Kutch

It seems to me that the entire being of Ibrahim chacha is shaking with conviction as he speaks. He has been talking to me for some time now and with each sentence his brown eyes grow brighter with angst and his words more emphatic in tone. His voice rises and he gets up agitated as he turns to look at me and asks- “how is it that our country chooses to hold one child so close to her and kicks the other in the stomach?”

He looks away.

I imagine him from the otherside. Staring intently at the coastline of Kutch. The land where for generations his family has migrated to the beach for eight months each year to harvest from the oceanic fish crops. I had been told before coming that all fisherfolk here can navigate from the stars. From anywhere in the ocean they travel to the exact location of their hut without fail each day. This is the land and water that they know better than their own selves. They know by the flatness of the water or the undercurrents within it, if a cyclone approaches. By the birds that circle the skies, they know which fish moves swiftly below the waves. The lifelines in their hands have been ridged by the nets they have thrown from a tender age. My guide, Aslam, tells me that when the government fixed a real time satellite feed based guide screen for the fisherfolk which informed them of the direction and type of catch available, Ibrahim chacha stared woefully at it and said that this was possibly the beginning of the end of the ocean. If little fisherfolk had such information, the large company owned trawlers which indiscriminately emptied the ocean of life, would surely be privy to such information. The future of fish, he said, looked bleak. How would the ocean replenish?

I stare at his back, unsure how to respond. The Gujarat government has approved seven special economic zones in the region of Kutch which will possibly imply that such fisherfolk communities, which already have a hand to mouth existence, might be cut off from even accessing the ocean. The government believes that through large concessions to the industry, the state will prosper. And again, in another part of this country, I feel emerging from within me a desire to laugh hysterically. 'Prosper' being defined in such pure economic terms has never before seemed so degenerate and narrow a description.

Kutch is possibly one of the most culturally rich regions of the country. In terms of music, I was recently told that almost 25 musical forms are found just in this one district. The embroidery by Kutch women is famous and unparalleled across the world and again the variety and quality are mind boggling. This is a land where a variety of different belief systems layer over each other and exist in harmony. Kutch was one of the regions of Gujarat, relatively untouched by the genocide of 2001. Here sufi influence transcends all traditions. And it is in this land that someone decided that 'prosper' means draining the delicate eco-system of the region by setting up vast industries which have displaced the local villagers, hurt their traditional livelihoods, polluted their land and air and is forcibly pushing them to the bottom of the global capitalist cultural order – an alien unknown power structure of incomprehensible proportions – making them strangers to their own world.

As I was returning and the salt land of Kutch vanished under the vehicle, I thought of an old quote by Martin Luther King which went -

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right”.

And I look at the politics of this country and wonder if we have lost the ability to discern what is right.
Lost seems the ability to seek within us that voice of conscience.