THE ODYSSEY OF REMEMBRANCE: DIGGING OUT TAUFIQ RAFAT’S WAR POETRY VIA NAYAR’S MODEL OF HUMANS AND THE UNMADE WORLD OF UNMADE SUBJECTS
Keywords:
1965 War, Abhuman, Bangladesh Liberation War, Human, Subhuman, Kashmir Conflict, Partition of the Subcontinent, Unmade Subjects, Unmade World, War PoetryAbstract
The anthropology of the elegies of the citizens of the decolonized states and the newly sovereign nations, whose shifting policies result in abuses and atrocities committed against the common people, is the war poetry in the post-colonial setting. In this regard, this work will scrutinize Taufiq Rafat's four war poems – "Sialkot," "The Village," "Sacrifice," and "Sialkot Bombed" – from Rafat's collection The Arrival of the Monsoon: Collected Poems 1947-78, guided by Pramod K. Nayar's conceptual framework Models of Humans and Unmade Worlds. According to Nayar, the human is an identity that enjoys conscious acceptance and protection in a society, the abhuman, the monstrous and grotesque human face, and the subhuman, a person who receives emotionless, inhuman, and brutal treatment. While the unmade world is a politically and socially destroyed state that produces unmade subjects who are no more than engulfed and personality-eradicated identities. Intending to determine the degree to which warfare affects individuals and civilizations, this paper attempts to formulate a hermeneutic of Rafat’s war poetry.
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