Sabka Vikas

German writer Bertolt Brecht wrote a poem titled ‘The Chalk Cross’ about a maidservant who had an affair with a man in Hitler’s SA. The guy told her one day how they caught ‘antinational’ people. He took out a stump of chalk from his tunic pocket and drew a cross on the palm of his hand. He would stand in the queue of the unemployed people in the country waiting for government’s favours. Some of them would curse the government. He would join the cursing and appreciate them by patting on their back. The pat would leave on the back of the man a mark of the white cross. That man would soon be taken away by the SA.

Soon this man from the SA took over the “savings book” of the woman. He said he’d keep it safe. He said he was a patriot who only had honest intentions. As he said that he laid his hand on the woman’s shoulder to calm her down. She “ran away terrified. At home / I looked at my back in the mirror to see if it didn’t bear / A white cross.”

In Hitler’s Germany antinational people were taken away with some pretension of subtlety. In India today, antinational people are arrested directly with no pretensions. India has advanced far ahead of Hitler’s Germany. Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas. Jai Hind.