1.

AFTER DEATH TWENTY YEARS: TITLE

The title of the poem "After death twenty years" by Birendra Chattopadhyay is quite intriguing. The use
of the term "after death" signifies that the poem might delve into the concept of life and death,
exploring the aftermath of a person's demise. On the other hand, the phrase "twenty years" adds a tinge
of mystery to the title. The question that arises is what happened twenty years after the death?

The title of the poem “After Death: Twenty Years” alludes to the death of Rabindranath Tagore in 1941.
Chattopadhyay’s persona addresses Tagore and portrays the massacre in Calcutta on 19 August 1946 in
the very first stanza. He says that all the catastrophes happening around this period have escaped his
eyes. Bengal became a living hell where thousands of people died each day.

Tagore was not alive to witness these bloody scenes. The raging fires that tortured thousands on the
streets escaped his eyes. There was an outbreak of famine and epidemic. Alongside that, the golden
lands of Bengal turned into a “living hell”. Several of Bengal’s sons killed each other during the
communal riots. Their mothers were also killed at the same time. In this hurly-burly, the poet ironically
comments on the brutality of men that transformed the glorious land of Bengal as well as India into a
hellish ground of bloodbath.

He did not have to see the Partition of India. More than 20 years had passed after his death, but his
dream of a humanitarian nation was still a far cry. The dream Indians saw collectively had turned into
nightmarish thoughts. Amidst this tremulous situation, Chattopadhyay’s voice relapsed into
hopelessness. It was a moment of disillusionment for the nation.

As one delves into the poem, it becomes clear that the title holds significant weightage in terms of the
theme and the message that the poem conveys. The speaker laments the loss of such important people
who could have stopped Bengal from falling miserably, their memories, and how the world has moved
on, leaving behind a void.

The title aptly captures the essence of the poem, where death and time are intertwined. The speaker
acknowledges that death is a natural process and that twenty years is a significant amount of time since
the person's demise. However, the distance between the present and the past doesn't diminish the pain
of the loss. The memories and emotions are still raw, and the speaker yearns for the departed soul.

The experiences of the past twenty years after Tagore’s death had made Chattopadhyay rethink his
dreams. He describes the bloody past as the “history of sewage”. The pages of history seem to be
surfacing the “sewage” of the past in his mind. The more he looks the more the haunting imagery
troubles his heart.

He can visualize thirsty millions, bathed in blood. The inhumane scenes of the partition still make him
fearful. He compares the history to an old hag who runs the brothels at Shonagachi. The comparison is
bleak and disturbing yet it reveals the harsh fact, difficult to take in.

The use of the phrase "twenty years" also adds a layer of nostalgia to the poem. It signifies that the
speaker has had enough time to reflect on the loss and come to terms with it. However, the memory of
the departed is still as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. The speaker mourns for the missed
opportunities and the memories that could not be created with the person who has passed away.

In conclusion, the title "After death twenty years" aptly captures the essence of the poem. It highlights
how death and time are intertwined, and even after a significant amount of time has passed, the loss is
still felt. The phrase "twenty years" adds a tinge of nostalgia and reflects on the missed opportunities
and memories that were left behind. The title complements the poem and prepares the reader for an
emotional journey that delves into the complexities of love and loss.

2. Critical appreciation

The poem “After Death: Twenty Years” was written around the 1960s. Birendra Chattopadhyay who was
26 years old at the time of the Partition of India had witnessed the bloody scenes before and after the
tragic event. While the revered poet Rabindranath Tagore could not encounter these events due to his
death in 1941. In this poem, Chattopadhyay alludes to a number of doomed historical events including
the Royal Air Force Mutiny, the August violence in Calculatta in 1946, and the Partition. He wrote this
poem in the context of the 1960s. Looking back at the past events, he describes how Tagore’s dream
concerning the country’s future is wrong.

Birendra Chattopadhyay was a predominantly political poet who, in his twenties, witnessed the “terrible
catastrophes”, the bloody riots, widespread mass killings and massacre preceding and following the
1947 partition of British India into a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan— an event that
was deemed necessary for India’s independence from colonial rule (B. Chattopadhyay). He, as such,
relates about the dark days of terror, pain and cold silence with the fiery tongue of his poetry. He points
out to Tagore how the fulfilling of his dream of an independent homeland, “Where the mind is without
fear and the head is held high”, incurred the cost of inhuman bloodshed which stained the entire nation
red in 1946 and 1947 (Tagore).

The poet has referred to the great Bengal famine of 1943 which belongs to the same period, just
preceding the great wave of 1946. It resulted in the widespread death of Bengalis, making Huseyn
Shaheed Suhrawardy highly unpopular amongst large sections of the Hindu population due to his
alleged responsibility in causing it. It is this same minister whose speech on the morning of 16th August
1946 incited the outbreak of the Great Calcutta Killing.

Through the phrase “tortuous fire of ’46”, the poet refers to this notorious Calcutta riot, also known as
Direct Action Day in the pages of history. The peaceful nationwide protest for a separate Muslim
homeland announced by Mohammad Ali Jinnah took an unruly form when the Indian Muslim gangs,
influenced by Suhrawardy, unleashed large-scale violence on the Hindus. This led to incessant counter
attacks between Hindus and Muslims, “sons” of the same “land”, in the city of Calcutta. The bloodthirst
took the horrendous form of “epidemic”, culminating in a cycle of barbarity. The vicious ferocity was not
confined to the public sphere alone. Homes were entered, destroyed, and women and children
attacked, to unmask the terror of “a living hell”
It is about all these insanities and many more atrocities encompassing the 1947 partition that the poet
refers to in this poem and in many other pieces. The “madness”, as he depicts, is “Worse” than what
one may witness at the Lumbini Park Mental Hospital of Kolkata. It was infused with the selfish
politicians’ greed and hunger for power and position which was being fed by some perfectly healthy yet
unmindful blind followers.

The poet further says that this inhumanity is of an unprecedented scale— something that surpasses the
brutality of the elderly brothel keeper of Shonagachi who forces the prostitutes into repeated
exploitative sexual encounters with varied customers, purely for materialistic interests. He also severely
condemns the insensitivity of ministers, especially the chief minister of his time, and all other poets,
artists and intelligentsia who prefer to keep silent amidst the tyrannies of the police and of the
administration of the then Congress Government in power. This cold silence even provokes the
unintimidated poet to go beyond the ranks of civility, comparing these hollow men to “Dogs on heat”
who are intoxicated in their own world’s pleasures and concerns, keeping their “conscience mortgaged
to the ruling class interest” and “pursuing research of their home affairs”. He further mentions how an
independent nation, bereft of the traditional caste system, has indeed brought everything on the same
pedestal so that such comparison is absolutely justified.

Thus, though the poets of his generation have inherited the “dreams” of a bright future in an
independent homeland, they have been unable to realise the same. It was, indeed, a question about
how one should “hold one’s head high even in the midst of hell”. The monumental dreams have
descended to be mere “drunken jokes played on the reeds of an oft-used harmonium”, allowing the
drunk to break into irregular feats of heightened potency, challenge established social conditions,
present alternative views— all of which is, nonetheless, just an illusion, devoid of any real sense of social
responsibility. As such, the poet finally challenges Tagore’s idealism who neither lived amidst such
turbulence nor could foresee such dehumanising genocides while wishing for a “free country”. However,
the poet does not negate the optimism and the earnest leadership spirit of Tagore who sought refuge in
not mere identity politics or petty religious segregation, in the name of patriotism, but in “humanity” at
large.