When will you show your documents?

When will you show your documents?

Those to the gallows went smiling for freedom
refusing the martyr’s fame,
their history pages you tear,
When will you show your documents!?

Of Taj-Mahal-Char-Minar domes
Red-Fort-Qutub-Minar minarets,
their proofs you demand
When will you show your documents!?

Bootlickers of the British rule,
in their intoxicating hate, you –
a Goebbel’s breed – drink blood
When will you show your documents!?

Men lived selling pakoda
and chai in my city, humanity
they didn’t sell, dignity they didn’t
sell, a concoction of lies they didn’t brew.
Tell us, when will you show your documents!?

When thorns pierced, tore, ripped
tyres, tubes which he mended and pumped air
the puncture-man did not sell his identity.
You who sold this country
Tell us, when will you show your documents!?

You who swindled the nation
to whom fake documents mean a trifling
matter must attest at least to humanity.
When will you show your documents!?

— Translated from the Kannada by Dhanya Gopal

(Poem first published on Scroll) (Image Credit: Times of India)