The poem, ‘If I was a Tree’ is a veiled and a bitter attack on the cruel and inhumane practice of caste discrimination practiced in Indian society. It is a social satire in which the poet by juxtaposing the world of nature with the human world accuses human beings of being meaner than the world of nature for practicing untouchability against their own fellowmen. The speaker intends to highlight the fact that caste is purely a man-made construct and with this diabolic idea, powerful sections of society have managed to humiliate and suppress the meek for centuries.
The poet adopts a logical approach to present before the reader, the impersonal and large-hearted treatment of nature vis-a-vis the pettiness of man. The speaker speaks in the persona of an untouchable and presents some instances of untouchability that he is subjected to. He uses the ‘tree’ as a metaphor for a representative from the plant world and highlights how agents of nature like the sunlight, the cool breeze and the raindrops would have treated him if he were not a tree when they come in contact with him.
The speaker says that if he was not a tree his shadow would feel defiled when the sunlight embraces him; his friendship with the cool breeze and the leaves would not be sweet; the raindrops taking him as an untouchable would refuse to give him water to quench his thirst and the mother earth would flee him asking for a bath if she came to know that he was branching out further from his roots.
Similarly, the bird is representative of the animal world. The speaker says that if he were not a tree the bird would have asked him what caste he was if it wanted to build its nest.
Similarly, if he were not a tree the sacred cow would not scrape her body on him, scratching whenever it itched her and incidentally the three hundred thousand gods sheltering inside her would not have touched him.
The speaker concludes optimistically, hoping that because he is a tree, at least after its death, the tree would be hacked into pieces of dry wood and would be either used as fuel for the holy fire or a bier for a dead body. The pieces of wood, when they burn as fuel in the holy fire, would make him pure and if not, as a bier for a sinless body that would be borne on the shoulders of four good men. Thus, the poem expresses the anguish and desperation of the untouchables.
