The title of the poem recalls an army command. It is a call to all the dispossessed of the world to change the world. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, ‘Forward March’ exhorts the masses to bring about a revolution everywhere.
The first stanza presents the picture of explorers marching towards a new land. The words ‘rolling’, ‘tolling’ create an onomatopoeic effect of ‘roaring sea waves’ and ‘ringing bells’. The song calls upon the suffering masses to rise and revolt against their condition. ‘Another world’ is the c ‘assless utopia—the dream of all Marxists-, which will demand a long, relentless struggle and a lot of sacrifices before it can be attained. The repetition of ‘another’ emphasizes the remoteness of the new world and the difficulty of attaining it.
The optimism and confidence seen in the first stanza (lines 1-8) continues in the second stanza (lines9-25), too. The short staccato lines and the quickness of rhythm already point to thefinal victory and urge fighters on: The choice is clear/The hour is near. The vision of anotherworld, the utopia, continues. But the metaphor changes. It is no longer a new world but aworld that will be built upon the ruins of the existing world. The two images merge ‘in our blood in floods shall drench all roads’—the sacrifices that the marchers will have to make to achieve their goal—a new world alias a new world order. Marxism believes in order arising out of chaos. The revolution they are aiming at will change the contours of history and geography as also of human mind, for, all present history and geography are a creation of the human mind. The future that this revolution hopes to usher in must be unburdened by the weight of the past. In changing geography Sri Sri echoes the Marxist goal of creating an international brotherhood, a classless society, that cuts across man-made frontiers. This revolution will rewrite history which will be a record not of the conquests of kings but of the lives of ordinary people. The revolution will erase national boundaries that only divide men.
The third stanza (lines26-38)begins-quite unexpectedly -on an angry note. II in the earlier stanza the marchers promised to correct the aberrations of the past, this stanza threatens to change the present-all institutions founded on false principles of injustice and hypocrisy, will be demolished. There is much sound and fury and less meaning in this stanza. Some of the collocations justify themselves only as outbursts of an angry orator: ‘Rottenmarrowed,’ senile time harrowed’,‘haggard laggards’. But towards the end of the stanza, Sri Sri moves away from the merely rhetorical gesticulations of a public speaker. Evan as he calls for the destruction of all that is false-humbug and hoax-he recognizes the powers of myth and tradition to give a new direction to man’s thoughts and actions. ‘Om,Harom’, shall be the battle cry of the revolutionaries, the new world seekers. ‘Harom’ is associated with shiva, one of the three Gods in Hindu Trinity. Shiva the Destroyer (of evil) had come to the rescue of gods (icons of goodness in creation) time and again in Hindu mythology. The world shall again be cleansed by ‘Harom’ as it had been in the past.
The image of a crowd shouting ‘Harom’ and storming the Bastille showcases a beautiful synthesis of the past and the present, the east and the west and underlines the eternal struggle of man for an equitable world order.
Stanza 5 presents an image of elemental fury that must possess the marchers if they arc to reach their goal. ‘Cyclonic winds’ was Shivasamudru in the original. If we keep that in mind the image of marchers full of the fury of cyclones and thunder and moving faster than the mind to destroy an evil, unjust world is invested with greater significance. When Shiva is roused he begins his tandavanritya (the dance of death): he is transformed into the Destroyer to cleanse the world of evil. The marchers, who were marching forward chanting ‘Harom’must now become shiva themselves to destroy the evil world ‘of humbug and hoax.... Rotten marrowed/senile time harrowed’ and bring back ‘Treto’ associated with Ramrajya–a world where no suffering and no injustice existed–something that all mankind has always aspired for.
The burning lights of ‘Treta’ can now be seen, the new world seems well within reach and it only increases the marcher’ Sense of urgency and impatience. They have been roused to fury and nothing would stop them now. ‘The blood in flood’ and the drizzling blood dazzling red hot' of the earlier stanza are now turned into ‘a lake of blood aglow’—it is like oil boiling. Blood here is a symbol of the revolution itself as also of the anger in the hearts of the revolutionaries.
The sixth stanza paints the picture of a world in upheavel : ‘leapleapleaping’ captures the relentless struggle of the revolutionaries; it is an image of a mob out to destroy, the world it hates. ‘whirlwhirl whirling and ‘doomgloombooming’ pictures a disintegrating world.
‘Niagara and Nyanza’ once again fuse the East and the West to give this search for a new world order a universal character.
Mountains roar, oceans roll and lakes are aglow—it is a world in turmoil that will give birth to a new and better world. They could hear the bells ringing from another world in the beginning, now they can hear the drums.
In the final stanza, anger, impatience and optimism come together. The poet sees the old world crumbling away and a new world rising like a new dawn. The youth are, for the first line addressed as comrades. They to clear out the dirt and dust of the past so that a fresh, new world will take its place unburdened by the unwanted legacies of the past. Yet paradoxically, it is the past again, which offers him symbols for the process of purification- of the serpents of shiva the Destroyer and Dhananjaya (Arjuna) of Mahabharata. But if the serpents belong to the mythical lore, the gray hounds belong to the modern world. Together they signify violent extermination of evil. Once again the mythical and the ideological come together to give a modern context to the poet’s revolutionary message.
A new dawn is seen coming over a new world–‘a newer, truer world’. It was the Treta light that had backoned them to this. Now it is Dhananjaya from Dwapara Yuga who would claim the new world. Sri Sri thus weaves together, the mythological cycle of different Yugas (‘humbug and hoax’ belong to the modern kaliyuga) followed by pralaya (the destruction of the evil world) and the birth of another world, with mankind’s eternal struggle for a free and just society. The red flag and ‘the ritual flame of time’ (sacrificial fires belonging to the krita and tretayugas) coming together do the same again, connecting the past and the present and making man’s quest for Ramrajya, an idealist goal through ages.
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