Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters recites Aamir Aziz’s anti-CAA poem, calls law ‘fascist and racist’

Pink Floyd's co-founder and guitarist Roger Waters recited 'Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega' at a London event and called Aziz 'an activist involved in fight against Modi'.

Pink Floyd guitarist Roger Waters | Wikimedia Commons

New Delhi: Pink Floyd’s co-founder and guitarist Roger Waters, in a protest march earlier this week, recited the poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega (Everything will be remembered) penned by Delhi-based poet Aamir Aziz. Aziz had written the poem in protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)

Speaking at an event in London demanding the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Waters described Aziz as an activist “involved in the fight against [PM] Modi” and called the amended Act “[a] fascist, racist citizenship law”.

Waters read out the English translation of Aziz’s poem:

Everything will be remembered.
Killers, we will become ghosts
and write of your killings,
with all the evidence.
You write jokes in courts,
we will write justice on the walls.
We will speak so loudly that
even the deaf will hear.
We will write so clearly that
even the blind will read.
You write injustice on the earth,
We will write revolution in the sky.

“This kid has got a future,” he quipped in the end.

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Roger Waters of Pink Floyd reads Aamir Aziz's 'Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega' and slays Narendra Modi. #DelhiRiots2020 pic.twitter.com/LAsDDD01Sq

— Samiran Mishra (@scoutdesk) February 27, 2020

Aziz had written the poem on 11 January, just days after the attack on JNU students. He also performed it at the massive anti-CAA protests in Hyderabad on the eve of Republic Day.

Aziz’s poems are critical of the government 

A former student of Jamia Millia Islamia University, 29-year-old Aziz has written several songs criticising the current government including ‘Achche din blues’, which was released a few days before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The song is replete with references to the Babri Masjid demolition. “Did the mosque close down, I asked. My friend told me it was broken,” sings Aziz.

The poet had also penned Jamia ki Ladkiyaan (The Women of Jamia) in response to the police crackdown on Jamia students on 15 December.

“Patriarchy’s clothes get torn when Jamia’s women gather on the streets… When police raise their sticks and pelt stones, and the men can’t muster the courage… Then it’s the women of Jamia who raise slogans,” reads the poem.

Aziz, in an interview last month on the Jamia attacks, said, “My parents and grandparents will all be illegal because they don’t have documents. When I tried to study and buy a house, they burnt our library, so where do I study now? India HAs become a dream now,” he said.