Poetry on trial: When ‘Hum Dekhenge' meets Section 152

Time of India

20-05-2025

As the Business Head for The Times of India, I lead strategic initiatives and drive growth for one of the nation's most influential media organisations. My journalist friends believe I've crossed over to the proverbial dark side. Living on the edges of a dynamic newsroom, I dabble infrequently into these times that we live and believe in the spectatorial axiom – 'distance provides perspective'. LESS ... MORE
There's an old newsroom rule: if satire starts feeling like reportage, double-check the dateline. Today's dateline reads Nagpur, May 20 '25 — and yes, the news is real.
Three people, including filmmaker Veera Sathidar's widow Pushpa, now stare at 'anti-national' charges because someone recited Faiz Ahmad Faiz's Hum Dekhenge at a memorial service. The FIR leans on the shiny new Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, our fresh-minted successor to sedition.
Let that sink in: a poem written in 1979 to needle Zia-ul-Haq's martial law is apparently dangerous for Indian sovereignty in 2025. My inner sub-editor wants to label this Irony, Grade A. My inner citizen just sighs.
A couplet, a complaint, a country on edge
According to the complaint, Faiz's verses 'raise an anti-establishment chorus' and risk communal disharmony. No arrests yet, the police assure us — they're merely investigating.
Translation: the process itself is the punishment. Court dates, lawyer fees, the slow grind of bureaucracy — all for a few lines of Urdu that begin with a Quranic echo and end in goosebumps.
Faiz's scaffolding is Islamic, sure — 'Wa-yabqaa wajhu rabbika…' — but the architecture is stubbornly secular. He topples tyrants, not temples; thrones, not theologies. The crown that gets tossed could belong to any despot with a Wi-Fi connection and a fragile ego.
The lightning rod, of course, is 'An-al-Haq' — Mansur al-Hallaj's heretical 'I am the Truth.' Read slowly and you'll hear its Sanskrit cousin 'Aham Brahmasmi.' Two languages, one rebellion: the divine spark within every mortal throat. When Faiz smuggles Hallaj into his stanza, he isn't preaching Islam; he's detonating hierarchy. The truth, he suggests, is portable — and intensely personal.
The image depicts people protesting with their fists up. (Image credit: AI generated)
During the anti-CAA protests, Hum Dekhenge became the unofficial background score, equal parts anthem and lullaby. That resonance clearly spooks those who'd prefer their dissent nicely laminated and out of earshot. So here we are, hauling a 46-year-old poem into the witness box.
Spare a thought for Pushpa Sathidar. She gathered friends to remember a husband who once acted in a film literally titled Court — a biting drama about the Indian justice system. Now life imitates cinema with cruel precision.
Every time we criminalise a couplet, we shrink the idea of India by a syllable. The Constitution promises the 'freedom of speech and expression.' But freedom with asterisk after asterisk is just parole. Ask yourself: if Hum Dekhenge is communal, what isn't? Kabir's couplets? Amrita Pritam's Aj Aakhaan Waras Shah Nu? If metaphoric thrones are off-limits, our literature syllabus will soon look like a censored WhatsApp forward.
Why this matters (Even if you never quote Faiz)
Because poetry is a canary. When the state reaches for penal codes to silence a stanza, you can bet tougher tools await the prose. Journalism, cinema, academia — the queue forms quickly.
Because conflating dissent with disloyalty is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. Change the act number, rename sedition if you must; the choreography stays the same. Because a republic confident in its own foundations should laugh off a poem, not litigate it.
Let's read Faiz aloud — in Urdu, Hindi, Bengla, even Klingon if that helps. Let's pair 'An-al-Haq' with 'Aham Brahmasmi' and watch the borders blur. Let's remind ourselves that metaphors don't carry Molotovs, they carry mirrors. And while we're at it, maybe update that FIR template. Replace 'endangering sovereignty' with 'triggering uncomfortable self-reflection.' At least it'll be honest.
Faiz ends with a promise: 'Hum dekhenge, lazim hai ke hum bhi dekhenge.' We will see, it is inevitable that we too shall see. Yes, we will — the verdicts, the backtracking, the memes, the inevitable tumble of overreaching laws. Truth has survived worse regimes than ours. It usually does. The question is whether we'll still recognise ourselves when the curtain falls. Until then, keep the poems handy. They make excellent flashlights.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.