#OmprakashValmiki #irrfankhan
The Late #Om_Prakash_Valmiki (1950-2013) hailed from Muzzafarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. He worked in the Government Ordnance Factories Board in India, but also published prolifically. He wrote self-reflexively about the Dalit experience and indicted the caste based social order through his work. In 1997, he published his autobiography, Joothan, which remains one of the most incisively honest and acclaimed accounts of Dalit life in the literary canon. “Kuan Thakur Ka” is from his early writings, in the 1980s, and reflects the agency in the face of indignation and stigma that marks Dalit lives. These poems are deeply and viscerally embedded in the politics of production and possession in relation to the systems of domination that caste has engendered over two millennia in South Asia.
【Poem : Thakur Ka Kuan】
चूल्हा मिट्टी का
मिट्टी तालाब की
तालाब ठाकुर का ।
The stove is made out of mud
The mud is sourced from the lake
The lake belongs to the landlord
भूख रोटी की
रोटी बाजरे की
बाजरा खेत का
खेत ठाकुर का ।
(We have) A hunger for bread
Bread made of pearl millet
Pearl millet grown in the fields
The field belongs to the landlord
बैल ठाकुर का
हल ठाकुर का
हल की मूठ पर हथेली अपनी
फ़सल ठाकुर की ।
The bull belongs to the landlord
The plough belongs to the landlord
The hands on the shaft of the plough are ours
The harvest belongs to the landlord
कुआँ ठाकुर का
पानी ठाकुर का
खेत-खलिहान ठाकुर के
गली-मुहल्ले ठाकुर के
फिर अपना क्या ?
गाँव ?
शहर ?
देश ?
The well belongs to the landlord
The water belongs to the landlord
The crops and the fields belong to the landlord
The lanes that run through these neighbourhoods belong to the landlord
Then what is ours?
The village?
The city?
The nation?
【1981】
3 май 2021
