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ShareYou will be saluting, as always, the "sujalaam, suphalaam, malayaja sheetalam, shasyashyamalam mataram". The motherland beautiful with sparkling streams and lush green fields, rich with water, fruit, crops and cool fresh air. Remember then the faces from Palamu in the east and Vidarbha in the west, the ravaged faces of starving farmers expected to feed the country who cannot even feed themselves, remember the stiff, dead cattle looming like Giacometti's nightmare, the mounting statistics for starvation deaths. Remember the cracked, burnt earth that is your motherland today.
In spite of hymns, chants and animal sacrifice, the rain gods have failed us. We made our virgin daughters plough the fields naked believing that the embarrassed rain gods would cover them up with sheets of rain. We have fasted and feasted for ritualistic frogs' weddings, pleading for the blessings of the river and rain. Yet we have had the driest summer in 83 years.
We have had 25 per cent less rain this year. Some districts have even had 80 per cent less. And when 60 per cent of farmland has no access to irrigation, that spells disaster. The government has finally recognised the threat. We now know that at least a quarter of India is facing a terrible drought.
Shubhra jyotsnaa pulakita yaamini, phullakusumita drumadala shobhini. But the silver moonlight doesn't make the night magical anymore, neither is our motherland as lavishly adorned with flowers. The smile has withered, the sweet words have dried on the suhaasinee, sumadhura-bhashinee mother. She now faces starvation, disease and the death of her children.
Not surprisingly, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's poem Vande Mataram (later set to music by Rabindranath Tagore) was offered in a similar context. In his 1882 novel Ananda Math, it was the battle-cry of the sanyasins fighting for freedom in a famine-devastated land. Ananda Math opens with heart-wrenching descriptions of famine. Of how the paddy fields dried into heaps of straw, how people starved, disease spreads, farmers sold their cattle and ate up their seed grains. People died of hunger in spite of the government food stocks. So they rose in revolt against the rulers who had betrayed them, and fought to reclaim their lost motherland of sparkling streams and green fertile fields, decked with flowers, fruit and the cool, gentle breeze, magical in moonlight.
Though not facing a 'famine' as such, India is undergoing a severe water and food crisis. And in a mature democracy, this sharp rise in endemic hunger, routine starvation deaths, the steady stream of suicides by farmers is no better than a famine. Especially since those who do not die of hunger, die of disease. For malnourished bodies are a haven for infections.
So maybe we should stop focusing only on upper class bugs like the swine flu -- which is thankfully still confined to the cities and kills far less than tuberculosis, malaria and the regular flu, which have been ravaging our countryside for months. And wait till swine flu encounters our malnourished millions, who have low immunity and no access to proper health care.
Tagore called Ananda Math a fable of famine. It tells the story of what happens when there is severe drought, and people starve to death and disease spreads. There is revolt against the rulers. Vande Mataram represents that.
We now have a government that has returned -- probably uniquely -- on grounds of welfare and development. On Independence Day it may want to urgently recognise the real message of Vande Mataram.
