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.A woman adjusts her saree as the sun sets. Credit: Reuters/Danish IsmailIn 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.‘The Fiends that Fetter Us’ is meant as a translation of a famous alliterating phrase – nammai pidittha pisaasugal – from the classic poet Subramania Bharati, quoted here by Revathi.The Fiends that Fetter Ussister… still many more breastsfor us to mould as if from clayin this era when living breasts are bittenby stones or by the tips of knivesthey’re like the grain that feeds our worldbut no fences to protect themand why are birds of prey rooting in those silos?eating sunshine straining to draw breathfrom an arid fieldthat old woman’s breastsfiends that fetter herhanging lowknocking against the chestlike dried-up history beyond the borders on mapsnot unlike those fiends that’s why sisterbreasts like freshwater ponds to drink deep fromlet’s not make them vessels of unending miseryfor a day at least let’s make those breasts stonesto use in slingslet’s wander with a solitary breastand carry our sun above us– Kutti RevathiTranslated from Tamil by Padma Narayanan and Vivek NarayananPadma Narayanan is the translator of numerous books of literary fiction from Tamil. Vivek Narayanan has written two full-length books of poems, Universal Beach and Life and Times of Mr S. 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.