A letter from the cremation ground

O Dr. Stanton,

Your ten stages
Are a mirror
Held up
To a century of horrors.
We stand before it
And see
Our whole civilization
Already reflected.

You said genocide
Is a process,
Not an event.
I say:
For Dalits
It is a climate,
Not a storm.
You wanted
To warn the world
So it could intervene
Before the final stage.
We write to you
From a place
Where all ten
Are braided
Into daily bread.

Yet,
We are not only victims.
We are the children
Of those
Who refused to die quietly.

When they banned us
From temples,
We built statues
Of Ambedkar
Of John Rawls
At the village gate
And worshiped
Our own courage.
When they burned
Our huts,
We rebuilt them
With the ashes
Of their shame.

We rename our lanes
After martyrs;
We write poetry
On police complaints;
We smuggle hope
Into classrooms
Where teachers
Call us by our caste.

O Genocide Scholar,

Our grief,
Is not a museum exhibit.
It is an accusation,
A syllabus,
A prophecy.

Your ten stages
Help the world
To count our wounds.
But know this:
We are more
Than the mathematics
Of our suffering.

One day,
When genocide scholars
Open their books
To teach
About the Dalit history,
May they also read
The names of our rebellions:
Indian Currents,
John Rawls,
Ambedkar,
Phule,
Periyar,
Gopal Guru,
Gnana Aloysius,
Sharmila Rege,
Sundar Sarukkai,
Gail Omvedt,
Eleanor Zelliot,
Navayana,
Patnala Suguna Yadav,
Finnish Matthew Malow or
Indianised Mattimalla
And the countless unknown
Who turned their backs
On the religious system
That divided humans.

Until then,
We send you this poem
From the edge
Of your diagram,
From a country
Where genocide
Wears the slow,
Polite face
Of custom,
And ask:

How many lifetimes
Must a people
Walk through all ten stages
Before the world
Learns to say,
Without denial,
Without evasion,
Without delay:

"This too
Is Dalit Genocide
And it must end"?