New Delhi: Inspired by the spate of countrywide anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act/National Register of Citizens protests, a group of actors, directors, authors and musicians from Bengal have strung together evocative verses in a Bangla video – ‘Kagoj aamra dakhabo na (We won’t show papers)’.
While this video is a spinoff of Varun Grover’s defiant and widely acclaimed Hindi poem, ‘Hum kagaz nahin dikhayenge (We won’t show papers)’, the 14-member group is likely to create more such modules of Bangla poetry and music in days ahead.
“We are next planning a module based on Salil Chowdhury’s famous ‘Pathe ebaar namo shathi pathe hobe e path chena (Come to the streets comrades and know the path lying ahead)’,” actor Dhritiman Chatterjee told The Wire.
The video includes popular Bengali personalities like Manoranjan Byapari, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Konkona Sen Sharma, Swastika Mukherjee, Nandana Sen, Suman Mukhopadhyay, Tilottama Shome, and Rupam Islam along with Dhritiman Chatterjee. The idea crystallised towards the end of December, when fresh anti-CAA/NRC protests were erupting every day. “We met at my house in Kolkata and thought we should use the power of social media and intervene in the situation,” Chatterjee said.
He clarified that the protest poem did not in any manner represent the general mood of the Bengali film industry.
Here is a loose translation of the poem, prepared by The Wire:
Governments will come and go,
We won’t show our papers.
Oppressors will come and go,
We won’t show our papers.
Never mind water canons and teargas,
We will not show our papers.
Love and revolution in our hearts,
We won’t retreat in fear.
We won’t show our papers.
This country is as much mine as it is of others,
Where Bismil and Ramprasad are one.
You can’t divide us by religion.
We won’t show our papers.
Bring on internet shutdowns,
Hit us on heads with police sticks.
The slogans won’t stop.
No way will we show our papers.
Enough of dividing us on caste and religion,
With your deceptive Mann-ki-baat.
We will be deceived no longer.
We won’t show our papers.
We have ‘Jana Gana Mana’ on our lips,
And in our soul the Constitution.
Come to the streets everyone, let’s give them a fight.
We will not stop the fight.
We won’t show our papers.
Not caste, food is what the people want.
Neither mandir, nor masjid,
We want our freedom.
We won’t show our papers.