July 03, 2021

The female poet voicing India's Covid tragedy

topic:	Health and Sanitation
located:	India
editor:	Tish Sanghera

With translations in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Assamese, English and now even German, a poem describing the horrors of India's second Covid-19 wave is being celebrated as astute socio-political commentary. 

The 114-line poem, titled Shabvahini Ganga and written by Parul Khakkar, a Gujarati homemaker in India's western region, was originally shared on the author's Facebook page. It has since spread across the globe, winning fans and breaking hearts for its poetic depiction of the River Ganges as a "hearse of corpses."  

As crematoriums struggled to cope with mounting deaths and poor families could not afford to pay for increasingly expensive firewood, images of the covid-dead wrapped in funeral attire and floating down the Ganges, or Ganga, appeared continuously on social media. 

For many Indians, these scenes encapsulated the government's botched pandemic response. Now even the dead were suffering at the hands of ill-prepared bureaucrats, who months earlier declared India had beaten Covid, held political rallies with thousands in attendance and allowed the world's largest religious festival to take place. 

Khakkar's reference to a "naked King" that is "lame and weak" has been widely read as a reference to India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. The PM's popularity has been waning in the aftermath of the second wave and his administration has been criticised for its puny performance. Modi appeared on TV during the peak of the crisis but failed to take responsibility for the dire situation (hospitals were running out of oxygen and turning people away).

While Khakkar has won the admiration of many across India and the global diaspora for voicing the tragedy and trauma experienced by almost every household in recent weeks, she has also gained many enemies. 

Unsurprisingly, ardent followers of the BJP, India's current Hindu-nationalist ruling party, have trolled the author for her 'anti-national' and 'anti-hindu' poetry that mocks their leader, spamming her account with thousands of abusive messages. Ironically, Khakkar is known amongst literary circles as a devoted Hindu whose poetry has even been used by followers of certain deities for worship.

Khakkar's poem has been perhaps particularly triggering for BJP supporters because it's written in Gujarati and the author too is a daughter of Gujarat - the home state of PM Modi, his Home Minister Amit Shah and a traditional powerbase of the BJP. 

No one expects a dissenting voice holding up a mirror to government incompetence to emerge from this corner of the country; let alone from a proud Hindu woman. 

Image: Swarnavo Chakrabarti. 

Call to Action

Help women in India improve their habitats

Support now