biography
| name: |
Islam, K(azi) N(azrul)
|
pronunciation:
[izlam]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1899–1976)
|
| biography:
| Poet, born into extreme poverty in the West Bengali village of Churulia. He rose to fame in the 1920s as a poet and leader of the anti-British movement in India with his poem The Rebel. He also published a bimonthly radical magazine, Dhumketu (The Comet), which was virulently revolutionary and anti-British in tone, and spent 40 days on hunger-strike in jail. In the 1930s he concentrated more on composing music and songs, and became an actor and radio personality. In 1942 he contracted a brain disease that bereft him of his faculties, including his speech. After the partition, which he had always opposed, he lived in penury until he was brought home in honour to the newly independent state of Bangladesh, and installed as the national poet. A Muslim, he married a Hindu, and was a lifelong advocate of Muslim–Hindu unity. He wrote over 500 devotional Hindu songs. |
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