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A Publication
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Out of Their Shadow And Into Our Consciousness

By Priti Gulati Cox

18 August, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Nobody is me, There are many like me. My violators are not the Taliban. They are not from the 19th arrondissement in north-eastern Paris. They are not killers with badges. They are not children of migrating landless laborer parents. They are not the US in US v Pfc Manning. My life has no worth in my country's popular consciousness and my violators roam freely. I am a Dalit, an Adivasi, and no upper-caste hands hold signs with our names.

I live and die and am reborn in their shadow....their calculating minds, their violent arms, their rapist's thighs, their trampling feet. This soil was once my fertile soil and I walked upon it. Now their collective usurpation has replaced it with pesticides and concrete. And I lie upon it, my feet pointing up at their mind's gods, waiting to be recognized as a victim of their discrimination. My hands' actions contradict my dignity and humanity. These are not my arms, but some upper-caste's other two arms. A mechanical bonus pair, like the Hindu goddesses. A surplus, to be manipulated any which way. My fate is as old as the Hindu scriptures that gave me these wretched arms, and their usurpers have evolved. My once-sympathetic Shudra comrades, born of Purusha's feet are now the post-1990s neo-Brahmins that stomp on my assertive words of equality with neo-violence.

I show up sometimes as the spirit of unity and solidarity in Declaration of Empathy petitions, but I am still the more than 300,000 defeated hearts of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, which failed to recognize me as a victim of descent-based discrimination. Maybe my place is at the back of those 'I Am' signs, scribbled in invisible ink: Nobody is Me, There Are Many Like Me.

Priti Gulati Cox is an artist living in Salina, Kansas. She also writes articles on some of the issues she addresses in her artwork. Her writings have appeared in AlterNet, Al Jazeera, Counter Currents, Counter Punch and Green Social Thought. She can be contacted at [email protected]


 



 

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