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Nazma Yeasmeen Haque is cheered by new issues of two journals
14 January 2011, 18:00 PM
BOOK REVIEWS

L-R: Mashik Uttoradhikar, Agrahayan 1417, Bangla Academy. Kali O Kalam, Poush 1417, Bengal Centre

The Agrahayan 1417 issue of Uttoradhikar, the monthly literary journal of the Bangla Academy, surely upholds the richness of the enterprise. In the earlier issues of Uttoradhikar, conscious presentations of the various aspects of Bangla literature as well as other areas of aesthetics were a palpable sign of the quality it had begun to aim for. The journal now comes with a profundity that should be noted by readers. In the issue under review, it is an enlightening write-up on Khan Sarwar Murshed, the distinguished academic and scholar, which draws attention. Abdus Shakur travels through an entirety of the Murshid landscape and offers up to the reader a pretty comprehensive account of Professor Murshid's life and times. Reading the article is for many who have had the good fortune of being tutored by scholars in the mould of Khan Sarwar Murshid a swift going back to nostalgia. And that is not all. Selina Hossain's informative write-up on Rabindranath Tagore's birth centenary celebrations in Dhaka in 1961 is one article that you can be sure readers will read with interest. The writer brings into the telling of the story an era that was truly the first concrete instance of nascent Bengali nationalism taking shape. Newspapers competed in their expanding battle to present arguments in favour of Tagore as well as against him. Obviously, as we now know from a reading of history, the anti-Tagore group, blindly associated as it was with the Pakistani establishment of the time, lost out. In 1961, therefore, a great victory was won by the Bengalis of what was then East Pakistan. The Tagore celebrations were the first hint of the secularism that Bengalis were returning to following the trauma of the partition of India in 1947 and the creation of the state of Pakistan. For those too young to recall the events of 1961 as also for those born after the liberation of Bangladesh, Selina Hossain's recalling of that seminal period in our history will come in handy. Other articles of a definitively incisive nature find place in this issue of Uttoradhikar. Subrata Kumar Das' comparative study of the Nepalese poet Laxmi Prasad Devkota and Bengal's Kazi Nazrul Islam adds to the south Asian literary ambience. Shibnarayan Roy has some serious thoughts on the Bengali to share. Khalequzzaman Elias' adaptation of an item from Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough promises to rekindle interest in western literature as it came to be shaped in long ago eras. And so the journal goes on, in all its diverse richness. It is not to be missed.
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Uttoradhikar Agrahayan 1417 makes its appearance at a time when Kali O Kalam too comes forth with an issue that ought to be a collector's item. The issue is given over wholly to the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore and comes with items which are as engrossing as can be expected. There is a purposefulness which you can spot in the subjects covered in the issue. Altogether, in their discrete form, the articles cover a variety of aspects related to the life of the Bard and in the end project the image of a poet whose links with life and with matters beyond life were to give him a special place in global literature. The tone is set off by Zillur Rahman Siddiqui, with his Bangladeshe Rabindranath and Anisuzzaman with his Rabindrananth O Bangladesh. Hasan Azizul Haque's Rabindranath: Shunyo O Purno demonstrates a new facet to an understanding of the poet. With Ghulam Murshid, it is the search for love in Tagore that says it all. In Bhalobashar Kangal, you get a refreshing new dimension of the poet's attitude to romance, indeed to women. Think here of Kadombori Devi and Victoria Ocampo. Abdus Shakur sees the swadeshi in Tagore, while Hasnat Abdul Hye comes forth with a brilliant assessment of the traveler that was Rabindranath. It is the wide scale in which Tagore comes in this issue of Kali O Kalam that makes an impression. The contributors to the journal have journeyed across a whole range of the Tagore landscape to give readers a totality of the life and ideals that were Tagore's and that were to leave such huge substance for Bangla literature to build itself upon. His poetry and plays are of course gone through. But then come all those other interests that gave a roundness of character to the poet's personality. You could come across much that concerned Tagore insofar as the mundane realities of life were concerned in Atiur Rahman's Rabindranather Krishi O Grameen Unnoyon Bhabna. There is then the translator that was Tagore; and, of course, you have a study of Tagore by Muslims in the early phases of his rising prominence, a reality outlined in detail by Abul Ahsan Chowdhury. The Shardhoshotojonmoborshe Rabindranath issue of Kali O Kalam is yours to claim. No question about it. Dr. Nazma Yeasmeen Haque, history buff and music enthusiast, is founder-Principal, Radiant International School, Dhaka

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