Kuhelika The Revolutionary

In Kuhelika, which began to be serialised in Naoroz in 1927 before appearing as a book in 1931, Nazrul portrays an armed revolutionary in Jahangir as well as two female revolutionaries in Joyoti and her daughter Champa. When Nazrul started writing Kuhelika, there were no female revolutionaries in Bengal. It was only in early 1930 that we see the emergence of female revolutionaries. Nazrul significantly introduced women revolutionaries in Kuhelika three years before Kalpana Dutt and Pritilata Waddedar carried out their attacks against the British. In Kuhelika, Nazrul imagines how a Muslim might have joined the Indian nationalist movement. In this novel, Nazrul humanises the revolutionary, shows that a hero might have feet of clay, that circumstances beyond his control – the genes he inherits from his parents and the attitude of society that he imbibes – might make him less than the ideal we imagine our heroes.