Karamchedu Massacre
For a pride of backstabbed lions
"Dear, you left holding your head in shame as you couldn't live in a cruel world where the sons of immoral birth live?" (Sri Sri Mahaprasthanam)
Sometimes poets can intuit
wolf-paws sneak into the den
of sleeping lions but die many
times before their death.
Man! You wash your buffalo in
clean water you call untouchable;
Slur my lame brother,
bull whip a sister and
call it heroism and
your birth, a noble one;
You blame our fair protest
as a low defiance against
an upper caste “honor.”
You secretly commune
for a final solution your
ruling landlords and
movie magnates fund with
your Chief godfather's approval!
Brothers! You should've given
the time and place and come
in a broad daylight like men to
see what a pride of lions could do.
Instead you wrapped your
soft spines in machetes and
axes and spearheaded your
spite for an ignoble cause in
the secret hour of darkness
to steal the light away from the
humility of our thatched happiness
while we were still asleep dreaming
a sun at our doors, we still struggle
every day to keep the wolf away from.
You looted the green fields
from the earth of our bodies
and the natural shadows
that sheltered our history that
knows the secrets of your birth.
The feet of your drunken pride
and burning envy danced
on our mangled bodies
in the rice fields like vultures
dragging away the entrails
of future out of our bellies
raped the honor of
our sentiments and
amputated our arms
that shouldered the
palanquins of your pride.
Do you remember
how we watered
our own lands you
grabbed for your
rice fields fragrant
of our red sweat
and the same aroma of
the food you dine in your
silverwares
You know how you stabbed
in our backs that bore the
honor of Karamchedu
and watered the glorious
roots of its history while you
still lay tired in your beds?
Do you see the bright grains
of our hardened blood that
groans in your fields like Abel's?
A veteran actor comes
with a Gandhian face
and sheep's clothing, to pay
a consoling visit making our
moaning graveyard his stage
for proficient crocodile tears
to those slit-throated doves.
My raped sister swallows
the spit of our boiling anger
back into her bleeding throat
because the blindness of
your hardened conscience
cannot see the pain.
Author: Sreekanthe Kopuri
On OMPJ | Website
Photo Credit: Chaitanya Chunduri on Unsplash
On July 17, 1985, a rich community of landlords massacred dalits in Karamchedu village of Andhra Pradesh state in India. The provocation for the violence came from a trivial incident in which a Dalit boy objected to a boy from upper caste soiling the water tank where Dalits drew their drinking water. The landlords felt that their caste-supremacy was challenged by the Dalits, who were perceived as “untouchables” and “nobodies.”
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