The Wire / by Moumita Alam

This is not a mere work of translation; this is the confluence of two great poets who defied the oppressive states of their respective times.

The following is the foreword to Varavara Rao’s translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam’s Bengali poems into Telugu, Vidrohi. It has been edited for style, grammar and clarity. The volume is being published by the Hyderabad Book Trust.

In what is called the second freedom movement in Bangladesh against the autocratic Sheikh Hasina government, the state police’s guns aiming at the students and the students singing the poem and songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam is the hair-raising moment for all people who aspire for and dream of freedom.
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Aslo read:
▪ BK-16 Prison Diaries: Varavara Rao on prisons as institutions of corruption, sadism and dehumanisation (The Polis Project / Oct 2024)
▪ At UN Human Rights Review, PEN International Questions Crackdown on Dissent in India (The Wire / July 2024)
Read PEN International’s full report here
▪ Tomorrow there won’t be any classes’: Activist Varavara Rao’s poems get an English translation (Scroll.in / by Varavara Rao, N Venugopal & Rohith / Jul 2023)
▪ Supreme Court grants permanent medical bail to P. Varavara Rao in Bhima Koregaon case (The Leaflet / Aug 2022)