About Poet:
Henry
Louis Vivian Derozio as the first Indo- Anglian poet. He was a poet, thinker, radical,
and one of the earliest Indian educationists to disseminate western learning
and philosophy among the young men of Bengal was also crucially the first
modern Indian to write of the incumbent nation extensively in English.
Derozio became famous in
his lifetime as ‘India’s first national poet’. On 25 December, 1822 Derozio’s
first sonnet signed D.V.L.H. called ‘sonnet to night’ was published in the
‘India Gazette’ when he just thirteen and with this he claimed the title.He
removal to Bhagalpur the following year saw an immediate spurt in poetic
activity and from January 17 onwards, he published approximately twenty poems
in that paper, many of which were later collected in his book of poems.
About Poem :
“The Fakeer of Jungheera” is
the masterpiece creation of Henry Derozio. In his poems, he deals with the
theme of patriotism, of love, of nature, of death. The central theme of ‘The
Fakeer of Jungheera’ is the ignoble and in human practice of ‘sati’ in the
contemporary orthodox Indian society. This rotten system had been in vogue in
the Indian society for centuries, and Derozio vehemently protested the ‘sati’
system both in his social life and in the classroom as a teacher at the Hindu
college, Calcutta. He wrote this poem to highlight the issue. Derozio writes in
it of various aspects of natural scenery, the evils of love which leads to
confrontation at different levels. First the funeral pyre, and later when
Nuleeni’s relatives, with the help of the Mughal army, try rescue her from the Fakeer
a fierce battle goes on. The Fakeer fights bravely but is ultimately killed, in
the battle field. Nuleeni joins him and dies in his embrace and their souls
depart from this mundane world, bound by the considerations of customs and
creed.
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