Mindset By Ink Soul Poem by Ink Soul

Mindset By Ink Soul

'We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern;
a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."
— Lord Macaulay,1835

We were not waiting to be shaped or schooled,
Our embers glowed where ancient wisdom ruled.
Our myths were sung where sages' voices swirled,
Our roots ran deep, our minds a radiant world.

They came not first with steel or blazing pyre,
But with a tongue that kindled shame's quiet fire.
In learning's guise, they carved a foreign claim,
And bound the soul to wear an alien name.

A voice was taught—not to feel, but to bend,
To nod, obey, and let the spirit rend.
"Yes, Sir, " they urged, and sealed the heart's descent,
While sacred tongues were hushed in silent lament.

The temples sighed, the oceans bore their grief,
As foreign books were stacked to choke belief.
Our centuries sank in shadows cold and deep,
Where native songs were lulled to endless sleep.

Beneath the banyan's ancient, whispered shade,
Where native chants in sacred chorus played,
A shadow fell, a foreign voice arose,
To chain the heart where freedom's river flows.

From clover isles where shamrocks kissed the morn,
To sunlit plains where baobab trees were born,
They came with scroll and saber's cruel command,
Their language crowned, our voices banned.

By Nile's soft grace, where pharaohs' words once soared,
Their tongue was lost to dust, its soul ignored.
In jungles dense where Taino prayers took flight,
The Arawak's sweet songs were drowned in night.

In snow-clad peaks where Buddhist chants would rise,
Through Ganges' vales where Sanskrit truths abide,
The Pali hymns, the Vedas' sacred lore,
Were silenced by the hymns invaders bore.

The Zulu's fire, where warriors danced in pride,
The Maori's haka, fierce with freedom's stride,
Were bound by grammar's cold, unyielding hand,
A lexicon of power across the land.

In Bengal's heart, where Tagore's verses bloomed,
In Haiti's fields, where liberty resumed,
The colonizer's lash, their tongue, did flay,
To make us strangers in our own birthday.

In Jallianwala, blood soaked sacred dust,
A thousand hearts betrayed a broken trust.
Tagore, in grief, returned their hollow crown,
His poet's voice unbowed, his truth renowned.

The Taj still weeps with marble's silent tears,
Angkor's spires mourn the weight of stolen years.
Great Zimbabwe's stones, in quiet sorrow, sigh,
For Shona tales that empire forced to die.

Machu Picchu, veiled in misty air,
Hears Quechua's loss in songs no longer there.
The Ashanti's gold, once gleaming in the sun,
Was weighed in words where kente webs were spun.

From Congo's heart to Java's emerald shore,
Our mother tongues were branded as no more.
Yet every silenced word became a seed,
To bloom in time through sovereign voice and creed.

"We'll raise a class, " the lord with coldness said,
"With native skin, but minds to us they'll wed

Indian in blood, yet English in their core, "
Macaulay's chain to bind forevermore.

But who were you, with ships and musket's gleam,
To deem our words unfit, to crush our dream?
Our Vedas sang before your steeples stood,
Our griots wove what Oxford never could.

Why civilize a soul already whole?
Our scribes carved truths on Indus' ancient scroll.
In Gaelic glens, where harps of freedom strummed,
In Aztec lands, where sacred drums once hummed,
You burned the roots and named it liberty,
Yet our old songs still rise defiantly.

The Sepoy's rage, the Mau Mau's rebel cry,
The Amistad's chains beneath a starlit sky,
Toussaint's resolve, unyielding, fierce, and bright,
Their spirits sing where silenced tongues take flight.

Yet still we rise, though scars of words remain,
Our voices swell like rivers after rain.
From Soweto's drum to Kingston's vibrant beat,
We dance once more with native, sovereign feet.

Oh, colonizer, hear this heart's decree:
Your tongue may rule, but it will not rule me.
Your empires fade, your monuments decay,
While our old songs reclaim their rightful way.

We had taste before your feasts were spread,
Morals before your sermons stained us red.
Thought before your ink could dare to reign—
So why must we still bear your chain?

The conqueror's word, like storms on salted plains,
Slipped through our gates to bind the mind in chains.
It cloaked the domes, renamed our sacred halls,
And drowned the chants our ancient spirit calls.

Bronze bells and scrolls were traded for your creeds,
Our poems lost in rain-worn, bleeding needs.
The statues stand, their stories forced to fade,
Beneath the weight of foreign tongues' crusade.

You whispered, "We shall craft a race anew,
With native blood, but thoughts that bend to you."
Yet never saw the stars our scribes had mapped,
The truths we held, in sacred verse enwrapped.

Why trade my mother's song for your refrain?
Why kneel to gods when mine were never slain?
We built our libraries, our drums called rain,
Yet you burned all to fuel your cold campaign.

In cities bright where spice and silk entwine,
Where torchlight gleams on rivers' sacred shine,
Our hearts once danced to ragas' ancient art,
Now forced to rhyme in your unyielding chart.

But history turns, like rivers carving stone,
Your rule now fades, its echo overthrown.
From ruins rise the voices you denied,
In every tongue your laws once set aside.

The Taj, the Nile, the Andes' timeless sway,
The T tymbuktu scrolls burned in your dismay

Their truths endure, though empires turn to dust,
Our native spray reclaims what you betrayed in trust.

We write, we sing, we speak with fearless flame,
In every dialect you branded with shame.
Your world of looted stone begins to fray,
And truth returns in native, sovereign spray.