilised by their greed,
the peasants are bonded labour,
Their freedoms trampled as under,
In the dust of progress,
They are left behind,
With less.

The crest of capitalism,
Waves goodbye,
Smiles enshrined in lies,
The people barely alive,
Under the weight of oppression,
They have to wait,
Grinding poverty and ignorance,
A stalemate.

The Indian National Congress,
The figure of Nehru,
The substance of Gandhi,
Nonviolence and ahimsa,
Partition the enigma,
To return power to the source,
To educate with a new course,
To empower and strengthen,
To lengthen life expectancy,
Spinning khadi on life’s wheel,
It is a hardy meal,
The symbol of resistance,
Satyagraha is persistence,
Adherence to truth,
Now you build your roof,
But as his light declined,
Fear replaced loves shine,
And the world washed over,
The experiments with truth.

Nonviolence was too slow,
To grow is mighty they know,
Out of the ashes of fighting,
Building on the scaffolding of greater threats,
In the nuclear game,
We place our bets,
But there are new players at the table,
They are weighing the chips,
Power is on their lips,
As they climb over the Koran,
To justify their plan,
Of an Islamic empire,
Grown from the amputation of Bengal’s fire,
Spurned from hate,
They rancor,
divide and conquer,
The chinese whisper,
The message is passed along,
To agitated minds who seek domination,
Nonviolence is submission,
Another abomination of insecurity,
Allah Akbar is the mission,
From the womb of poverty,
No more begging bowls,
They demand honour and respect,
On the rock of fear and neglect,
They split the deck,
The atom is not small,
And the game is over for all.

South Asia,
The microcosm of the world,
They are at a juncture,
It is the season,
For the voice of reason,
To rise above the cash crops,
To harvest self determination,
Sow the seeds of self esteem,
Clean up the streams flowing into the mother and give her hope,
To work as one people,
To give to each other the rope,
That the temple is the mosque,
That differences are lost,
As women start to know,
The power they have to show,
To reclaim their rightful place,
To revive the kinder face,
To drink from the chalice,
Empowerment is balance.

All is change and transformation,
It is a new future all must see,
That knowledge and choice is the liberation,
Unity and harmony is freedom,
This is what all seeks,
As the world connects,
They will see they are complete,
Cooperation is the cheek,
That must be turned.