Sunday 10 April 2011

‘We shall overcome’

To millions of people it is the ultimate song of resistance. To me ‘We shall overcome’ is also the reminder of a mea culpa moment. I had heard it sung dozens of times earlier without ever knowing its historical significance. But this time it touched my soul, it changed my vision of seeing the world. It was a deeply moving and embarrassing experience.
As a group of non-committal adolescents, we loved attending the youth camps of the church to have a little bit of fun. We were boisterous and loud, but our words were empty. Coming from middle-class families, we went to ‘regimented English-medium schools’ that had sprung up in small towns, and vainly thought it rocking that we could belt out almost all songs of Abba or Boney M. With a beat in our hearts and a spring in our steps, we made it to every camp as a gang. We practised skits for ‘talent time’, stayed late into the night to prepare the morning ‘newspaper’, giving little thought to what was discussed during the day. Our vision was tunneled.
One day during break time at one of the students’ conferences, we retreated to the verdant surroundings of Charalkunnu with guitars in hand. Unmindful of what was happening around us, we started singing loudly. Little did we know that we were disturbing a small group of people huddled together. They were a class apart from the Syrian Christians that we were. They were attending the same camp.
As the group’s attention turned towards us, we heard a loud voice from their leader, an Achen: “Do you want to sing English songs, children?” And then he began to sing ‘We shall overcome’.
The boys and girls in the group formed a circle and sang after him. The faint voice now became bolder. This came as an assault on our sensibilities. We were sorry that we had touched a raw nerve. It was never our intention to disturb anyone and we walked away. The three little words rang in my ears for a very long time.
We shall overcome, as they say, “started out in church pews and picket lines”. Since then it has reverberated through history. The civil rights movement in the United States adopted it as its unofficial anthem. Vowing to fight for voting rights for all Americans, President Lyndon Johnson invoked the hypnotic words in his famous speech.
It has inspired civil rights and pro-democracy movements worldwide and brought about reforms in governments. It has led millions through the storm, through the night, of despair and doom. The message of hope and courage has been translated into many languages, including in Hindi (‘Hum honge kamyab’).
It was not difficult for me to discern the hurt in the voices of the boys and girls, the anger deep inside them and the sense of collective self-esteem by getting into a huddle and establishing an identity.
But, has all the “cries of pain and hymns of protests” of Dalits delivered them from centuries of oppression? Has conversion to Christianity whose bedrock is “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal.3: 28) redeemed them from social discrimination and untouchability?
Figures say there are some 19 million Dalit Christians in India. That is more than 70 per cent of the total population of Christians in the country. But their place in the church is nothing to speak of.
No doubt, caste is a political reality than just a personal reality. And it is another matter that the church has been fighting for the constitutionally guaranteed protection and privileges that Dalits lose just because they profess their faith.
But political struggles apart, don’t we need to liberate ourselves from the prejudices that have ruled us for long? African American writer James Baldwin’s essay ‘The fire next time’ explores the question of black identity. He believed the black man’s suffering was
redemptive. But he also believed that the deliverance of the whites lay in delivering themselves “from their imprisonment in myths of racial superiority”. We need to replace race with caste when we think of our own deliverance.
That is the same message that Peter got from the “great sheet let down from heaven” and made him say to Cornelius, “Get up, for I am a man as you are.” (Acts: 10).

P.S.: A cartoon I saw below one of the articles on the ‘We shall overcome’ song shows a little black boy nudging his grandfather to ask him, “Did we overcome yet?”