The Eyes Have It:

Naeem Mohaiemen’s
Kazi in Nomansland
and the Crisis of History
Murtaza Vali

M
ichael Billig, in his influential book Banal Nationalism,
challenges orthodox conceptions of nationalism that present it as
a discourse that is always exceptional, that is solely the domain of
extremists or separatists populating the nation’s ideological fringe,
or that suddenly emerges as a rallying cry at moments of national crisis, like war or
a terrorist attack.1 This approach, he argues, focuses on “hot nationalism”, rendering
invisible the subtle effects of many trivial everyday representations and acts—flags,
currency, language—through which a national imaginary is constructed, reinforced and
ultimately normalized. Billig collectively terms this “banal nationalism”. Though he
does not discuss them, stamps, as products authorized by the state that surreptitiously
disseminate elements of the national imaginary—flags, symbols, maps, portraits of
political leaders and military heroes, titans of science and industry, and exemplars of
arts and culture—both within and outside its borders, are another excellent instrument
of “banal nationalism”.2
Naeem Mohaiemen, who engages with history as both artist and academic, often
draws on this minor register of “banal nationalism”—which is especially hospitable to an
un-disciplined amateur such as himself 3—to challenge the discipline’s master narratives
and temper its grand aspirations to objective truth.4 It is hardly surprising then that

1.
Naeem Mohaiemen, Kazi in
Nomansland (postal), 2008.
Stamp sculptures from
India: 2.8 x 4 cm;
Bangladesh: 3.8 x 4.5 cm;
Pakistan: 3.4 x 4.2 cm.
Collection of the British
Museum.

74 Marg • Vol. 68 No. 2

Kazi in Nomansland (2008), his two-part installation on the fascinating life and legacy
of Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), began with an unusual and unexpected philatelic
fact: the revolutionary Bengali poet has the unique honour of being the only person ever
featured on postage issued by Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Presented at the Durbar
Hall in Ernakulam, Mohaiemen’s installation was one of two key works inspired by
postage stamps included in “Whorled Explorations”, the 2014 Kochi-Muziris Biennale
curated by artist Jitish Kallat.5 The focus of one of the most popular childhood hobbies,
stamps—as instruments of “banal nationalism” with a decidedly global reach—easily
transcend the territorial limits of the nation-state while still projecting its self-image,
and, as such, were apt vehicles through which Kallat, a fellow un-disciplined amateur,
could question, challenge and deconstruct conventional cartographic representations
of the world, an important curatorial theme of his exhibition.
The first part of Mohaiemen’s installation consists of three stacks of these stamps,
one for each country. Those issued by India and Pakistan both feature the same canonical
portrait of Nazrul Islam’s boyishly hairless face framed by long, thick black tresses, while
Bangladesh goes with a different, if no less iconic, image of the young poet with shorter hair
and a manly moustache. These modest sculptures provide irrefutable material evidence of
the competing claims of contested neighbours, as each, at different points in their histories,
somewhat cynically co-opted the firebrand poet for its emerging national narrative,
transforming a real-life revolutionary into a one-dimensional national icon. The irony is
that Nazrul Islam, driven by a deeply felt humanism, was avowedly cosmopolitan and a
passionate critic of communalism, as his uncompromising verses amply demonstrate.6
Though staunchly anticolonial, he remained suspicious of nationalism and vehemently
opposed the division of the subcontinent along religious lines.
The installation’s second part consists of five narrow horizontal C-prints that 2.
focus on the poet’s later years. In 1942, a mysterious illness left Nazrul Islam unable Department of Posts (DoP)
India, first day cover of
to speak, write, or communicate with those around him. He spent the remaining
commemorative stamp
three decades of his life in involuntary isolation, cut off mentally if not physically set on “Linguistic Harmony
from the world. Enlarged and cropped from archival photographs from this period, of India” with the stamps
featuring Kazi Nazrul
each presents a slice of history, isolating Nazrul Islam’s expressive eyes. They invert a Islam (pictured here),
technique commonly used in pre-digital print media to ensure a person’s anonymity Ramdhari Singh “Dinkar”,
Jhaverchand Kalidas Meghani
by obscuring their eyes with a thin black strip, as if, as Shakespearean “windows to and Rambriksh Benipuri,
the soul”, they were the key to identity. Each print is given a distinct tint to distinguish September 14, 1999.

Murtaza Vali • Naeem Mohaiemen’s Kazi in Nomansland and the Crisis of History 75
3a–e. it as a unique moment in history, and is accompanied by a keyword or phrase and
Naeem Mohaiemen,
Kazi in Nomansland (eyes), a short caption that contextualizes the source photograph, but does so somewhat
2008. Suite of five digital allusively. The veracity of the bits of historical information Mohaiemen provides is
C-prints; each 8.9 x 63.5 cm.
Collection of Dipti Mathur.
sometimes put into question by his provocative and speculative asides, which pushes
us to consider the perspective of the mute Nazrul Islam. A tabula rasa, his silent body,
cast into no-man’s land, becomes an unwitting locus for the writing of history and,
together, text and image narrate the somewhat bizarre story of how he came to be
Bangladesh’s national poet in the years following its independence from Pakistan.
India’s claims over Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet par excellence and
author of its national anthem, were unquestionable. And for Pakistan the choice had
been obvious—Muhammad Iqbal, a stalwart of Urdu poetry, to whom the origin of the
idea of a separate homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims is commonly attributed—
though, when the country’s two wings were still intact, it had also championed Nazrul
Islam as the Muslim alternative to the “Hindu” Tagore, as its stamp featuring him proves.
As a Bengali Muslim, Nazrul Islam was perfect for the newly independent Bangladesh,
which, though the end result of two distinct identity-driven separatist impulses, was
established as a secular republic. The poet epitomized this ideal while simultaneously
reinforcing the nation’s religious as well as linguistic majoritarian preferences. The only
problem was that he lived with his family in Calcutta. In 1972, Bangladesh invited Nazrul
Islam to visit Dhaka as a state guest. Though impossible to confirm, he seemed happy in
the villa in Dhanmondi where he was housed and where he continued to stay until the
1975 military coup that deposed Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, when he was transferred to a
cramped room at P.G. Hospital. He died there a year later. Though an Indian citizen, his
body was not repatriated to his family in India. Bureaucratic red tape and inexplicable
travel delays ensured that they were unable to attend the funeral, allowing Nazrul Islam to
be ceremonially interred in Dhaka, the nation’s poet finally laid to rest in its own hallowed
ground.7 Primarily black-and-white, the fifth print of Mohaiemen’s installation is taken
from a photograph of Nazrul Islam lying in state at his funeral. His eyes, finally closed,
appear on the left. On the right, a vertical red band draws our attention to another male
figure, partially obscuring his sunglasses-covered eyes. This is General Ziaur Rahman
who, as leader of the ruling military junta, presided over and, most likely, orchestrated the
ceremony and, as Mohaiemen’s caption reminds us, would, himself, be dead in five years.

76 Marg • Vol. 68 No. 2

 Installed so that Nazrul Islam’s eyes in each print line up vertically, Mohaiemen’s
installation beseeches us to repeatedly interrogate these eyes, searching them for traces of
an account he is unable to narrate, for any evidence of a response—be it acknowledgement,
capitulation or protest—to the cynical machinations his silent body was subjected to in
the name of nationalism. This body serves as a poignant metaphor for other voiceless
victims of history and politics, of lands repeatedly and arbitrarily carved up according
to the whims, wishes and desires of colonial administrators, nationalist leaders and
founding fathers, and of people whose lives, families, communities and histories were
cleaved asunder by those drawn borders.8 And the undeniable inaccessibility of Nazrul
Islam’s eyes recalls the unflinching stare of Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus (1920), Walter
Benjamin’s famous Angel of History, and reminds us that the truth of history is always
elusive and what remains of it is often mute.9 It is the thankless task of the historian to
find ways to hear the testimony of the past’s many silent and silenced witnesses.

NOTES
1 Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism Another recent work that uses postage
(London: Sage Publications, 1995). stamps to explore histories and politics of
2 Henio Hoyo, “Posting Nationalism: postcolonial nationalism and liberation
Postage Stamps as Carriers of Nationalist movements in Africa is the Otolith Group’s
Messages”, in Joan Burbick and William essay-film In the Year of the Quiet Sun
Gass, eds., Beyond Imagined Uniqueness: (2013) and related timeline installation
Nationalisms in Contemporary Perspectives Statecraft (2014).
(Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge 6 For a general discussion of Nazrul Islam’s
Scholars Publishing, 2010), pp. 67–92. poetry see Priti Kumar Mitra, The Dissent
3 The phrase “un-disciplined amateur” of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History (New
is not meant to be dismissive. Rather, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007).
“un-disciplined” references Mohaiemen’s For a discussion of this installation in
abiding commitment to a cross-disciplinary relationship to Nazrul Islam’s poetry see
approach that does not sacrifice rigour for the related essay by Naeem Mohaiemen,
breadth. And “amateur” does not suggest a “Kazi in Nomansland”, in Murtaza Vali,
lack of skill or aptitude but acknowledges ed., Manual for Treason (Sharjah: Sharjah
an engagement that is driven by sheer love Art Foundation, 2011), pp. 76–95.
(the Latin root of the word is amare or to 7 For a historical account of these events
love) rather than financial compensation or see Sajal Nag, “Two Nations and a Dead
professional accomplishment. Body: Mortuarial Rites and Post-Colonial
4 For a related discussion of Mohaiemen’s Modes of Nation-Making in South Asia”,
use of what Lauren Berlant calls the “silly Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No.
archive”, see Murtaza Vali, “Action Man: 50 (December 16–22, 2006), pp. 5183–90.
Introducing//Naeem Mohaiemen”, Modern 8 In a way, Nazrul Islam’s fate uncannily
Painters, Vol. 24, No. 1 (February 2012), echoes that of Bishan Singh, the tragic
pp. 44–46. protagonist of Saadat Hasan Manto’s
5 The other was Kader Attia’s Independence famous short story “Toba Tek Singh”, an
Disillusionment (2014), an installation of asylum inmate who, unable to process
26 paintings based on stamps issued by the horrific reality of Partition and pick a
countries in West Asia and Africa shortly side to belong to, perishes instead on the
after they achieved independence. Flush “bit of earth which had no name”, the no-
with the optimism of liberation and man’s land of the border in between. See
in the early throes of nation-building, Saadat Hasan Manto, “Toba Tek Singh”, in
these stamps featured images of space Mottled Dawn: Fifty Sketches and Stories
exploration and moon landings, utopian of Partition (New Delhi: Penguin Books
visions that marked the frontiers of India, 1997), pp. 1–10.
modern science and progress at the time. 9 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the
Attia’s uncanny contemporary retrieval Philosophy of History”, in Hannah
of these archival images underscores the Arendt, ed., Illuminations (New York:
bitter eventual failure of those aspirations. Schocken Books, 1968), pp. 253–64.

Murtaza Vali • Naeem Mohaiemen’s Kazi in Nomansland and the Crisis of History 77