The voices of the republic include dreamers, dissenters and rebels against borders and authorities. One poem of resistance, from a different Indian language, each day this week.Bhil women grinding corn in a village. Credit: Wikimedia CommonsIn a country that has no ‘national language,’ the presence of many languages is at once beautiful and politically charged.For a week from Republic Day, The Wire presents poems that throw open how our languages can be oppressive, oppressed and insurgent. The poems are curated by Poorna Swami and Janani Ganesan, from a special edition of Asymptote, an online journal for international literature in translation.Each of these poems is a work of resistance but also of presence – asserting a future where our many languages, while different, are more accommodating of each other.#7Living and Dying in a Foreign Tongue The language that was at home in the earand seeped into our bloodwith the thread of grandma’s storyin the dark night.Through forest-river-field, astride grandpa’sshoulders, the language that entered within throughthe eyes.The language of the light of a morsel of foodchewed and fed by mother.The living language of the family, neighbourhood, villageseen through my fingers entwined with my father’sat festival time.A language alivein the family-courtyard-village.Everyone lives as one.Dances, sings, works as one.The sorrow of oneis the sorrow of all.Our language that takes us tothis higher pathcould not even climbthe threshold of the schoolhouse.I sat alone in schoolwhile our tongue sat outsidewhining, like a dog.The master said: don’t speak in our language.I was scared and could not ask:Why can I not speak our tongue?Who forced that foreign tongue intoour master’s mouth?From 10 to 5 during the dayit sat on the iris.Like the deep darkness of the darkest night,as letters, it made its way into me through the eye.At times, as if possessed,it forces its way into my body through my fingers.Forcing its way through the lashesof the teacher’s green stickthat foreign tongue.Proving us uncouth,night and dayit tries to civilise us.How to rule over each other?Letting us live, it kills.That language teacheshow teeming mid-bazaarto snatch the fruitof someone else’s labour.It leaves us living deadthat foreign language. — Jitendra VasavaTranslated from Dehwali Bhili by Gopika JadejaGopika Jadeja is a poet and translator, and editor of a print journal, Five Issues. Her work has been published in The Wolf, Indian Literature, Vahi, Sahcharya and elsewhere. This translation first appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of Asymptote, as part of its Indian Languages Special Feature. Asymptote is the winner of the 2015 London Book Fair’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award and a founding member of The Guardian’s Books Network with Translation Tuesdays.