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Between the Arab and the Indic Worlds: Kazi Nazrul’s Profoundly Restless Hunger for the Spirit

Nazrul’s call for absolute destruction stem from his inner need to rip the veil, the hijab, so that true freedom can arise. Bidrohi announces: “Balo Mahabishher mahakash farhi, Chandra, Surja, graha tara chari, bhyulok, dylok golok bhedia, khodar ashan ‘arash’ chediya, uthiachi chirabishmaya ami bishhwa bidhatrir.” Such a call even to tear through the seat of God can only come from one who belongs with such visionaries as the Rabia of Baghdad who ran around like a mad woman with a bucket of water and fire in her two hands. When asked what she was doing, she replied, she wants to extinguish the fires of hell with the water, and set fire to heaven, so that human beings would love Allah for Allah’s sake and not for the fear of hell and desire for heaven. Nazrul’s poems’ goosebumps giving energy arises from a truth deeply embedded in the human heart and the reality without. People respond to the energy of the poem, but critics find contradictions. In reality when he proclaims “Ami jagga, ami purohit, ami agni, ami srishti, ami dhanhsha, ami lokalaya, ami shwashan,” he is pronouncing the nonduality of the Arab and Persian Sufis and the Advaita of the Upanishads where the sacrifice, the sacrifcer and the sacrificed are ultimate one, the human source of it is the self or the atman that arises when the mere aham is annihilated, the fire of fana enlightens the truth of baka when nothing remains but the face of God. Nazrul would know instinctively what the great Shaikh, Ibn Arabi called wahdat al wujud, the unity of being. Even when the immediate context is the political imprisonment of his country by British Imperialism, Nazrul speaks of and desires ultimate freedom. A poem like “Anowar” expresses an unbearable need for freedom. In “Korbani”, Nazrul asks “Rahman ki Rudra nan?” Isn’t the merciful, also the fierce one? Here the Sufi notions of the two faces of the Divine meet. Jalal and Jamal or tanzih and tasbih, both appear in Nazrul’s poetry. He invokes the majestic anger of Allah to help him destroy the unjust rule of every kind. The death wielding aspect of the ultimate reality is expressed in what is called Vir rasa in the Indian aesthetic theory. He takes on the role of the powerful man who can wield a Shamsher when required, but it should not be taken as some mindless violence and call to a meaningless religious war. In order to see how Nazrul’s poetry balances the Vir rasa of annihilation with the beauty of creation with the same intensity, we can look at the seemingly opposite first poem in “Dolan Champa” where he sings “Aaj srishishukher Ullashe, mor mookh hashe