Tagore and Nazrul: The complex bond between two literary titans

“Give up hunger strike, our literature claims you.”

Rabindranath Tagore sent the message to Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1923, when the latter was serving a one-year sentence for sedition.

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On April 14, Nazrul was transferred from Alipore Central Jail to Hooghly Jail, where he began a hunger strike protesting the treatment of political prisoners. The fast lasted 40 days, severely affecting his health. Contemporary reports described forced feeding, fever and extreme weakness.

Tagore, then in Shillong, tried to intervene. His telegram, addressed to Presidency Jail, was returned with the message “addressee not found”, and Nazrul never received it.

There was an apparent contradiction in Tagore’s response. When asked to persuade Nazrul to end his fast, he had reportedly said that asking an idealist to abandon his ideals was akin to killing him. Yet he still sent the telegram. He respected the young poet’s defiance but did not want Bengal to lose him.

As Bangladesh marks Nazrul’s 50th death anniversary, we revisit the relationship through the recollections of those who knew the two poets and their writings.

Their direct acquaintance began in 1921, when Dr Muhammad Shahidullah took 22-year-old Nazrul to Santiniketan. When Nazrul asked Tagore to recite, he replied, “I am waiting to hear your songs and recitation.”

Nazrul recited “Agamani” and sang Rabindra Sangeet. At his request, Tagore recited “Madhabi hothat kotha hote...” Tagore later invited him to stay at Santiniketan, but Nazrul declined.

Nazrul revered him and Tagore, meanwhile, recognised a literary force markedly different from his own. There was affection and influence, but also disagreement, hurt and eventually estrangement.

Nazrul’s reverence for Tagore began long before their meeting. In “Boror Piriti Balir Bandh”, written years after their relationship had become distant, he recalled how Tagore had lived in his imagination since childhood. He had kept Tagore’s picture before him and venerated it with incense, flowers and sandalwood.

That devotion was also public. At the Bengal Literary Council’s celebration of Tagore’s 60th birthday on September 4, 1921, Nazrul touched his feet, and Tagore invited him to sit beside him.

At a June 25, 1922 memorial for poet Satyendranath Dutta at Rammohan Library, Tagore again seated Nazrul beside him.

Shantipada Singha, Nazrul’s close associate and manager of Dhumketu, later recalled that some writers considered Nazrul unworthy of the honour, while the suggestion that he might one day rank immediately after Tagore drew ridicule.

After writing “Bidrohi” in December 1921, Nazrul took the poem to Jorasanko and according to later recollections, announced, “Gurudev, I have come to kill you,” before reciting it. Tagore reportedly replied, “Indeed, you have killed me.”

On January 22, 1923, while Nazrul was in Alipore Jail, Tagore dedicated his musical play “Basanta” to him. The gesture publicly recognised the imprisoned young poet at a time when some of Tagore’s admirers questioned Nazrul’s literary standing.

Tagore sent Pabitra Gangopadhyay, Nazrul’s close friend and a writer and translator associated with the Kallol-era literary movement, to take the book to Alipore Jail. He asked Gangopadhyay to tell Nazrul that although he could not personally give him the book, he was sending his “wholehearted, unstinted blessing”.

Some questioned whether Nazrul’s blunt diction could be poetry. Tagore defended its “form and rasa”, arguing that when a nation was attuned to the “clang of swords”, poetry had to give that sound a voice.

“If I were young today, the same music would sound in my pen,” Tagore reportedly said. “Soldiers will be many, but we also need poets to inspire them in battle.”

When the book reached Alipore Jail, Gangopadhyay opened the packet across the bars. Seeing Tagore’s dedication, Nazrul rushed to the grille, startling a European warder.

“Poet Tagore has dedicated a book to him,” Gangopadhyay explained.

“You mean presented?”

“No. Dedicated.”

“You mean the convict is such an important person?”

“Yes. Our greatest poet next to Tagore.”

The warder then opened the door.

Nazrul embraced Gangopadhyay and began to dance. When the book fell from his hands, he picked it up, touched it to his head and pressed it against his chest. The episode, preserved in Gangopadhyay’s recollection, offers a rare glimpse of Nazrul’s private reverence for Tagore.

Their literary exchange continued beyond Nazrul’s imprisonment. In 1928, Nazrul dedicated his poetry collection “Sanchita” to Tagore, addressing him as Bishwa-Kabi-Samrat -- the emperor of world poets.

In 1935, Nazrul sought a contribution from Tagore for the magazine Nagarik. Tagore, then 75 and in failing health, replied on September 1, 1936, addressing Nazrul as a “young poet”. He wrote that the older poet could ask for the younger one’s compassion and invited Nazrul to visit if he came near the Birbhum-Bardhaman border.

When Tagore died on August 7, 1941, Nazrul was devastated. He composed and broadcast tributes including “Rabi-hara”, “Ghumaite Dao Sranta Robire”, “Salam Astorabi” and “Mrityuhin Rabindranath”. Within a year, Nazrul himself would fall into the illness that gradually robbed him of speech and memory.

The relationship between the two poets was neither uncomplicated nor antagonistic. It was a meeting of distinct literary temperaments -- Tagore, the established universalist; Nazrul, the rebel modernist.

Admiration did not preclude disagreement, and estrangement did not erase reverence.