Derozio's Ideas Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

History of human thought
And its development,
How to charter the course?

Derozio
Was he a patriot,
A nationalist
Or a free thinker?

Was he a romantic
Or a social reformer,
Who was he Derozio,
An educationist?

Poetry to Derozio cme to
As the wisps and whiffs
Of romanticism
And he drank deep

At the fountain of free thinking
And liberty,
Drawing and deriving from
The French Revolution.

Derozio a poet
He was Byronic,
Campbellian,
Scottian.

A Eurasian, Derozio was
A critic of society,
A radical reformer.

The Ganges by Bhagalpore
Charmed him
And he thought of
The Fakeer of Jungheera.

Derozio as a poet derived
Much from
Renaissance and Reformation.

Indian society
Its conservatism and orthodoxy
He would have definitely opposed.

A reformer, an educationist
He was
A debater too.

Poetry to Derozio is a debate
On free-thinking and liberty,
Reformative zeal and spirit.

Abraham Lincoln's dreams of democracy
One may in his poetry
The concepts of the French Revolution.

Burning with the fire of patriotic zeal,
Nationalistic spirit
He wrote down poetry

Grappling with Indian themes and situations
He faced it discrimination in the India
Of then times.

When he talks of the orphan girl,
The images of the poor girl
Of Tagore's The Postmaster
Dances upon the eyes.

To read him is to be reminded of
Tagore's Chandalika, Gandhi's Harijanodhara,
Lawrence's gipsy.

His reformative spirit
Reminds us of Ram Mohan Roy,
Vidyasagar.

The Sati system struck him
And he felt morose,
Johar.

The child marriage would have
Hurt him definitely
And untouchability in general.

Derozio burning with
The frenzy of romanticism
Was reformative and liberative.

Indian society
Its conservatism and orthodoxy
He would have definitely opposed.