Revisiting Nazrul

Abstract

Kazi Nazrul Islam, born in a poor family, led a life of struggle but encountered all challenges through a romantic approach to life and poetic creation. His romantic attitude involves profound insight that can be attained in multifarious ways but can only be understood and made meaningful by expressing and sharing love. The oeuvre of his poetry demonstrates how love is concealed in everything-even in war- implying that even war can bring forth harmony and good in this universe though it sounds paradoxical. However, to Nazrul, it is clear that anything can be considered as love as long as it brings good to humanity as a whole. Thus, Kazi Nazrul, popularly known as a rebel poet, looks for the seed of love in each place where other poets or people dare to venture. This paper, thus, examines how underneath every verse, he manages and approaches concepts of rebellion, war, equality, humanity, tolerance, and even secularism proclaiming the idea of love and its practice among human races covertly and overtly. His rebellion is against all sorts of injustice, inequality, orthodoxy, fascism, and racism which deliberately, and sometimes inadvertently, and nonetheless boldly chants the slogan of greater love for the whole human race. Moreover, the paper contends that though Nazrul dealt with different subject matters, every subject matter, however, falls into the same place, that is, love – love for humanity.