Kazi Nazrul Islam Kazi Nazrul Islam Olive-tree Warbler Category="Bangladeshi poets"Category="Bengali musicians"Category="Bengali writers"Category="Indian poets"Category="People of Kolkata"[image]

Kazi Nazrul Islam (Bangla: কাজী নজরুল ইসলাম) (b. 1899, d. 1976) was a Bengali poet. He is the national poet of Bangladesh, and is highly revered in West Bengal, India as well. He is widely known in Bengal as Vidrohi Kobi, the rebel poet.

Early life

Kazi Nazrul Islam was born in Churulia village in 24 Parganas, now in West Bengal. His father Kaji Fakir Ahmed was the Imam of the local mosque. Nazrul's family was quite poor, and Nazrul was often referred to by the locals as Dukhu Mia (the destitute one). Nazrul soon left his home, wandering around. His experience at this stage of life was varied. He worked for a while in a bread factory in Asansol, where his poetic faculties were first noticed by the people around him. Later, at the age of eighteen, Nazrul was a student of class ten in Raniganj (in today's West Bengal), when he came under the spell of the distant First World War. He joined the new Bengal Regiment and was posted in Karachi. Although the regiment never faced battle, and was disbanded in 1920 after cessation of hostilities, the cadence of the soldier's parades and marches permeates much of his writing from this time.

Literary career

Nazrul returned to Kolkata in his and the century's early twenties. His entrance in the Bengali literary scene was a phenomenon, due to his soldierly attitude and poetry in what was usually a more civilian urban crowd and his Muslim background in a then Hindu dominated culture. What was also notable was he was able to free himself pretty fast from the all-encompassing influence of the great Rabindranath Tagore, something very few, if anyone at all, had successfully done before him (he was followed shortly, by the Kallol group of even younger writers).

Nazrul's place in the Bengali literary canon was secured when he published Vidrohi (Rebel) in 1922. Set in a heroic meter, this long poem invokes images from Hindu, Muslim and Greek mythology. Nazrul's the rebel is destructive, unrepentant, hard, but also romantic, soft and gentle ("sleep smothered like the flute of Orpheus"):

I am unstoppable, irresponsible, brutal

I am Nataraja, I destroy the universe


        With my metered dance.

Like a cyclone, I blow fear into the hearts of men

I crush underfoot all rules and traditions

Fully laden boats I sink, a dark menace:


        A torpedo, a floating mine.

My hair dishevelled, I am the untimely storm

Unpredictable. I am the first raindrop

Tenderly I kiss the parched soil.

Rebel Incarnate I have come


        From the womb of Mother Universe.

Vidrohi sent shockwaves across Bengal. It was first published in the magazine Bijli, and Bijli was sold out completely, forcing publishers to reprint the issue multiple times. Apparently, after writing Vidrohi, Nazrul stormed into the Tagore residence, declaring loudly, "Gurudev, I have come to kill you off" (Gurudev or "Revered Guru", was ofcourse Rabindranth). This poem was followed by other poems in this angry rebellious vein, such as Pralayollas (Destructive Euphoria) and Kamal Pasha, all of which found resonance in a land that was politically ready to erupt against the British rule. His first book, the hugely popular Agniveena (Fiery lyre, 1922), led to the popular moniker "rebel poet" (Vidrohi Kabi). By the end of the year, however, Nazrul was arrested for writing a thinly veiled political allegory, and underwent imprisonment for one year.

Politics

Nazrul's literature can hardly be seperated from his politics. After Nazrul achieved fame as a poet, he started editing a weekly political and literary magazine named Dhumketu (The comet). Its started with a now famous adulation from Rabindranath Ay chole ay re dhumketu, andhare badh agnisetu (O comet, come, create the firebridge in the darkness). It didn't take long for Dhumeketu, which openly opposed the British rule of India and hailed movements against it to be shut down and its workers, Nazrul foremost, to be arrested and imprisoned. In fact, Nazrul was imprisoned multiple times, and some of his very best literature comes from his experience in prison:
Ei shikol bhanga chhal, moder ei shikol bhanga chhal

Ei shikol porei shikol toder korbo re bikol

(This, our shackled dance, O our shackled dance

We shall break our shackles by embracing them)

was written when Nazrul was literary shackled in Presidency jail. While being prosecuted on various counts, Nazrul denied the help of a lawyer, and instead produced one of his most memorable pieces of prose, the fiery Rajbandir Jobanbandi (Deposition of a political prisoner), which he read to the court. He also once went without food for forty days to protest against the treatment of political prisoners in the prison.

One of the main themes of Nazrul's politics was the unequivocal demand of India's freedom from British colonial rule. Nazrul was one of the first, if not the first, to demand complete independence of India, as opposed to Swaraj promoted by Gandhi at that time or dominion status. Nazrul vehemently opposed swaraj, which literally means "self rule", supported the armed movement against the British contrasting the non-violent methods adopted by Gandhi. At one point, Nazrul joined Langol (The plough), a major socialist newspaper. Nazrul, a muslim, was also strongly against the Pakistan movement (which demanded a seperate homeland for Indian muslims).

Nazrul-Geeti: Oeuvre in Song

In addition to his poetic corpus, Nazrul, who was a talented musician, also composed more than three thousand songs, which constitute a complete genre in Bengali music today, under the name of nazrul-geeti, and remains immensely popular, with a large number of artistes and an active recording industry, both in West Bengal and Bangladesh.

After the success of his early poetry, and his increasing stature in literary and political circles, in the late 1920's Nazrul started composing his songs to music.

In this dark cotton cloud rain

The forest has spread out green

Beyond its boundaries

O where are you

In this dark cotton cloud rain. . .

However, here too, his fiery patriotic songs are notable:
Breaking down the doors of dawn

We shall bring the morning on

Shredding darkness with our song

    We shall overcome.

(From Chal-Chal-Chal)

He became associated with the Kallol literary group and also continued his political activity, running for election in 1926. For a period, a large number of his writings were banned. Other notable books of poems and songs from this period include Dolonchampa(1923), Bisher Bansi (The poisonous flute, 1924), Bhangar Gan (Songs of break-up, 1924), Puber Haoya (The east wind 1925) and Bulbul(1928).

Nazrul lived in divisive times. Religious communalism was on the rise, possibly fuelled by elements in the British administration. Muslims felt disenfranchised and alienated in the majority Hindu culture. There were a number of Hindu-Muslim riots, culminating in reckless carnage during independence when the Empire was divided into three parts on religious lines. Through all this, Nazrul remained committedly non-communal, writing both Shyama-Sangeet in praise of Kali, as well as Islamic Hamd songs. He married Pramila Devi, a Hindu lady, and chose Sanskritic names for his sons. In later years, his liberal views on religion came under attack from the Muslim right.

Illness and later life

[image] In 1942, Nazrul fell seriously ill and despite many attempts at treatment, he gradually lost his voice and memory. He entered a world of increasing isolation, until 1972, when the newly formed nation of Bangladesh rediscovered him and he was honoured as the national poet. However Nazrul's physcial and mental condition never improved, and ne passed away in 1976. According to a wish expressed in one of his poems, he was laid to rest beside a Mosque on the campus of the University of Dhaka.

See also