Who calls you a robber, my friend? who calls you a thief?
All around the robbers beat their drums and thieves rule.
Who is the Daniel that sits in judgement
- over thieves and robbers?
- over thieves and robbers?
O Supreme Judge, hold high your sceptre,
For the great are great today only by robbing the weak.
The greater the robbery and theft,
- the cheating and the exploitation
- the cheating and the exploitation
Palaces rise built with the congealed blood of subject peoples,
Capitalists run their factories by destroying a million hearths.
What diabolical machine is this fed by human flesh?
Live men and women go in but come out like pressed sugar-cane.
The factories squeeze the manhood out of millions,
And fill the millionaire's cups of wine and jars of gold.
The moneylender grows pot-bellied on the food that the hungry need,
The landlord ruins the poor's home to drive his coach-and-four.
The merchant mind has turned the world into a brothel house,
Sin and Satan are its cup bearers and sing a song of greed.
Man has lost food and health and life and hope and speech,
Bankrupt, he rushes toward sure destruction.
There is hardly any way of escape,
For all around are trenches dug by the greed of gold.
The whole world a prison and robbers are the guards.
Thieves have their brotherhood, cheats their comradeship.
Who calls you a robber, my friend? who says you steal?
You have only taken a few coins or cups,
But you have not stabbed man in the heart!
You are not inhuman though you may be a thief,
Like, Ratnakar, you can still become Valmiki if
- only you meet a real man!
- only you meet a real man!
- - Translated by Humayun Kabir
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