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.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.#3Mohenjo Daro I stand in the court of the Simon Commissionlet mother earth and humanity be my witnessfrom there I speak wherethe burnt body of a woman liesright there, on the last step of the tank at Mohenjo Daroinside it, scattered bones of humanityscorched corpses of womenyou’ll find in Babylonbones of humanity you’ll find scattered in Mesopotamiaover and over I thinkto remember—at the estuaries of many an ancient civilizationlies the scorched corpse of a woman andscattered bones of humanityfrom the spurs of Syria to the plains of Bengalthis story travelsand spans the jungles at Kanhaand the woodlands of the Savanna.a womanwho could have been a mothersisterdaughterwifeI tell you, go away from memy blood boils,my heart smolders,my body, a fiery emberit is my mother, it is my wife,it is my sister, it is my daughter they have killed, they have burnttheir souls resound in the heavens aboveand on that scorched corpse of the woman I would have banged my headuntil I died if I didn’t have a daughter of my own!yet this daughter of mine says—“Papa, you worry unnecessarily about usWe girls are just firewoodto be tossed in the cooking hearth”and these scattered bones of humansthey could have been slaves from Romeor Julahes from Bengalor even Vietnamese, Palestinian childrenempires are empires after all, be Roman be Britishor the ultramodern American empirethe destiny of all empiresto scatter bones of humanityover mountains and plains, by river and seathey claim their right over historywith just these three decreesthat we packed this Earth with embersthat we engulfed this Earth in flamesthat we littered this Earth with human bones!but,as the heir of humanityI avow even as I livego and tell Caesar’s slaveswe shall meet as oneand one day march on Rome!— VidrohiTranslated from Hindi by Rashmi Gajare and Patricio FerrariRashmi Gajare is a poet, Indologist, linguist, and preservation architect. Patricio Ferrari is a poet, translator, editor and critic, with a forthcoming multilingual collection, Nomad Books. 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.