Chat with us
In this second volume of Mera Naam Joker, I continue my satirical engagement with Abhijeet Dipke and the political tendency associated with him. The book contains 87 poems. It is not intended as a neutral account of individuals, campaigns, or political events. It is a work of political satire, written from my Marxist-Leninist understanding of society, the State, class relations, and the struggle for emancipation.
My central concern is the contradiction between the language of protest and the material conditions that sustain exploitation. Under capitalism, political democracy and formal equality coexist with economic inequality, private ownership of the means of production, and the appropriation of surplus value by the capitalist class. The working class produces social wealth but does not exercise corresponding control over the conditions of its production. I believe any serious assessment of political movements must begin with this fundamental contradiction.
I therefore question political campaigns that expose particular injustices but leave the economic structure responsible for them largely untouched. Unemployment, the crisis in education, the condition of rural schools, and the oppression of Adivasis are not isolated problems that can be permanently resolved through appeals to the conscience of those in power. They are connected, in different ways, with the organisation of capitalist society and the priorities of the ruling class. My satire asks whether campaigns directed at individual failures can bring lasting change when the underlying relations of property and power remain intact.
Nationalism, constitutional symbolism, and the celebration of political icons also come under my scrutiny. The Tricolour, the national anthem, constitutional language, and portraits of revered leaders can carry powerful emotional significance. But symbols, however sacred they may be considered, cannot by themselves, abolish exploitation, or eliminate class inequality. Formal equality before the law does not automatically produce equality in material life. I use satire to question the assumption that reverence for national and constitutional symbols is a substitute for transforming the social relations that determine who owns wealth, who controls production, and who benefits from the labour of others.
The cockroach is one of the recurring satirical figures in this volume. Through this metaphor, I ridicule a political tendency that, in my interpretation, displays remarkable adaptability and survival within the existing order. The metaphor is deliberately provocative. Satire must sometimes exaggerate, disturb, and offend in order to expose what conventional political language conceals. My target is the political conduct and ideology I seek to criticise, not the ordinary people who participate in protests because they face genuine hardships.
I am particularly critical of reformism when it turns protest into a permanent exercise in managing grievances rather than confronting their structural causes. Crowdfunding, charitable assistance, and public campaigns can provide immediate relief to people in distress. I do not deny their practical value. My question is different: can charity replace social rights, or can voluntary contributions substitute for a system in which education, healthcare, and other essential needs are secured for everyone? When social suffering repeatedly requires private generosity, we must also ask why the social and economic order continues to reproduce that suffering.
From a Marxist-Leninist standpoint, the State can not be understood merely as a neutral institution standing above competing classes. Its institutions operate within a society structured by unequal ownership and class power. This does not mean that every official, reformer, or protester consciously serves the capitalist class. It means that political intentions must be examined alongside the material limits within which politics operates. A movement may win concessions, expose injustice and mobilise people, yet still leave the foundations of capitalist power undisturbed.
I distinguish between reforms that improve people's lives and reformism that present limited improvements as the final horizon of political struggle. The former can be necessary and valuable. The latter becomes a limitation when it discourages people from understanding the social system as a whole. For me, emancipation requires more than replacing one set of political personalities with another. It requires transforming property relations and placing social production under the control of those whose labour creates social wealth.
My poems employ nursery rhymes, popular songs, slogans, mock advertisements, invented biodata, and familiar cultural references. I use humour, parody, repetition, and absurdity to bring political contradictions into sharper focus. These devices are not merely decorative. They allow me to place the grand language of politics beside the everyday realities of class society. The resulting contrast is intended to provoke readers into questioning claims that might otherwise pass unexamined.
I recognise that satire is polemical. It selects, exaggerates, and attacks. This book should, therefore, be read as my political and literary intervention, not as an attempt at detached political reporting. Readers may disagree with my judgments, but I hope they will engage with the questions underlying them: who benefits from the existing order, whose interests are served by particular political strategies, and what kind of change is actually possible without confronting the power of capital?
The title Mera Naam Joker invites a final question: whose dreams are being fulfilled and whose remain unfulfilled? A country can not be judged only by its national symbols, electoral rituals, public campaigns, or declarations of constitutional values. It must also be judged by the conditions in which its people live and work by the distribution of its wealth and by the extent to which working people exercise control over their own lives.
I have written these poems from the conviction that satire can be a weapon of criticism. It can not, by itself, transform society. But it can expose contradictions, challenge political complacency, and unsettle comforting illusions. My purpose in this volume is to use that weapon against the ideas and practices that, in my view, divert attention from the class relations at the heart of capitalist society.
Book Bazooka Publication बुक बज़ूका पब्लिकेशन
