Chanchal Kumar
In this technological age, we have to ask the question, Is it worth moving towards an Ambedkarism that is more rooted in our time, and embodies all the changes that the year 2023 has brought? There has been multiple covid waves, apart from a bunch of other international maladies, that have broken the back of humanity as a whole.
Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in his Logicus Tractatus that it is possible to write an entire work of philosophy containing solely of jokes. Well, the time of Wittgenstein has passed as well, and we don’t have jokes, but we have memes. And it is possible to express the human condition, as well as wage a war using just memes.
Also, the time of Boomers has passed, and we are at the cusp of another awakening, brought about by the call of time. The gen which is steadily taking the rein in their hands is Gen Z, while Millennials have assumed the role of king-maker. In the political arena around the world, there’s a need to lend our ears to what Gen Z has to say. Do they or do they not support humanitarian politics? Do they or do they not support a certain menacing political personality who has the eyes of the entire world on them?
Whither we go from here? Shall we crowd the streets and naively assume that the carceral state won’t put us all behind bars? Or at the least, maim us somehow to try and break our spirits?
We should choose to be joyful in this strange time. And we should fight only when we want to, to quote Sun Tzu. We should be not one, but a hundred steps ahead of the oppressor. We should make the despots regret their actions, and ensure that they are punished.
How do we do that? We can certainly take the help of memes. We need to shame the dominant and the cruel with our unabashed laughter. We should make our hill at a place which oversees clouds. We should be absolutely calm and thoroughly dedicated to our aim. We need to pledge that our future will be ours.
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Chanchal Kumar is from Jharkhand and currently lives in Delhi, India. His poems have previously appeared and awarded in The Sunflower Collective, Hamilton Stone Review, Welter Journal, Name and None, Young Poets Network, UK including others. Recently, his poems were translated to Bengali by Harakiri Journal. He is pursuing M.Phil at University of Delhi.
