The Great War, communal identity and personal emotions in the fiction of Kazi Nazrul Islam

ABSTRACT

This article examines how Kazi Nazrul Islam, litterateur and musical polymath, references the First World War in his Bengali prose fiction as a means of constructing and asserting both a personal and a communal identity. Nazrul was part of the newly formed 49^th Bengalees or the Bengali Double company, which never saw combat and was unceremoniously dissolved after the War. Several of his fictional works written during his posting in Karachi cantonment or immediately after it draw on the War as a matrix for staging a multiply inflected persona with autobiographical overtones. These texts often equate military service for the colonial master with patriotism and evoke an ideal of heroic masculinity for the heroism-starved Bengali. Besides, most of these texts try to inscribe Bengali Muslims into an urbane, middle-class literary space and forge an identity for them within the broader rubric of Bengali or Indian nationalism. But more conspicuously, these texts focus on personal emotions revolving around unrequited love. Even in texts depicting gruesome battle scenes and the rigours of military training, the Great War does not enjoy thematic centrality but serves only to metaphorise or catalyse the protagonist’s amatory tribulations. This article argues that Nazrul’s prose fiction deserves attention because of the way it appropriates and personalises the Great War for emotional self-projection, in dialogue with the more public sentiments of heroic masculinity and patriotism.

KEYWORDS:

• Kazi Nazrul Islam
• First World War
• heroic masculinity
• Bengali Muslim identity
• unrequited love

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Islam, Nazrul-Jibani, 50.

2. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 42; Khan, Bangla Sahitye Nazrul, 15.

3. Islam, Nazrul-Jibani, 42–44, 46.

4. Islam, Nazrul-Jibani, 94. Sumita Chakraborty points out that Bandhan-Hara may be called the first novel in Bengali to include the context of a contemporary war, although it does not describe the war directly. Chakraborty, Bangla Upanyase Kazi Nazrul Islam, 130.

5. Ibid., 44–45.

6. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch!, 148.

7. Sen, History of Bengali Literature, 355–56.

8. Islam, Nazrul-Jibani, 47; Khan, Bangla Sahitye Nazrul, 16.

9. Sen, History of Bengali Literature, 356.

10. Islam, Nazrul-Jibani, 96–98.

11. Islam, Shat-il-Arab, 41.

12. Ahmed in his discussion of Nazrul’s juddha-kabita or war poems does not even mention this poem. Ahmed, Nazrul-Sahitya Bichar, 123–34.

13. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 303–15.

14. Murshid, Kabir Unmesh, 347–49.

15. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 70, 30.

16. Islam, Nazrul-Jibani, 33.

17. Mukhopadhyay, Keu Bhole Na Keu Bhole, 133, 119.

18. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 39.

19. Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam, 27. Another of Nazruls’s teachers at the school, Bipinbihari Ganguly, was an absconding revolutionary. Murshid, Kabir Unmesh, 342.

20. Chattopadhyay, Kazi Nazrul, 34.

21. Priti Kumar Mitra asserts that ‘Nazrul remained thoroughly anti-British during his service in the British Army and took particular interest in developments anywhere in the world that went against British interests.’ Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam, 33.

22. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 195.

23. Ahmad wrote and published his biography of Nazrul while imprisoned at the Dumdum Central Jail in 1965. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 6–7.

24. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 197–98; Khan, Bangla Sahitye Nazrul, 15–16.

25. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 198–99.

26. Bose, A Hundred Horizons, 133, 132.

27. For a helpful overview, see Sinha, “Giving Masculinity a History,” 41–45.

28. Gangapadhyay, Chalaman Jiban, 92.

29. Murshid, Kabir Unmesh, 346.

30. Sur, Shatabdir Pratidhwani, 47.

31. “The 49^th Bengalees,” n.p. See also Murshid, Kabir Unmesh, 345–47.

32. Das, ‘Ardour and Anxiety,’ 361.

33. Bangali Sipahi, 534.

34. “The 49^th Bengalees,” n.p.

35. MacMunn, The Armies of India, 129–30.

36. Mukhopadhyay, Keu Bhole Na Keu Bhole, 118.

37. Sarala Devi’s stance and ideology would be directly opposed to Rabindranath Tagore’s at this point. By the onset of the Great War, Rabindranath had become sceptical, and even apprehensive, about the contemporary European model of the nation that was posited on the idea of a shared territory, language and ethnicity. He denounced this concept of the nation in his 1916 lectures delivered in Japan and the USA, which were published in 1917 as a book entitled Nationalism.

38. Devi, Ahwan, 1138.

39. Devi, Udbodhan, 88.

40. Devi, Agnipareeksha, 117.

41. Ibid., 118.

42. Devi, Jibaner Jharapata, 134. The story by Kipling in question, ‘The Head of the District,’ was published originally in the Macmillan’s Magazine in January 1890. Sarala Devi gives a slightly erroneous summary of the story in her memoir.

43. Devi, Agnipareeksha, 120–21.

44. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 34–35.

45. Islam, Rikter Bedan, 395.

46. Ibid., 398.

47. Dashi, Juddha-jatra, 758. I am indebted to Abhijit Sen, Publication Officer of Jadavpur University, for this reference.

48. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 32, 33.

49. Ibid., 33; Devi Udbodhan, 87–88.

50. Sumita Chakraborty clarifies that it is not the first epistolary novel in Bengali, contrary to what is often claimed (e.g., Islam, Nazrul Rachanabali, vol. 1, 450). She also registers the possibility that Nazrul may have based the character of ‘Sahasika’ in the novel, who is a well-educated and articulate school-mistress averse to matrimony, on Sarala Devi. Chakraborty, Bangla Upanyase Kazi Nazrul Islam, 129, 135.

51. Devi, Agnipareeksha, 119–20.

52. Islam, Bandhan-Hara, 99, 100. Nurul’s complaints that the Bengali soldiers have been deprived of true military rigour may have some historical basis. It is apparent that the training schedule for the 49^th Bengalees was quite light and they were never given serious assignments. Murshid, Kabir Unmesh, 346–48. The letters and memoirs of Bengali soldiers about the training camp also indicate that they seemed to be enjoying something of a picnic or excursion. See Samad, Paltane Nazrul, 179–81.

53. Khan, Bangla Sahitye Nazrul,15.

54. Islam, Bandhan-Hara, 100, 99.

55. Ibid., 89.

56. See note 39 above, 89.

57. “The 49^th Bengalees,” n.p.

58. Dutta, “The Bhadralok Goes to War,” n.p.

59. Ray, Bangali Paltaner Shesh Chinha, 71.

60. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, 155.

61. Mukherjee, “The City of Colleges,” 112–22. The emergence of the Bengali Muslim literary sphere from the turn of the century, and the complex relationship of the Bengali Muslim author with fellow Hindu practitioners, has been very cogently and judiciously traced by Neilesh Bose. See especially 13–30.

62. Bose, Recasting the Region, 29.

63. Islam, Bandhan-Hara, 114–15.

64. See note 20 above, 34.

65. See Bose, Recasting the Region, 6–16, for a brief account of the literary efforts by Bengali Muslims in the Bengali language from the 19^th century till Nazrul’s advent.

66. Bose, Recasting the Region, 47–51.

67. Bose, Recasting the Region, 8.

68. Nazrul was known to keep with him Rabindranath’s books, especially notations for his songs, while at the Karachi cantonment. Chattopadhyay, Kazi Nazrul, 34.

69. Islam, Bangla Sahitye Musalman, 388, 390.

70. Islam, Ghumer Ghore, 361. Italics added.

71. Islam, Rikter Bedan, 402.

72. Bose, Recasting the Region, 45.

73. Murshid, Kabir Unmesh, 344.

74. Ibid., 398.

75. Sarkar, ‘Imagining Hindurashtra,’ 177.

76. See note 60 above, 155.

77. Islam, Rikter Bedan, 395, 396, 397.

78. Islam, Bandhan-Hara, 103, 103–4. The novel consists of letters exchanged between some middle-class Bengali Muslim men and women based in the non-metropolitan areas of Murshidabad, Birbhum and Bankura. The characters writing these letters appear to be educated, urbane, progressive and open-minded, free from the religious conservatism and bigotry that formed part of the Muslim stereotype in contemporary Bengali Hindu imagination. For an insightful discussion of the novel, see Chakraborty, Bangla Upanyase Kazi Nazrul Islam, 125–30, 134–35.

79. Satchidanandan, ‘Celebrating Nazrul Islam,’ 5.

80. See note 59 above, 71.

81. Islam, Boundeler Atmakahini, 407.

82. Sen, History of Bengali Literature, 356. For a reappraisal of Buddhadeva Bose’s unfavourable criticism of Nazrul, see Ahmed, Nazrul-Sahitya Bichar, 79–93.

83. Subehdar Phani Bhushan Dutta also gives a detailed account of his experience as a member of the 49^th Bengali Regiment (sans the matters of the heart) in an article entitled Amar Juddhajatra, published in the monthly magazine Malancha.

84. Sen and Dutta, Sainiker Atmakatha, 383.

85. Ibid., 384.

86. Islam, Hena, 327.

87. Ibid., 334, 335, 337, 338.

88. Ibid., 338, 339.

89. Ibid., 400, 401–2, 406.

90. Islam, Bandhan-Hara, 102, 98.

91. Ibid., 98, 101, 141–42.

92. Ahmed, Nazrul-Sahitya Bichar, 205.

93. Islam, Boundeler Atmakahini, 411, 414.

94. Islam, Byathar Dan, 321–23.

95. Ibid., 323–24, 326.

96. Islam, Ghumer Ghore, 359, 361–64.

97. Ibid., 355.

98. Mukhopadhyay, Amar Bandhu Nazrul, 153–54.

99. Islam, Nazrul Rachanabali, 185.

100. Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, 44.