A tribute to Trayvon, from Delhi

Trayvon Martin

You forgot your Biblical lessons,
Dear boy; God being Light, all
Good things are white;
And Satan being the prince
Of darkness, being born black
Is a hopeless mess.

Against such black vissicitudes
Was a just law found that said
To the white killer, “stand your ground.”

Only some sixty million of your forefathers
Were murdered in the slave trade;
Too many more are still left
To be made dead. Sinners are those
That think racism is bad.

Only when non-white trash gathers
Into a common cause is racism racism;
Zimmerman is merely God’s own prism.
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The deities we create

Published by The Hindu, Nov 6 2010.

I recall remarking once to a colleague that if we as citizens were given a choice of belonging only to one or the other theocratic state, my vote would be for a Hindu Rashtra.

And for the simple reason that whereas a Christian or Islamic State would give me no more than a handful of holidays a year, a Hindu Rashtra would give me many more. Indeed, the Hindu archive being chokeful of gods and goddesses, even a full working year may not do justice to them all.

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Badri’s Poems

[Collected here are some of Badri’s poems]

September 30, 2011

Crossing the Line

Sardar Montek Singh Ahluwalia,
He plan my poverty;
Suddenly I am a rich man,
For my income is thirty three.

Having crossed the line by a whole Rupee,
I now have more and more;
I see around my jhuggi things
I never could see before.

That magic buck floats angelic
Beyond my penury;
The thirty two upon the ground
Reach up for the Christmas tree.

The knowledge that this extra buck
Puts me among the haves,
Makes me feel I needed not
The sumptuous fishes and loaves

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Third World Story

by Badri Raina
first published in The Hindu November 7, 2008

VIJAY PRASHAD’S new book, The Darker Nations, is history enumerated not just by a scholar but by an anguished participant in the destiny of the world’s oppressed who scrutinises the collapse of a promising world-idea in order to understand better how new ways may be found to resurrect a humanist order.

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Heal and Renew

by Badri Raina
first published in the Mainstream Weekly, September 3, 2008

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark;
O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right.
(Hamlet)

In an act of conspicuous courage (some might say ‘audacity’) the young, bright, and fiercely upright Omar Abdullah has breached the pall of silence in which the Valley has remained suffocated since the coerced exodus of the Pandits in 1990.

In a statement recorded on his blog, Omar has made the following candid aversions that interrogate Kashmiri Muslims as a whole:

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