Brahma Prakash’s ‘Body on the Barricades’ is a moving imagery of the gasping republic

The book enfolds literary and poetic challenges to the oppressions of authority and power, specifically, institutional power. It poses an analytical challenge to the 'barricades' of life and existence in an authoritarian world.

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WHEN I first read the title of this book, I was reminded of the winter of 2020, when farmers from all over northern India came marching to Delhi's borders, which were to become their home for the next 15 months.

The young and the old, mounted on tractors and trucks, agitated against the Central governments' enactment of new farm laws, and pushed aside the barricades that came in their way across roads and into rivers like so many weightless cardboard toys.

Today, barricades have come to mean so much to us. They are the boundaries externally imposed upon us as 'citizens' and limits that we continuously push as 'people'.

This book provides meaning and context to the barricades in our lives, society and politics. In this engaging commentary on Indian socio-political life, Brahma Prakash tries to find answers to our current predicament, where we find it difficult to effectively breathe, imagine, create, speak and live in a body politic, under a right-wing neo-liberal siege.

He finds the roots of this predicament, as a whole, in the nature of our body politic itself— the Brahmanical, deeply hierarchical and inhuman foundations of our republic. This reminds me of Anand Teltumbde's Republic of Caste, wherein he writes that: "how beneath the veneer of a modern, developing, superpower India remains a republic of caste."

Academics are often known to keep it 'methodological'. Texts written without a well-defined methodology are not considered objective enough, hence, the extent to which these texts can be generalised, is difficult to determine.

The text of this book comes across as a counterfactual. It uses the "methodology of the heart", while making the readers feel like it was written by them, or at the very least that it harbours some of the emotions that the readers might have experienced in the past few years.

"Like many writers, I believe epic tragedies and violence have to have an epic writing response; they cannot be captured merely by stating facts and information." writes Brahma Prakash. What lies at the core of this book is the author's uneasiness and response to 'curtailment' of various sorts.

A pain tempered by poetry

The book grapples with difficult social and political issues, which some readers might find painful to engage with, but the author's unique literary and poetic touch helps them navigate the complex topics.

Also read: No country for young men – A review of 'Affairs of Caste' 

Despite such literary and poetic flourish, the book is not devoid of the political consciousness of its times. Qala ka phool bas raja ki khidki me hi khilega (the flower of art would only blossom in a king's window), wrote the revolutionary poet, Avatar Singh 'Pash', dejected at the complete surrender of art in front of power.

This text, on the contrary, defies the restrictions imposed by the troubled political times and attempts to speak truth to power and succeeds.

Apart from prologue and epilogue, this book is home to eight chapters. All chapters are roughly of the same size but differently painted and decorated, tied together by the fundamental themes of curtailment, resistance, hope, hopelessness and resilience.

Breathing and other revolutionary acts

One of the intentions of this book is to interrogate an act that most of us take for granted— breathing. The first chapter is titled 'We can't Breathe'. It is also about being in a state of breathlessness— physical, psychological and political.

The chapter beautifully dissects the tragic perpetual struggles that humans—in societies and as nations— go through to escape this state of breathlessness and find new possibilities to emerge together as a 'we', in solidarity and fraternity.

The chapter gets its name from George Floyd's dying words, "I cant breathe!" which shook the core of the self-styled world's oldest democracy, and it echoes the cry of "kaaghaz nahin dikhaengey!" (we won't show our papers) that became a popular battle-cry during the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in a country that likes to call itself the world's largest democracy.

From the dying whisper to the roaring battle-cry, Prakash's poetic and captivating prose unravels what it means to be marginalised, pushed aside, ignored, crushed, humiliated and forced to die in the ailing republics.

All these themes have been joined through the frame of curtailment, which denotes the state of restriction and seizure over movement, thoughts, ideas, bodies and lives. However, the curtailment contains within its bounds a ground for nurturing new seeds of nascent solidarities, which will blossom into plants of new possibilities and hope towards a better future.

Words and power

What masks this curtailment is 'words'— deceptive and manipulative. The next chapter on 'Words and Demagogues' interrogates how words are distorted, manipulated, twisted by a demagogue. The chapter begins with a description of the extent of power that words carry, exemplified by a wide array of forces across time and space, from Bhakti saints and Sufis rising against unjust social and religious orders, to killings of activists like Gauri Lankesh and Narendra Dabholkar.

Also read: 'Sound of Freedom' and 'The Kerala Story': A comparison of the socio-legal reaction in the US and India

Words lose their emancipatory potential once they land up in the lap of a demagogue. 'People' can very well be transformed from a revolutionary force to a mob that excludes, discriminates, oppresses and, ultimately, kills.

Words that used to heal earlier now give life to hateful propaganda and lies, acting in service of the leader putting those at the margins at the risk and danger of persecution. As Sudhir Mishra's latest Netflix release depicts, every hate crime begins with an Afwaah (rumour); and what is a rumour if not a politically charged, distorted bouquet of words, soaked in the syrup of believability and packaged as the truth.

In today's times, when an afwaah travels faster than anything else, Prakash's commentary in the next section on 'Will you hate him', as you hate me' painstakingly unravels the anatomy of hate against India's minorities, particularly Muslims. The extreme manifestation of such hate became visible during the Covid pandemic, when Muslims were declared the 'dangerous contagion' and 'dealing with them' took precedence over dealing with the virus.

The politics of otherisation, stereotyping and Islamophobia has taken hold of everything, from the realm of the material and physical, to the domain of the emotional and psychological. Nothing is spared. Food, language, attire, names, architecture and color, everything is divided between 'us' and 'them'.

Through the memories of Hasni daiya, the author reminisces how even years of everyday communication with the 'other' could not absolve one of their hatred, that now sits in the very bones of the majority community. No matter how hard you try, it just does not  go away.

The worker and his tools

The next chapter, 'Dance of the migrant labourers', is a moving account on the plight of migrant workers who walked on railway tracks at a time when the mercury was crossing 40°C, and the country was literally locked down.

Echoing the Marxist concept of workers' 'alienation' from the object of production, Prakash writes: "With affection, with perfection, with blood and sweat, they make cities liveable. But as soon as the houses are ready to move in, they have to move out."

Thousands suffered, were injured and died not because of the virus, but due to the hunger, thirst, exhaustion, exasperation and hopelessness resulting from poor administrative response to the pandemic coupled with a deep-seated social apathy.

What also underlines the discussion is the constant tossing of the migrant labourers, the poor and marginalised castes between the city and the village. Urban and rural settings may differ in their treatment of labourers, yet they reinforce the underlying mechanisms of exploitation in the most humiliating and inhumane ways. 

"[T]he caste occupation from the village to the cities continues, as there is a straight highway of the caste line that runs from Darbhanga and Dindigul to Delhi and Bengaluru," Prakash writes.

The author hints at the underlying dangers of the constant exploitation of the working class, as if we are standing on the cusp of something bigger when everything will "burst asunder" in a Marxian sense.

Also read: Basic structure and constitutional morality: Are they meta-constitutional norms?

He says, "What will happen when they start walking back, against the desire of the authority, against the flow of capital, against the performance drive that is driving us to this madness?"

The king and the poet

The next chapter, on 'The Trial of Art', reads like a heartfelt ode to all those whom the State has failed, whose art refuses to bow in front of the powers that be, who are speaking truth to power, and paying for it. In the recent past poets, writers and artists have been subjected to the worst kind of political witch-hunting.

From Bhima-Koregaon-11 to activists of the Kala Kabir Manch, many continue to be behind bars, facing extraordinary laws and fighting legal battles in the hope that justice would be on their side.

The State and the poet are bound to be in a state of opposition. Their goals are antithetical. While the State demands more and more rationalisation, poets and artists crave the room for free and radical imagination, but the two ends never meet.

By making this fundamental claim, Prakash finds himself on the side of the poets and artists, who, through their writings and imagination, "instigate the conscience" of people.

Field report

In an act of dissemination of hope, the next chapter on 'March of the Mustard' passionately and optimistically recalls how the recent protests challenged and debunked the claimed invincibility of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's regime. 

In one of the best descriptions of protests that I have read in recent times, Prakash presents before us what it means to say 'I protest'. From anti-CAA and the protests against the dilution of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 to farmers' protests, he beautifully captures the aesthetics of the protests.

He paints them as grounds where new solidarities emerge, new slogans are raised, and hope in the collective power of the people is reinstated.

Prakash writes, "Covered in green and yellow, they marched as fields were marching. They marched as crops were marching; they marched as the wheat was marching. They marched as soil and sweat were marching."

By defying the claims that the success of protests lies in the achievement of their aims, he argues that we need to look at protests beyond their immediacy. Moreover, the description also calls for a need to rearticulate the idea of (non)violence, from a position of vulnerability instead of privilege.

Russian doll of a siege

Speaking of protests, in the next section called 'A Siege Against the Siege', through the Una strike of 2016, Prakash has not only challenged the dominant understanding of 'strikes' but has also attempted to unravel the hollow foundations of the Hindu social order.

Drawing from Ambedkar's understanding of strikes as a 'breach of contract of service', he asks: "What will happen in caste society when Dalits or lower castes or, for that matter, women, breach this social contract?" We all know the answer to this question— the collapse of our social, economic and political systems.

The Una strike was 'non-violently violent'. By refusing to engage in the middle-class civil society-based, well-choreographed modes of protest, the Una strike stripped off the bare hypocrisy of the Hindu caste system.

Also read: 'The Silent Coup: A History of India's Deep State' by Josy Joseph – a book review

The chapter has replaced the popular image of caste-oppressed people from being victims to people who have the moral courage as well as the physical strength to take on with their oppressors and how!

An obituary for a phoenix?

Ending the book in a heart-wrenching section titled 'A Show for the Dead', Prakash asks: "What happens when a funeral procession is banned and grieving itself is perceived to be a threat? One is not allowed to grieve. One is not allowed to touch the dead."

Dignity in death was taken for granted to the point where the victim of the Hathras rape case was cremated without the permission or presence of her family.

It reminds one of the virus-infected dead bodies, sailing across the rivers at the peak of the Covid pandemic in India. It brings us out of our comfort zones and makes us confront the reality that we as a people have no one to be taken care of by, when we are alive and in our death.

The State  understands the triggering effect of mourning and its potential to ignite resistance very well.

Pash, through another one of his powerful verses says, "Mein to ghas hoon, tumhare har kiye dhare pe ug aaunga" (I am grass, I will rise even from the debris). It is the imperishability of the human spirit, its ability to rise from the ashes that scares power. It is in the darkest of times, the times of mourning and death, that newer forms of life sprout.

This book proves to be a strong example of how politics can be made more effective, relatable and sensory.

"We are not making an exit. This is not the end. We are only taking a pause. We will meet again at the barricades, in words, for life and freedom. A popular saying goes that the barricade closes streets but opens ways," concludes Brahma Prakash.

As I finished reading the book, I had mixed emotions. There are moments where the book becomes simply overwhelming at the thought of the world suffering on unimaginable levels.

However, the style of writing adopted by Prakash also makes you feel like the prose never ends. It makes you crave for more. There is so much more that needs to be talked about.

There are so many stories of hope and hopelessness that need to be included. However, one is often bound by the limitations of time and space. Perhaps the limitations call for more to be written, since so much still feels unsaid. Perhaps a sequel to it, provided that the language remains as lyrical, and the arguments as edgy.