Mother India Poem by PRAVEEN KUMAR English Poems

0 mother land,
0 dear dear mother,
Our mother India,
Our beloved India,
For all your charm and ancient wisdom,
For all the rich past and spiritual cast,
For rare forbearance and variegated forms,
How, mother, you are caught in a sorry state now
Of crave, craze, ignorance and cowardice,
Of filth, hunger, degradation and violence?

What a sad gap'tween now and then!
What a vast gulf 'twixt your own children!
A seat of wise sages is a den of self-seekers
Who thrive and flourish on the poverty's sufferance
And pain and hunger of myriad brothers;
Open your eyes,0 dear dear mother,
See how a few smart ones grow to fatty bad giants
While most cry hoarse for a morsel every day,
Though each is your child,
Though you give, all you have.

You know not perchance whom you mother,
Whom you feed with the best of love,
With the best of food, home, joy and comfort
With all your riches, power and name-ruffians
Scoundrels, worst models of rogues,
Cheats, worst crooks, gangsters and criminals;
Mother, see otherwhere, gentle children, you breed,
In unending fight to keep the both ends meet,
No joy, no peace, no comfort or support,
They go on knees, 'neath the weight of crime world.

You better be barren, our dear mother land
Than breed cruel criminals in your sacred womb
That bore rare jewels of the mankind once;
You better be invalid, our mother land
Than feed bands of gangsters with your gentle hands
And throttle good lives of gentle innocent babes;
Why nectarlike milk of your kind breasts
Turn godlike infants to rude blood-hounds?
Why your gentle hands strangle innocence,
Breed dark ignorance and spread violence?

We love you, dear mother, for your noble past,
For giving us life and means of livelihood;
We hate you, our mother, for what you are now,
For giving us life in this mean hell of land
Where cheats go rich and killers rule the land,
Where violence gives power and crimes ease life;
Where savagery is adored by indifferent ignorant mass,
Where oppression is elected by ignorant cowardice,
Where satanic shadows dim the angelic gentle light
And everything bad thrives and everything good fails.

Why this eclipse of the pristine charm?
Why this disgrace to an ancient land?
Where has gone the deep passions for value?
Where is time-valued sense of just cause?
All is gone like sunshine in dusk,
Like an aircraft that crashes in mid-air;
Burnt fragments of the past do appear, scattered
In brooding mood of the foregone ages
Like faded youth of an aged woman;
Aye, India is dying a slow disgraceful death.