In “Amar Kaifiyat” Nazrul recognizes the confusion people have about him and how no religious label can stick to him. He declares himself as the poet of the present and mocks both Hindus and Muslims for wondering whether he is a jaban or a Kafir: “Mau lobhi jata Maulabi aar mollara kon hat nere/deb-debi nam mukhe aane, shabe dao pajitar jat mere…hindura bhabe parshi shabde kabita lekhe, o paat nere!”(2, 133). Mullas call him kafir because he speaks of Hindu deities and Hindus think he is a low class Muslim who writes poems using Farsi. In his prose pieces Nazrul strongly states his opinion about religion and nationhood. He protests against the call to religion within the struggle for freedom against British colonialism in an essay “Amar Dharma”/ my religion. His keen intellect knew how dangerous that call can be, and how easily narrow religiosity and “fundamentalist” and fossilized ways can take over the human mind. He roars: “What religion? My life is my religion.” He wants to destroy external practices and he calls to the youth to break away from old rotting paths of religious hypocrisies. We must break away from all kinds of mental slavery and without freedom, one can’t speak of religion. In “Amar Path” he writes that knowing the Atman brings self-reliance as he begins his path with “Dhumketu,” a magazine he established. It will follow the path of truth and nothing else. Nazrul does not think one can be free without self-knowledge which comes when one knows the great Self. He writes: the day we truly find this self-reliance, only then we shall be truly free, not before that (2, 431). He declares: Dhumketu will fight against communalism because “Jar nijer dharma bishhash ache, je nijer dharmer satyake chineche, she kakhano anya dharmake ghrina korte parena” (432)/one who knows the truth of one’s religion, that one can never hate another’s religion. In “Mandir O Mashjid,” one of his most intense and evocative prose pieces, he criticizes in severe language the people he calls dharma maatal/ religious drunkards because “ihara satyer alo paan kare nai, shastrer alcohol paan kariyache”/they did not drink the light of truth but the alcohol of texts.” Then Nazrul laments: “jinni shakal manusher debata, tini aaj mandirer karagare, mashjider jindankhanaye, girjar gaol e bandi. Molla-purut, padri-bhikkhu jail warder mato take pahara diteche…ihara eet puja kare, ihara pathar pujari” (2,442)/ One who is all human being’s deity, that being is today imprisoned in the temples, mosques and churches. Mullas, pandits, padres are the jailors keeping that being a prisoner;…those who worship stones. Another essay “Hindu-Mushalmaan” ridicules all the false purveyors of religion who originated in tiki pur and daristan, pandits with their tikis and mullas with their dari, beard. Referring to Hindu Muslim violence he says this violence is between mullas and pandits, “Narayaner gada aar allar taloware konodinai thoka thuki bhandbena, karan tara dujanae eik. Tini sharba naam, shakal naam giye misheche or madhye./ Narayan and Allah can never fight because they are both one. Nazrul jokes, Alla/Narayan is neither Hindu nor Muslim with neither tiki nor dari but completely clean. (446) All names merge in him.
Between the Arab and the Indic Worlds: Kazi Nazrul’s Profoundly Restless Hunger for the Spirit
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