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The farmer grows golden grain
The state sprouts spikes;
The farmer lets the waters run,
The state builds deadly dykes.
The farmer sends his sons to man
The army and the police;
The state calls him a terrorist
For protesting his cause in peace.
The state’s walls and fatal wires
Secure the republic
From ‘we the people’ who they say
Are not part of it.
The state is a democracy
Says Authority;
Democracies must not tell the truth
About state and society.
Citizens who make comment
May do so only if
They praise the government,
Or go jump off the cliff.
Foreigners who do not our perfection see
Are enemy India-haters;
Their gratuitous interventions
Prove them conspirators.
Our children are not malnourished,
Our women are not anaemic;
We have no poor people,
No Indian is ever sick.
A government in majority
Can never be in the wrong;
Such must be our compliance,
Such must be our song.
Our wisdoms are hoary,
The world must listen to us;
Our exceptionalism is greater
Than that of the United States.
We are the shining city
Atop the Himalayas;
The farmer who now is misled
Will surely vote for us.
Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.
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