Is there any poetry on the net from the 1940s during the Riots in India between the Hindus and Muslims?
I would like to discuss one of the poems for my poetry class. Please leave links to the direct poem or poetry.
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I would like to discuss one of the poems for my poetry class. Please leave links to the direct poem or poetry.
You could try for poetry about Gandhi. It might be a good starting place.
I have an original contribution:
Riots are bad,
and oh so sad.
But actually I hope you find some, that was a very sad period in history.
Some one million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs died from communal violence that followed the partition of India in 1947, and left Amrita Pritam, a Punjabi refugee at age 28, when she left Lahore and moved to New Delhi. Subsequently in 1948, while she was pregnant with her son, and travelling from Dehradun to Delhi, she expressed anguish on a piece of paper as the poem, “Aaj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu” (I ask Waris Shah Today); this poem was to later immortalize her and become the most poignant reminder of the horrors of Partition. The poem addressed to the Sufi poet Waris Shah, author of the tragic saga of Heer and Ranjah and with whom she shares her birth place, the Punjabi national epic:
Aj aakhan Waris Shah nun, kiton kabraan vichchon bol,
Te aj kitab-e-ishq daa koi agla varka phol
Ik roi si dhi Punjab di, tun likh likh maare vaen,
Aj lakhaan dhian rondian, tainun Waris Shah nun kaehn
Uth dardmandaan dia dardia, uth takk apna Punjab
Aj bele lashaan bichhiaan te lahu di bhari Chenab
Today, I call Waris Shah, “Speak from your grave”
And turn, today, the book of love’s next affectionate page
Once, a daughter of Punjab cried and you wrote a wailing saga
Today, a million daughters, cry to you, Waris Shah
Rise! O’ narrator of the grieving; rise! look at your Punjab
Today, fields are lined with corpses, and blood fills the Chenab – Amrita Pritam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amrita_Preetam