Person · Bengali rebel poet · India
Kazi Nazrul Islam
Also known as Kazi Nazrul Islam, Nazrul, Bidrohi Kobi, Rebel Poet
Bengali Muslim poet (1899–1976) known as the Rebel Poet (bidrohi kobi) for his 1922 poem Bidrohi, who wrote 4,000 songs across Hindu devotional kirtan, Muslim ghazal and nationalist marches; served in the Bengal regiment in Mesopotamia during the First World War; and ran the nationalist weekly Dhumketu until the British imprisoned him for sedition in 1923. His Nazrul geeti forms a distinct Bengali song corpus beside Rabindrasangeet. He fell ill with Pick's disease in 1942 at the age of forty-three, lost speech and most faculties, and lived another thirty-four years in silence. He was taken to Bangladesh in 1972 as the state's national poet and died at Dhaka in 1976.
- Date
- 1899–1976
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; contemporary chronicles and institutional records as applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His 1922 Bidrohi — six hundred lines in the voice of a cosmic rebel refusing all submission — is one of the most anthologised Bengali poems of the twentieth century. His 1930 Pralaya Shikha, dedicated to the newly released Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, caused a second sedition case. The thirty-four-year illness is one of the sadder arcs in Bengali literary history: he was lucid enough in his first months of symptoms to understand what was happening and to write about it.
About the place
Placed between Calcutta (early career) and Dhaka (last years and burial).
Connections (1)
- Based atKolkata
Kazi Nazrul Islam ran his nationalist weekly Dhumketu from Calcutta from 1922 — the paper for which he was imprisoned in 1923 for the Anandamayee sedition case — and most of his working literary life was spent in Calcutta. His 1922 Bidrohi was published in the Calcutta Bijali; his Nazrul geeti song corpus was composed and performed at Calcutta's Albert Hall, HMV studios and private salons. His illness overtook him at Calcutta in 1942 and he lived his thirty-four years of silent captivity between a Calcutta clinic and his family's quarters there.