Kazi Nazrul Islam । কাজী নজরুল ইসলাম

The first major Bengali poet to have come from the rural proletariat and the first one to have raised—in public—the demand for the total independence of colonial India, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976) enacts insurrectionary ruptures and breaks with certain old traditions in Bengali poetry while inaugurating new ones. Because of his explosively anti-colonial poem like "Bidrohi" (The Rebel, 1921), which are characterised by unprecedented rhetorical, linguistic, and even metrical energy as well as by thematic and structural novelties, it is customary to call Nazrul a "rebel poet." Although a poet in the first place, Nazrul was also a musician-composer-songwriter, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and essayist. A hardcore activist, Nazrul—along with his comrades—even founded and led a short-lived political party (the Labour-Swaraj Party) by writing a revolutionary manifesto on its behalf.