Inner Line Permit

Inner Line Permits

I.

The inner line in my heart
And the inner lining of my brain,
together: my Inner Lines, don't permit
Me to be sans decorum
While pointing out the insane.

They don't permit me
To slide out my knife
And slip it between the ribs
of the Nepali boy who fell
in love and took a Khasi wife

They don't permit me
to introduce his skin to petrol
and fire; to purge us of his
devilry, that unentitled, supposedly
economy consuming, leech without control.

They don't permit me
To ignore his penance -
That he has lived on this land
As long as i have and he has loved
Without giving hate or race a chance.

II.

My Inner Lines
Don't permit me to blame
The migrant labour for the follies
Of my government, for our shortcomings,
For having the hunger to work for lesser
For leaving families afar
And working in simmering danger
Amidst bare fangs dying to strip
Them off the dignity of slogging for
A hundred rupees when the bare fangs refuse
A hundred rupees as not fair market value.

My Inner Lines
Don't permit me to steal away quietly
And ambush a puja pandal 
To protest the lazyness of the assamese
Or Bengali origin, who do nothing but
Sit at homes and wait for government largesse
While we toil on the arid fields and give our gatherings
To the poorest of the poor.

If i were, occasionally tempted,
To douse and burn with petrol or slide the knife
Out, I'd do well to remember, the Nepali boy
was my dearest childhood friend and the assamese
man studied by the candlelight while
I moonlighted as romeo on the roads,
With someone else's agenda planted in my mind.


III.

We are settlers, of Mon Khmer and Shan
Extract; we have come to create
Our own rituals, art, song, dance; we
Created tradition and culture; We were indigenous,
Yet many came to believe in the Son
Of God not the sun;
We of the duitara took to
The six stringed and left behind
The devanagiri for the anglicised roman;
We morphed, evolved, coexisted as living
Culture and tradition does, and yet
We permit
Our Inner Lines
To be corrupted
By the lies and deceits,
the pretences and conceit
Of those whose mental culture
Is blood and war,
Fear mongering and power grabbing,
Sectioning and fiefdoming
Our hearts, our brains,
Our Inner Lines.

Khasi – the people indigenous to the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya, India

Assames – people from Assam, a neighbouring state.

Bengali – people who originally hailed from West Bengal.

Puja Pandal – the ornate tents constructed during the durga puja festival celebrated by the Hindus (who are in a minority in Shillong)

Mon Khmer – of cambodian origin/roots ( the Khasis are believed to have Mon Khmer origins)

Shan – of Burmese origins (the Garos who are indigenous to the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, India are believed to be of Burmese/Shan origin).

Duitara – an indigenous stringed instrument. Literally it means “two stringed”.

Devanagiri – the script in which Hindi, Sanskrit, Assamese etc. And many other Indian languages are written in.

[Note: Shillong is going through tough times- there is a huge debate that confuses economic problems with issues of culture and identity. Of late it has become politicised and has also started taking a more violent hue – a distinction has been drawn by some between the indigenous and the settlers or those who have come here for a wage. These are dangerous trajectories that call for us to examine our motives, our reasons and to really identify the problems that exist. The Inner Line Permit has been mooted as a solution – essentially, a system of permit which controls/permits/denies non-indigenous people permission to travel/stay in a particular are without having secured an Inner Line Permit. A dangerous solution that harkens back the old days of segregation that we've fought hard to overcome]