Nazrul’s rebellion to establish truth :
M. Mizanur Rahman :
I sing of equality-
Nothing is glorious and nobler than the human affinity.
-Kazi Nazrul Islam
Nazrul’s rebellion is against tyranny, economic exploitation towards establishment of democratic humanitarianism on earth. His fire-brand poems and essays are written especially to revolutionise the youths against tyrannical rules of British imperialism and colonialism along with countrywide social discriminatory communal faiths and racial parochialism, superstitions, hatred among different faiths of the people, wretched economic inequality and inhuman sufferings of the people in social arena all over India-and to bring about independence of his country from the clutch of foreign rules in his time. In all, the poet pines for economic equality among all the people of the world to do away with their common sufferings.
Though Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) is said to be the National Poet of Bangladesh but he once proclaimed himself as one of the poets of the world.
The poet was sent to jail for writing satirical poem, ‘Anandamoyeer Agomoney’ against the British ruler. As a political prisoner in the imperial court he made his own deposition which expresses his own philosophy as well as his absolute faith in Allah and none else. It was titled as ‘Rajbondir Jabanbondi’ (Deposition of the political prisoner). The translated portion of the same is given hereunder-
“The allegation against me is, I am a rebel against the king. That is why I am charged in the imperial court and thrown into the imperial prison.
On the one hand there is the king’s crown and on the other blazes the fire of the comet. One is the king with scepter in hand, the other is Truth holding aloft the cudgel of justice. For the king there are his mercenaries. For me stands the Almighty God, the King of kings, the Judge of judges, the Truth eternal.
Nobody has appointed my judge. In the eyes of the Great Judge, the king and the subject, the rich and the poor, the happy and the unhappy-all are equal. On His throne king’s crown gets its place side by side with the beggar’s one-string lyre. His law is justice, rightfulness. No victorious human race has made this law against any vanquished race. That law has emerged from the truth realised by the world humanity; that law belongs to the universal truth, that law is the law of the omnipotent God. The king has in his favour the minutest made-up fragment; in my favour I have the infinite and everlasting whole-the Creator.
The smallness is behind the king, but behind me I have the Thunder God. He who favours the king wants to satiate self-interest, amasses money. He who is with me desires truth, the result is profound happiness.
The king’s utterances are bubbles; my message is the boundless ocean. I am the poet sent by God to free truth from the dark, to give shape to the un-embodied creation. God speaks out in the voice of the poet. My message is the expression of truth, it is God’s message. That message may appear seditious in the judgment of the king, but that message of justice does not trample Truth. Those words may be penalised in the imperial court, but in the light of Truth and in the court of justice the message is guiltless, pure, chaste-it is the imperishable truth.
Truth is self-evident. No red eye, no king’s rod can stop it. I am the Vina (lyre) of the eternity, the self expressing truth, the Vina that pronounces the eternal truth. I am the Vina in the hands of God. The Vina might even break but who will destroy God?…
A stupid man has no limit to his arrogance. He wants to imprison and punish Him Who is his Creator. But arrogance will drown in tears some day or other….
…who can destroy the Almighty? I am mortal but my God is immortal. I shall die, the king too will die because many rebels like me have died, and again many a king who brought such allegations also have died- but manifestation of truth can never be bolted by any means-its message does never die….I have neither fear nor sorrow because God is with me. My incomplete work will be completed by others. Truth will never cease to express itself and shall fight back. Now, the comet in my hand will be flaming torch in the hands of God and will burn down tyranny and torture. The Thunder God Himself will be the pilot of my fire-aero plane. So don’t fear there’s nothing to be afraid of.
The dark placid lap of my enchained mother in the prison has beaconed this unworthy son. I do not know whether this unfortunate son shall have shelter on the breast of his subjugated helpless mother. If it ever happens, I shall extend tearful thanks to the Judge. I repeat- I have no fear, no sorrow.
The tyrant’s torture on truth-
will die
That truth is my God
who in me does lie.
(abridged)
Presidency jail
Kolkata, Sunday, noon, 7th January, 1923.*
The poet is the votary of nature where he used to explore love and beauty. Man betrays man but nature betrays none. It goes in its own way. When man disturbs nature he gets the reprisal either instantly or late. It has its balance, either mild or disastrous. The poet can perceive it but the common people can hardly understand that due to narrow self-interest.
Once Kazi Nazrul Islam was given a rousing ovation by the Bangio Mussalman Sahitya Samity, Kolkata in its Jubilee celebration held in the Kolkata Musim Institute Hall on 5th and 6th April 1941 in which the poet delivered the following address while presiding over the function :
If The Flute Sounds No Longer
“Why you have selected the mendicant as the President of the Jubilee celebration of the Bangio Mussalman Sahitya Samity is known only to the absolute Master, the Prime Mover and the Supreme Lord of the universe. It is not unknown to you today that at home or out -of- doors, in a meeting or in the secluded cave of an internment, I have no intention or ambition to boss anywhere. This right of overlordship or leadership lies exclusive with the only and Supreme Master of all activities, all religions, all countries, all nations and the entire world. I admit that man also is entitled to this right. But if such entitlement is not providential it becomes a vanity which I hold as the ambassador of the non-beautiful. And such vanity is not divine but demonic. Worship of the non-beautiful is not my vocation. Allah with me remains the Supreme Beauty with full of affection, love, savor, and bliss for me. When I come down at your call amidst the hubbub of mundane activities, I feel deprived of my communion with the Supreme Beauty and an endless cry shakes my inner and outer self. I can not stand over a moment’s detachment from Him. My entire existence, my activities, life and death, my past, present and future, I have dedicated to Him with an oath taken by His name only. And today I have no hesitation to declare that all my merciful and loving Providence has taken over the ‘I’ in me.
Many litterateurs and poets who as friends are closer to me than relatives, complain that I had as though an immeasurable potentiality to contribute to the country, to the nation and to the minds of good literary taste. Only out of miserliness or in my selfish effort of personal salvation, I have raised my gifted right hand up towards the unknown infinite. They all love me more than my relatives. I am swept in tears when they say so. The sentiment they exhibit to me, I with my unperturbed and indifferent loneliness, convey to my Sublime Beauty, from which ocean I had suddenly appeared, as a dark deep cloud in a stormy night with frequent flashes and thunders of lightning in the depth of darkness and my unmated hair covering all around and quenched the thirst of the arid terrains of the earth with my ceaseless showers. Many witnessed the beauty of my frightful dance but failed to notice that the turbulent cloud-clad form of mine had come not only with the tambourine and the horn of the Lord but also contained tears of sad eyes which helped the world to bloom flowers of love and petals of the lotus and the woods were excited in joy and that the same cloud brought floods of pleasure, jingling rhythm, heavenly tune of melody and flow of music. One day this cloud discovered itself lying all white and frozen on the top-peak of the Himalayas. His strength, his own beloved also being, as it were, entranced at his left as ‘Mahasweta’. I used to recollect sea of my origin in that depth of reverie and I suddenly started musing where this ocean came from. As I ventured out in search of an answer, my mind, my intellect and my ego used to be lost in the clouds one after another, in the great void. So, let me tell my friends, it is neither miserliness nor my selfishness but it is my basic characteristic, my nature. The little water they have collected by breaking the slice of ice in me, failed to quench their thirst as they say, but they did not believe me when I expressed my helplessness. The kite while flying has got stuck to the branches; use of force may damage both the kite and the thread; but still the foolish hand does not stop dragging and pulling it down.
You have not come to this literary assembly, this hall of pleasure to listen to the anecdotes of my hapless life. I have told you of my helplessness earlier. But if you compel a singer suffering from tonsillitis, or having a corn stuck into his throat, to perform his art, he will rather display the sad state of his voice than the suttees of the melody. The corn or the pain in tonsils will predominate. You have embraced this punishment deliberately and I am not to blame. You can pull out the tail of a lion in the cage and even tear it off and hear its roar but you cannot bring it out of the cage. I have no way to come out until He Who has looked me in, takes me kindly out of the confinement.
The power that supplied me with the savour from an unknown blissful, golden sky, as I have told you earlier, turns into a statue of stone. This is not death but gloomier than death. Today let me tell you that my dormant power has awakened from meditation but is not completely out of bewilderment and is in a trance now. If that deified power of delightfulness does not again go to meditation and takes me to the absolute void for dissolution, I assure you that I will sing the lyre of love or the song of equality and bliss the world has not heard for long. If I were not blessed with the love of my life-long beloved, abode of love, I would know my game for this life is over. I will depart leaving my flute behind on the shores of the Yamuna, the river of separation. Should someone at some point of time pick it up from the sandy shores and play it, the flute will be gratified.
If the providence by whose grace I have witnessed beauty in me today, restores my lovable and divinely joyful power by accepting my entire existence and if streams of tears run down from the eyes of that power, if his being again comes the flow of nectar and if his feet again move in the festive dancing rhythm of Krishna and Radha, I assure you to beautify this malice-ridden world stained by ugly communal disparities and oppression by filthy demonic forces. This thirsty universe will get back the stream of joy and ecstasy, and the love of which it has been deprived for long. It will come through me as the means only. That equality, that parity, that peace, that pleasure and that live will come from that eternal sublime-beauty of my deity. You will never get juice by squeezing a dry branch. I request you to allow time to acquire succulence. I know your thirst for the savor of liberation and joy has become acute. But you are to wait. I am waiting at His door with the begging bowl of love and joy. If I am not graced with alms and some one of you gets it, I declare in the name of that Sublime Beauty that I will be just equally glad and I will be the first man to go and worship his feet and obey him like the servant or slave. If you say your thirsty eyes are waiting for that auspicious day veering round me, then bless me that the half-awake power of divine pleasure does not engage herself to meditation again, bless me that I get her favor of Her beautiful eyes, bless me that I may dance in the wake of the flow of Her love again, eternally charged with knowledge, power and joy.
If the flute sounds no longer, I don’t say as a poet, I say this by virtue of my right born of your love. Forgive me and forget me. Believe me, I had not come here to be a poet, I had not come here to be a leader, I had come here to love, I am leaving this merciless world forever with mute and wounded vanity.
There is…animosity and warfare among nations, extreme poverty, debt and dearth of means of livelihood in human life on the one side, and soaring accumulation of crores of rupees in the banks of the greedy demons on the other. I came here to remove this inequality and this nonsensical disparity. In my poems and songs and in all actions of my life, I defended parity, beauty and equality. I came to pardon the abnormal, and destroy the demon.**
(abridged)
Thus the great rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam unfurled the standard of universal human rights against the tyrant capitalist demons all over the world.
*Translation by Chandan Bandyopadhyay
**Translation by Giasuddin Dalal and Ashoka Mukhopadhyay (adopted from the book ” Selected Nazrul The Singer of Equality” Page 62-66 and 107-111.
(The author of this article is a poet, essayist and columnist.)