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Wall (not text) by Libby Fullard©
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Wall (not text) by Libby Fullard©
Post Script:
When Hindus [took] up cudgels on behalf of their Gods ... p. xii
I didn't write this poem. I don't even know the name of the little girl who walked up to the dais, picked up a piece of chalk from the floor and wrote these words on the wall. But I will never forget her face; its vulnerability and courage.
And I carry her poem in my head. It brings back memories. Memories of mass violence, fear, distrust and confusion. Empty streets and the piercing whistle of an occasional police van. Shrieks at night and media reports of killing and bloodshed. This was December 1992; the days following the destruction of an ancient mosque by a group of Hindus in India.
There is also another image. A bright winter morning in the Public Gardens of Hyderabad. We laughed and sang, held hands and walked around. We raised our voices in protest.We called ourselves "Artists against Communalism".
We were sitting on a raised platform which people sometimes used for stage performances. A woman among us stood up and called out, "Any one who wants to write something, a poem may be or a slogan or draw a picture, this floor is all yours." She turned back and said, "And this wall too.I have some pieces of chalk here."
For a while there was silence. All of us were used to writings on the wall. Walls in India are used by political parties for campaigning, by business houses to advertise their wares and by anyone who has any vulgar comment to make on anything. But a poem on the wall? What can one write? There was also a sense of shame in that silence. There had been a rent in the secular fabric of India and we were feeling ashamed of ourselves. Was the secularism of India a lie? Were we tricked into believing that lie? Or were we the betrayers?
While we looked on it was the younger children who took the lead.We joined in slowly, a little hesitantly perhaps. Together we wrote and drew, read each others' words and recognised our collective desire for a better world.
Were we building Babel? I think we were. To me both the sites look strikingly similar. From one wall to another then ...
From Bandana Pattanaik
CHARGE
OCCUPATION
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