SINGER Billie Eillish may have won Grammy’s ‘Song of the Year’ for Wildflower, but this powerful sentence uttered as part of her acceptance was no less a ‘song.’ It held the mirror high. It’s not likely that people - powerful, self-obsessed - may see the mirror yet. But once the mirror of truth is placed, one cannot ignore it for too long. It is funny how easily the uninterrupted flow of history is often diverted to channel one’s own narrative. Focus on one little detail, cry hoarse about it and all the other happenings fade into oblivion! For a long time, all history books carried were stories of victories of one king over another. During that very period, some traders were trading through high seas, some philosophers were opening doors of human understanding, some poets were enriching literature, some mathematicians were setting formulae to widen scope of human calculations. But their tales were no match to the mighty emperors as they had no court-poets eulogising their deeds! Later, when the Europeans marched all over the world with their ‘sophisticated weapons and even astute statecraft’, they gifted the other ‘boorish communities’ (that had a far ancient civilisational history), with light of knowledge.

 

 Just like that  

 

They colonised many parts of the world to make them understand sovereignty; they gifted the world with high principles of equality and fraternity and then divided it into first, second and third world. Two great world wars were inflicted upon mankind so that it can join the one or the other ‘polar’ world. Scared of the horrors of the two great wars, the winners committed to the welfare of ALL mankind for a ‘UNITED NATIONS’ and then gave themselves a ‘veto’ power. A great nation now wants illegal migrants to leave its borders. …and the souls of its original inhabitants wish to know the cut-off date from which migrants became unwelcomed. In the hindsight, they would want to borrow from the present-day government of that great nation its many slogans barring ‘illegal immigrants’, and show those to a certain Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, and their ilk. But it was centuries ago when the most legal and legitimate thing was the sword.

 

That illegal immigration, cannot be counted today. Only, if those slaves traded from the ‘cradle of humanity’ could say to their White owners, how they would hate to be illegally migrated to a foreign country! The one lesson that humanity must learn from history is that not often, in fact, very, very rarely, has legality, anything to do with justice. Legal, is in fact, the convenience of the most powerful. ‘Illegal’ is an inconvenience. So, a great nation, built on the strong shoulders of its migrant communities, can find migrants inconvenient and hence illegal. Oh! Only if History was this simple! Like a playful river, it follows its own course. Some peculiar soul searching along its banks often stumbles upon skeletons of inconvenient truths. Peculiar as they are, they grab those and show it to the world - the inconvenient truths. “No one is illegal on a STOLEN land.” The court poets, of course, disagree. As is the custom, while some part of the history is to be revered and highlighted, some must be buried so deep that it is forgotten from the collective memory of mankind. Digging it out may bring along ‘Fire and ICE.’ History smirks, “Only if I was this simple!” Assuming all of a river’s playfulness, History has dug out things buried deep.

 

A ‘Wildflower’ has dug out that mirror and is now holding it to the world. History also has, on numerous counts, informed the world that some songs are just too powerful to be buried by the frenzy of court poets. Sometimes the river feeds the truth, but does not water it down. Sometimes, history rubbishes the court poets and their eulogies of convenient legalities. Sometimes, it makes illegality so inconvenient, that it forces all of the legal chapters to be rewritten. Some say the world order is about to shift. We are at the cusp of a great change. The powersthat-be want to retain their power. Those notso-less-powerful anymore desire more of it. One only hopes that between these shifts of power the inconvenience of many finds due mention in the corridors of convenience, so that while they discuss illegal immigration they also speak of stolen lands and their displaced people.