While the 60s and 70s was the golden period of protest poetry and songs, with demonstration having found a space in social life of the country, the genre has seen a revival of sorts, says Saimi Sattar
Jab taj uchale jaenge...
Jab takht girae jaenge...
Iqbal Bano’s sonorous voice spirals and echoes. The applause that follows is thunderous so the ghazal singer repeats the line from Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s immortal nazm. Hearing the recording of public rendition of Hum Dekhenge which was sung in Lahore in 1986 to oppose Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorial regime is enough, even when we are 33 years removed from the actual performance, to give a person goosebumps. And for a long time, the subcontinent swore by this very poetic and, at the same time, public exhortation to the masses. However, of late, revolutionary poetry has seen a resurgence of sorts powered by rejection by students of many norms set by the generation that holds the reigns of power and, in effect, makes rules.
So while Hum Dekhenge continues to occupy a legendary status befitting its lyrics, Varun Grover’s Hum Kagaz Nahi Dikhayenge has spiralled up the popularity charts with three different renderings having a total of 2,77,000 views within six days of them being aired on YouTube. The poem which itself takes inspiration from Rahat Indori’s Sabhi ka khoon shaamil hai yahan ki mitti me, which too has found its way in posters and slogans at different places, 30 years after it was penned. Of course set against the backdrop of the CAA-NRC protests that have rocked the capital and many other Indian cities, it was bound to gain traction.
Another old poem doing the rounds is Habib Jalib’s Dastur rendered by Shashi Bhushan, a visually impaired student from Jawaharlal Nehru University. The song talks of dismissing established norm.
“Poetry, slogans and some sort of symbols are what make a strong imprint on people’s mind,” says Yashasvi Chawla, a part of a collective called Ankahi United consisting of about 10-15 people who engage in poetry, street theatre and videos and more on weekends.
He goes on to point out that songs are easier to put any message across. “We actually make the songs in a way so that people can join in. In the song, Ki wo dono politician the has a chorus which says ‘Kaho galat kahi? Nahin sarkar’ which makes it engaging. We try to make them comical so that it sticks in the minds of the people,” adds Yashasvi. Though the group does have some intense numbers like Pinjra which talks about internet shutdown in the country. “One out of a 1,000 speeches will stick in your mind. You will throw away the pamphlet. But, a song, you will remember,” he adds.
Harshveer, who runs the Instagram page Storysellercomics agrees, “A jingle gets more attention, is more sharable and engaging. It is wittier and thus makes more of an impact because it is more interesting. Even if someone does not know about an issue, if they hear a four line poem, just by virtue of it they will get interested in the issue.”
Harshveer who writes all kinds of poetry, some of which is also socially relevant says that the internet and thus the availability of a number of channels have made the space for poetry more democratic. When we share it, it reaches out to at least 10 people who react and share their opinions and thoughts. Moreover, in a family of four, each receives information from different sources which is shared among family members, thus disseminating it further.”
Another thing that he has noticed is that women, who were earlier marginalised, have come out in large numbers to protest against the new Act. And this he believes has also to do with the fact that a lot of the art is driven by them in contemporary times.
Poet and singer Amir Aziz, who release his first protest song, Ache Din Blues on the eve of the 2019 General Elections says, “While I can’t say where revolutionary poetry will go but there are two important things. These are historical documentations about what is going on in the times. So someone has to write it in a way that it can communicate the feeling of the day. It can also make people feel heartened, which is a positive thing.”
However, having said that, Amir strikes a discordant about poetry holding out a beacon of hope. “Saying that poetry holds hope is a contradiction as we have seen so many failures during revolutions. We will have to accept that we have been mistaken and betrayed during revolutions so our poetry needs to reflect that too unlike that from the 60s or the 70s. During the freedom struggle for instance, one could say ‘Sarfaroshi ki tamanna,’ but no longer. We are still living in the nostalgia of that kind of poetry and drawing inspiration from it. I also do that when I look to John Lennon or Bob Dylan when writing my work,” he says.
However, Ankahi United has another aim as well. Not just inspiration, the group which started out with Naveen Choure, Yashasvi Chawla, Gargi and Harsh Sharma, wants it to be a source of information as well. “In between performing two or three songs we also talk to people and tell them about the things that we know. So even if people are aware of an issue, they might have incomplete information. Our aim is that if they come with 40 per cent knowledge, they go back with about 70 per cent about what the whole point of the protest is,” says Yashasvi.
Yashasvi emphasises that the group is against violence whether inflicted by the protesters or the police and says, “I think protest and poetry are intertwined. If there are protests at a very large scale for a right reason and cross a certain scale where a lot many people are affected then poetry cannot be stopped from being linked with the protests because it is the best way to make the audience aware while ensuring that they do not lose focus of the issue,” he says.
Yashasvi says that the aim of their performances is also to raise questions which are necessary especially the ones which weren't being raised or put out the opinions of those who can't voice them. “The answers are already there. All we need to do is make the people aware,” he says. So during the current protests they highlight, how according to them, the CAA alone is wrong and when combined with NRC how it will affect the country, how it is not needed, especially the economy, is going south. “We should get away from CAA-NRC and also highlight the things that we want which include getting the economy back on track, jobs, any other thing that is not right,” he adds.
Amir has another interesting point to make in the context of the the songs that he has written and especially about the current protests. “While writing, I am stuck in an identity even if I want to escape from it because the kind of society that we have built ensures that my name is enough to classify me as a Muslim. I am not trapped in this identity as I don’t say the words through the lens of being a Muslim. But while documenting the times when one community has been singled out, I will have to name it. For instance while talking of Nazi Germany we can’t just say that people were killed as that won’t make sense. Jews were killed and that has to be documented. So even though it might appear that I am trying to assert the identity of a community, it is essentially humanitarian in nature. In the song Strange Fruit, Nina Simone refers to black bodies after all because that was the reality of that time.”
Yashasvi points out that the protests are not powered by any political party. “Personally, as a group, we are not talking to any party or leader. We are doing it as per our own understanding of what is going on. People whom we have met during our group performances at Jantar Mantar and India Gate or at individual ones at Shaheen Bagh are pretty much aware of the issue and it is not as if someone is putting this thought in their mind or manipulating them. This is best illustrated by the instance that Priyanka Gandhi was told not to politicise the issue at India Gate by some of the protesters themselves,” he says.
Amir who first started a YouTube Channel before performing on streets and has one more observation. “When I read out the poetry live, the enthusiasm is much lesser as compared to what it is on the internet. I can gauge if my performance is good or bad so that is not the reason for the somewhat less warm response. Maybe if reading out poetry continues, then people will start responding more,” says the singer whose Ballad of Pehlu Khan documented the lynching of the dairy farmer from Alwar.
But at the end of the day, what all these groups and individuals are setting out to do is follow what German playwright Bertolt Brecht said,
“In the dark times Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”
