During our times; no Bengali child would grow without listening and reciting in schools and Rama Krishna Missions and other cultural hubs the famous line ---
"Ami shei din hobo shanto,
Jobe Utpeerit-er krondon-rol akash-e batash-e dhonibey na,
(I shall rest in peace only when
the anguished cry of the oppressed
shall no longer reverberate in the sky and the air.) The lines are from the poem Bidrohi by Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh.
A young Nazrul in front of the Dalmadal Cannon in Bishnupur, Bankura
Born - May 24, 1899 – he expired on August 29, 1976. He was a Revolutionary Bengali poet, a celebrated writer for children and a fantastic lyricist and musician. He also wrote and gave music to songs dedicated to Goddess Kali - hailed in Bengali culture as Shyama Sangeet.
Nazrul was a champion of religious harmony.
In one poem he wrote: "Ek hi brinte dooti kusum ... Hindu Musalman (meaning Hindus and Muslims are attached to each other in a single bud).
He seamlessly composed both profound Islamic ghazals and devotional Hindu Shyama Sangeet.
A Polymath of the Arts: He wasn't just a poet. He was an actor, soldier, journalist, film-maker, and a pioneering musician who introduced the ghazal to Bengal.
He created nearly 4,000 songs, collectively known as Nazrul Geeti.
Through his works like Samyabadi (The Proletariat/The Communist), he raised voice fiercely against the exploitation of the poor and championed women's rights.
Nazrul seemed almost instinctively to take to heart—despite having had no familiarity with it in his own time—Karl Marx’s injunction, relatively recently discovered:
“[…] rub your conceptual blocs together in such a way that they catch fire!”
“Bidrohi” is a poem animated by the fierce dance of the dialectic—a poem at once of negation and affirmation—and thus a momentous, unparalleled gift to the Bangla language.
"So formidable was his anti-colonial spirit that it continued to shape and inspire the people of erstwhile East Pakistan, today’s Bangladesh, in its nationalistic struggles against West Pakistani quasi-colonial rule throughout the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the armed Liberation War and ultimate victory following a nine-month-long bloody war in December 1971," writes Ahmed Ahsanuzzaman in Dhaka-based 'Daily Star' newspaper.
Nazrul insistence that peace under an oppressive regime is itself a form of violence, a “violence of peace” that the colonised must reject through awakening, defiance, and ultimately, revolt.
There is a philosophical element in these.
Violence - hence - need not be incidental but 'essential' to the process of decolonisation or fighting oppression. Nazrul perhaps emphasised the political as well as psychological impact of Violence.
For French psychiatrist and political philosopher Franrz Fanon too, revolutionary violence was inevitable, purging, and transformative as it destroyed the colonial system and united the oppressed.
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| Fanon |
In the book 'Black Skin, White Masks'; Fanon had described the unfair treatment of black people in France and how they were disapproved of by white people.
Frantz argued that racism and dehumanization directed toward black people caused feelings of inferiority among black people. This dehumanization prevented black people from fully assimilating into white society and, further, into full personhood. This caused psychological strife.
Indians and the Bengali population under British faced the same predicament and challenges.
For Bengalis and those Indians who followed Nazrul; he was/is not only a poet; he exists in constant form—as voice and a force.
Get the gravity of the statement --- “Bolo bir—
bolo unnoto momo shir!” (Speak, O hero — lift my head high!)
Take few more examples: Shrishthi Shukher ullhashey (Triumphant over nature's creation).
*** And some more :: --- Rose does no longer bloom in rain.
Old enjoying the warmth of youth's funeral pyre ---
- Cannot tolerate embrace or kiss of Death.
A century of possibilities of imposibles
Well, Science may be regularity and order .... but Poetry is chance and arbitrariness !!
ends
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