Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Don’t cry Mother, don’t cry.
Don’t cry at least for today. This is the Republic day.
This is the day of rejoice for some of your children, Mother! Let them enjoy. Don’t cry.
In the name of democracy, Mother, horse traders and power grabbers and pimps of foreigners shall exercise their rights to unfurl the tricolor. Uniformed peoples who draw salaries from the exchequer and students, who aspire for jobs in future but need certificates of activities extra-curricular, will obey commands to pay salutes to the official flag-hoisters, Mother! and mass media organizations will carry whatever they utter. Let them enjoy the opportunity; because this being the election year who knows if they get a few months hereafter this chance so rare! Mother, allow them to enjoy the moment therefore.
Son of a man who around three decades prior to his death was a mere three hundred rupees monthly wage earner is building up for his use a house that media projects to be the costliest one under the sky in the private sector! It happens, Mother, when the Government creates an environment where a swindler becomes a hero. And, the architects of this swindling environment are in power, Mother, in power.
For them the Republic day is the day for their pleasure.
The day is the day of pleasure for swindlers of shares; and, also for all the looters of surplus value of labor. For them the Republic day is the day for their pleasure.
They will now unfurl on their respective masts the Tricolor, Mother; because they are so far the victors.
They will not see your tears, Mother, they will not see your tears.
They will not see the tears that the farmers shed while distress-selling their crops to the miller.
They will not see the tears that a mother sheds while distress-selling her baby, the sweetest of everything that was her dear.
They will not see the tears that a nubile girl sheds while distress-selling her body or an intellectual sheds while distress-selling his brain or the workers shed while distress-selling their labor.
They have built up their own impregnable empires, Mother, where shall never reach your cries of despair.
Today is their day of pleasure, Mother, the day of their flag-hoisting, the day for them to show the world how have you prospered under their care!
So stop your tears, Mother, stop your tears. You cannot say that you are not theirs. And, your innumerable children, too inanimate to overcome them, cannot rip open their crust at the moment to show the world that your dreams are corpse and they are the vultures.
But don’t cry Mother, don’t cry.
For millenniums together, generations after generations, scoundrels posing as kings, establishing dynasties, exploiting and oppressing your peace-loving children, were basking under self-acquired epithets that were projecting them as gods in human forms. They were the hereditary owners of all the lands, all the animals, all the humans, all the minerals, all the means of productions found within the boundary under their control.
But, Mother, where now are they?
A single boy of thirteen years, a child of a wretchedly poor widow living in a tiny village called Nilakanthapur in Dhenkanal of Orissa,
Baji Raut wiped them out from the scenario of power. The armed personnel of the king of Dhenkanal and his protector British crown killed the boy brutally as he defied their command to ferry them in chase after the leader of peoples’ movement Baisnab Charan Pattanayak and entering into martyrdom, he inspired the peoples of the Princely States so much that the subjects who were worshipping the kings as gods thrashed them off their thrones. The kings of Orissa were compelled to merge their States in your new set up and the rest of the so-called Royals that were offending you with their filthy presence followed suit in order to escape public wrath. In compelling the kings to surrender, the States’ peoples had shown the way to build up your new era on the basis of obliteration of private property. But the people who formed the Governments have betrayed them.
Don’t cry Mother, over this betrayal. Even as no remedy is readily available, your tears shall push your innocent children to further anguish and deep despair.
Do not worry dear Mother! It is not that the remedy shall not come for ever.
Your most innocent and utterly disadvantaged and brutally exploited children have many Baji Rauts amidst them. Unknown. Unrecognized. Unsung. But, as always, loyal to you and to you alone.
The looters of your assets and their associates are in habit of equating some of them with terrorists who operate from beyond the border and unleash State terror on all opponents of exploitation taking advantage of the natural aversion of all your noble, innocent, simpleminded, peace loving children to violence. And to preempt any uprising against the loot raj, they patronize and promote soothsayers, Babas or Seers under the attire of positive thinking to keep their domain safe. But Mother, your every child would one day read the reality and like Baji Raut would sure lit the light of liberty. Real liberty. Do not worry Mother, do not cry.
When all your Baji Rauts will rise, there shall be no soothsayer to misguide them, no Baba or Seer to derail their determination, no Sri Sri to say that revolution against exploitation is a negative agenda of life. Be sure Mother, be sure of this.
The Republic you had given birth to has been shanghaied into the black empire of the economic offenders. Your tortured children shall certainly retrieve it Mother, certainly; because you belong to them and they to you.
Till then, don’t cry. Allow the black sheep to enjoy the Republic Day. Don’t cry, Mother, don’t cry.
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