The
Caste Hooligans
( Jaater
Naame Bajjati Shob
)
Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976)
Translation
 ©
Monish R Chatterjee 2020
The
caste hooligans have long been at play
Caste fraudsters gambling with human
life -
So
touching a fellow human makes you an outcaste
Is your caste, then, fragile as candy
in a child's hand?
Caste
hooligans playing roulette.
Hookah
water and your crock of rice
You think these are the lifelines to
your hallowed caste?
And
hence clueless dupes have you managed
To divide a single nation into a
hundredfold!
Caste
hooligans playing roulette.
And
now look around, caste fiends, across our Bharata
All we find scattered are stinking
corpses
Alas,
we find nary a human being anywhere
All we hear is the deafening cackle
of the caste-jackals!
Caste
hooligans playing roulette.
Know
you not, caste hooligans- that which we call human religion
Is resilient and forbearing as a
shield?
Can
that ever be broken by the trivial pebble of touchability?
If there be religion which is that
fragile and insubstantial
If
not today, it will surely shatter tomorrow
Let that religion be cast to hell,
let Humanity prevail, no fear!!
Can
you tell me, caste hooligans, what caste is the Creator?
The touch of which of his sons makes
Jagannath impure?
If
the Lord Creator has no caste, if Narayana has no caste
Why then are you with the caste
trifle so obsessed?
You
spit in the face of the son while offering frankincense to the Mother!
The
caste hooligans have long been at play
Caste fraudsters playing roulette.
[ Commentary: Next to the
supremely towering literary renaissance-builder Rabindranath Tagore, the much
younger poet and composer Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) acquired a major status
as a considerably inspiring literary presence in the early 20th
century. It is a testament to the
secular triumph of India, despite many pitfalls, that though Muslim by birth,
Nazrul Islam spent his entire life attempting to bring the Hindu and Muslim
communities in the country he loved with all his heart together in common bonds
of unity. His stirring works and words
are almost without parallel even in the sterling history of Bengali
inspirational compositions from the years under English colonial
occupation. In the wake of my
presentation of Rabindranath Tagore's strident condemnation of casteism in his path-breaking
indictment, Hey Mor Durbhaga Desh,
whose translation (My Wretched Country) I recently presented in this forum, I
am now including in this sequence the stirring, moving and even more direct indictment
of casteism by Kazi Nazrul, titled Jater
Naame Bajjati Shob, filled with exceptionally blunt language, here
translated as The Caste Hooligans.
It is worth remembering that Kazi
Narzul Islam's fiery poems, which moved many a young man and woman in the
Bengal of the early 1900s to join the freedom movement, in the case of his
intensely path-breaking revolutionary poem, Bidrohi
(The Rebel), which I will attempt to translate on another occasion, led to his
being tried for sedition, and earned him the much-beloved popular sobriquet, Bidrohi Kabi, the Rebel Poet. Yet Kazi Nazrul was well beyond a composer of
exceptionally stirring songs of freedom and social justice. He was equally a poet of the physical world,
with romance, imagination and the longing for beauty in creation. He was among the quintet of path-breaking,
age-defining Bengali composers from the Bengal Renaissance- Tagore (1861-1941),
of course, Dwijendralal Ray (1863-1913), Rajanikanta Sen (1865-1910), Atul
Prasad Sen (1871-1934) and Kazi Nazrul Islam, being discussed here, whose musical
work has simply defined Bengali music for more a century, a prolific record of influence
which is likely without compare in any other language.
[URL
of a song based on Jater Naame Bajjati Shob by Mrinalkanti Ghosh (1942)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62N45QgxbY8
]
The Caste Hooligans, which is also
rendered movingly into a song (URL attached above to this write-up), has
immediate relevance to the color, race, religion and economy based bigotry and
discrimination rampant around the world right now, especially here in the US in
terms of its ruthless, military-style police force victimizing its Black and
colored population in a variety of spheres. Simply replace the word "Caste" in this poem with "Color," "Race," or "Religion,"
and the song perfectly applies (if need be, we may only replace the Hindu
references by icons from another religion).
We especially note Kazi Nazrul Islam's
use of established Hindu icons, Bhagavan (Ishvara, or the Godhead) and
Jagannath (another name for the Lord Krishna), and also Narayana in an
alternative rendition, about whom I have written earlier within Tagore's My
Wretched Country- in arguing the utter destructiveness of the caste-based
prejudices. Nazrul is at his most
eloquent in addressing the worst form of caste-based discrimination in Indian
history- the story of the Untouchables, and makes the clear and emphatic
argument that the Lord of Creation is completely outside any man-made race,
caste, religion or economic/class delineations. These destructive delineations and their complete meaninglessness are
the central lessons to be derived from this phenomenal poem. Monish R Chatterjee ]
(Article changed on June 6, 2020 at 17:19)
(Article changed on June 7, 2020 at 18:11)
