Michael Madhusudan Datta (1824-1873) is widely regarded as the first modern Bangla poet. Well before Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), Madhusudan is even reckoned as the first rebel poet in Bangla literature, although he is by no means a revolutionary like Nazrul.
Last modified on Tue 29 Jun 2021 12.50 EDT
The British empire in India was in effect established at the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757. The battle was swift, beginning at dawn and ending close to sunset. It was a normal monsoon day, with occasional rain in the mango groves at the town of Plassey, which is between Calcutta, where the British were based, and Murshidabad, the capital of the kingdom of Bengal. It was in those mango groves that the British forces faced the Nawab Siraj-ud-Doula’s army and convincingly defeated it.
British rule ended nearly 200 years later with Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous speech on India’s “tryst with destiny” at midnight on 14 August 1947. Two hundred years is a long time. What did the British achieve in India, and what did they fail to accomplish?
Read the passage. Then answer the questions below.
Michael Madhusudan Dutta was popular in 19th century Bengali poet and dramatist. He is considered the father of Bangla Sonnet. He was born in Sagordari on the bank of the Kopotaksha River, a village in Keshobpur Upazila under Jessore district. His father was Rajnaryan Dutt, a pleader. His mother was Jahnabi Devi. From an early age, Madhusudan aspired to be an English man in form and manner. Though he was born in a sophisticated Hindu family, he took Christianity as a young man, much to the ire of his family, and adopted the first name Michael. In his childhood, he was recognized by his teachers as a precious child with a gift of literary talent. His early exposure to English education and European literature and his college inspired him to imitate the English in taste, manners and intellect. Since his adolescence he started believing that he was born on the wrong side of the planet, and
1. (a) Madhusudan Dutta was a very popular poet. (exclamatory)
(b) He was one of the greatest dramatists in Bangla literature. (positive)
(c) He was born at Sagordary in the band of the Kapotaksho. (complex)
(d) When he was a boy, he desired to be an Englishman. (simple)
(e) He was recognized by his teachers as a precious child. (active)
(f) He thought that he was born in the wrong side of the planet. (interrogative)
(g) He also thought that his society was unable to appreciate his intellect. (negative)
(h) Again he believed that none but the West would be more receptive to his creative genius. (affirmative)
December 20 marks the 89th birthday of Badruddin Umar. Bangladesh s foremost Marxist revolutionary one who has been speaking truth to power for more than six decades now Umar is the author of more than a hundred books and countless articles. His three-volume work on our Language Movement of 1952 called
Purba Banglar Bhasha Andolon o Tatkaleen Rajneeti (The Language Movement in East Bengal and Contemporaneous Politics; 1970, 1976, 1981) is trailblazing, while his
tour de force also includes his two-volume work titled
The Emergence of Bangladesh (2004, 2006), published by Oxford University Press.
Indeed, we are yet to assess the entire range staggering as it is of Umar s contributions to studies of politics, culture and history, among others. I had the privilege of working with Umar closely for several years in the 1990s, as I worked as the General Secretary of Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir the country s oldest national organisation of writers, artists and activists on the left an or