Poetic unity
On May 1 every year the working people around the world march on the
streets, carrying placards and shouting the slogan, "Workers of the
world unite, you have nothing to lose but chains". This is a corrupted
version of the original German quote in the Communist Manifesto, which
could be translated as "Proletarians of all countries, Unite". Still
they march separately, even within the same country, as they have been
marching all these years since they began this ritual.
The May Day rallies came to my mind as I walked with poets of many
countries, on their march for peace. It was held first in Dhaka and then
in Darainagar (Sea City, once called Cox's Bazar), Bangladesh. Poets too
have nothing to lose, but their chains, chains of nation, race and
language.
There should never have been a need for poets to march for peace, for
there should always be peace among them, and their creative works too
should be for peace, because poetry is universal and poets do not have
any identities outside their world of poetry.
At first glance there appeared to be greater unity among the Bengali
poets. They speak Bengali and write in Bengali. Yet they identify
themselves as Bangladeshis and Indians. Some of them believing or
claiming to belong to a piece of Mother Earth politically identified as
a separate country. There is only this political barrier, created by the
idiocy of the British, where once there were no other barriers. Most
'countries' have several barriers, geographical, ethnic, religious and
language. Within such countries, sometimes man erects barriers of
language and tries to form separate states, while here two 'countries'
with the same language are staying apart. There is an imaginary
political barrier, a border separating the poets living in Bangladesh
writing in Bengali, while on the other side are poets living in India
writing in Bengali.
The 'Peace Procession of Poetry, Dhaka to Darianagar' is the
brainchild of Prof. Mohammad Nurul Huda, Dean, Faculty of Human
Sciences, Darul Ihsan University., and winner of the Bangla Academy
Literary Award and Mahadiganta Poetry Award. He was able to gather
'poets from SAARC countries and Beyond', with the sub-theme, 'Poetry for
Human Beauty'. For four days, from December 28 to 31, almost all
language barriers were broken, because all of us could communicate with
each other in Bengali or English. And we marched together as one family,
our national, racial and religious identities all forgotten.
The Peace Procession began from the Shaheed Minar in Dhaka, the
monument established to commemorate those killed during the Bengali
Language Movement in 1952. It is significant that young people
sacrificed their lives to fight for equal status for their mother
tongue. It is the youth of Bangladesh who first erected, and young
people today who have only heard of the pain and suffering a half a
century ago now help maintain the memorial. The next stop was at the
grave of the revolutionary poet, Kazi Nazrul Islam, reminding us how
great poets should be honoured.
This was the third Darainagar Poetry Fair or KabitaBangla, with
poetry reading, recitation, discussion on contemporary poetic trends and
free interaction for reading and writing.
The Indian poet Utpal Jah, translated my poem written in English, and
also poems by the Nepali poets, Prakash Subhedi and Keshab Sigdel, into
Bengali, so we could read them in Bangladesh. Poet Prabath Kumar
Mukhopadhyay had translated into English his own poems and the poems of
two other Indian writers, so they could share them with all the poets
gathered at the Poetry Fair.
Like music, like paintings and sculpture, songs, poetry and drama too
could be made universal.
This has been very successfully carried out by the baul singer and
dancer, Parvathi Baul, in Kolkata, where she opened her one woman
exhibition of paintings.
All the paintings narrated a story. The stories were enacted by
Parvathi with her baul songs in Bengali. The paintings helped everyone
in the non-Bengali speaking audience from around the world to understand
and follow her drama. This is really 'art into art', as referred by
Prof. Senaka Bandaranayake about the terra-cotta figurines found at
Sihigiri.
Parvathi has demolished the language barrier, making her dance drama
to be a universal art form. Poets too could achieve this universality by
creating art from their poems, so that we could all understand and
appreciate the poems across barriers.
At Darianagar we have come a step closer to peace and unity. That is
why the Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist poets could gather at the
Ramu temple and the statue of the Buddha, for a session of Poetry
reading with a theme of Buddha Dhamma, Loving Kindness and Peace. This
was also significant, because behind the statue was the temple which had
been burnt down by a few misguided misinformed people in September 2012.
Some poets write in English, though they were not born with English
as their mother tongue, and do not have an English national identity,
but have been burdened down with their own national and racial labels.
They too should be able to shed all these unnatural labels and march as
poets writing in English, as human beings who have been reduced to use a
language which is a strange tongue to many other human beings, but has
become a link, a bridge across many language barriers erected by man.
Next year let us look forward to all Bengali poets march together for
peace and unity, irrespective of the location of their homes. Let the
Hindi and Urdu poets recite their poems as one. Let all the poets share
their creativity through the medium of English, even if it is not their
mother tongue.
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