TREASONERS SCREED Farooq Ahmed

KAZI IN NOM ANSL AND

Naeem Mohaiemen

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Udayan reminds me, as we walk to the train, that Nazrul is the only person to appear on the stamps of all three countries. Thats not right, cant be right. There must have been others. None, Im sure. Gandhi? On the Pakistan stamp...? What do you think?! Hmm...what about Nehru? No, I suppose not. Wait there must have been someone. No really, he was the only one. Are you sure? Arre bhai, oversure! I did my research, I know Nazruls story. Months later, in Dhaka central post office, Im in a parallel argument. This time Im the oneoversure. But the Post Master General is not convinced. He calls his kerani in and asks him to search the library. The kerani returns fifteen minutes later, with a Philately Souvenir Booklet. The director turns to page 22. He has a seminar essay there. He insists, gently, that I read it all the way through. The essay is all about Pakistani stamps. It seems there were 328 stamps issued by Pakistan from 1947 until the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh (or breakup of Pakistan, depending on your perspective). Only one of these featured a Bengali, poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. His assistant interjects: But, Sir, there was also the 1956 stamp that had two anna in Bengali script. Yes, but that one had distorted Bangla. Bhool Bangla, bujhlen? Later, Salam the stamp shop owner pulls out his reference notebook to also dispute the 328 number. He shows me Pakistans Pioneers of Freedom series, each face drawn in bas relief: Suhrawardy, Fazlul Huq, Khaza Nazimuddin, Sir Salimullah. But a phone call to another stamp store reveals that this series came out in the 1990s. The 1 for 328 statistic stays intact. Nazrul ended up spanning all three countries. After Partition, he refuses to leave India for Pakistan. Or to be precise, his family makes the decision for him, Nazrul has already lost the ability to speak. The mysterious disease that enveloped him is already in its second year. In this manner he becomes an uneasy new icon: the Muslim poet who refuses Pakistan, or rather resists the way territory is being redrawn. India embraces this decision, and structures a moral around it: Muslims have a home in India after all. Perhaps Maulana Azad serves the same function as well within the new Indian state? All the token Muslim refuseniks. At the midnight hour, the Partition of India begins. As new flags go up,
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familiar modes of belonging are broken and reborn. The geographical impossibility that is the new country of Pakistan: two Wings a thousand miles apart, that fantastic bird of a place, two Wings without a body, sundered by the land-mass of its greatest foe, joined by nothing but God [Salman Rushdie, Shame, 1983]. Yes, the two Pakistans are united by religion but divided by language, culture and everything else that really matters. In 1952, the central states clumsy attempt to impose Urdu as an all-Pakistan language goes very badly. Language riots, four deaths, and the birth of a Bengali nationalist movement in the Eastern half. By the 1960s, Pakistan is increasingly concerned about losing the restless Eastern province. The language riots killed one idea, but a newer one takes its placeculture as cohesion. Bengali culture, appropriately modified and Islamized, as the scaffolding for national unification. Two Koreas, Two Germanys, and finally, now, a line is drawn. Here, we wont allow Two Pakistans. Enter Nazrul into the Pakistan project, passing onto the national stamp. To be used on letters or postcards, perhaps even some to be mailed to our lost families across the border. Reading parts of his story, a friend tells me of an appropriate Derrida quote: No, the stamp is not a metaphor, on the contrary, metaphor is a stamp. Slowly, steadily, Nazrul is rebranded as an exclusively Muslim poet, to be used as a counterpoint to the dominance of Bengali literary lion and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. After all, Tagore is a Hindu, Brahmo Samaj or not. The cultural fascination with his songs must be wiped out at all costs. (Tagore has the last laugh, his songs end up as the national anthem for two countries: India, and later Bangladesh) Finally, after 1971, when Pakistan is broken and Bangladesh emerges, Nazrul becomes a third token, a symbol of independent Bangladesh. But how willing are all these transfers? More on that later, kromosho prokash...

LEF T Naeem Mohaiemen Kazi in Nomansland (stamps) 2009 1.5 inches 2 inches each stamps and glue Courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom, for Lines of Control (Dubai, Karachi, London) and Granta Pakistan issue

FOLLOWING PAGES Naeem Mohaiemen Kazi in Nomansland (slivers) 2009 25 inches 3.3 inches each digital C print & wall text Courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom, for Lines of Control (Dubai, Karachi, London) and Granta Pakistan issue

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In 2008, I wanted to build little stamp towers out of the Nazrul stamps. A tower for each country, each a different height. But glue curls and moisture modified those plans, reduced my ambition (thankfully). The Dhaka General Post Office had exactly 19,538 of the 1977 Nazrul commemoratives in stock. With the clockwork efficiency of an automaton inside a bad bureaucracy, the kerani informed me this number after consulting his book. I noticed, howof ever, that he did not correct the number after I was finished with my purchase. In one week, I bought 3,000 of these stamps. Now collectors were wondering what was going on. My colleague joked that I was causing a tiny tsunami in the stamp market. Better not be planning any more limited editions. Meanwhile, Salam the obsessive philatelist had been tracking me. Bhaiya, did you go to the Post Office to buy vintage Nazruls? You should have come to me. Their stamps have been in the godown, totally damp! Dont worry, for Pakistan and India stamps I still have to come to you. GPO is for Bangladesh only. But he doesnt actually have that many of the India and Pakistan Nazrul stamps. They are harder to get, more expensive. Fifteen times face value, or even more. When I explain my idea, he offers an alternative. For the India stamps, the base can be made out of a 1977 birth control commemorative. Same dimensions and same amount of dirt on serrated edges, no one will be able to tell the difference. I pause while I think through the ethics of the wall labels. But for Pakistan he offers a clincher. The only Pakistan stamp that fits in size with Nazrul are the multi-hued generics of his theoretical nemesis: Pakistans founder Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah. Only stamps of Iqbal could have topped this juxtaposition. Nazrul would appreciate this little ironyon par with everything else in his life. In the list of reasons why Sarzamin broke apart into Pakistan and Bangladesh, there are multitudes of economic and cultural statistics. Stamp politics is only a small p in that schema.

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Memory. In New York, I met a psychologist whose uncle had been in Ranchi asylum with Nazrul. Now researchers say it may have been Picks disease that caused dementia. I can only imagine Ranchi snapped the remaining wires.

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I am a saint, a soldier of music I am the prince in disguise With the dress of a hermit-mystic. I am a Bedouin, a Chengis the brute It is none, but me, I salute. Nazruls poetry is innovative, flowing, a new ferocious form in Bengali language. A decisive break with the genteel parlor modes and bucolic imagery of imagined village idylls of previous generations, especially the Hindu bhodrolok litterateur. But his writing is not yet, not fully, directed at the British. The experience of being a temporary loyalist, a soldier in the 49th Bengal Regiment of the British Indian Army, pushes things towards a decisive break. His poetry and songs accelerate, becoming more radical and confrontational, bleeding out faster and faster after his demobilization. In civilian life he finds the meter of rebellion. I am thunder From the God Iswans pipe, I am the mystic Omker Alas! from the bugle of Israfil, I am the roar danger. I am Bishyamitras disciple, Durbasha the furious I am the fury of forest fire Nazrul by now has little patience for Gandhis non-cooperation andolon, or even the Indian Muslim Khilafat movement. Instead he models his politics after Turkeys Kemal Ataturk, expressing his admiration in the poem Kamal Pasha. Standing apart from both Hindu and Muslim mainstream political movements, he argues that the ouster of British rule must be accompanied by the creation of a secular and modern state. For the sake of a united movement that already has popular support, Nazrul joins with the broader non-cooperation movement. But a sharper edge still spills out in his lyrics. I will burn to ashes this universe. I am the heart opening laughter I am the great anti-creation terror I am the Eclipse of the twelve Suns of the final disaster. [Bidrohi (Rebel Warrior)]1 Nazruls essays and poems land him on repeated police watch. Essays like Muhajirin hatyar janya dayi ke? (Who is responsible for killing refugees?) cause the confiscation of the publishing magazine. Repeated police
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interventions lead to his arrest, trial and finally incarceration by 1922. While in prison, he launches a hunger strike, compelling the intervention of his admirer Rabindranath Tagore. In a telegram sent to jail, Tagore writes: Give up hunger-strike, our literature claims you. Out of this experience come Nazruls iconic jail anthems. Things rise to fever pitch, birthing songs of a pure violence of form and fever. Destroy those iron gates of prison, Demolish the blood stained stony altars Of chain worshipping! O youthful Israfil, Blow your horn of universal cataclysm! Let the flag of destruction Rise amidst the rubble of prison walls Of the East!! Play the music of the festival of Shiva! Whos the master? Whos the king? Who is it that gives punishment Having snatched away the truth, free and open? Ha! Ha! Ha! Its a laugh God is to be hanged? Rumor-monger Who gives this nasty lesson? [Karar Oi Louho Kopat (Those Iron Gates of Prison)]2 The damages of the Great War of European nations fatally weakens the British Raj. Their grip on India loosens and decolonization is increasingly seen as inevitable. Different strands grab control of the liberation battle. Nazrul watches in horror as the independence movement he supported abandons the idea of a secular, united country. Anti-British fervor metastasizes into intense Hindu-Muslim riots and the seemingly inevitable drums of Partition. In 1941, he publicly writes against the idea of Pakistan, dismaying his Muslim supporters. His onetime mentor Fazlul Huq now abruptly fires him from the newspaper where he was employed. Two flowers on same stem, Hindu-Musalman Musalman the centered eye, Hindu the soul At night now, we chase and slaughter you, my new enemy

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But with dawn, brothers will know what they did to each other We will embrace and cry, and ask forgiveness again. [Deshattobodhok (Patriotic)]3 In 1942, soon after witnessing the carnage of communal riots, Nazrul contracts a mysterious disease. At an astonishing speed, over a period of a few months, he begins losing his memory and speech. Already abandoned by Huq, Nazruls family approaches another Bengali Muslim politician, Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy. And from here onwards, Nazrul begins his travels in no-mans land. Huq has already ejected his ward for anti-Partition views, Suhrawardy rejects him because he worked for his archrival Huq, and the Congress abandons him because a Muslim who opposes Pakistan is a danger to the Hindu groups also pushing for Partition. His vegetative state increases and will continue for another three decades. His wife dies in this period, which leads to one theory that the disease is syphilis. Later Picks Disease is argued as the more likely diagnosis. A mute Nazrul stays on in India after 1947, voting with his body against Pakistan. On the Indian side, he is now presented as a syncretic Muslim who imbibes Hindu culture; the dark Cassandra of songs about both religious syncretism and divisions is forgotten. Where unite Hindu-Buddhist-Muslim-Christian Who are you? Parsi? Jain? Jew? Santal, Bhil, Garo Confucius? Charbak-Chela? Keep listing all your names, be anything you please In your heart and head, carry whatever books you value Quran-Puran-Veda-Vedanta-Bible-Tripitak [Samyabadi (Egalitarian)]

Sarzamin. And now government of Pakistan has put you on a stamp. A country you never set foot in after 47. But Soviet authors continue to visit you in India. Non Aligned Movement!

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Along with Syed Mujtaba Ali, he becomes one of the Bengali Muslims distancing themselves from PakistanNazrul through physical presence in India, Mujtaba through his essay against Urdu as state language. But in Pakistan, the state is bent on crushing Hindu tendencies in Bengali culture and music, so they re-imagine this same Nazrul as a Muslim poet. Facts that dont fit are ignoredpersonal (his Hindu wife who did not convert, his children who had Hindu names), political, and in poetry. The Pakistani state tries to present Nazrul as Muslim above all else, even re-writing some lines of his poems. In his anti-British marching song Chol Chol Chol (March March March), the stanza shajib koribo moha-shoshan (we will rejuvenate the cremation ground) is changed to shajib koribo gorosthan (we will rejuvenate the graveyard). His Kandari Hushiyar (Boatman Beware) has two stanzas deleted (Who dares ask if they be Hindu or Muslim / Boatman, tell them it is man who drowns, children of our mother) as well as the line India will rise again. In other textbook reprints, words like Sanskritized bhagavan are replaced with the Arabicized rohoman. Nazrul is of course not the only subject of culture wars. There are others; some become willing participants in unity literature projects, while others like Shawkat Osman sabotage the process through novels like Kritodasher Hashi (Slaves Laugh). The coded messages embedded in this new Bengali literature of discontent remain completely opaque to the Urdu speaking elite in Karachi and Islamabad. The final years of the 1960s see Pakistan in continuing turmoil, with language the Achilles heel of the unity project: simultaneously a weapon for transmission, organizing and protest in East Pakistan.

BangaBandhu. A fresh country invites you on a state visit, later it becomes permanent. Your Kolkata family is baffled. Well he seems happy. But I cant talk, how do you know.

All efforts at united nation fall apart by 1971, when the Pakistan project collapses. Now, in a foretold tryst moment, another partition and a new country: Bangladesh. Finally, India flies Nazrul to Bangladesh as a goodwill gesture towards the new President Sheikh Mujib. A temporary visit becomes a new home.
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Four years later, Mujib is killed in a vicious military coup. The new army government moves Nazrul out of the state-provided guesthouse into virtual house arrest at PG Hospital.

Assassination. 1975, a military coup. Now the poet is transferred to PG Hospital, his world shrinks. He looks confused in that portrait with nurses. What is happening, why wont anyone tell me.

When he dies a year later, the military junta of General Ziaur Rahman refuses the familys demand to bury him in India. Instead his funeral in Dhaka is used to cement the military governments hold on the nationalist narrative. By the time family members manage to bypass the Bangladesh governments bureaucratic maneuvering and land in Dhaka, the funeral is over. Nazrul, who fought against Partition, now becomes embedded in the new narrative being constructed by a Saudi-supported, military-led, Islamization project in Bangladesh.

Nationalism. Nazruls burial is fiasco and jubilee. I look at General Zias sunglass covered eyes at the funeral and shiver. Did Zia imagine the next grand funeral would be his own, five years later.

You never commanded any destruction Other religions, other temples Today we cannot tolerate any other belief Forgive Us Prophet! [Khoma Koro Hazrat (Forgive Us Prophet)]

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 Many years later, I go to visit an elderly relative. He talks for a whole afternoon, and then proudly shows me a photo album. Tourism snaps in India, Japan, Finland. In India, a set of color photos, posed and formal. There he is, sitting next to Nazrul. I vaguely recognize the stooped look and inert eyes. But there is nothing left of the wild eyed, long-haired Nazrul of Bidrohi days. This is Nazrul? I never knew you met him. Yes of course, this photo is my evidence. Well...what stories did he tell you? Stories...he didnt tell us any stories. He didnt say anything. I mean, he couldnt speak by then. Oh, of course, this is after he became ill. So why did you meet him then? We all went. Then it was the fashion, to sit next to Nazrul and get your picture taken. It didnt really matter that he couldnt speak.
ENDNOTES
1 2 3 Translated by Rezaul Karim Talukdar. Translated by Sajed Kamal. This and all subsequent poems translated by Naeem Mohaiemen.

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