Approver | A Poem From Prison

Dalit rights activist Sudhir Dhawale wrote this poem in Taloja jail in Navi Mumbai where he was incarcerated for more than 6 years in connection with the Bhima Koregaon- Elgar Parishad case. Besides being a tireless rights campaigner, Dhawale is a prolific writer and spent the punishingly long mundane hours in solitary confinement penning down his thoughts. He authored five books and numerous poems. The following poem is an ode to his artiste friends Sagar Gorkhe and Ramesh Gaichor from Kabir Kala Manch, who were arrested in connection with the same case in 2020 by the National Investigation Agency. Before their arrests, the duo released a video, disclosing that they were being threatened by security agencies to turn an approver and spend less time behind bars. The two continue to remain imprisoned. 

I didn’t plant the bomb,

I didn’t even dream of it,

I shall not collaborate, with you.

An approver is

an accomplice to the devil,

and sleeping with the devil, blissfully

is the sleep of the sepulchre!

Your ultimate arrogance

threatens again and again

with a barrage of questions one after the other

You roll out your democratic weapons

of fear, fright and inducements

You issue final warnings again and again

Or else, you promise to ‘annihilate our lives'

and still, ‘if you don’t confess then,

we’ll get your mother, sister, wife, daughter

here, right in front of you...’

Yet, we didn’t bow to your tyranny

Didn’t even make offerings of shit.

We stood tall, steadfast

on the side of truth,

on the side of equality,

on the side of justice,

on the side of love...

We have awoken.

We are poets,

moulding weapons from words.

We don’t betray the people,

don’t abort principles.

The pen is our legacy,

to the words of our heritage

we remain faithful.

The writing of mercy petitions is your tradition

yet you can’t let go the conceit of the title of ‘Swantantra Veer’ 

We scorn 

your hypocritical traditions

We refuse

to join your treacherous and servile parade

Your are welcome to your fake freedom,

We 

shall not sell our souls,

We 

shall not auction our dreams,

Were we to speak quietly like this one by one,

your ego would only further swell.

As always, you’ve kept losing your balance.

You’ve always been of weak mind

and have had a perverse heart.

You rave

and snarl

“Surrender,

you sister f.”

You provoked the bee hive

and

then you clownishly yell

"Save me! Save me!"

You blocked every path back to our homes,

put barricades on the path of the light;

you it was who ran our media trials,

and went on to increase the number of arrests...

What fear of death can we have

We

are those who have given up our homes and all

We

are those who walk to the gallows with a smile

We shall never plead

before your naive jails and barricades.

We know for sure that

until the demons of sorrow are destroyed,

ideas shall never die!

(Translated from Marathi to English by Vernon Gonsalves. Vernon is also an activist and was accused in the Bhima Koregaon case.)