The Ministry of Cultural Affairs, in collaboration with Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, is going to observe the occasion of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam's 126th birth anniversary with a three-day state celebration.
The Bangladesh government commemorated Nazrul's legacy with a three-day celebration last year too.
In the intervening period, however, a mass uprising took place in July-August, 2024 which toppled the Awami League regime that had been in power since 2009 through questionable elections, state-backed violence and many other illegal means.
No doubt, this must have a bearing on this year's celebration of the Rebel Poet's birth anniversary, especially one who remains a source of inspiration in every socio-political movement of our nation since the early 20th century. This year the theme of the celebration is "Mass Uprising '24: Kazi Nazrul's Legacy".
The unity we saw in the July uprising is rare in the political landscape of Bangladesh. However, the post-July period is marked with political fragmentations.
Furthermore, there is no clear manifestation of political philosophy before the nation on the part of the major political parties. This is confusing the nation, particularly the younger generations who shed blood for their deep desire for a more just and democratic Bangladesh.
Amid this poverty of political philosophy in Bangladesh, Kazi Nazrul Islam's legacy could play a pivotal role for the younger generations to fuel themselves in the line of social-political activism.
From the anti-colonial struggles against "British rule", the independence movements against Pakistan to the socio-political movements of today's Bangladesh, Nazrul remains a source of enormous inspiration for the nation to fight any kind of oppression, especially orchestrated by state power.
Nazrul's literary career expanded from 1919 to 1942. Tragically, he was diagnosed with Pick's Disease - a rare neurodegenerative disease - in 1942 and was largely silent till his death in 1976.
The 23 years of his literary career witnessed diverse waves of social uprising in British India. In many cases, Nazrul was far ahead of his time and sometimes even paved the path for social, cultural and political leaders to follow.
For instance, the demand for independence from the British was first pursued by the Indian National Congress in 1928 at the annual gathering in Kolkata presided over by Motilal Nehru, though it was finally accepted by the Congress the next year in 1929's annual gathering in Lahore.
But Nazrul had demanded independence from the British for the whole of the subcontinent six years ago, in 1922, in his editorials at Dhumketu (The Comet).
Anuradha Roy (2006) showed that Nazrul was not only the forerunner in setting up a tradition of nationalist swadeshi music against the colonialist-fascist rule of the British in India, but he remains the stalwart in influencing the tradition of the "people's song" for the social, economic, and political emancipation of ordinary people, especially the suppressed classes of peasants and workers.
While Bangladesh in 2025 is struggling to find ways for national integration and mainstream political parties are leaning more and more towards elitist patron-client politics, Nazrul, along with many other prominent political personalities, initiated the Labour Swaraj Party within the Indian National Congress back in 1925.
Langal was the partisan newspaper for this group, in which Nazrul relentlessly advocated for social equity and justice regardless of race, religion, caste, creed, gender or any other identity orientation. This found echoes in the anti-discrimination movement of July 2024, but that apparently has faded since the ouster of the AL regime.
Crucially, the Labour Swaraj Party and Langal paved the way for communist movements not only in Bengal but in the whole subcontinent. Before the 1926 communal riots broke out, Nazrul called for religious harmony in the subcontinent and argued that this is a mandatory condition for the politico-economic emancipation of the people of the subcontinent.
Nazrul broke apart the ethnic, national and cultural boundaries in his literary works and social-political-cultural activism from the very moment he entered into the theatre of literature at the beginning of the 1920s and offered himself to the service of all mankind.
Auritro Majumder (2016) researched the influence of South Asian literature on the postcolonialist and comparativist interdisciplinary discourses of Anglo-American academia and showed that Nazrul's contribution remains mostly uncontested in this development.
Political scientist and international relations expert Winston E Langley (2023) showed that the moral norms and values Nazrul advocated in his career were incorporated in the ideas and concepts of human rights within political theory and philosophy. He also argued that Nazrul's literary dreams are carried out in today's world through the transnational policy forums like the UN.
Therefore, in the context of the July uprising's dreams and demands, we should not just ceremonially celebrate Kazi Nazrul Islam's birth anniversary. Instead, now more than ever, the nation should embark upon an in-depth understanding of the political philosophy of Kazi Nazrul Islam, which still has the merit to show future directions in the context of today's Bangladesh.
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