Kazi Nazrul Islam Jayanti

Kazi Nazrul Islam Jayanti is a public holiday in the Bengali-speaking state of Tripura. It is the birthday of the famed Bengal “rebel poet” Kazi Nazrul Islam. The holiday comes every 24 May, the day on which Nazrul was born back in 1899. In 2027, Kazi Nazrul Islam Jayanti falls on Tuesday 25 May. The holiday will be on Friday 26 May in 2028. Kazi Nazrul Islam was both poet and revolutionary. He lived in the days of British India and openly wrote in favour of the independence movement. For this, he was often jailed by the authorities, but even there, he continued his writing. His famous Deposition of a Political Prisoner was written in prison. Nazrul wrote rather voluminously, and he greatly changed the style of Bengal poetry, making a clean break from the traditional style that had dominated since Medieval times. He is regarded by many today as a “social justice warrior”, and he is much admired in both Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura.