Nazrul Islam

A manuscript containing Kazi Nazrul Islam’s poems, the copyright of which he had sold for Rs 250, has surfaced close to four decades after his death. Published by Desh Prakashan, it will be launched on Thursday.

The manuscript was lying with the family of Syed Nausher Ali, speaker of the legislative assembly during the coalition government of 1943-46.

According to the handwritten deed, signed by Nazrul, he had transferred the copyright of 26 listed poems to Mohd. Kasem of Dhaka with the instruction that the collection of poems be published with the title Nirjhor. The date is December 10, 1929. This was just after the birth of his son Kazi Sabyasachi.

Kasem in turn sold the copyright to barrister Emdad Ali Khan who had a press. “Nirjhor was published in 1938 but the copies got confiscated by the British. Nazrul had already been imprisoned for sedition once. Khan left the manuscript with his son-in-law Na-usher Ali,” says Nurul H. Sarkar, who has married Ali’s granddaughter Rabeya and has taken the initiative to print the book anew.

Nazrul’s family was unaware of the sale. “Most of the poems in Nirjhor are in Dadu’s collected works but the hand-written deed is important,” the poet’s granddaughter Khilkhil Kazi told Metro from Dhaka.