Feature

An interview
Prof. Winston E. Langley talks about Nazrul

Prof. Winston E. Langley earned his PhD in International Relations from Howard University in 1969. In 1974 he did his JD from Suffolk University. He has taught for over 37 years at various colleges and universities. His recent book includes: The Encyclopedia of Human Rights Issues Since 1945 (1999). He was the keynote speaker at the North America Nazrul Conference 2002 held in California State University and Nazrul Symposium 2006 held at the University of Connecticut, USA.

Langley's book Kazi Nazrul Islam: The Voice of Poetry and the Struggle for Human Wholeness has been published by the Nazrul Institute, Dhaka in February, this year.

On behalf of the Star Campus the e-mail interview was taken by Nazrul enthusiast and translator Subrata Kumar Das.

How did you come to know about Kazi Nazrul Islam?
I was invited to the home of Dr. Gulshan Ara and her husband, Mr. Kazi Belal, whom I met in Massachusetts, the United States. It turned out that they are among the most fervent supporters of the “Rebel Poet” and leaders in the North American Nazrul Society.

At their home, they played musicpatriotic songs, gazals, raga songs, songs pertaining to nature, and some devotional songs. Some of them, although outside my own musical tradition, moved me deeply. And I sought to know about the composer.

Before I left that evening, I was given some books on some selected songs and poems of Nazrul's. And I became a strong admirer of his.

How much of Nazrul's works have you been able to go through?
I think I have been able to go through a fair amount, including some plays, a wide range of his poetry, his songs, some essays, some speeches, some evaluations of his work, and some biographical sketches.

What aspects of Nazrul's writings do attract you most?
There are many aspects of his literature that attract me. Among them its vitality; its un- compromising moral quality; its internal drama; its encompassing metaphors; its universality; its lyrical beauty; its generosity; its sadness; its implications with nature; its commitment to human dignity; its unfailing search fro freedom from the shackles of poverty; its absence of respect for authority, status, birth….; its link, in the broadest sense, to human needs; and its religiosity, outside the bounds of dogma. Finally, its aesthetic/moral juxtapositions.

In what way is Nazrul relevant to this era of globalization?
In the focus on liberation for all human beings; in his fight against the social in- equalities of socio-economic structures (that inequality is being accentuated today); in his focus on human rights (not the rights of any particular national, gender, social class, or co-religionist); in his focus on the relationship between ethics and aesthetics; in his embodiment of global citizenship; in his focus on feeling for suffering across borders; in his recognition that each human is, him or herself, a “border and a bridge”; in his search for human unity.

What More plans do you have in respect of our Rebel Poet?
I plan another book, this one will deal with Nazul's focus on our multiple citizenship (local, national, and global, among others).

Tell us something about you and your area of interest.
I am a professor, whose fields of interests are human rights (I have a law degree as well as a Ph.D.), international political economic, models of global order. My interest in literature is deep, because I think we cannot possible know much about human behavior, and human imaginings, human struggle for liberation, connection, and order, without literature (literature is a form of orderor disorder, if one will). I also teach a course on Images on World Politics through Film and Literature.

(Subrata Kumar Das, a teacher, essayist and online writer is the author of www.bangladeshinovels.com)