Don’t Mourn. Here’s The Spring, Dance

By Sourav Banerjee

25 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Enough has been said but not done since the state-aided suicide of Rohith Vemula of the University of Hyderabad. Revolt is in the air and people are talking about a revolution. He rebelled, but now it is our historical duty to carry forward his struggle to its logical end and confirm his sacrifice was revolutionary, if we indeed believe so. It will be an utter disregard to the martyred revolutionary souls if we fail to turn their sacrifices into a radical rupture of society from the present — a rupture from the inert materiality they sought, sacrificed their lives for, and we must negate as we grow as a society. Tragedy is always sad but the hero can be saved if we honour his pain and despise the evil for ever. Rohit, Prof Kalburgi, Dabholkar, Pansare, all must be saved to save us. They must be saved to see their ideas triumph.

I went to Rohith’s grave after they destroyed his material existence in an anxious haste before he drags their system to his grave, and found he is not dead and will surely be saved. He is bleeding and has gone underground. Before departing, he asked me to spread this promise among friends and comrades in this spring…

I have gone underground
Not to exist peacefully with the soil
And then consumed by it one day
No; heaven is too far yet
I am here to unearth the microbes
Too impotent to nourish the soil
So that it could yield a giant oak someday.

I have gone underground
Deep into your eyes
Not to refuge within; comfortably mute
I am here to find the source for your tears
That would turn the gentle dew drops into a devastating stream
Drowning all the injustice and tyranny
You and I can ever think.

I have gone underground
Deep arterial into your heart
Not to throb and thump in monotone
But to flush a gust of blood
As a sacrifice to the purpose it is made
Before it is forever ceased.

— Fugitive
(Sourav Banerjee)

Sourav Banerjee is an editor with a publishing house