Walking With The Comrades
Gandhians with a Gun? Arundhati Roy plunges into the sea of Gondi people to find some answers...
Arundhati Roy
Comrade Sukhdev asks if he can download the music from my Ipod onto his computer. We listen to a recording of Iqbal Bano singing Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge (We will Witness the Day) at the famous concert in Lahore at the height of the repression during the Zia-ul-Haq years.
Jab ahl-e-safa-Mardud-e-haram,
Masnad pe bithaiye jayenge
(When the heretics and the reviled will be seated on high)
Sab taaj uchhale jayenge
Sab takht giraye jayenge
(All crowns will be snatched away
All thrones toppled)
Hum dekhenge
Fifty thousand people in the audience in that Pakistan begin a defiant chant: Inqilab Zindabad! Inqilab Zindabad! All these years later, that chant reverberates around this forest. Strange, the alliances that get made.
(English Translation) We shall see
We shall see
It is a must that we shall see
The day that has been prophesized
The one written on the Tablet of Fate
We shall see
When the insurmountable mountains of oppression
Shall blow as if cotton flakes
And beneath the feet of us common folk
This land will throb with a deafening sound
And upon the heads of the despotic folk
Lightening will strike a thundering pound.
We shall see
When from the Palace of our Lord
All earthly gods will be taken out
We, righteous ones, outcasts of Church,
shall don a glorious robe, no doubt.
All crowns will fly
All thrones will fall
We shall see
Only the name of the Lord will stay on
who is unseen, yet ever seeing
who is the sight, as well as the scene
The shout of "I am The Truth"* shall rise
which is true for you and I
and the creation of the Lord will rule
which is true for you and I.
We shall see
It is a must that we shall see
We shall see.
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