Bangla Academy today awarded two individuals with Nazrul Award-2025. Photo: Bangla Academy Facebook page

DHAKA, May 25, 2025 (BSS) - Bangla Academy today awarded two individuals with Nazrul Award-2025 for their contributions to the study, performance, and promotion of the works of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. 

Nazrul’s work Researcher Prof. Anwarul Haque and Nazrul Music artist Shobnom Mushtari received the award at a programme organized on the occasion of 126th birth anniversary of the national poet.

The academy handed over the award during a seminar held at the Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad Auditorium.

Bangla Academy director general Prof Mohammad Azam delivered the welcoming speech with its president Professor Abul Quashem Fazlul Haque in the chair.

Director of Bangala Gobeshona Afzalul Bashar joined the function as the key speaker while assistant professor Joglul Asad of Tangail Government Sadat College presented the main speech titled 'Nondoner Banshori O Turzo' or Dynamicity of Nazrul's Literary Thoughts’.

Bangla Academy DG Mohammad Azam called upon all to practice Nazrul to understand his literary thoughts, saying, “Nazrul's thoughts are still relevant and we see a reflection of Nazrul’s rebellion during the July Uprising.” 

Stressing the aesthetics of Nazrul's work, he said, "Nazrul's works were too different from the then dominant literary works to put those in any specific aesthetic frames of literature."
"It will help us get rid of our literary narrowness which has been chasing us for long time and on the other hand we my get some new dimensions of literary aesthetics that will firmly reduce our mindset of practicing Nazrul," he said, urging researchers to uncover Nazrul’s literary thoughts.  

Nazrul Researcher Afzalul Bashar said Nazrul was such a great literary intellectual who can never be weighted as he was contemporary, voiced the marginal people throughout his works. His works echoes the tune of love, rebel, peace, sorrow, politics and religion at once, he added. 

“Nazrul does not belong to any particular religious group though some people try to portray him as communal. He was much different from others,” Afzalul said. 

“Nazrul was quite different, he questioned the British rule and irregularities throughout his works and never compromised with truth at the cost of risking his life,” he added, saying, Nazrul sew the seed of brevity in the blood of Bangali nation.

While presetting the key note paper, Joglul depicted an outline of Nazrul’s thoughts of literary works comparing with those of European literatures.

Bangla Academy Chairman Abul Quashem Fazlul Haque praised the Nazrul awardees and inspired them to keep their efforts up to enrich and flourish Bangla literature.

He said, “Since the beginning of the modern age of Bangla literature, Bangla might have the most enrich literature in the global south. Comparative works can reveal it. We suffer from inferiority complex thinking our literary works are not better enough to compete. This inferiority complex is one of the main barriers to the nation’s intellectual advancement.”

He urged all to study Nazrul’s works from real perspective without being partisan or communal to get rid of national inferiority complex.      

The seminar concluded with a cultural performance titled 'Dekhbo Ebar Jogottake' with the direction of Nur Hossen Rana.