O P Bhatnagar is among the most main voices of Indian English poetry whose collections Thought Poems (1976), Feeling Fossils (1977), Angels of Retreat (undated), The Audible Panorama, Oneric Visions, Shadows in Floodlight (1984) and Cooling Flames of Darkness (2001) bespeak of political consciousness of the poet. As it’s clear reduce undeniable fact that Indian English poetry can by no means keep away from the socio-political environment of India and poets who don’t write underneath a single components however reasonably begin a dialogue between ‘man and man’ so Bhatnagar too offers with quite a few problems with our society and politics. Dr. A.N. Dwivedi feedback:
“Bhatnagar’s poetry comprehends an important number of themes which immediately concentrate on the lengthy ness of his expertise and the solemnity of his involvement within the affairs of life.” (CIE217)
Bhatnagar’s tackling of political theme is extra agency and bigger than another Indian English poet for he has touched virtually all of the elements of political situation. Dr.V.Okay.Singh observes:
“We discover in Bhatnagar a frank evaluation of the details of up to date life. Bhatnagar descants upon myriad elements of political life as current at the moment. No salient characteristic escapes his keenly discerning eye. Bhatnagar rips open the bosom of a number of political riddles. He mirrors earlier than us what’s what of all political issues.” (152)
Themes like election, bribery, corruption, criminalization of politics, rampant bribery among the many leaders degrading character of nationwide leaders, division of society by communalism, castism, linguism, and regionalism and many others and the utter lack of values in politics are touched by the poet in a remarkably delicate and beautifully sarcastic approach which remains to be not being surpassed by any poet of Indian English Poetry. His assertion that ‘Indian Poetry in English needs to be Indian’ can’t be neglected if we aspire to advertise Indian Literature. Merely copying and dealing with the English and English Literature is inadequate as a result of Indian sensibility shouldn’t be struggling with the penury of ideas, feelings and sensibility and since it has its basis vitality and voice of potentiality. Dr. R.C. Sharma is true when he says:
“The explanation why Bhatnagar advocates making Indian Poetry in English is beset with conflicts and considerations; and these conflicts and considerations are mainly Indian. Bhatnagar is acutely aware of the milieu through which the Indian poet in English lives in addition to of the responsibility which the Indian poet in English has to carry out.”(79)
O.P.Bhatnagar has handled quite a few themes like social consciousness, political consciousness, love, nature, philosophy and Indianness. In keeping with Dr. A. N. Dwivedi:
Bhatnagar’s poetry comprehends an important number of themes, which immediately concentrate on the largeness of his experienceand the solemnityof his involvement within the affairs of his life. (CIE,217)
On this approach Bhatnagar understands the tempo and temperature of his instances and accordingly orchestrates his poetry. Bhatnagar’s coping with the theme of politics is myriad and actual. The varied social issues that agitate the conscience of man are the topics of his poetry and he tries to throw a great deal of gentle on all of them. S.C.Bose observes:
“The poetry of O.P.Bhatnagar which has certainly many dimensions can be important as poetry of political consciousness.” (V. V., 29)
The frank evaluation of the very fact of up to date life, and the picturesque delineation make his poetry vibrant and interesting. In keeping with Bhatnagar:
“Many of the important areas of the life right now are ruled by the standard of political life and environment are creating and residing. Politics right now has changed our non secular mode of life. We’re quick turning into involved with a sort of nationalism that will outline our function and duties within the making of the future of our Nation in future.” (RC, ‘Introduction’, 8)
In keeping with Bhatnagar:
Indian poetry in English ought to primarily concern to social and political lifetime of the individuals of India and it, ‘should democratize its considerations and relations to society and make it a supply of shared expectations…it should throw gentle on the degeneration and corruption corroding identities. It should communicate of the entire lose of ethical values, the gloom and the frustrations pervading the Nationwide scene.” (RC, ‘Introduction’9)
Poetry for Bhatnagar is a continuing search and energy to represent for a greater socio-political life .to him, it’s ‘a self acutely aware craft formed and reshaped by fixed practice-refined and retouched by means of the imaginative and prescient. Like life itself, it’s the work of a gardener who after eradicating all weeds cultivates it to last development and flowering. As such there isn’t a affect of any explicit faculty of thought on his poetry. It’s completely his own- a private experiment impressed by environment, ages, instances and above all by human predicament.
The primary assortment of Bhatnagar Thought Poems (1976) has whole lot of poems of political consciousness. The poems wealthy in thought content material lack in emotion like that of romantic poets however the first poem of the gathering finds out the method of poetic creation. Bhatnagar writes:
“Poetry’s that means
Like a deity in enshrined
Phrases upon phrases, the edifice construct.” (T.P, 5)
Bhatnagar throws ample gentle on the query regarding God who can’t be resolved out in going around the temple by the worshipper. God is a that means and deity enshrined in phrases of poem, the artist alone can expound and search Him out:
“We could go spherical and around the temple
But by no means be round God.
We could go spherical and rand an concept
But by no means be round a thought.” (ibid. 5)
In one in all his poems, he predicts the long run as gloomy as the current:
“The longer term seems pale
Just like the blossoms of cacti after daybreak
The saints from bars, brothels and night time golf equipment
Tasting of casinos and underworld
Flip morals, values and virtues to ice-cream
Licked by enjoyable loving childness in cones.” (T.P, 10)
Within the poem ‘The brand new Scale’ Bhatnagar tries to strike steadiness between one man’s meat is one other man’s poison. The poet finds the dictum worn out within the trendy context ‘a easy and sincere man measures life in worth spoons as he finds dishonesty to be the meanest lifestyle’. The stark actuality of life will be seen as:
“A easy, sincere man
In a worn out mode
Should himself discover
Measuring life in worth spoons
Bribery, corruption and forgery
For him, a bitter poison be.” (T.P., 12)
Bhatnagar needs to opine that the one’s who amass wealth are the little concern with the curiosity with their fellow beings, nor do they really feel any immorality in performing fairly opposite to the code of conduct. In one other poem ‘A Woe of Surprise’, Bhatnagar expresses our sentiments and helpless angle. The poet regrets the range, disintegration that our nation possesses right now. The emphasis of the poet is nothing however Nationality, one sentiment and one angle. This concept is penned by the poet as:
“Our is a multiheaded nation
Wanting in no explicit path
Trimurti is an all inclusive imaginative and prescient
From right here to eternity risen
Telling the story of our frivolity.” (T.P., 14)
Equally within the poem ‘The Bonds of Nation Care’ the poet feedback on the loyalty and patriotism of these Indians who’ve been amassing vainness, wealth and vanity by their providers to the nations to which they’ve immigrated. These so known as loyal residents and tireless patriots go to India for their very own trigger:
“Loyal residents pleased with patriots
Always remember the care of their nation
And fly again residence infrequently
Both to decide on a bride like a prince
Or purchase of ones nation a jewel of a land
Putting their kingdom in a security of bands
Sealed with the loyal assurance with a wink
That though they do not belong to this nation
It positive belongs to their empire.” (T. P., 15)
The second assortment Feeling Fossils has additionally some poems of political curiosity. Bhatnagar regardless of treating the politics in an oblique method hardly fails to pin level very unusual phenomena that in some way stay hidden from the attention of even those that have specialised within the recreation of politics. ‘Crossing The Bar’ is lifelike poem that lashes on the trendy politicians. His touch upon the trendy politicians is price quoting:
“Morals as dense
As thick forests
Let no gentle in;
The sport is bizarre
Searching loyalties
For love.” (F.F, 16)
One other notable poem ‘The No Man’s Land’ expresses the concept freedom has introduced no racial change within the lifetime of the people who find themselves nonetheless residing the darkish dungeon of poverty, illiteracy and justice. The motion of liberation was raised by the plenty however solely few privileged males got here ahead to manage. And when the efforts and sacrifices of the plenty resulted success these privileged few captured thrown of the nation and continued ruling over the nation underneath the garb of democracy. So the poet feels proper:
“Earlier than the British got here
The land was not ours:
After they left,
It was not ours too
The land belongs
To those that rule;
The others merely inherit
The no man’s land.” (F.F., 19)
The third assortment Angles of Retreat has a number of thought upsetting poems through which the poet explores the that means of time as is evaluated from the occasions rising from the cave of materialism wedded to hypocrisy. The tone of the poet on this assortment is satiric and ironical. Within the poem ‘Historical past is A Sorry go spherical’ the poet needs to propound that the historians typically ignore the significance of the individuals at giant and so they are inclined to amplify the deeds of some privileged males. The political sycophants haven’t any different approach of reaching the pages of Historical past. The historians suppose that their labor in recording titles and tortures serve the reason for Nationwide unity and safety and they’re helped by political sycophants:
“Political sycophants are their aides
On whose beguiling predictions
They hearth eat and carry out
The Japanese fire-walk exhibits
To dazzle the already dazed.” (A.R, 40)
Nonetheless political leaders and sycophants neglect that the tyrants and blood suckers should face a fall:
“An excessive amount of suppression and far politicking
Ferments its personal defeat
Forcing the plenty to forge
Within the smithy of their conscience
The invisible weapons of their conscience
The invisible weapons of their fall
Crowning disgrace on the foreheads of tyrants
And nailing bitter truths
On the crossroads instances.” (A.R.41)
‘Beggars can Be Choosers’ is a exceptional poem through which the poet extends his sympathy for the poor, homeless deceased and propounds that begging shouldn’t be an evil as these which can be harbored by shallow careerists, dare satan smugglers and dishonest blackmarketeers. The beggars are away from the ailment of rigidity, alienation and lack of identification and the poet concludes:
“All my humanitarian method
Appeared a snarl to me
And my reformist fervor a celluloid zeal
Little realizing that beggars additionally will be choosers
And little much less apprehending
The way in which we will misinterpret each other
To maintain our irrational kinds going
That in limitless deceit
Finish the shapes of our future.” (A.R, 43)
Equally, in one other poem ‘Ideas on A Election Day’ is one other poem of political consciousness through which the poet ridicules and paints a really vivid and lifelike image of ignorant voters and literate officers as follows:
“The ignorant voters of their routine
Queue up day-dreaming
And in a ardour of a second
Eliminate their oscitant indecision
Stamping symbols for males.
With a handful of literates
Sealing illiterate favours in metal containers
And recording the proud proportion of ballot
A fairly reigns over the polling cubicles
Like mourners retired from their obsequies.” (A.R., 46)
The hope for brand spanking new political miracles after such democratic phenomena in each 5 12 months is finely portrayed by the poet who needs to say that Democracy is nothing however the ugly face oppression and injustice.
The fourth assortment of verse Oneric Visions not directly muses over the themes of politics whereby a number of fragments associated to political consciousness are scattered within the quantity. For instance within the poem ‘If One Begins Asking Questions like Hamlet’ the poet provides a reference to politics:
“The fanatic erect marbles statues
Of their transient heroes
On the evanescent route of times-
Some whispering revolution
Others proclaiming peace-
Leaving the frequent man
To elbow solar with sun-shades.” (O.V. 25)
In ‘Who’s Afraid of Worry’ the poet’s concept concerning the magnitude of evils that inform concerning the nature of politics is expressed by the poet:
“Up rise the ghost of smugglers
Hoarders, hooligans and holy-idlers
In a saucy denial of their treason
And evoke the deformed apparitions
Of the boys who wished to rule
Or the person who simply could not be males
And like a Shikhandi shielded
The shadow of sin
Branding solar complain of gout
Bent with an getting old dream
Wiping morals like magnificence
Scrapped by actors with chilly cream.” (O.V., 35)
The Gandhian idea of non-violence may be very effectively expressed within the poem ‘Non-Niolence and Violence’. Like Gandhi, Bhatnagar feels that even non-violence has its limits:
“If one strikes you as soon as
I invite him to do it once more:
If one takes off your shirt
Provide him to take away no matter stays.” (O.V., 35)
However it isn’t virtually non-violence however a dearth of knowledge reasonably the poet suggests:
“With beliefs folded like umbrella
One could maintain them for a wet day
And bask in violence for enjoyable
However the wrinkled dialectic of violence
Is a bit too monotonous
Placing the ikebana of horror
Unrelieved and unpossessed
Of any sense of humour
Definitely worth the whereas.” (O.V., 43)
The gathering Shadows in Floodlight has a number of poems of depth and statement through which the poet turns into philosophical in addition to analytical. Within the poem ‘Of Poverty, Revolutions and Goals’ the poet upholds rightly:
We can’t worth poetry than its contents
Like vice greater than its purity
And frustrations behave a wfore:
For poetry in itself is a revolution
Undreamt of in dreamt undreams.” (S.F., 17)
However in one other poem ‘The Dwelling Scene’ the poet presents the image of contemporary India saying:
“The residing scene in my nation
Is price just for the granite eyes
Insensitive and resilient
For our visions to unfold.” (SF,20)
And he provides:
“it is a scene the place utopia and epic
Are merging right into a palpable chaos
Journey overrunning freedom
Gangsterism whipping justice,
Politics retaining dignity captive
Inaction to keep away from thought.” (ibid)
The sixth assortment The Audible Panorama has ample poems associated to political consciousness through which the poet vocalizes and displays the current situation of the Nation and its individuals. For instance, the primary poem displays the slavish mentality of the people who find themselves able to undergo with out making a sigh. The Nation has turn into coward and the illness is past all remedy. The poet says:
“The self enslaving slaves are dominated
By glad ghosts.” (AL, 9)
And he provides:
“When slavery is liked as a rhetoric to outlive
Rendering each Cervants and Dostoyevsky futile
Conceits of cowards want no therapist
Nor freedom a Marx or a Gandhi to revive.”(p.9)
He mirrors our predicament saying:
“A prisoner is extra free than these
Who haven’t any freedom even to dream.” (ibid)
Virtually the equivalent tone is sustained within the subsequent poem ‘The Partitions of Jail home Stay’. Bhatnagar writes:
“We have damaged the chains of slavery
The partitions of prisonhouse stay.” (AL, 10)
The next extract from the poem mirrors the plight of the Indians:
“Our despair shouldn’t be as a result of
There may be much less revolution
However little change.”(ibid)
Or:
“Even now we search for leaders to comply with
God to ship us his grace:
We’re afraid of talking the reality
And resisting no matter is unjust
Foul and corrupt in our bones.”(ibid)
What a enjoyable it has that we’ve got taken phrases for actuality forgetting all resistance and protest. Bhatnagar says:
“Lengthy caged in slavery
We have turn into like circus lions
Incapable of freedom in feelings
Turned our personal prisonwalls.” (.A.L. p.11)
The third poem within the quantity ‘Can Details Be Destroyed By Concepts, highlights the truth which can’t be destroyed by concepts the so known as cat politics can’t play the sport of conceal and search for a very long time. The poet writes:
“Yesterday they have been the desires of tomorrow
Right this moment they’re the recollections of past-
Villages to switch heaven:
The unsheltered resting in villas:
Morals to be as agency as mountains:
With he hungry feeding on the Taj-
All that is historical past now of politics
That enrich nation with poverty such lengthy.” (AL, 12)
The poet concludes saying:
“Even poets at the moment are weary of desires
Readt like Caligula to depart
Let wrestle revive to make up for the loss
In artwork flip materials hostile to artwork.”(ibid)
On this assortment there are variety of poems like ‘Nonetheless Questions’, ‘The New Morality’, ‘The Second Coming’, ‘On Seeing Rashtrapati Bhavan’, ‘Displacement Extra Spacious’, ‘That Area’ and ‘The Second Conversion’ through which the poet factors out the foils and foibles of our character and presents the snapshot of the struggling humanity and reveling a unadorned of contemporary life Bhatnagar tries to reform the current situation and motivates us to struggle in opposition to injustice and humiliation.
The final assortment Cooling Flames of Darkness (2001) has additionally quite a few poems of political curiosity through which the poem ‘The Janus Confronted Politician’ is exceptional. The poet begins saying:
“Who says it takes yellow sweat and struggling
To turn into a frontrunner these fruitful days!
It is now faience with all imperfections
To appeal the harmless unequals
With extra charming handicaps
Approach laying day-dreams by faldage
With misleading drawings of fain hopes.( CFD, 17)
The farcical face of Indian politics and the imposters known as politicians are sketched by the poet so effectively. Bhatnagar urges us:
“So, watch a hardcore bandit
A seasoned-green kidnapper
A sensible assassin: a high-fi smuggler
A excessive shifting scamster
Speak glib on tv
Or dictate his undercover turns
To the twice beleaguered individuals
Voting him to energy with little selection
Democracy forcing its method to a farce. (CFD, 18)
The poem ‘Ravaged Kids of The Civilized Occasions’ exhibits virtually all of the outer conflicts on this planet the place the individuals of the trendy instances are extra indulged in cancerous violence, sins and crimes reasonably being ‘within the line of the most effective promoting fiction:/ media blow-up on sight on web’. Politicians are like Cassius and Shakuni who’re fixing distant designs of private power-park and are ‘perambulating their nebulous desires.’ In keeping with him, politicians won’t ever let the world change in its earlier glory. He says:
“We’re ravaged of civilized times-
Our limping spirits have their very own vexed reality:
Philosophers, physiologists or politicians apart
All fires end- discover their glory in ashes:
And waters emptying themselves out
By all of the mountain gashes. And
Howsoever a lot innocence could stand the take a look at
By hearth and water:
Violence won’t ever misplaced its radiance
The woes of innocence their chilly give up.
Would be the return to the tenderness of coronary heart
Lies by bestiality, faxed everywhere in the world
The textual content in its authenticity unchanged.” (CFD,14)
Likewise, in ‘The Primitives of The Age’, the poet imagines the extra ghasty mishappenings and the overgrowth of the ghost of soiled politics:
“Come one, come all
Come hyenas or wolves
The inlaid roots will naturally pressure
Their trampled energy to recent shoots
And survive the grizzly undergrowth
In a brand new grace of their previous salons
Tesing the civilized of their
A lot biting enamel.” (CFD,16)
In ‘Wanting At My Solitude’ the poet tries to unburden himself from the agonies of time however finds solace nowhere and says:
“For the agony of it
Philosophy, music or poetry
Could solely half-persuade the high-quality style
To savour the style of solitude
In good style and belief:
For, the bitter at greatest can flip
Solely much less bitten not sweeter nonetheless.” (CFD, 36)
Thus, from the above narration it’s revealed that Bhatnagar’s poetry is free from all of the actions of Rightist or Leftist nor it has any relation with any explicit faculty of thought or ideology reasonably to an outline of actuality crystal-clearly and narration of reality in pictorial and vividly. The Faith of Bhatnagar’s poetry is love and peace. His poetic creed is basically human and sort. He appears to be a real advocate of simplicity when he says:
“Poetry at its greatest is a transparent and a simplified model of the complicated and the confused for there’s nothing extra transcidental past the inventive simplicity of poetry. Poetry wins not by its snobbishness however by its simplicity. Easy poetry is the poetry of togetherness. If extra Indian individuals are to learn poetry in English then it should get frequent and accessible and associated to the residing human considerations of the instances than mere to phrases, animals, damsels and intercourse.” (FD, 122)
Due to this fact, we will say that Bhatnagar has handled the politics as metaphor in his poetry and his poetry has established itself because the clarion name of awakening within the current milieu of political darkness.
References:
oA.N. Dwevedi (ed.), Up to date Indo English Verse. Bareilly: Prakash E book Depot.1998.
oV. Okay. Singh. ‘Silhouttes from Political & Financial Life’ The Poetry of O. P. Bhatnagar- A crucial Analysis. Beneath the supervision of Dr. T. Okay. Ramchandran, Submitted to Rohilkhand College, Bareilly,1992
oR.C. Sharma & Dolly Oswal, ‘O. P. Bhatnagar’s Therapy of Politics’, Agra College Journal of Analysis. Vol.xxx, pt. 1, Jan.1982
oS. C. Bose, Imaginative and prescient & Voice. Vol.2, Ed. G. P. Baghmar, Nagpur; Vishwa Bharti Publications. (Abbreviated as V. V.)
oO. P. Bhatnagar(ed,) Rising Columns-Some Indian Poets in English.Amravati; Kala Prakashan.
o——————————Thought Poems.Aligarh: Skylark Publications. 1976,(Abbreviated as TP within the textual content)
o——————————Feeling Fossils .New Delhi: Samkaleen Prakashan., (Abbreviated as FF within the textual content)
o—————————Angles of Retreat .New Delhi: Samkaleen Prakashan., (Abbreviated as AR within the textual content)
o—————————-Oneric Visions. Jaipur: Rachna Prakashan., (Abbreviated as OV within the textual content)
o—————————–Shadows in Floodlights. Aligarh: Skylark Publications.(Abbreviated as SF within the textual content)
o——————————Audible Panorama. Aligarh: Skylark Publications.(Abbreviated as AL within the textual content)
o—————————Cooling Flames of Darkness. New Delhi: Samkaleen Prakashan.,2001 (Abbreviated as CFD within the textual content)
o—————————Future Instructions- Indian Poetry in English Jaipur: Rachna Prakashan, (Abbreviated as FD within the textual content)
