Madusudhan Dutta - the giant poet and his MeghnadBadh Kabya

 Today is the birth anniversary of this great Bengal renaissance poet Modhusudhan Dutta and the father of Bengali modern poetry.

Michel Modhusudan Dutta(1824-1873) and his immortal  book of poetry  'Meghnadbadh'  (1861) are always breathed  together .Retelling the epic through a modern ballad and is one of the renaissance tradition challenging the myth and  a section of the poem we are reading in school text book for generations.

Meghnad was a tragic hero in Ramayana. He was slayed by Lakshmana brutally, while he was worshiping Goddess Nikumvilā, in the royal temple of Lanka, because of betrayal by Vibhishana, who was an uncle of Meghnad. Meghnad asked Lakshmana not to fight with an unarmed person, rebuking him as a coward; but Lakshmana did not hear him. This unfortunate hero twice endangered Rama as well as Lakshmana but could not survive himself in this unfair battle. This is the central theme of this epic. Meghnad was a patriot, a loving husband, a caring son and a friend to his countrymen.

Here are some comments of a few pioneers of Bengali literature:

"...to Homer and Milton, as well as to Valmiki, he is largely indebted, and his poem is on the whole the most valuable work in modern Bengali literature." -Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894),legendary novelist .

"The Epic Meghnad-Badh is really a rare treasure in Bengali literature. Through his writings, the richness of Bengali literature has been proclaimed to the wide world." -Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1941), the oriental bard and nobel laurate.

"MeghnadBadh is a supreme poem." -Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar(1820-1891), the iconic social reformer and educationist  

He is credited with poetic and dramatic innovations best illustrated by his merging of Bengali stories and language with Western styles and forms such as those found in the works of Homer and John Milton. Dutt's most significant contributions are to poetry and they include the development of Bengali blank verse and the sonnet.He has introduced a new style …’amitrakshar chhanda’ ( the lines of his ballad do not rhyme : blank verse). 

His adolescence coupled with the spirit of intellectual enquiry convinced him that he was born on the wrong side of the planet, and that conservative Hindu society in early nineteenth century Bengal (and by extension Indian society) had not yet developed the spirit of rationalistic enquiry and appreciation of greater intellectual sophistry to appreciate his myriad talents. This led to his conversion to Christianity and going to overseas for settlement and recognition.

When abroad , he bagan to feel the pangs of homesickness and call of homeland. He switched to writing in Bengali but introduced a mix of westen grammar in his poetic expressions.

Dutt was largely ignored for 15 years after his death.[20] The belated tribute was a tomb erected at his gravesite.

His epitaph, a verse of his own, reads:

Stop a while, traveller!

Should Mother Bengal claim thee for her son.

As a child takes repose on his mother's elysian lap,

Even so here in the Long Home,

On the bosom of the earth,

Enjoys the sweet eternal sleep

Poet Madhusudan of the Duttas.

Today, centuries after his demise, he is referred to and titled as, “Bengal’s Own Virtuoso”

 In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

All the stormiest passions of man's soul he [Madhusudan] expressed in gigantic language.