Nayakayaneni Lyrics by Rachel Halliday

O leader who kept no granary of your own
you who filled the empty storehouses,
not from the bellies of the poor,
but by squeezing the hoard and pressing hard on the misers…….
the demon-kings fall beneath your feet.

Came with empty hands, went with empty hands,
O leader who blossomed upon the human earth
the fragrance of your virtue soothes all people.
Slaying the fierce foes of injustice,
you waved the clinging banner of justice,
O leader who lay light upon the earth
you took the motherland into your embrace…..

O deer-faced folk, made prey
to the cruel kings who were tigers and bears,
cry out, roar, and tell your sorrow
the saviour hidden beneath the soil
comes again, throwing off the earth…..

This is a song of homage to a selfless leader, and it burns with the anger of the poor and the hope they place in such a figure. The whole portrait is built on one contrast: this leader “kept no granary of his own” yet “filled the empty storehouses.” And crucially, he filled them not by taking from “the bellies of the poor,” the way corrupt rulers do, but “by squeezing the hoard and pressing hard on the misers,” turning wealth back toward the people. Before such a leader, the song says, “the demon-kings fall beneath your feet.”

The second verse defines his greatness through what he refused to keep. “Came with empty hands, went with empty hands,” he took nothing for himself; the “fragrance of his virtue” is what soothes the people. He slew “the fierce foes of injustice,” raised “the banner of justice,” and lay “light upon the earth,” weightless because he was never a burden on the poor, and gathered the motherland itself “into his embrace.” He is drawn as the opposite of the greedy ruler in every line.

The last verse is the rawest, and the most striking. It calls out to the ordinary people, the “deer-faced folk” made “prey to the cruel kings who were tigers and bears,” and urges them to “cry out, roar, and tell your sorrow.” And it ends on an image of resurrection and undying hope: “the saviour hidden beneath the soil comes again, throwing off the earth.” Whether read as a fallen leader who lives on in the people’s cause or as the promise that a true champion of the poor can never be permanently buried, what the listener is left with is a fierce, moving faith that justice, and the leader who embodies it, will rise again.