Niaz Zaman

The Journey Home

Tired and exhausted, my sons had finally fallen asleep in their seats.

The Portrayal and Relevance of Women in Kazi Nazrul Islam’s Novels

Kazi Nazrul Islam is our National Poet, but, in addition to writing poetry and composing songs, he also wrote fiction. In fact, Nazrul’s first publication was not poetry, but the short story “Baundeler Atmakahini” (The Autobiography of a Vagabond), published in Saogat in May 1919.

Equality

I sing the song of equality– Of a country where fresh joy blossoms in every heart

Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein and Kazi Nazrul Islam

Roquiah Sakhawat Hossein was born in 1880, Kazi Nazrul Islam in 1899. Apart from their difference in gender, there could not have been more differences in the circumstances of their class and upbringing.

Death and Displacement in Syed Waliullah’s Partition Stories

Perhaps the starkest image of the Partition, which created the two independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947, is that of the train massacres.

Nazrul, the eternal rebel warrior: 100 years later

One late December night in 1921, Kazi Nazrul Islam wrote what would be his most iconoclastic poem, the poem that would give rise to his soubriquet, “Bidrohi Kabi,” the Rebel Poet. Inspired by a complex of emotions, Nazrul’s ideas were flowing too fast for his pen to keep pace.

The Islamic strain in Kazi Nazrul Islam

Nazrul’s iconic poem uses both Islamic lore as well as Hindu myths to rebel against all that dehumanises and discriminates against human beings.

I have not come to weep

In her memoir, translated into English as An Unknown Woman (2016), Jowshan Ara Rahman describes how the first poem on February 21, 1952

February 21, 2021
February 21, 2021

Navigating Bangla literary: Translations

A lot of translations are being done in Bangladesh, from English into Bangla and Bangla into English; much of the latter by native Bangla speakers.

March 9, 2019
March 9, 2019

Delight in Disorder: South Asian Festival of Sufism and Buddhism

The last email that I got from the organizers of the South Asian Festival of Sufism and Buddhism (the word Buddhism continued to be

September 16, 2017
September 16, 2017

A Feminist Foremother: Critical Essays on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

Mohammad A. Quayum and Md. Mahmudul Hasan, the editors of A Feminist Foremother: Critical Essays on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain,

May 27, 2017
May 27, 2017

Kazi Nazrul Islam and the October Revolution

On 25 October 1917 in Russia – 7 November in India – the Bolsheviks led an armed insurrection against Petrograd. News of the

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