Silence as resistance: A sociological reading of three poems by Rajesh Joshi

By Ravi Ranjan* 

Rajesh Joshi is one of the most commanding voices in contemporary progressive Hindi poetry. His work is deeply tied to social conscience and the quiet struggles of ordinary people, carrying the scent of native soil after rain and the enduring human will to live amid suffering. Beyond poetry, he has enriched translation and other literary forms. His major collections include "Ek Din Bolenge Ped", "Mitti Ka Chehra", "Naipathya Mein Hansi", "Do Panktiyon Ke Beech" (Sahitya Akademi Award winner), "Chand Ki Vartani", and "Zid". His long poem “Samragatha” sparked wide discussion. He has received the Sahitya Akademi Award, Makhanlal Chaturvedi Award, Shikhar Samman, Pahal Samman, Muktibodh Award, Shrikant Verma Smriti Samman, Shamsher Samman, and others. His poems, translated into English, Russian, German, and various Indian languages, consistently search for faith even in crisis, questioning power with sharp urgency.

This essay offers a sociological reading of three poems, framing silence as a form of resistance—against noise, injustice, and dehumanization.

In “Between Two Lines,” Joshi presents a rare meta-poetic work that X-rays poetry’s own structure, revealing the profound silence between words. The narrow gap becomes a “secret galaxy” and “open sky,” a magical-realist space where meanings wander like truant children, anusvaras peep from margins, and stray syllables settle uncertainly. Words form a screen hiding an endless forest of untamed images and soaring eagles of desire. The poem births itself in this emptiness: language acts autonomously, grammar lives and breathes. The famous injunction—“Before you step here, leave your shoes outside”—transforms a simple gesture into a philosophical rite. External noise, proud reasoning, or shallow analysis shatters the fragile spell. The white space is sacred ground, the true birthplace of words, demanding utter stillness from the reader.

This aesthetics of silence resists an age flooded with information and digital clamor. Poetry here is not what is said but what is unsaid—the rich soil where meaning grows. Joshi’s language remains intimate and speech-like, using everyday turns (“sooni-sooni-si,” “hadbadi”) to make the mysterious labor of creation feel tangible. Personification animates grammar; rhythm arises from thought’s natural sway. The poem becomes a manifesto: great poetry is entered, not merely read; its deepest stratum is invisible, and protecting that enchanted hush is its truest purpose. In a noisy world, Joshi reclaims the dignity of pause, urging a return to the primal pulse before language hardens.

“Children Are Going to Work” is among the most piercing indictments in contemporary Hindi poetry. It begins with fog-shrouded children walking to labor at dawn—an image of stolen childhood. Joshi insists this horror cannot be mere description; “our time’s most terrible sentence” must be a cry, a question: Why are they going to work? He lists what should be every child’s right—balls, bright books, toys, schools, fields, gardens, courtyards—and asks if they have vanished. The deepest wound is that everything remains “hāsb-e-māmūl” (as usual): toys bounce elsewhere, schools stand, parks stay green—yet these children are excluded. Resources exist; access does not. This exposes modern class fracture and normalized injustice.

The poem’s chain of questions is revolutionary, refusing cold statistics. Fog symbolizes blurred futures; termites and black mountains emblemize a brutal, hollow system. The tone is grave, restrained—no shouting, only deep distress. Blending Hindi and Urdu (“hāsb-e-māmūl,” “madrasa”), Joshi widens the social horizon while grounding pain in innocence crushed.

Sociologically, child labour forms a vicious poverty cycle, wasting human capital and blocking capabilities (Amartya Sen). It reflects unequal resource distribution, global capitalism’s demand for cheap labor, and failures in education access. ILO and UNICEF stress legal safeguards and social security nets; crises like pandemics push more children into work. The Bal Mitra Gram model, from the Save the Childhood Movement, offers a proven path: children’s parliaments, community protection committees, school enrolment drives, economic support for families (MNREGA, pensions), and collective oaths against child marriage and labour. It transforms children from victims to decision-makers, healing roots rather than symptoms.

Joshi’s poem clothes abstract data in living grief, turning “cycle of poverty” into crushed toys and fallen balls. It indicts societal numbness—passing children at tea stalls without stirring—and makes “hāsb-e-māmūl” a terrifying hush. Echoing Dushyant Kumar’s ironic use of the phrase (stability turned rotten), Adam Gondvi’s callous elite calm, and Paash’s dangerous peace, Joshi warns: when injustice becomes custom, civilization falters. Poetry here completes sociology: facts meet conscience; description becomes urgent question.

“I Bend” delicately traces the line between self-respect and servitude through everyday acts—tying laces, breaking bread, picking up a pen or coin. The body must bend; this stooping is natural, necessary, dignified. Yet Joshi contrasts it sharply with the soul’s bending before power, the eyes bent in shame or flattery. “I bend—but not as the soul of a flatterer bends.” The knee bends toward the belly by birthright; such physiology is not submission. Power’s language equates every stoop with surrender; the poet resists, insisting acts carry multiple meanings beyond domination and obedience.

The repeated “I bend” forms a litany, each instance reclaiming honor. Proverbs, the poem notes, live more in implication than statement. Compromise born of fear or advantage kills self-respect; true dignity preserves an erect inner spine while accepting life’s inevitable bows—for sustenance, learning, survival. Myths worldwide affirm this: bamboo bends to survive storms (Taoism); Bali bows to higher truth (Indian legend); Odin sacrifices for wisdom (Norse). Voluntary stoop for noble cause differs from fearful flattery.

In today’s politics, power reads every bend as victory, every upright stance as revolt. Joshi redefines resistance: not rigid pride, but fidelity to natural dignity amid necessity. The poem audits our own bending—body for bread, soul never for arrogance—reviving sensitivity in an era that blurs dignity.

Across Joshi’s work, silence restores the invisible: poetic hush in “Between Two Lines,” shattered into question in “Children Are Going to Work,” preserved as inner steadfastness in “I Bend.” Magical realism and social passion converge—demanding sacred attention to the unsaid, refusing normalized cruelty.

Joshi shares deep affinities with Pablo Neruda. Both fuse lyricism with social conscience, refusing to separate personal and collective. Neruda’s journey from intimate love in “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” to epic outrage in “Canto General” parallels Joshi’s shift from rooted tenderness to systemic critique. Neruda rages against exploitation; Joshi pierces “hāsb-e-māmūl” normalization of child labour. Both elevate the ordinary—Neruda’s odes to onions, tomatoes, socks; Joshi’s reverence for soil in “Mitti Ka Chehra,” the damp fragrance of earth, humble acts like bending to eat. They dignify labor and materiality against dehumanization.

Differences exist: Neruda’s voice thunders in continental epics; Joshi works in tighter, piercing forms. Neruda’s surrealism explodes outward; Joshi’s quieter magical realism turns inward, demanding stillness. Neruda’s communism is ideological; Joshi’s progressive commitment is restrained, rooted in Indian realities.

Yet both practice democratic wonder: the lowliest—earth, vegetables—deserve celebration as true substance of life. Neruda re-enchants the everyday; Joshi gives soil a human face, witness to struggle and endurance.

In these poems, Joshi weaves silence into resistance. From enchanted gaps between lines to fog-bound cries for childhood, from dignified bodily bends to unyielding souls, he unmasks structures of erasure. Sociologically, he reveals how power thrives on indifference, inequality devours futures, dignity survives in the unsaid. Like Neruda, he reclaims the ordinary as sacred, urging us to question, pause, and nurture faith amid tempests. In an era of noise, his work is quiet revolution—reminding that change begins in silence, in the bend, in the plea for justice.

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*Professor & Former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad