This Country is Broken by Bapurao Jagtap, Literatures from the Margin, B.A English Literature, 3rd Year 6th Semester, Elective Paper, University of Madras

 B.A English Literature

3^rd Year 6^th Semester

Elective Paper – BEN-DSE2C

Literatures from the Margin

UNIT-1: Poetry 

1.3 “This Country is Broken”– Bapurao Jagtap

About Author:

     Bapurao Jagtap is a famous Marathi Poet.

About Poem:

     The poem ‘This Country is Broken’ attempts to highlight the roots and existence of the pitiful Dalit community who are continually overshadowed by the upper class. He adds that the upper class blindly refuses to acknowledge the existence of the Dalits in the society.

     The poet express his brethren, in a tone of pain and anguish mixed with sarcasm, asking them to abandon this land and settle elsewhere.

Text:

This country is broken into a thousand pieces;

Its cities, its religion, its castes,

Its people, and even the minds of the people

- all are broken, fragmented.

In this country, each day burns

Scorching each moment of our lives.

We bear it all, and stand solid as hills

In this our life

That we do not accept.

Brother, our screams are only an attempt

To write the chronicle of this country

-this naked country

with its heartless religion.

The people here rejoice in their black laws

And deny that we were ever born.

Let us go to some country, brother,

Where, while you live, you will have

A roof above your head,

And where, when you die, there will at least be

A cemetery to receive you.

Summary:

    The poet points out that this country is broken as there is no equality and no freedom to the downtrodden people. They are treated as the other or the outcaste. He further says that this country is having a heartless rigid religion and most of them rejoice the black laws that are favoring the upper castes. These people don’t even consider that these Dalits are even born in this country. They deny their right as man and treat Dalits with disgrace. This poem is making the people understand the agonies of the Dalits who are attempting to write the chronicle of the country.

   The following lines, “The people here rejoice in their black laws And deny that we were ever born” is heightened the heart-wrenching misery by the poet that the country celebrates these discriminative and inhumane laws made only for the benefit of the upper class society.

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