| Published on 05-10-2007 In World | | Viewed 1950 times | | The colour of blood is saffron |
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| Written by
Amit Sengupta | 
The Great Spanish poet Pablo Neruda, who spent some years in Rangoon as the Chilean consul to Burma when he was just about 23, rediscovered the amazing texture of 'time and space' in this laid-back, slow and friendly country. In between falling in love and writing a painful farewell poem to 'Josie Bliss', from whose obsessive passion for him he reportedly ran away, Neruda wrote about how life-affirming is this flight of time. So what is wrong if what is being done in an entire day can be done in an hour in more technologically sophisticated societies?
It is the rhythm and fabric of time that is more rich, loaded with nuances, feeling its own sense and substance in the passage of time. The quality of time is more important and sacred then the 'quantity' of time or the product which follows the productivity of work.
Such is perhaps the beauty and patience of traditional societies, like the fisherman who can wait it out near the waters, or the boatman who can swing with the tide which never comes, not even on a full moon nights, like the poet whose verse is unhurried, like Neruda's magical poetry.
That is what comes back as the Buddhist monks in saffron (unlike the xenophones of Hindutva saffron in India) stake their lives, in tens of thousands, against the junta jackboot of the military mafia in Burma. The monks, who could wait and withdraw into the materialism of inner peace and tranquility, enter the streets in the same manner, and walk in long rows of silence, unhurried, like a river and a poem, unafraid of life, unafraid of death, unafraid of time.
That they are facing perhaps one of the most brutal and nasty dictatorships in the world has not deterred them; they kept coming out, with prayers for justice and peace, reworking a post-modern liberation theology in a small obscure country which has been forgotten by world powers. Except that the superpowers and neighbours like China, India and Russia have willfully and shamefully decided to relentlessly back the junta because of reasons other than democracy or humanity.
Think about it. These nations, and the western nations including Britain, which controlled Burma as its administrative territory in the early 20 th century, still use the colonial metaphor. They have ignored all pleas for justice, for democracy, against mass detentions and torture in jails for decades, against the elimination and disappearance of hundreds of students and dissidents, against killings of innocents, against organised State repression. They have allowed a little country and its condemned people to die a living death in abject suffering and imprisonment, in abject poverty.
Why?
This is because they are part of the loot and plunder of the natural resources and gas reserves of this pristine country on the borders of India's northeast. All these countries are using, extracting and eyeing the natural riches of Burma. Hence democracy can be damned, long live the junta.
That is why the world has allowed these decades of repression. That is why India and China are playing footsie while thousands of monks and students – the catalysts of the great resistance – are scripting a new textbook of struggle and freedom, not witnessed for a long time in contemporary history since the massive upsurge of students and citizens against the dictatorships in South Korea and Indonesia.
Look at this amazing picture: it's like that solitary protestor standing in front of the tanks despite the Tiananmen Square massacre in June, 1984, in Beijing, China. It's like the Japanese photographer still clicking in Rangoon , sprawled on the ground, moments after he is shot at point-blank range by a soldier, moments after which he will inevitably die. Like the monks in saffron, face to face with the armed machine of a military mafia in slow motion, the sound of their prayers hanging in silence, seeking peace, justice and freedom for the people of Burma and Aung Saan Suu Kyi, upholding the highest values of courage, resistance, tolerance and non-violence.
If the world – and India – is still behaving like a shameless ostrich, then it is a pointer that between modern foreign and economic policy and medieval barbarism, there is no dividing line -- it's all the same. Cold, cold-blooded, bloody inhuman.
China, we all know, is run by a totalitarian mafia, almost like Burma. It has nothing to do with the original philosophy of communism or democracy. This is exactly what they did in Nepal – backing the king's autocratic emergency and working against the mass movement for democracy. China 's leaders resemble more the characters of the gangster movies in 'Chinese Hollywood' -- chasing pragmatic capitalism, totally immoral. And ruthless.
But what about India? Why has this 'superpower' become so speechless and toothless? Why can't they hear the guns and see the blood-red holes on saffron bodies and witness the midnight raids? What stops them to back democracy and the people versus a corrupt and cruel mafia in uniform?
That is why the Neruda poem comes back: Come and see the blood on the streets… Come and see the blood on the streets… come and see the blood on the streets…
Because, in Burma, the colour is blood is first saffron, then red. |
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