Essay : Postcolonial Theory and the Literary Oeuvre of Kazi Nazrul Islam : Biswajit Ghosh
Translated from the Bengali into English by Mohammad Shafiqul Islam
In exploring knowledge in the present-day context of the world, Postcolonial Theory plays an important role. To comprehend the principal trends of colonial and postcolonial literature and culture, this theory has made an impact in a variety of ways. Self-exploration and the spirit of resistance are the major characteristics of postcolonialism. Resistance against colonizing powers, the delineation of the relationship between the centre and the periphery, rebellious women’s voices, renewed constructions of myths, consciousness about subalterns, patriotism and love for nature, and the uncompromising revolutionary spirit are the key issues of the theory. If the works of Kazi Nazrul Islam are explored through the lens of postcolonial theory, a distinct and exceptional Nazrul emerges to readers and scholars. Before excavating Nazrul’s works, an introduction to the postcolonial theory and its application in literature is inevitable.
2.
In analyzing literature, art, politics, and culture, postcolonialism has been employed since the beginning of the later half of the twentieth century. Postcolonialism has been formulated upon the historical and conceptual investigation. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, the Europeans expanded their empire all over Asia, Africa, and Latin America through sea voyages. In the guise of trade, the Europeans occupied the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, establishing their power; consequently, they plundered the wealth of the native countries and preached Christianity. As the Europeans were able to occupy these native lands and establish their political dominance through sea voyages, they implanted a sense of racial superiority in their minds—hence came into being the binary-opposition between the master and the slave.
England, Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France—these countries indeed had conquered almost the whole world through sea voyages since the 15th century. Those sea voyages were not only simply voyages, but they were eternal explorations to earn knowledge and gather information and data. Through the geographical knowledge and information and data about the conquered lands, the Europeans became familiar with the wealth and the weaknesses of the natives; likewise, they developed an idea about their own power and superiority. Probably for this reason, the novelist Franz Kafka termed the Europeans’ conquering the sea as knowledge machine (Kafka 1919 : 11). With this new knowledge, the Europeans created a dichotomy, which the settler countries began to deeply follow, eventually enforcing it upon the native people and compelling them to believe in the dichotomy. The examples of such binary opposition include ruler/ruled, white/black, civilized/uncivilized, enlightened/ barbarous, dynamic/sluggish, good/bad, beautiful/ugly, human/beastly, teacher/ learner, wise/ ignorant, physician/ patient, centre/periphery, and so on. Needless to say that the first party of this dichotomy represents the imperial powers of Europe and the other the colonized world. The Europeans circulated that Europe represented whatever was good, beautiful, human, and logical, whereas the colonized people were ugly, inhuman, barbarous, ignorant, and peripheral. Europe wanted to make the world understand and was able to do so that the whites were human and beautiful, representing all goodness. The blacks, on the other hand, were born to be ruled and to serve the whites.
While expanding the empire, Europe set a discriminatory standard for the colonized lands and the natives. These differences— organizational, political, social, cultural, and psychological—gradually made an impact on everything. This dichotomy or difference brought people into a realization that—since the vast areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America were barbarous, devoid of the light of education, and poor—the Europeans came to these people as a messenger of emancipation to reach the light of civilization to them. This dichotomy ratified the truth that Europe was developed and civilized, whereas the rest of the world was poor and uncivilized; Europe was the centre and the rest of the world was the periphery. In this context, Bill Ashcroft comments :
Colonialism could only exist at all by postulating that there existed a binary opposition into which the world is divided. The gradual establishment of an empire depended upon a stable hierarchical relationship in which the colonized existed as the other of the colonizing culture. Thus the idea of the savage could occur only if there was a concept of the civilized to oppose it. In this way a geography of difference was constructed, in which differences were mapped (cartography) and laid out in a metaphorical landscape that represented not geographical fixity, but the fixity of power. Imperial Europe became defined as the ‘centre’ in a geography at least as metaphysical as physical. Everything that lay outside that centre was by definition at the margin or the periphery of culture, power and civilization (Ashcroft 2013: 36-37).
The all-time imperial power intends to keep this binary opposition between the centre and the periphery strong and steadfast. The success and the permanence of imperialism along with a triumph over keeping the colonized weak depend on the steadfastness of the binary oppositional relationship. As a result, the ships leaving the European shores carried not only the trading commodities but many other apparatuses as well—religion, culture, education, administration, and even people’s thinking processes, the sole purpose of which was to keep the colonized under thumb politically, administratively, and psychologically.
Imperialism and colonialism are considered to complement each other. The motto of imperialism is to expand territories, whereas colonialism is its pragmatic phenomenon. To explain the relationship, Edward Said writes, “Imperialism means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory; colonialism, which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory” (Said 1993: 26). In his famous book Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon comments on how European imperialists made a complex relationship between the ruler and the ruled in colonized countries, “For the rule of the colonizers, a psychological transformation occurs between both the colonizer and the colonized. With the conscious efforts of the colonizers, the cultures, traditions, and languages of the natives keep declining and, at some point, die away. This decline or death of the traditions or cultures of the natives give birth to a sense of inferiority or subservience in their minds” (Fanon 1986: 10). For constant circulations and attempts of the colonizing powers, a strong fascination and deep esteem to the cultures of the colonizers are created in the minds of the colonized, and, at the same time, the natives begin to feel a sense of inferiority towards their own traditions, languages, and cultures. Fanon notes, “Colonialism do not remain content in restraining the natives, but they also benumb their brains and thinking power. With certain perverted astuteness and logic, the oppressed people are made to lag behind, and they are deformed, defaced, and destroyed” (Fanon 2006: 28).
This way the supremacist philosophy had bolstered the Europeans to expand their empire throughout the world for four hundred years—they plundered the colonized countries. During the 19th and 20th centuries, about two thirds of the world went under control of the colonizing powers. Similarly, the Indian subcontinent got entrapped in this cultural net of the colonial powers. These efforts of the colonial powers can be realized from Thomas Babington Macaulay’s statement. As a strategy to make the natives wear white masks, Macaulay wrote, “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” (Woodrow 1862: 115).
As the key purpose of spreading education in the colonized countries, the imperial powers gave importance to cultural dominance. The direct result of this policy was the newly-educated middle-class Bengalis of the 19th century. The real picture of the intellectual and cultural aggression of the colonizing powers appears clear in the following remarks by eminent scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o :
The oppressed and the exploited of the earth maintain their defiance : Liberty from theft. But the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other people’s languages rather than their own. It makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those forces which would stop their own springs of life. It even plants serious doubts about the moral rightness of struggle. Possibilities of triumph or victory are seen as remove, ridiculous dreams. The intended results are despair, despondency and a collective death-wish. Amidst this Wasteland which it has created, imperialism, presents itself as a cure and demands that dependant sings hymns of praise with the constant refrain : ‘theft is Holy’ (Thiong’o 2010: 15).
It is also well understandable from Malay Roy Chowdhury’s observation about how the settlers injected the idea of superiority and domination into the mindset and belief of the colonized. Malay observes :
We often hear people saying this that they have had a bitter experience. If anyone says this, we can slightly figure out what they mean. The remark is colonial. After the establishment of imperial rule in this land, the expression has come to mean the negative connotation. The paradigm is about the taste. Now it is said that the matter of bitterness in Bengali culture is not bad. Even on the first turn, the Bengalis like to eat bitter gourd. They also like bitter fenugreek and their favourite dry fish. The bitter experience, then, cannot be the un-favourite one. Over time, expressions of the rulers have turned into the expressions of the colonized, because the British do not eat bitter food. Bitterness is never good to them. The Bengali writer who uses the phrase ‘bitter experience’ is ignorant of its original meaning. They depend on the representation of imperial cultures. They want to talk about the Bengali lives but they do so in the language of Europe (Malay 1996: 21).
In order to destroy the traditions and cultures of the natives, the imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism attempt to impose their own concepts, beliefs, and cultures upon them. The colonial powers also invite and allure the native intellectuals to join them and take hold of the media. The common tendency of the colonizers is the unexpected aggression towards the native cultural framework. In his book titled Monojagate Upanibesh: Tathya Samrajyabader Itibritta (Colonialism in the Mind : History of Information Imperialism), Mofidul Hoque writes :
There is a deep connection between information supremacy to economic dominance all over the world. In the name of the third world, the economy of the whole world is controlled by exploitative policies of neocolonialism—as part of this, an all-out effort has been going on to control the information structure of the entire world under a centre. For this, it is necessary to embrace the modern culture in the so-called style of the west, putting an end to national cultures of different countries. A report has recently been published in the newspaper—200 young men from the city of Trujillo in Peru have reshaped their noses into the contour of American pop singer Michael Jackson’s nose through surgery. The report is simultaneously hilarious and dangerous. In fact, everywhere across all the third world countries, surgery of culture is happening this way (Mofidul 1985: 9).
Against the economic-social-political-cultural aggression of imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism indicated in the above statement, an intense consciousness of resistance gradually emerged in various countries around the world. This consciousness for resistance against the colonial cultural aggression indeed defines the theory of postcolonialism. Postcolonialism identifies and locates the enterprises and efforts of the colonizers who destroyed the native traditions, education, and cultures. The theory also explores freedom of the natives from the clutch of colonization through an education system of their own. In postcolonial locations, the native people grow a collective consciousness as an independent and self-sufficient nation.
The principal objective of the postcolonial theory is to expose the mask of the colonizers—hence comes the culture of rebellion and resistance. In search of identity and in anticipation of accumulating strength to resist, the natives, especially the creative people and intellectuals, construct a new life consciousness resorting to myths, legends, fairytales, and fables—so a rebirth of myths and traditions take place. The ever exploited subalterns and the oppressed and unrepresented women begin to raise voices to wrest their rights and seek the land of their own existence. To locate the power of silence against dominating values in the form of colonial mindsets in life, culture, literature, politics, and other areas of the society, and to make the invisible collective consciousness and existence visible are among the principal aims of the postcolonial discourse (Fakrul 2007: Introduction 5).
Postcolonial consciousness seeks the self, searches the land, being, and existence of the colonized. Postcolonialism quests the voice of the self or attempts to make the self-discovery possible. In an anticipation of revealing the form of colonial domination and aggression and in order to achieve complete freedom of the colonized land, postcolonialism has emerged and is playing a great role worldwide as an intellectual theory. Rejecting the western knowledge structure, to create a new structure of knowledge is the historical contribution of postcolonialism. In light of the above discussion on the postcolonial theory, we would like to focus on Nazrul literature to find the features of the theory in his works.
3.
After the First World War when the whole world was in extreme crisis with frustration, decadence of values, and economic depression, Kazi Nazrul Islam emerged as a bright figure in Bengali literature. His poetic soul was deeply rooted in the mindscape of the newly awakened middle class Bengali Muslims. His political and social awareness and deep connections with common people brought a new dimension in Nazrul’s poetic realm. The Great October Socialist Revolution in Soviet Union, the establishment of Communist Party in India, freedom movement, and dreams and possibilities of the middle class Bengalis enlightened Nazrul’s poetic mindscape. Still despite romantic sensibility, he imagined an equitable society free from discrimination instead of inequitable colonial social structure. He sought to free the land and its people from the jeopardies of lies, calamities, and misfortunes. Facing the critical times in the postwar situations, he sang the song of life and emitted rebellious words of resistance against the shackles of colonial powers for the complete freedom of people and the land.
Highly optimistic, Nazrul dreamt of the freedom of his own country, calling upon the people of all walks of life to wake up and stand against colonial powers. In order to keep control over the colonized land, the British Empire astutely created communal divisions in the Indian subcontinent; the people of the two big religions came into conflict with each other. Different political parties fueled the conflict from behind. Nazrul was saddened at the communal division, so he consciously sought after harmony between the Hindus and the Muslims. A worshipper of truth, beauty, and bliss, Nazrul wanted freedom of human beings above communal identities. In fact, communist thoughts gave birth to non-communal human sensibility in his mind. Instead of being oppositional, Hindus and Muslims became, in his consciousness, two powers complementary for each other. As a genuine advocate of equality, Nazrul writes :
Leaving addictions of opium and religions,
We’ve devastated trades with religions.
Breaking mosques, temples,
And churches, we sing songs.
All humans bear the same blood—
Who hear then rumbles from tabernacles!
(Nazrul 1967 : 384)
Where lies the connection between the postcolonial theory and Nazrul’s non-communal spirit? Postcolonialism stands against colonization with the spirit of resistance, for which collective power is important. In his desire for collective power, Nazrul dreamt of united Bengalis and united Indian subcontinent. In this context, his non-communal spirit matches the spirit of resistance in the postcolonial discourse. In fact, in his whole life Nazrul considered human beings and their religions to be highly important. He sought the wellbeing of humans, welfare of society, and freedom of the motherland. Therefore, for rebellion, he called upon human beings, not the Hindus and the Muslims.
In order to create the spirit of resistance against colonial powers, self-examination and self-power are necessary. Gramsci has also asserted on self-examination in the postcolonial theory (Gramsci 1996: 57). Nazrul emerged in Bengali literature as a conscious rebel against colonial exploitation, feudal oppression, and religious superstitions. To reveal self-power, the poet talked about self-discovery first—as he writes in his most famous poem “The Rebel” : “I’ve recognized myself/ today all chains have dropped” (Nazrul 1967: 21). In the following remarks, there is a call for self-examination and self-discovery :
(a) Know yourself. If you can put up resistance like a strong rebel, if you can create storm, then the dormant Shiva will certainly wake up, welfare must come. If you can kick like a hero, even the God accepts it. Be a revolutionary like Bhrigu, even God will wipe dust from your feet. Do not follow anyone; do not fear anyone, the rebel. Run the horse, launch the chariot, beat out fire, and play the drum. Say : let one who wants to go leave, but I won’t. Say : I will build a new land. Let the creator’s seat shake. Say : we don’t accept anyone’s subservience, neither even of one in the motherland nor abroad (Nazrul 1967: 673).
(b) If we wish to earn complete freedom, we have to revolt against all forms of rules and regulations, barriers and shackles, and embargos and prohibitions. And to rebel this way, first you have to know yourself and courageously declare : “I don’t bow down before anyone but myself” (Nazrul 1967: 697).
(c) I am highly self-confident. I’ve identified injustices, oppressions, and lies in society and rebelled against them. I haven’t adulated or fawned anyone, neither have I pursued anyone in return of big gains. I’ve rebelled not only against the ruler’s injustices, but my sword of truth has always strongly revolted against the incongruities in society, nation, and country. As a result, ridicule, contempt, humiliation, and assault from different corners have poured on me, but in fear of anything I’ve never belittled my position on truth and self; upon greed for anything, I haven’t sold my self-realization, haven’t played down on my vast complacence, because I’m dear to god, flute of truth; I’m a poet, mine is the soul of a sage, seer of truth (Nazrul 1967: 722).
It is clearly noticeable that Nazrul’s rebellious spirit has been reflected in the above statements. The key to these words is the desire for self-examination and self-discovery in order for rebellion and resistance. Because of the disgrace of dependence, Nazrul’s heart was torn apart, and to get rid of the disgrace, he became a rebel. His rebellious spirit was not limited to merely the independence of the country—his rebellion was both idealistic and realistic. His rebellion was vociferous against dependence, strident against all rules and regulations, resounding of cruelties of Genghis Khan who is notoriously known in history, ready to install a foot-print on the chest of God like Bhrigu, determined to establish humanism, excited at the invocation of destruction, and enthusiastic about prevailing beauty in society.
In an anticipation of resistance against all forms of inequalities and incongruities, poetry became a strong weapon to Nazrul. In his rebellious and revolutionary spirit, three-dimensional characteristics are noticeable :
(a) rebellion against lies, evils, misfortunes, and injustices;
(b) rebellion against colonial powers for the independence of motherland; and
(c) rebellion to free the ‘ego’ of a fettered poet.
These three streams have always dominated in Nazrul’s work. His spirit of resistance was creative and keen on freeing the motherland from the bonds of colonialism. Degeneration, disillusionment or hopelessness, and sexuality of the thirties could not impede Nazrul’s poetic being by any means. Since his rebellion was creative, he found the potential of creation amidst destruction. Wishing the death of ugliness, he accepted the eternal beauty :
Are you afraid of destruction? After this comes creation,
Because the youths wake up to abolish life’s enemy, the ugliness.
So in this hair and style,
They’re coming with a smile—
They can bring eternal beauty after destruction (Nazrul 1967: 21).
This is certain that Nazrul rebelled against lies, injustices, evils, and misfortunes; against feudal systems and values and colonial powers. His rebellion arose, no doubt, from the sensibility of love and well-being for each other, but simultaneously he wanted to free his own self. For the new awakening, human beings chained under religious creeds have become free; they have also freed their individualism. ‘I’ in the poem “The Rebel” is an artistic creation of this newly awakened individualism. Crossing over the cosmos and carving the footprint on God’s chest, Nazrul ranged across the universe—in the following lines, he revealed himself with the pride of his own self :
I navigate the cosmos with excitement,
I’m mad, I’m crazy.
I have known myself, all shackles are unchained today.
I am an eternal rebel-hero,
My head ever held high, I’ve risen alone conquering the world. (Nazrul 1966: 23)
The postcolonial theory celebrates self-examination and self-empowerment. The whole poem, “The Rebel,” is indeed a unique artwork of self-examination and self-empowerment. From his craving of revolution, rebellion, and resistance, the poet wanted to discover people’s self-image and the vastness of the self.
From his desire of rebelling against colonialism, Nazrul explored the realms of mythology, history, tradition, folklore, and fables in order to hone creative talent and garner creative power. With the magical touch of wisdom mixed with creativity and being influenced by the contemporary society, the myth, tradition, and history achieved a new birth at the hands of Nazrul. The contexts of mythology, history, and tradition add a distinct realization of infinite and deep power to Nazrul’s poetic consciousness. This power gives the poet courage to deconstruct the status quo of the society and makes him revolutionary, rebellious, resistant, and resentful. Myths make the poet to dream—the dream is not personal but collective. While conversing with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell comments : “Dream is at the centre of our consciousness in life—deep and personal experience; and myth is the dream of our society. Myth is a collective dream whereas dream is a personal myth” (Campbell 1988: 49).
The central themes of Nazrul’s poetics are rebellion and resistance, which incorporate power to his poetic being—hence the poet’s reliance on history, tradition, and myth. At the backdrop of colonial exploitation and postwar degeneration, destruction, and loneliness, Nazrul consciously relied on different historical and mythical characters and contexts in order to catch on the highest meaning of life. In his poetry, the history, tradition, and myth have become artistic as he employed them in a variety of ways, and they reflect different dimensions. Arjun, Durvasa, Bhim, Viswamitra, Jamadagni, Vishnu, Parshurama, Balarama, Bhrigu, Prahlad, Chandi, Durga, Shiva—these mythical characters, and the West-Asian history or Medieval literary history or European Orpheus and Pluto and so on have created a supra-conscious phenomenon of myth, tradition, and history in Nazrul’s poetic world (Akram 1985: 75). For the multidimensional use of myth and legend, a bridge between collective unconscious and personal realization (Jung 1974: 205-32) has formed Nazrul’s poetic being.
In Bengali poetry, Nazrul’s uniqueness is that he was exceptionally successful in employing Indian mythology and West-Asian tradition in his poems. Upon aesthetic resemblances and the connection of life-force, the elements of art belonging to two different traditions have created a rhythmic harmony in his poetic world. In this regard, it is important to refer to Nazrul’s inheritance to the rich tradition. The poet was enriched with his kinship with a wide range of history and heritage (Motaher 1972: 33-34). Nazrul was by birth an Indian, so he considered the Indian heritage as his own and therefore accepted it warmly. On the other hand, as far as the religious background is concerned, he was West-Asian—a successor of the past glory and tradition of Islam. Consciously he held both the two traditions in his own poetic being. As a result, he could successfully combine West-Asian history and tradition with Indian traditions even in the same poem—he simultaneously wrote notes on Durga and Shakti and ghazal and Islamic songs. Gathering strength and influence from both traditions, Nazrul wanted to use them against colonial powers in order to put up resistance against them. In the front-war against colonization, he aspired after the arrival of Durga, who came down upon earth from heaven to destroy the evil, to save the oppressed human beings :
Show again, O Mother, the destroyer of demons,
Demon-destroying in the form of Chandi.
Show, O Mother, the fortune
Can make a mass of destruction.
Not inhabiting amidst white lotuses,
Mother dressed in red—
Let the full moon of your creation
Smile on the mass of destruction. (Nazrul 1967: 27)
Devastating the colonial powers, Nazrul sought to build a country of welfare in which there exists an equity among people. In response to his desire came Shiva, who in the form of Nataraj, helped build the mausoleum of creation amidst destruction, which is indeed the image of Nazrul’s desires and dreams. As the following lines suggest :
The moonlight scatters in Shiva’s matted hair,
Lighting the room in full.
Why fear in a game of creation and destruction?
Hail the victory, you all.
Enkindle the lanterns, you all.
In the form of destruction comes the beauty.
Hail the victory, you all. (Nazrul 1967: 27)
Even in employing West-Asian history, tradition, and myth, Nazrul placed his rebellious spirit at the centre. For rebellion and resistance, one requires power, in quest of which the poet explored the West-Asian history and tradition. As a poet of rebellion and resistance, he transformed the mourning of Muharram into strength and flowed Hazrat Ibrahim’s sacrifice into the spirit of the youths, as the following lines indicate :
(a) The month of Muharram has come back—
We want sacrifice, not elegiac songs and tears. (Nazrul 1967: 39)
(b) No killing, today is the launch of the power of Satyagraha.
We want strength, not sympathy anymore,
Isn’t it the day of kurbani, the sacrifice?
Where are music and decorations?
Today in the name of Allah we sacrifice and celebrate the holy Eid.
No killing, today is the launch of the power of Satyagraha. (Nazrul 1967: 41)
Both the above-mentioned references suggest that West-Asian history and tradition have offered Nazrul the endless strength and courage for rebellion and resistance.
An aspiration for rise and empowerment of the subalterns and the marginalized is one of the remarkable aspects of the postcolonial discourse. In Bengal’s social structure, Nazrul was one among the marginalized, and he belonged to the subalterns. Love for the subalterns and a sense of responsibilities to the marginalized influenced Nazrul to write poems, stories, essays, and novels. He rebelled for the independence of the oppressed and the marginalized. For rebellion and resistance, the poet also called upon women along with men. This spirit is found in the poems “Barangona” (“Prostitute”) and “Nari” (“Woman”)—instead of looking at women from the natural perspective of male and female binary, Nazrul evaluated them from the social perspective of gender. To speak about the subalterns and the marginalized, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak enquires : “Can the subaltern speak” (Gayatri 1990: 31)? In Nazrul’s poetry and fiction, however, the subalterns speak, protest, and rebel. Severing bondage with the subalterns and the marginalized, Gulshan in the story “Byathar Dan,” Bindi in “Rakshushi,” Johra in “Padmagokhro,” Jahangir’s mother or Jayati and Champa in the novel Kuhelika, Ayesha in Bandhanhara, Pakal’s mother or Mejo Bou (second daughter-in-law) in Mrityukshudha come out into the enlightened world and make their surroundings resonant with words and acts. Jahangir or Ansar also raise their voices courageously in favour of the subalterns. So understanding the significance of Nazrul’s literary oeuvre and standing opposite to the contemporary literary trend, we can declare in response to Gayatri’s question—Yes, the subaltern can speak.
Nazrul is a rebellious poet, Nazrul is a writer of the marginalized. In his writing, words of rebellion and resistance and revolution against colonial and imperial powers have reverberated piercingly. In his poetry, essay, and fiction, Nazrul not only depicted the lifestyle of the subalterns but also highlighted their dreams and aspirations to rise and upsurge. Very few poets and writers from a long history of world literature are as revolutionary and rebellious as Nazrul. Rising above all forms of narrowness and prejudices, he stood against the settlers during colonial period, but in post-Independence India, he protested against social injustices, discriminations, and inequalities between the rich and the poor, men and women, and the centre and the periphery. He even participated in war and took part in politics only because he dreamt of a society free from exploitation, poverty, and disparities. The spirit of rebellion and revolution remained strong and loud throughout his whole life, and he never stopped writing poems and stories of resistance. As a postcolonial literary voice in Bengali literature, Nazrul is a unique, exceptional, rare, incomparable, second-to-none, and unsurpassable talent.
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Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, a poet, translator, and academic, is Professor in the Department of English at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet 3114, Bangladesh.
Illustration : Rajat
