June 30, 2002

Nazrul Islam burst on to the literary scene of Bengal at the end of the First World War like a Nietszchean ‘dancing star’. His meteoric rise to literary fame and political notoriety just as much as his untimely and tragic eclipse may have prevented the critics from carrying out a full and genuine assessment of his contributions. In post-1947 Pakistan as well as post-liberation Bangladesh, his identity as a Muslim (in truth a partial and complex identity at best) became politically primary for reasons that are too obvious and crude to consider. Unfortunately, the richness, depth and complex polyphony of Nazrul’s creative life has been all but lost in this game of political and religious (and at times, politico-religious) representation. So much so that we are now finally forced to raise the seemingly simple questions: Who was Nazrul? What phenomenon did he represent?

The scope of the present endeavour is, therefore, to focus on a select few poems after a rather broad based picture of his activities as a poet in the inter-war years. There are many voices of Nazrul that have shaped the complex polyphony of cultures and classes in ‘modern’ India which never managed to generate a genuine modernity of its own.

Born in 1899, at the height of the triumph of the second modernity in Bengal, Nazrul’s chequered early life was marked mainly by non-English institutions. Even the high school he went to was in the Muffassil — the hinterlands. And the Daroga, the police subinspector who had earlier become his benefactor was simultaneously both a symbol — albeit a very low-ranking symbol — of the English idea of imperial law and order, and a native son steeped deeply in the folk culture of Bengal.

Add to this Nazrul’s time in the Leto group where he learned to sing, act and play the harmonium — the last item, a curious example of a missionary instrument transformed to serve the carnivalesque. Here you have the makings of a man who could hardly fit into the stereotype of literary and cultural modernity created by the so-called Bengal renaissance. Of necessity, Nazrul was the person who represented the masses. But the stresses and faultlines of the second, more imitative modernity had an effect him as he came to be better known. On the other hand, Nazrul’s formal initiations into poetry, lyrics, musical forms and melodies would ultimately make him a genuine part of the grand carnival of the Bengali populace.

According to the special Nazrul issue of Kavita (Poetry), edited by Buddhadev Basu, Nazrul’s fame among both the literary and the ordinary people was established more quickly and easily than that of any other contemporary poet. The reasons are not hard to fathom. Here was a poet who brought the cadences of poetry down to the fields and the streets without fear or compromise.

The fluency with which he wrote, the ease with which he mingled with everyone, his zest for life, unbounded energy and acceptance of the joys and sorrows of his countrymen and women, defined him as a poet apart from the rest. Most interestingly, he was not removed from the masses, as other modernists. These were the ones who mimicked the Pound-Eliot inspired modernism of English poetry, imported freshly from abroad, in the wake of which, Nazrul was clearly and perhaps the only exception.

Nazrul’s audacious anarchy appears more bold, if one takes into account the cultural atmosphere of the first few decades of the twentieth century in Bengal.

The 1920s, however, were years of great turmoil and intellectual fermentation for Bengali Muslims. After the dismantling of the Turkish caliphate by Mustafa Kemal and his group, the powerful Khilafat movement met its natural demise. Nazrul welcomed Kemal by writing a poem in military style called “Kemal Pasha”. Like most of his poems, here too, one finds a natural use of not only Urdu, Arabic and Persian phrases, but English aswell.

The inclusion of English in his work reminds one of Gupta Kavi, and a fair comparison shows that Nazrul synthasized Ishwar Gupta’s modernity with Michael’s in his work. As a poet, he was unusually gifted. But Nazrul did more than simply synthesize. He added a new dimension to our modernity by injecting in his verses the idioms of Muslim Bangali. Although “Kemal Pasha” as a poem has many shortcommings, some of the features of this new poetic dimension can be discerned even in this poem.

The poem begins with a short prose, dramatic introduction, and refers to Kamal Pasha marching back with his forces. The ‘poetry’ part of the poem begins with a direct reference to ‘Kamal Bhai’, a Bengali expression where a set of close community relations are conventionalized in familial terms. Thus Kemal Pasha becomes ‘brother Kemal’ to his soldier-comrades and to us, the readers. In just two opening lines (Oi khepeche pagli mayer damal chele Kamal Bhai/ Oshur pure shore uthechhe jorese shamal shamal tai) Nazrul uses pure Bengali words (shamal shamal), Sanskritized words (Oshurpure), Arabic-Farsi-Urdu words (shore,jorese). Next comes a refrain completely in Urdu:

Kamal tune kamal kiya bhai

Ho ho! Kamal tune kamal kiya bhai!

In order to grasp the significance of Nazrul’s innovations in what is perhaps his most remarkable poem, “Bidrohi” (The rebel) we need to remind ourselves of the modernities of poetic dimensions in Bengali poetry. Gupta’s modernity was limited to an impressive but somewhat superficial incorporation of the Anglicized diction. Nevertheless it was close to the language of the newly emerging urban lower middle classes. Dutt’s Europeanized and later Sanskritized diction clearly strove for a high culture of the ancient days modernized just as the English Romantics had looked at Greece and Rome not so long ago.

Nazrul deepened both these tendencies; however, perhaps his lack of higher English education and his roots in the culture of the masses, saved him from the historical limits of earlier modernities. This propensity in his work can also be attributed to Nazrul’s nomadic lifestyle which was to some extent chaotic in nature.

“Bidrohi” does not so much rebel against the existing poetic dimension of the two modernities as completes their contradictions in the colonial context. There is also no radical break with the existing prosodic paradigms or metrical structures. In a sense there is no apparent resemblance with the modern European literary avant garde practice. Yet the very title of the poem is a declaration of revolt. This revolt at first seems merely an individual one. But Nazrul’s revolt can also be seen as the revolt of the colonized mind.

Nazrul’s approach cuts deeper than a project of freedom based on collective and individual violence. Nazrul also draws upon the cultural resources of the tradition of Prem (love) from both Hindu and Islamic traditions. The marvel of the Rebel is the juxtaposition of these apparently opposing themes: love-hatred, violence-non-violence, restlessness-peaceable meditation, eternal striving and quiet meditation. The accretion of tension throughout the poem and its attempted dialectical resolution are what generate the almost unique dynamic movement of this poem.

In “Bidrohi”, Nazrul begins with traditional stanzaic form, and the metre seems innocuous at the beginning. In fact, it begins with just six letters without even any Juktakkhor (double letters with strong consonantal sound):

Balo Beer (Speak! oh valiant!)

In the next line we encounter a bold declaration of unbending individuality:

Chiro unnata mamo shir (Ever unbent is my head).

In various parts of the poem there are references to many Hindu mythic figures. To mention just a few: Vrigu, Vishnu, Chandi, Parashuram and his axe, Balaram and his plough, Shyam (Krishna) and his flute, etc. There are equally prominent references to Arabic-Persian, even Mongol images: Khoda and his Arosh (seat), Bedouin, Chengis, Israfil, Borrak the divine carrier, Jibrail, Jahannam, etc.

These syncretic examples show that Nazrul’s quick maturity as a poet came from an early assimilation of the Indian culture which, at that time was augmented by his exposure to western influences.

A significant aspect of “Bidrohi” is the spontaneous fusion of the masculine and the feminine personas — the Jungian animus-anima or the East Asian yin-yang, as it were. For example, there is the following masculine part:

I am the mighty primordial shout!/ I am Bishyamitra’s pupil, Durbasha the furious,/ I am the fury of the wild fire,/ I burn to ashes this universe!/ I am the gay laughter of the generous heart,/ I am the enemy of creation, the mighty terror!/ I am the eclipse of the twelve suns,/ I herald the final destruction!/ Sometimes I am quiet and serene,/ I am in a frenzy at other times,/ I am the new youth of dawn,/ I crush under my feet the vain glory of the Almighty!

This is followed almost immediately by the feminine:

I am the maiden’s dark glossy hair,/ I am the sparkle of fire in her blazing eyes./ In the sixteen year old’s heart,

I am happy beyond measure!/ I am the pining soul of the lovesick,/ I am the bitter tears in the widow’s heart...

(Translation by Kabir Choudhury)

It is because of this polyphonic voice in himself that Nazrul could write in “Amar Kaifiyat” (My defence):

I am the poet of the present, not a prophet of the future...

In this satirical poem Nazrul gently mocks the narrowmindedness of both the Hindu Pandits and the Muslim Mullahs:

Wondering whether I am a Hindu or Muslim/ I search for the physical signs and shake my head

At the very end of this poem Nazrul forcefully presents his mission as a poet:

I pray that those who rob the food from the mouths of our children/ Those are the people who will be doomed by what I write with my blood.

Through his assimilation of several different aspects of life and the sheer force of his genius, Nazrul managed to create a whole new dimension that went beyond the earlier modernities in Bengali poetry. Therefore, in a deep historical and anti-imperialist sense, Nazrul is the first postcolonial, revolutionary postmodern poet of Bengal, who emerged in a colonial and modernist environment, arose from the voices of the masses and the depth of the stirrings in their souls.

Writer’s email: hkhan@du.edu

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