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Kazi Nazrul Islam - Politics

Kazi Nazrul Islam - Politics: Encyclopedia II - Kazi Nazrul Islam - Politics

Nazrul's literature can hardly be separated from his politics. After Nazrul achieved fame as a poet, he started editing a weekly political and literary magazine called Dhumketu (The comet). It launched with a now famous adulation from Rabindranath Ay chole ay re dhumketu, andhare badh agnisetu (O comet, come, create the firebridge in the darkness). It didn't take long for Dhumeketu, which openly opposed the British rule of India and hailed movements against it, to be shut down and its workers, Nazrul foremost, to be arrested and imprisoned. In fact, Nazrul was imprisoned multiple times, and some of his very best li ...

Kazi Nazrul Islam: Encyclopedia II - Kazi Nazrul Islam - Politics

Kazi Nazrul Islam - Politics

Nazrul's literature can hardly be separated from his politics. After Nazrul achieved fame as a poet, he started editing a weekly political and literary magazine called Dhumketu (The comet). It launched with a now famous adulation from Rabindranath Ay chole ay re dhumketu, andhare badh agnisetu (O comet, come, create the firebridge in the darkness). It didn't take long for Dhumeketu, which openly opposed the British rule of India and hailed movements against it, to be shut down and its workers, Nazrul foremost, to be arrested and imprisoned. In fact, Nazrul was imprisoned multiple times, and some of his very best literature comes from his experiences in prison:

Ei shikol bhanga chhal, moder ei shikol bhanga chhal
Ei shikol porei shikol toder korbo re bikol
(This, our shackled dance, O our shackled dance
We shall break our shackles by embracing them)

was written when Nazrul was literally kept shackled in Presidency jail. While being prosecuted on various counts, Nazrul denied the help of a lawyer, and instead produced one of his most memorable pieces of prose, the fiery Rajbandir Jobanbandi (Deposition of a political prisoner), which he read to the court. He also once went without food for forty days to protest against the treatment of political prisoners in the prison.

One of the main themes of Nazrul's politics was the unequivocal demand for India's freedom from British colonial rule. Nazrul was among the first of British India's intellectuals to demand the complete independence of India, as opposed to Swaraj as promoted by Gandhi at that time or dominion status. Nazrul vehemently opposed swaraj, literally meaning "self rule", and supported the armed movement against the British, in contrast with the non-violent methods adopted by Gandhi. At one point, Nazrul joined Langol (The plough), a major socialist newspaper. Nazrul, a Muslim, was also strongly against the Pakistan movement (which demanded a separate homeland for Indian muslims).