1. Polarisation:

When bridges are burned in the mind

Your sixth stage
Is polarisation,
The pulling apart
Of any threads
That might still bind
Victim and killer.

Here, when we ask
For land
Already watered
With our blood,
They say we are Dalits,
Untouchables,
Filth.

When we ask
For a seat in the classroom
Our ancestors built with unpaid hands,
They say
Pour the acid or
Cut my tongue.

When we love
Across the barbed wire of caste,
Our bodies become
Offerings
To their wounded honour.
They call it
"Honour killing";
We call it
The murder of the
Life,
Love,
Liberty,
Light,
Democracy,
Human values,
Law,
UDHR,
Modernity,
Soul,
Body,
Freedom,
Civilisation,
Future,
God's Creation.

They whisper that reservations
Are "reverse discrimination,"
That our tiny footholds
On the casteist face of power
Are in fact
A malign
Against their purity.

On the screens of smartphones
"Anti-Dalit" hate multiplies
Like a laboratory culture:
Memes of mockery,
Jokes with blades inside,
Anonymous handles
Vomiting old slurs
With new fonts.

Anti-caste moderates
Are taught to shut up
Writers killed,
Editors harassed,
Activists driven
To police stations
With lynching fans
And farewell bodies.

When you say
Polarisation is a step
Towards genocide,
We answer:
"Our villages
Have been polarised
Since time began.
Your theory
Is a latecomer
To this funeral."

2. Preparation:

The quiet before the storm.

Your seventh stage,
Preparation,
Is the grinding of knives
Behind closed doors.

Here, preparation,
Is as simple as simple
As the rumours on every Hindu breath:

"That Untouchable bastard sat on a chair in front of us."
"That Untouchable bastard read a book."
"That Untouchable bastard talked our girl."
"That Untouchable bastard loved our girl."
"That Untouchable bastard..."

Machetes are purchased
With the same calm
As bags of grain.
The path to the Dalit village
Is traversed in the daylight
By men who are merely
"Taking a stroll,"
Counting exits,
Calculating distances
From the Dalit ghettos.

Like Nagas came in Sumos
To teach me a lesson
For loving their Sümi Naga girl.

They displayed their
Manpower,
Muscle power,
Money power,
Media power,
For loving their Zünheboto girl
In the streets of Dimapur.

India screams "unity in diversity"
But when a Dalit
Loves their Satakha girl,
That slogan suffocates
On its own lips.

O Jurist,

You did not behold unity in diversity,
Nor diversity in unity
Not in the slow numbers,
Not in the clean files of the court,
Not in the deletions labelled "order."

But I beheld both
In this land
The instant a Dalit
Loved their Nagalim girl.

In slaying a Dalit,
In defiling a Dalit,
In humiliating a Dalit,
In filming a Dalit body nakedly,
They beheld unity in diversity
And diversity in unity:
Different languages,
Different gods,
Different races,
Different religions,
Different skin colours,
Different ideologies,
Different schools of thought,
Different geographies,
Different genders,
Different sexualities,
Different features,
The same upraised hand.

In every state,
Every bylane,
They assemble
With one sole aim
To muffle the flesh
That loved beyond the mark.

Whether a Sema girl or a Naga girl,
Brahmin girl or Shudra girl,
When a Dalit loves them,
Their Nagas or Sümis
Or Hindus
Or Muslims
Stand side by side,
Forgetting their strife,
Remembering only caste.

They come together
To efface a Dalit's body,
To destroy a Dalit's soul,
To make a lesson of his love
A textbook of terror
Taught in blood,
Tested in death,
Assessed in silence.

This is how I learned
The actual textbook
Of "unity in diversity":
They are many,
I am one,
And my offence
Is loving their Nagalim or Indian girl.

At the Capital level
Preparation
Is the never-created
Special court,
The never-funded
Witness protection,
The never-disciplined
Officer
Who failed us last time.

No trains run
To our Dalit carnage centers;
We are too poor
For such extravagance.
Instead, gasoline
In a bottle,
A box of matches,
Like in Kanchikacherla Kotesu Madiga massacre,
A large group of Hindu and Muslim men, women
and children
Who are heartened
By the certainty
Of impunity.

Your textbooks
Feature pictures
Of camps and barracks.
If you wish
To take a picture
Of our preparation,
You must zoom in
On a Hindu's and a Muslim's smile,
A lawmaker's shrug,
A bureaucrat's file
Gathering dust
While a complainant
Gathers threats.