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Surat
December 1992

SARBPREET SINGH

 

 

 

 


This is the fifth in a series of poems and essays by Sarbpreet Singh, marking the 30 year since India's anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984. The poem refers to the anti-Muslim violence of December 1992. In Surat, Gujarat, India, scores of Muslim women were pulled off a Bhusaval bound train; their menfolk and their children were butchered and they were made to strip, and were chased naked through the streets by gleeful mobs: one more horrific incident of violence against minorities in the Indian State of Gujarat.

 


 

There is no moon

Your naked whiteness

Softly lights

The silent streets

Unmetalled with

Compassion

Strewn with jagged

Broken pieces of

Hatred

 

The scream that

Escapes from your

Lips, clenched bleeding,

Bursts from the mouth

Of another

Hundreds of miles away

 

The bitter tears that flow

Down your tender cheeks

Splash into the river

That has flown from her eyes

For eight long years

 

Try not to cover the shame

Of your nakedness

With tattered rags

Its useless;

Her body has burnt to ashes

Every sheet she tried

To cover hers with

 

Your violated body

Is but another lick

In the timeless

Inferno of injustice,

Which cannot be smothered

By clothes or vengeance

 


October 30, 2013

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December 1992"









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