Nilim Kumar

A horrible experience, marginality affects millions of people throughout the world. As process of domination and subordination, it makes communities or sections of people feel as if they are not important or they are put in such a position in which they have no power. Peter Leonard, in his book—Personality and Ideology (1984, p. 180) has tried to sum up social marginality as 'being outside the mainstream of productive activity and/or social reproductive activity'. This includes voluntarily marginal to the social order and involuntarily socially marginal. The involuntarily marginal are those who remain outside 'the major arena of capitalist productive and reproductive activity’ and they are experiencing 'involuntary social marginality'. Poverty and dependency are everyday aspects of economic dislocation and social marginalization.

In Assam, the tea tribes, Bodos, factory workers, other hills and plains tribes have been unfeelingly excluded from economic, social and political means of promoting one’s self determination; and as a result, they endure countless plights. Their identity remains in question.

In this write-up, I make an attempt to have a peep into select poetical works of Nilim Kumar, a renowned Assamese poet of the twentieth century. Kumar, a huge bulk of whose poems appear in English, Hindi, Nepali, Bengali and other regional languages in the country, looks compassionately at the oppressed or the involuntarily marginalized section and shares with them in their distress. Moi Tomalokar Kavi (I’m Your Poet), published in 2002, is a collection of poems which bear the testimony to his engagement with social marginalization that besots our society. With these poetic deliberations, he dreams of rebuilding a fair society violating all of its established norms. Although he has no illusions about his trance for a better society, he himself admits that most of the emotional renderings included in this anthology are slogan-based and spirited. He painfully regrets that no desired revolution for emancipation of the down-trodden has yet taken place. Kumar draws successfully from his rich personal experiences, though he is himself dubious about the fruitfulness of writing about such issues.

In Come for a blue valley, the poet feels that the opportunists make this land a place for their happiness and arrange a psychological ban to step in for those who are marginalized. This attitude of the rulers and policy makers stimulates the poet’s aggrieved veins and he finally dares to talk of revolution,--a kind of warfare on which he believes a retaliation and change in society:

Here our storm
Turns rains
Under their command

In the blue valley
Not hit by storm and winter
They do not allow us to enter

Come,
Let us raise the time
To a bloodshed
For a blue valley.
 

In Come for a blue valley, he invites the common folk to marsh towards the land of peace.

I Would See Them Too draws the violent attitude of the oppressor. The poet’s heart gets crushed at the subjugation meted out to his fellowmen; and although he experiences the conceited tyrants on their dreadful turn with deadly weapons like whip and others towards the common people, his conscience does not permit him to surrender before the violent forces of the cruel leaders. Rather, he is optimistic to see them too (the marginalized) and their hands as hard as granite. This is, however, indicative of an upheaval that is expected to wage war against those who disregard the power and importance of the marginalized section. Nilim kumar has preferably set this balance between the oppressor and the oppressed for probably two reasons: first he himself assimilates with the hot blood of his fellow men and second he foresees the oppressor’s awful end. The mid part of the poem carries a satirical tone with the lines:

I’ve seen you
Cracking your whips the folk on horse

Lowliness that grows with the marginalized gradually collapses their enthusiasm. With their identity, they lose destination too. In Road, the poet brings a picture of those unfortunate few who begin to behave like the helpless in their blood smeared roads. The gathering wherein they wait to find their ways for better future has no any information that could inspire them. Hence, the poet conveys their dismal condition in the following lines:

Blood smeared
Each road

Gathering
One after the other

Gathering grows
One after the other

Gathering
Falls off at shot sounds

Gradually
Gathering grows

Each gathering
Embraces
The other

Each one of the gathering
Asks one
Of the other gathering
Which is the road?
Which is the road?

For what you are my mother is a rhythmic poetical finish where he painfully expresses his anger for incapable mother.

In Your poet I’m he assimilates with the blood of the diseased declaring himself to be their poet.

Be frank, Calculation, Island of silence, Even after great cataclysm bear the testimony of Nilim Kumar’s serious engagement with the cause of the marginalized few.

In Even After Great Cataclysm, marginalisation is such a tragedy or an attitude that a tribe or a community must have to face doom almost in all stages. Nilim Kumar feels gravity of this ill-fated condition and considers their subject as like a great cataclysm for them. But he is optimistic and says:

We the two would survive
In all engulfing darkness
After the great cataclysm.

He is confident that even death cannot confiscate them from their power and wisdom:

Like wind grasping the grass
Music of the green would capture their voice
Where from death cannot confiscate us.

The poet is critical of the voiceless people at this risky juncture. He unambiguously heightens the intensity of an alarm for the dire state of affairs. For him silence is very dreadful as the lords or the oppressors step up its activities to dominate the weaker section. He writes in Island of Silence:

We are here
Silent
Like boastful conceit our silence is
Very dreadful is this silence.
As if we are an island of silence
In midst of sea roars.
It’s an island of dreadful silence.

Nilim kumar’s poetic works on the marginalized people are mainly based on (i) a tendency to organise to resist oppression and reclaim what is truly theirs (ii) a search for social peace (iii) inspiration (iv) exploration on the idiosyncratic and prejudiced lords (v) alienation (v) economic liberty (vi) resilience (vii) demand to return what was with the down-trodden (viii) poverty etc. His idea of struggle against social marginalization is in the form of class struggle that besots the world over the centuries.

In My Two Eyes, he writes:

My two eyes are towards a ray of light

And nothing
Light and my eyes
There are.

My two feet
Two hands
Tear away
In darkness

In the darkness
Cheek, ears, forehead, nose
Melt away
Hairs, teeth
Fall off

Gazing towards light
My eyes stay eager.

Alas!
Who would be
In want of my eyes
Getting stone?

The poet gets frustrated at the dire state of affairs. But he still hopes to find a way out of it. He fixes his look towards light. The last stanza illustrates his weary wait.

Nilim Kumer’s poetic ingenuity paves a new way in the history of modern Assamese poetry. His poetry is also rich in engagement with meaninglessness of life, history, aesthetic outlook and physical environment.

About Nilim Kumer
Born in Pathsala, Barpeta district, Assam, Nilim Kumer is one of the most popular poets of contemporary Assamese literature. He has published a total of 17 collections of poems; and some of them are Achinar Akhukh (1985); Bari Kunwar (1988); Swapnar Relgaari (1991); Seluoi Gadhuli (1992); Topanir Baagicha (1994); Panit Dhou Dhoubor Mach (1990); Narakashur; Atmakatha. He has also authored a number of novels—Matit Uri Phura Chitrakar; Akash Apartment; Athkhon Premar Uppannyas. He is the President of The Call of the Brahmaputra, a socio-cultural literary organization of Assam. He received awards like Raja Foundation award, 2009, Uday Bharati National award, 1994. His poems have been published in Treasure Trove, a 25-volume literary project on Assamese literature in English translation Edited and Compiled by Abhigyan Anurag.
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