The hollow empire: Shrikant Verma’s poetic anatomy of power

By Ravi Ranjan*  

Shrikant Verma’s "Kosala Lacks Ideas" is a deceptively brief poem that unfolds into a dense meditation on power, language, history and the moral foundations of political life. Although framed as a courtly celebration of a king’s victory, the poem steadily dismantles the very idea of victory, exposing how political authority manufactures legitimacy through language, spectacle and selective memory. 

The poem’s opening—“Your Majesty, congratulations! Long live Your Majesty. / No war took place— / The enemies have gone back”—immediately reveals the gap between fact and proclamation. Victory is declared even though nothing happened. This dissonance becomes the poem’s central device: power does not merely record events; it constructs their meaning. The absence of war is turned into triumph through linguistic performance, revealing how authority depends on discourse rather than truth.

The poem’s detailed listing of military preparations—“four akshauhinis of armies, / Ten thousand horses, / Roughly as many elephants”—is less a description of strength than a display of political spectacle. It reflects a mentality that equates power with visible resources, numbers and grandeur. Yet this splendour is hollow, because the supposed enemy is unarmed. 

The poem’s satire deepens: if the opponents had “no weapons, / No horses, / No elephants,” what was the purpose of such massive preparation? And how can victory be claimed over those who never fought? The poem refuses to answer directly, instead inviting the reader to confront the contradictions inherent in power’s self-justifying narratives.

The unarmed figures in the poem possess something more enduring than military force: ideas. Their solitude—“Each one of them was alone / And each one used to say / Every one is alone!”—is not weakness but moral autonomy. Verma transforms solitude into a philosophical condition: every individual ultimately stands alone with his conscience, his questions, his intellectual independence. 

This inner strength becomes a form of resistance that power cannot suppress. The poem suggests that truth does not require armies; it requires individuals willing to think and question. In contrast, the state’s grandeur masks an ideological emptiness.

The poem’s courtly voice returns—“Whatever it may be, / This victory is yours!”—exposing the artificiality of panegyric language. Facts do not matter; only the ruler’s prestige does. Even the invocation of Rajasuya and chakravartin, symbols of sovereign authority in Indian tradition, is used ironically. The king may complete the ritual and claim universal dominion, but the poem shows that such formal success can coexist with moral bankruptcy. External achievement does not guarantee internal strength.

The poem’s final twist—“They have left behind only a few questions”—redefines the entire narrative. Those supposedly defeated leave behind questions, and questions are the true threat to power. They destabilise official truth, expose contradictions and demand accountability. The concluding line—“Kosala cannot last much longer, / Kosala lacks ideas!”—transforms Kosala into a symbol of any political system that relies on spectacle, declarations and military might while neglecting intellectual vitality, critical consciousness and democratic dialogue. A state without ideas may appear strong, but it decays from within.

The Hindi poem resonates with modern theories of power. Michel Foucault’s notion that power constructs truth is vividly present in the poem’s depiction of victory without war. The royal language becomes a “regime of truth,” shaping what is accepted as reality. The poem also reflects Foucault’s idea that power disciplines consciousness: there is no visible repression, yet the courtly atmosphere ensures that only one narrative is permissible. 

Even the counting of armies becomes a political performance, a symbol meant to naturalise authority. The unarmed people embody Foucault’s insight that resistance emerges wherever power attempts to fix meaning. Their questions represent “subjugated knowledges,” the suppressed perspectives that challenge official history.

Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony also finds deep echoes in the poem. Military force can enforce obedience, but it cannot create ideological consent. A state survives not merely through coercion but through the active participation of society in its worldview. When ideas dry up, when dialogue is replaced by declarations, when critical consciousness erodes, the ideological foundation of power collapses. Verma’s poem warns that a system relying solely on external strength becomes hollow. Weapons can silence opponents temporarily, but they cannot eliminate questions. Ideas outlast armies.

The poem’s satire is subtle yet pervasive. The celebratory tone, the exaggerated military listing, the premature declaration of victory—all create an atmosphere of absurdity. The poem’s language is restrained and dialogic, allowing contradictions to reveal themselves. Verma avoids direct commentary; instead, he constructs scenes where meaning emerges through tension between statement and reality. This style gives the poem its ideological depth and timeless relevance.

Within Verma’s broader poetic world, Kosala Lacks Ideas aligns with his recurring engagement with history, myth and political consciousness. Like many poems in Magadh, it uses the past as a metaphor for the present. The poem is not about ancient Kosala; it is about any modern system that mistakes spectacle for substance. Verma consistently emphasises that the longevity of a civilisation depends not on military might but on intellectual richness, critical dialogue and democratic wisdom.

Ultimately, the poem argues that the real crisis of any society lies not in its borders or armies but in the erosion of ideas. When language becomes a tool of power rather than truth, when history becomes propaganda, when questions are unwelcome, a civilisation begins to weaken. 

"Kosala Lacks Ideas"  is therefore not merely a political satire; it is one of the most profound reflections on democratic consciousness in modern Hindi poetry. It urges readers to examine not only power but the language through which power legitimises itself. It reminds us that ideas—not armies—sustain societies, and that questions—not declarations—ensure the future of civilisation.

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*Professor and former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper