This is my translation, with help from friends, of another poem by Makhdoom Mohiuddin. As always, the translation is still a work in progress — so if you know Urdu and English, and have suggestions, let me know through the comments (same goes for transliteration).

The poem itself was collected in his 1944 anthology, Surkh Sawera, or Red Dawn. It was written to protest Indian troops fighting for Britain in the “imperialist phase” (samraaji daur) of the second world war.

sipahi
makhdoom mohiuddin

jaane waale sipahi se poochho
voh kahaaN jaa raha hai

kaun dukhiya hai jo gaa rahi hai
bhooke bachchoN ko behla rahi hai
laash jalne ki boo aa rahi hai
zindagi hai ki chilla rahi hai

jaane waale sipahi se poochho
voh kahaaN jaa raha hai

kitne sehme hue haiN nazaare
kaisa Dar Dar ke chalte haiN taare
kya jawaani ka KhooN ho raha hai
surKh haiN aaNchaloN ke kinare

jaane waale sipahi se poochho
voh kahaaN jaa raha hai

gir raha hai siyahi ka Dera
ho raha hai meri jaaN savera
o vatan choRh kar jaane waale
khul gaya inquilaabi farera

jaane waale sipahi se poochho
voh kahaaN jaa raha hai

Soldier
Makhdoom Mohiuddin

Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going

Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going

The vistas themselves are afraid
How frightened the stars proceed
Such murder of youth
Red are the hems of veils

Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going

The tent of darkness is falling
My dear, the dawn is coming
O you who have left the nation!
The revolutionary flag is unfurled

Ask the departing soldier
Where he is going

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I am trying to work out some thoughts on Marxism and ethnicity, with respect to Donald Horowitz’s reading of ethnicity. For some part, and this is a massive book, I think Horowitz proceeds properly. He sees ethnicity as something that is neither set in stone nor putty, it is malleable, within limits — to paraphrase Horowtiz (66). Ethnicity is a myth of common ancestry, or common descent (52). It isn’t “natural,” in the sense that it doesn’t proceed logically that, from differences of race, language, kinship groups, etc., there will be differentiated groups. Rather, differentiation of groups picks up on — or even constructs, that is, intensifies or gives new meaning to — language, race, etc. As he puts it, it’s not the attribute that makes the group or group difference, it’s group difference that makes the attribute (50). Culture provides the content, it is not the prerequisite to ethnic differentiation (69). If ethnicity, in and of itself, isn’t “modern” — i.e., identitarian differences existed long before “modernization” (incorporation of the Third World into the world capitalist system) — it certainly has been modulated, moulded, shaped by this incorporation of societies into modernity. Particularly, he notes how colonization gave rise to the significance of identity by incorporating diffuse groups, that is, previously politically diffuse groups, into a singular polity (76). All of a sudden, you have a different dynamic to deal with. He does mention somewhere about how colonialism reinforced ethnic identities, but he doesn’t focus on this too much (as, for instance, Benedict Anderson does in Chapter 10 of Imagined Communities, or how Leroy Vail approaches the question in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa).

Horowitz distinguishes between “ranked” and “unranked” ethnic groups. Ranked is where, for instance, ethnicity maps on, more or less, to class. So slavery, or colonialism, is a clear example of how ethnicity (race) is ranked. The question of a caste system, to the extent that a caste can be seen as an ethnicity, is also a ranked system. (However, here we have to be considerate of the fact that castes exist within ethnic identities. Horowitz doesn’t seem to theorize this.) However, an unranked system is more complicated, in the sense that within an ethnic group you will have different classes (or castes, is it is). The question then is why is ethnic conflict — or ethnicity, at any rate — so salient in these unranked systems?

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I had to do an assignment on Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. I tried to pull together some of my thoughts here. Besides, it’s been over six months since I last updated this blog. So what better way to update now than to indulge in this.

When I first read Anderson’s book I quite liked it. Sure, some parts of it left me unsettled, but I couldn’t quite grasp why. It focused largely on culture and consciousness, but its basis was entirely “material” — so to speak — that the developments of capitalism facilitated national consciousness. Ah, historical materialism, I thought. And to a considerable degree, Anderson’s work is a pretty good example of a work that seeks to relate changes in consciousness to changes in material conditions (in a sense), and not doing so in a vulgar way, despite certain pronouncements in his book. But then pulling my thoughts together her helped me realize why I didn’t like it, his historical materialism isn’t properly historical nor properly material. For Anderson, history is not driven by the struggle of peoples — class struggle, in a word.

But I am putting the cart before the horse. Let us first examine Anderson’s argument step by step, so that we may better engage in critique.

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