***Nazrul's poetics and politics of resistance and opposition sprang from the poet's undivided commitment to none but man. And it is this humanism which draws Nazrul close to the anthropocentric idealism of Chandi Das and Lalon Fakir who, in fact, inspired Nazrul to dispense with artificial, divisive signifiers such as race, caste, religion, and even nationalism.***

***Nhzrul's poetic consciousness of, and resistance to, colonialism a Ad imperialism were not class-neutral in that the poet now and then brought to the centre the plight and power of peasants and workers.****

THE history of Bengali literature Is predominantly one of resistance and opposition to forces arid factors, mostly alien and oppressive. Yes. the history of literature, in general, tends to be one of resistance and opposition in that creative writers with characteristic dissatisfaction and with a sense of Inadequacy tend to traverse beyond the outworn maps of conventions and commonplaces, repeated styles and forms. In other words, in his untrammelled craving for new modes and forms of experiences and articulations. a creative writer unmistakably poses resistance and opposition to the ethos of conventions confronting both life and art. Susan Sontag was right when she said: "the history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions. '

But. in the case of Bengali literature, transgressions made at various points of time In history are not born out of mere aesthetic opposition and resistance: they are mostly political in the immediate sense of the term. The Bengali language itself had to struggle hard Just in order to live on its own. and of course, to grow, and to .gather its strength. True, this language had to evolve itself out of its sharp Contradictions with colonial realities which. In (pct. gave rise to a series of conflicts between Bengali and Sanskrit, between Bengali and Persian, and between Bengali and English. The pundits earlier held that Bengali was inferior to Sanskrit, and that to learn Sanskrit meant prestige and grace. On the other hand, the Persian, language had Its own superiority complex finding expression in the similar logic that Bengal was ^n Inferior language. There were also cer tain material factors Induced by the politics of colonialism Itself Given the realities. It was not Bengal) but Persian, and later English, whfth could ensure one's access to Job facilities. economic opportunities. social prestige, and even bureaucratic and political power Thus. Bengali became the language of the less honoured, the less privileged During the coiqnlal rule of Pak istan. the Bengali language had to come under one of the most severe forms of colonial attack against which the Language Movement of 1952 posed resistance and opposition even at the expense of life and tjjood In fact, in the history of man. no nation other than Bengalees had to pay blood for their own language

Given such odds and obsta cles mostly kept alive by thei politics of colonialism over a* long period of time, literary activity — which Is essentially a linguistic activity as well — Is bound to politicise Itself in terms of opposition and resis tance to those forces which land to dwarf and diminish the scale and space of Bengali Vidyassgar and Madhusudan for eaampie. were keenly aware of their linguistic situa tion inescapably Informed by colonial realities, and they went on to politicise the Ben gall language by extending its boundaries and territories. Tagore also tellingly accomplished the task of waging anti colonial resistance both at aesthetic and political levels and discovered and consolidated the hitherto-un-

known potentials of the Bengali language, both in poetry and prose. Nazrul Islam, too. was very much involved in the continuity of such a political and cultural, rather anti-colonial. struggle by continuously exhibiting his opposition and resistance to Imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, and to various forms of fundamentalism and communalism — all of which were then very much colonial realities confronting the people In this part of the world.

2

Born in a stormy night of 25 May 1899 in a village called Churujia in the Burdwan district of West Bengal, Nazrul started writing poetry in the twenties when Rabindranath Tagore was at the height of his

poetic career. Nazrul continued to write throughout the thirties, when the so-called modernists' were making self-conscious attempts to move out of the orbit of 'Tagorean aesthetic, style and creed. The consequence of their attempts was their extreme reliance on Eurocentric modernism which could not yield the freedom of the Bengali language, but which. Instead, enhanced a spell of what may be called literary neocolontsatlon. But. Nazrul Islam, like Tagore and his predecessors such as Kabir. Nanok. Chitannya. Tukaram Chandl Das and Lalon Fakir. was Involved in "decolonizing cultural resistance". to use Edward Said's words. Of course, reading Nazrul is an experience of a stylistic signature different from that of Tagore, but. then, like Tagore. Nazrul was trying to evolve his own poetics and politics of resistance and opposition to colonialism And this, in fact, visibly placed Nazrul in the mainstream of Bengali literature connecting this poet up with the tradition of protest and revolt which predominantly characterises this very literature.

One can say that Nazrul s resistance to colonialism was in the first place, sparked off by hre acute class conscious ness. Serajul Islam Choudhury in his Introducing Nazrul Is lam. Justly mentioned that Nazrul Islam "is the only no table writer in the Bengali lan guage who came from the rural proletariat and wrote on Its behalf." in Agnlblna published In 1922 and also tn Blsher Baansht (1924). Bhangar Gaan (1924), Samyobadl (1925) Sarbahara (1926). Fantmanasha (1927) and Prolog Shikha (1930) we find Nazrul s un mistakable resistance to colonialism. which according to Nazrul is nothing but a consequence of the Imperial "will to-ruie-and loot" Nazrul said."They loot the land of the others like nothing but robbers" It is interesting to observe that the current post colonial concept of the binary divide between the self and the "other" was very much there in the poetic conscious ness of Nazrul However

Nazrul's poetic consciousness of. and resistance to. colonial ism and imperialism were not class-neutral in that the poet always brought to the centre the plight and power of peasants and workers, tellingly exemplified in the works namet* above. Nazrul. at one point, maintained explicitly that the evils of colonialism and imperialism can best be reflected in the Very plight-ridden predicament of the working and peasant classes who. as we see. time and again figure in his poetry. Nazrul also maintained that the regl struggle against colonialism and imperialism .can draw Its energy and elan from the united strength of these classes. And

Nazrul identified these classes as the authentic revolutionary forces much earlier. In Dhumketu. It needs mentioning in passing that for his anti colonial politics which largely determined and animated his poetics. Nazrul. during his lifetime, had to Incur the wrath of the colonialists. No Bengali poet other than Nazrul had to suffer year long impels onment for writing poetry, and unprecedentedly, his five vol umes of poetry and two vol umes of essays were banned by the British colonial rulers. One may be reminded here of poets

like Nazim Hikmet and Man delqtam among others, for whom writing poetry meant risking life, as It certainly did for Nazrul. Taking Nazrul's life and oeuvre together, one may feel that the margin between poetry and politics In Nazrul tends to be dissolved now and then

One can fairly easily see

Nazrul's opposition and resistance to capitalism as well. True, during Nazrul's times, capitalism was yet to find Its ground in this subcontlneht. On the other hand, the feudal relations of productions were encountering threats and challenges. of course only politically. But. then colonialism — a form of Imperialism — had its own dynamic^ and design which encouraged sustenance of feudal values on the one hand, and unsystematically — and for that matter, dangerously — exhibited signs of per verse capitalism on the other, focusing more on mercantile capital than on industrial capital. Nazrul, was keenly aware of this complex dynamics of colonial society, and for him. colonialism constituted an active Intertext of signs' and symptoms of feudalism and capitalism which he stood against. Therefore, his resistance to colonialism can also be read as his resistance to capitalism, and vice versa. But. the fact that his political imagination took into account the evils of capitalism was clear enough, particularly In his po-' eras such as Krisbaner Gan’ (The Song of the Peasant ) in Sarbahara (The Proletariat). and also in 'Bramiker Gan’ (The Song of the Labourer') In Samyyobadi {The Communist). and very strongly in the poem called Chor-Dakat’ ('The Thieves and the Robbers'), where the poet tried to locate hot only the local but also ths global site of capitalism both In contemporary times and futuristic terms. The poet explicitly said: "The merchants all Over the world have been whoring around with capital./... while men have been losing food, health, life. hope, language". The poet's uncompromising.

frontal attack on capitalism, particularly mercantile capital ism. can be noticed ip the poem Kri*ianer Gan' where the meta[jnor of leech was so aptly employed to indicate the atrocity of exploitation perpe traled by both the ruling colonialists and mercantile capitalists Indeed. Nazrul's resis tance. to a large extent, thus

turned out to be a form of class-resistance, so evident in his poetry, as he said: "Come. O workers of the land,/ lift your arms, your scythes, your hammers." Even in his famous poem 'The Rebel", Nazrul's declared rebellion turned out to be a class-rebellion in that he firmly spoke and stood on behalf of the oppressed class-— certainly She peasants and the workers, the worst sufferers of-colonlallsm, capitalism, feudalism and Imperialism — T am the Great Rebel, will tire of war and be at peace./Only then, when the anguished cry of the oppressed/Shall no longer rend the sky and air./Ah^ the tyrant a terrible sworcf/Will no longer rattle on the field ‘of battle." It needs mentioning here that the T in this poem is no romantic counterpart of Nietzsche's God like Superman' basking in the glory of self-celebration, or celebrating the insignia' and potentials of the individual with Dionysian vigour'. One can, of course, move on to identify certain amount of Nietzschean Dlonysianism tn Nazrul’s "The Rebel"; but. then, the "I" in the poem does not remain singularly Individual. but soon assumes its class-identity. merging' into the stream of the masses. The "I" itself is a class' finding its voice, and exhibiting ’the wlll-to-express’ in a society oppressively repressed and closed, almost sealed down.

But. it would not be appropriate to push Nazrul's class-consciousness to the extent of undermining the poet's characteristic concerns with man in general. In fact, it was from his deep concerns with the plight and anguish of man that his opposition and resistance to colonialism and Imperialism derived their force and assumed their intensity — in fact, found their raison d'etre. For example, when he sang of man. he spoke of man's equality. and when he looked forward. almost in the Sheileyan fashion, to a future society where all men are not only born equal, but all men also remain equal. he could not but speak of an insistent, uncompromising class-struggle against all shapes and shades of discriminations engendered by colonialism and imperialism Thus. Nazrul's poetics and politics of opposition and resistance sprang frqpi the poet's undivided commitment to none but man And it is this humanism which draws Nazrul close to the anthropocentric idealism of Chandi Das and Lalon who. in fact, inspired Nazrul to dispense with artificial divisive signifiers like race, caste, religion, and even nationalism. In fact. It was Nazrul who could courageously do away With religion-based nationalism and could say boldly that the oppressed do not have any nationality or any religion, in his poem called Elder Chand (The Crescent of the Eid'), echoing in a way Marx's The Communist Want festo Nazrul's humanism thus made him an Internationalist In the way Lalon was one: he was an internationalist not be cause of the fact that he had multi lingual scholarships or a polymathic and catholic range of the understanding of global cultures; but. he was an Internationalist for his infeeling Into, and his poetic experience of. the unity of the oppressed

and the poor all over the world.

Nazrul's internationalism and humanism made him stand against yet another evil of colonialism and

imperlalism.namely.com-munalUm and fundamentalism. He could say strongly: "You are not a Brahmin, not a Sudra. nor a Hindu, nor a Muslim; you are a human being, that is the truth". This typical Lalonesque response of Nazrul to man naturally brought him into sharp conflicts with the culture of fatwatsm drawing its energy and inspiration from shostras. from religious texts which were then used to undermine men and women quite conveniently in a society that was feudal and colonial. For Nazrul. as he himself mentioned, shas-tras are not prior to man, but man brings shastras themselves. It was Nazrul who, perhaps most strongly. unearthed the dirt and desist of shas-trawallahs who were called by Nazrul "shastralcoholics". In fact, according to Nazrul. the-seshastrawallahs made wine out of the Quran. the Vedas. the Bible, also turning these texts into a form of trade-capital. And Nazrul stood against this feudal-colonial culture of fundamentalism and fatwabqfl which is always inimical to the freedom and growth of man.

Nazrul consistently made the point clear in a number of his works that God and religion do not reside in mosques or In temples, but in man himself — in his heart, in his work, in his love, fn his songs, in his struggle for unity.

3

Colonialism in the physical-geographical sense came to an end earlier, but it has redrawn its map. extending Itself more subtly and effectively Into this part of the world. The feudal relations pf production had already been dissolved no doubt; but the accompanying super-structural changes have not yet taken any final shape in that the remnants of feudalism still persist with their force and fury. Capital, which comes "dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt", is Increasingly' replacing man by profit. On the other hand, fundamentalism is posing deadliest threats to man's freedom and creativity. Against such a scenario where the oppressed sigh and cry and die. the Rebel in Nazrul with his poetics and politics of opposition and resistance increasingly assumes his significance, his contemporaneity, and a humanistic appeal. Indeed. to pay tribute to Nazrul Islam is to remain uncompromisingly involved In the struggle for man's freedom.