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ഇന്ത്യന്‍ ദേശീയതയെ കുറിച്ച് ടാഗോര്‍

11 june 2021, 04:16 pm ist, വലിയ ബുദ്ധിമുട്ടുകളുണ്ടായിട്ടുപോലും ഇന്ത്യ ചിലതൊക്കെ ചെയ്തിട്ടുണ്ട്. ഭിന്നതകള്‍ യഥാര്‍ഥമായി നിലനില്ക്കുന്നിടങ്ങളിലെല്ലാം, അവയെ അംഗീകരിച്ചുകൊണ്ടും, ഏതെങ്കിലും വിധത്തിലുള്ള അടിസ്ഥാനപരമായ ഐക്യത്തിനുവേണ്ടിയുള്ള അന്വേഷണങ്ങള്‍ നടത്തിക്കൊണ്ടും വംശങ്ങള്‍ തമ്മിലുള്ള നീക്കുപോക്കുകള്‍ക്ക് ഇന്ത്യ എന്നും ശ്രമിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്..

ഇ ന്ത്യയില്‍ നമ്മള്‍ അഭിമുഖീകരിക്കുന്ന പ്രശ്‌നം രാഷ്ട്രീയമല്ല, സാമൂഹികമാണ്. ഇന്ത്യയുടെ മാത്രമല്ല, എല്ലാ ദേശരാഷ്ട്രങ്ങളുടെയും അവസ്ഥയാണിത്. ഏതെങ്കിലും പ്രത്യേകമായ ഒരു രാഷ്ട്രീയത്തില്‍ എനിക്കു വിശ്വാസമില്ല. പടിഞ്ഞാറിന്റെ രാഷ്ട്രീയം അതിന്റെ ആദര്‍ശങ്ങളെ ഭരിക്കുന്നുണ്ട്. ഞങ്ങള്‍ ഇന്ത്യക്കാരാകട്ടെ, നിങ്ങളെ അനുകരിക്കുകയും ചെയ്യുന്നു. വംശീയമായി ഐക്യപ്പെട്ട ജനങ്ങളും പ്രകൃതിവിഭവങ്ങളുടെ ദൗര്‍ലഭ്യതയുമുണ്ടായിരുന്ന യൂറോപ്പിന്റെ സംസ്‌കാരം, തുടക്കംമുതലേ രാഷ്ട്രീയവും വാണിജ്യപരവുമായ കൈയേറ്റത്തിന്റെ സ്വഭാവമാര്‍ജിച്ചിരുന്നു എന്നത് നമുക്ക് ഓര്‍മ വേണം. ഒരുഭാഗത്ത്, അവര്‍ക്ക് ഒരിക്കലും ആഭ്യന്തരമായ സങ്കീര്‍ണതകള്‍ നേരിടേണ്ടിവന്നിരുന്നില്ല. മറുഭാഗത്താകട്ടെ, അവര്‍ക്കു നേരിടേണ്ടിവന്നത് ശക്തരും പിടിച്ചുപറിക്കാരുമായ അയല്‍ക്കാരെയുമായിരുന്നു. അതിനുള്ള പരിഹാരമായി അവര്‍ കണ്ടത്, സ്വയം സംഘടിക്കലും മറ്റുള്ളവര്‍ക്കെതിരേ ശത്രുതാപൂര്‍വമുള്ള നിതാന്തജാഗ്രതയുമായിരുന്നു. ആദ്യകാലങ്ങളില്‍ അവര്‍ സംഘടിക്കുകയും കൊള്ളയടിക്കുകയുമാണ് ചെയ്തിരുന്നതെങ്കില്‍, വര്‍ത്തമാനകാലത്തും അതേ ആവേശം നിലനിര്‍ത്തിക്കൊണ്ട് അവര്‍ സംഘടിക്കുകയും ചൂഷണം നടത്തുകയും ചെയ്യുന്നു.

പക്ഷേ, ചരിത്രാരംഭം മുതല്‍ എല്ലാക്കാലത്തും ഇന്ത്യയുടെ മുന്നിലുണ്ടായിരുന്നത് അവളുടെ വംശത്തിന്റെ പ്രശ്‌നങ്ങളായിരുന്നു. ഓരോ ദേശത്തിനും അതിന്റെ ദൗത്യത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് കൃത്യമായ ഒരു അവബോധമുണ്ടായിരിക്കണം. എന്നാല്‍, കാലം നമുക്കായി കരുതിവെച്ച ദൗത്യങ്ങളെ പൂര്‍ണമായി പരിഹരിക്കാതെ രാഷ്ട്രീയമായി അവയെ നേരിടാന്‍ ശ്രമിച്ചാല്‍, നമ്മള്‍ അപഹാസ്യരാവുകതന്നെ ചെയ്യും.

എത്രയോ വര്‍ഷങ്ങളായി ഞങ്ങള്‍ പരിഹരിക്കാന്‍ ശ്രമിച്ചുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുന്ന ഈ വംശീയൈക്യത്തിന്റെ പ്രശ്‌നം, ഇവിടെ അമേരിക്കയില്‍ നിങ്ങളും നേരിടുന്നുണ്ട്. ഇന്ത്യയിലെ ജാതിവിവേചനത്തിന്റെ ഇപ്പോഴത്തെ അവസ്ഥ എന്താണെന്ന് ഈ നാട്ടിലെ പലരും എന്നോടു ചോദിക്കുകയുണ്ടായി. പക്ഷേ, അവര്‍ ഈ ചോദ്യം ചോദിക്കുന്നത്, സ്വയം ഉന്നതരാണെന്ന നാട്യത്തോടെയാണ്. അല്പം വ്യത്യാസത്തോടെ ഇതേ ചോദ്യം ഞങ്ങളുടെ അമേരിക്കന്‍വിമര്‍ശകരോട് തിരിച്ചു ചോദിക്കാന്‍ ഞാനും പ്രചോദിതനാവുന്നുണ്ട്, 'റെഡ് ഇന്ത്യക്കാരുടെയും കറുത്തവര്‍ഗക്കാരുടെയും കാര്യത്തില്‍ നിങ്ങളെന്തു ചെയ്തു?' എന്ന്. അവരോടുള്ള നിങ്ങളുടെ ജാതിമനോഭാവത്തില്‍നിന്നു നിങ്ങളിനിയും വിമോചിതരായിട്ടില്ല. മറ്റു വംശങ്ങളില്‍നിന്നു വ്യത്യസ്തരായി നില്ക്കാന്‍ നിങ്ങളുപയോഗിക്കുന്നത് അക്രമത്തിന്റെ മാര്‍ഗമാണ്. അമേരിക്കയില്‍, നിങ്ങള്‍ ഈ പ്രശ്‌നം പരിഹരിക്കുന്നതുവരെ, ഇന്ത്യയെ ചോദ്യംചെയ്യാന്‍ നിങ്ങള്‍ക്കൊരു അവകാശവുമില്ല.

വലിയ ബുദ്ധിമുട്ടുകളുണ്ടായിട്ടുപോലും ഇന്ത്യ ചിലതൊക്കെ ചെയ്തിട്ടുണ്ട്. ഭിന്നതകള്‍ യഥാര്‍ഥമായി നിലനില്ക്കുന്നിടങ്ങളിലെല്ലാം, അവയെ അംഗീകരിച്ചുകൊണ്ടും, ഏതെങ്കിലും വിധത്തിലുള്ള അടിസ്ഥാനപരമായ ഐക്യത്തിനുവേണ്ടിയുള്ള അന്വേഷണങ്ങള്‍ നടത്തിക്കൊണ്ടും വംശങ്ങള്‍ തമ്മിലുള്ള നീക്കുപോക്കുകള്‍ക്ക് ഇന്ത്യ എന്നും ശ്രമിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്. നാനാക്കിനെയും ചൈതന്യയെയും അവരെപ്പോലുള്ള ഋഷിമാരിലൂടെയും ഏകദൈവത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് ഇന്ത്യയിലെ എല്ലാ വംശങ്ങള്‍ക്കിടയിലും പ്രചാരണം നടത്തിക്കൊണ്ടാണ് ആ അടിസ്ഥാനങ്ങള്‍ അവള്‍ സ്വായത്തമാക്കിയത്.

ഞങ്ങളുടെ പ്രശ്‌നങ്ങള്‍ക്കുള്ള പരിഹാരം കണ്ടെത്തുന്നതിലൂടെ ലോകത്തിന്റെ പ്രശ്‌നങ്ങള്‍ക്കുള്ള പരിഹാരം കണ്ടെത്താനും ഞങ്ങള്‍ സഹായിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ടാവണം. ഒരുകാലത്ത് എന്തായിരുന്നുവോ ഇന്ത്യ, അതാണ് ഇന്നു ലോകം. ശാസ്ത്രത്തിന്റെ സൗകര്യങ്ങളിലൂടെ ലോകം മുഴുവന്‍ ഒരു രാജ്യമായിക്കൊണ്ടിരിക്കുകയാണ് ഇന്ന്. രാഷ്ട്രീയത്തിന്റേതല്ലാത്ത ഒരു ഐക്യത്തിന്റെ അടിസ്ഥാനം നിങ്ങളും കണ്ടെത്തേണ്ട സമയം ആഗതമായിരിക്കുന്നു. ഇന്ത്യയുടെ പ്രശ്‌നങ്ങള്‍ക്ക് ഒരു പരിഹാരം കണ്ടെത്താന്‍ അവള്‍ക്ക് കഴിയുമെങ്കില്‍ അതു മനുഷ്യത്വത്തിനുതന്നെ വലിയൊരു സംഭാവനയായിരിക്കും. ഒരേയൊരു ചരിത്രമേയുള്ളൂ. അതു മനുഷ്യന്റെ ചരിത്രമാണ്. ആ വലിയ ചരിത്രത്തിലെ കേവലം അധ്യായങ്ങള്‍ മാത്രമാണ് എല്ലാ ദേശീയചരിത്രങ്ങളും. ആ ഒരു വലിയ ലക്ഷ്യത്തിനുവേണ്ടി എന്തു നഷ്ടം നേരിടുന്നതിലും ഇന്ത്യയ്ക്ക് സന്തോഷമേയുള്ളൂ.

ഓരോ വ്യക്തിക്കും അവനവന്റെതായ ഒരു സ്വാര്‍ഥ താത്പര്യമുണ്ടായിരിക്കും. അതു നേടിയെടുക്കാന്‍ മറ്റുള്ളവരുമായി പോരാടുന്നതിന് അവന്റെ നിഷ്ഠുരമായ ചോദനകള്‍ അവനെ നയിക്കുകയും ചെയ്യും. എന്നാല്‍ അതേസമയം, അനുകമ്പയുടെയും പരസ്പരസഹായത്തിന്റെയും ഉയര്‍ന്ന ചോദനകളും മനുഷ്യനിലുണ്ട്. ആ സമുന്നതമായ ചോദനകള്‍ ഉള്ളിലില്ലാത്തവരും, അന്യരുമായി സഹവര്‍ത്തിത്വത്തില്‍ കഴിയാനാവാത്തവരുമായ മനുഷ്യര്‍ ഒന്നുകില്‍ നശിക്കും, അതല്ലെങ്കില്‍ അധഃപതിക്കും. സഹവര്‍ത്തിത്വത്തിന്റെ ഉള്‍പ്രേരണ ഉള്ളിലുള്ളവര്‍ക്കു മാത്രമേ അതിജീവിക്കാനും സംസ്‌കാരസമ്പന്നത കൈവരിക്കാനുമാവൂ. അതിനാല്‍, പരസ്പരം പോരടിക്കുകയാണോ സഹകരിക്കുകയാണോ വേണ്ടത്, സ്വാര്‍ഥതാത്പര്യങ്ങള്‍ക്കുവേണ്ടിയാണോ പൊതുനന്മയ്ക്കുവേണ്ടിയാണോ ജീവിക്കേണ്ടത് എന്ന തിരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പ് ചരിത്രത്തിന്റെ ആരംഭകാലം മുതല്‍ക്കുതന്നെ മനുഷ്യനു നേരിടേണ്ടിവന്നു.

എല്ലാ രാജ്യങ്ങളുടെയും ഭൂമിശാസ്ത്രപരിധിയും വിനിമയസൗകര്യങ്ങളും പരിമിതമായിരുന്ന ചരിത്രാരംഭകാലത്ത്, ഈ പ്രശ്‌നത്തിന്റെ വ്യാപ്തി താരതമ്യേന ചെറുതായിരുന്നു. അവരവരുടെ വേറിട്ട ചുറ്റുവട്ടത്തു മാത്രം ഐക്യബോധം നിലനിര്‍ത്തിയാല്‍ മതിയായിരുന്നു അന്നു മനുഷ്യന്. അന്ന് അവര്‍ തമ്മില്‍ ഒരുമിക്കുകയും മറ്റുള്ളവര്‍ക്കെതിരേ പൊരുതുകയും ചെയ്തിരുന്നു. എന്നാല്‍, ഈ ഒരുമയുടെ ആര്‍ജവമാണ് അവരുടെ മഹത്ത്വത്തിന്റെ ശരിയായ അടിസ്ഥാനം. അവരുടെ കലയെയും ശാസ്ത്രത്തെയും മതത്തെയും വളര്‍ത്തിയതും ഈ ഒരുമയാണ്. ഏതൊരു സവിശേഷ വംശത്തിലെ മനുഷ്യര്‍ക്കും ഇതരവംശത്തിലെ മനുഷ്യരുമായി അടുത്ത ബന്ധം ഉണ്ടാക്കേണ്ടിവരുമെന്ന യാഥാര്‍ഥ്യമാണ് ആരംഭകാലത്ത് മനുഷ്യനു നേരിടേണ്ടിവന്ന സുപ്രധാനമായ ഒരു യാഥാര്‍ഥ്യം. ഈ യാഥാര്‍ഥ്യം തിരിച്ചറിഞ്ഞവര്‍ അവരുടെ സമുന്നതമായ പ്രകൃതത്തിലൂടെ ചരിത്രത്തില്‍ അവരുടെ അടയാളം രേഖപ്പെടുത്തുകയും ചെയ്തു.

മാതൃഭൂമി ബുക്‌സ് പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ച ടാഗോറിന്റെ 'ദേശീയത' എന്ന പുസ്തകത്തില്‍ നിന്നും

പുസ്തകം ഓണ്‍ലൈനില്‍ വാങ്ങാം

Content Highlights: Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore Malayalam translation Mathrubhumi Books

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രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍

• admin trycle
• May 4, 2020
• 0 comment(s)

രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍

കവി, തത്വചിന്തകന്‍, കഥാകൃത്ത്, നോവലിസ്റ്റ്, വിദ്യാഭ്യാസ പണ്ഡിതൻ, ചിത്രകാരന്‍, നാടകരചിയിതാവ്, ഗാനരചയിതാവ്, ഗായകന്‍, സാമൂഹികപരിഷ്‌കര്‍ത്താവ് എന്നിങ്ങനെ വിവിധ മേഖലകളിൽ പ്രതിഭ തെളിയിച്ച വ്യക്തിയാണ് രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍. ഇന്ത്യന്‍ സാഹിത്യത്തെ ആഗോളതലത്തിലെത്തിച്ച രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍ വിശ്വകവി  എന്ന് വിശേഷിപ്പിക്കപ്പെട്ടു. സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യപൂര്‍വ്വ ഭാരതത്തിന്‍റെ കലാ-സാംസ്കാരിക രംഗങ്ങളില്‍ വ്യക്തിമുദ്ര പതിപ്പിച്ച ടാഗോര്‍ നോബല്‍ സമ്മാനം നേടുന്ന ആദ്യത്തെ ഏഷ്യക്കാരനാണ്.

1861 മെയ് ഏഴിന് കൊല്‍ക്കത്തയില്‍ ദേബേന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറിന്റെയും ശാരദാദേവിയുടെയും മകനായാണ് രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍ ജനിച്ചത്. അച്ഛനായ ദേവേന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറും സാഹിത്യ രംഗത്തെ പ്രമുഖനായിരുന്നു. എട്ട് വയസ്സ് മുതല്‍ കവിതയെഴുതി തുടങ്ങിയ അദ്ദേഹം പതിനാറാം വയസ്സില്‍ ഭാനുസിംഹന്‍ എന്ന തൂലികാനാമത്തില്‍ അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്‍റെ ആദ്യ കവിതാസമാഹാരം പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചു. ടാഗോര്‍ തന്റെ പ്രാഥമിക വിദ്യാഭ്യാസത്തിന്റെ നല്ലൊരു ഭാഗം ഗൃഹത്തില്‍ തന്നെയാണ് നടത്തിയത്.  പിന്നീട് തുടര്‍ വിദ്യാഭ്യാസം പൂര്‍ത്തിയാക്കിയ അദ്ദേഹം 1878 മുതല്‍ 1880 വരെ ലണ്ടനില്‍ പഠിച്ചു. സംസ്‌കൃതം, ഇംഗ്ലീഷ്, ഫ്രഞ്ച്, ബംഗാളി ഭാഷകളില്‍ പ്രാവീണ്യം നേടി.  ഇന്ത്യയില്‍ തിരിച്ചെത്തിയ ടാഗോര്‍ 1880 കളിൽ നിരവധി കവിതാസമാഹാരങ്ങൾ പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചു. മാത്രമല്ല ‘സാധന’ എന്ന ബംഗാളി മാസിക പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചു. ബംഗാളി സാഹിത്യത്തില്‍ കാലാനുസൃതമായ മാറ്റങ്ങള്‍ വരുത്താന്‍ ശ്രദ്ധചെലുത്തിയ ടാഗോര്‍ ബംഗാളി സംഗീതത്തിനും ചിത്രകലയ്ക്കും പുതിയ മാനങ്ങള്‍ നല്‍കി.

വിദ്യാഭ്യാസരംഗത്ത് മാറ്റം ആഗ്രഹിച്ച അദ്ദേഹം 1901-ല്‍ ശാന്തിനികേതന്‍ എന്ന വിദ്യാലയം തുടങ്ങി. 1921-ല്‍ ഈ വിദ്യാലയം വിശ്വഭാരതി സര്‍വ്വകലാശാലയായി വികസിച്ചു. അവിടെ അദ്ദേഹം ഇന്ത്യൻ, പാശ്ചാത്യ പാരമ്പര്യങ്ങളിൽ ഏറ്റവും മികച്ചത് വിദ്യാർത്ഥികളിൽ എത്തിക്കാൻ ശ്രമിച്ചു. ശാന്തിനികേതനിൽ സ്ഥിരതാമസമാക്കിയ അദ്ദേഹം അവിടെ ഒരു ആശ്രമവും, പുഷ്പ-വൃക്ഷ തോട്ടങ്ങളും, ഒരു വായനശാലയും സ്ഥാപിച്ചു. 1902 നും 1907 നും ഇടയിൽ ഇവിടെ വച്ച്‌ ടാഗോറിന്റെ ഭാര്യയും രണ്ട്‌ കുട്ടികളും മരണമടഞ്ഞു. 1913-ല്‍ ഗീതാഞ്ജലി എന്ന കവിതാ സമാഹാരത്തിന് സാഹിത്യത്തിനുള്ള നോബല്‍ സമ്മാനം ലഭിച്ചതോടെ പ്രസ്തുത സമ്മാനം നേടുന്ന യൂറോപ്യനല്ലാത്ത ആദ്യ വ്യക്തിയായി. നൂറുകണക്കിന് കവിതകളും അതിനൊപ്പം കഥകളും നാടകങ്ങളുമെഴുതിയ അദ്ദേഹം എട്ട് നോവലുകളും രചിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട്.

ഇന്ത്യന്‍ ദേശീയപ്രസ്ഥാനത്തിന്‍റെ ഭാഗമായി പ്രവര്‍ത്തിച്ച അദ്ദേഹം 1886 ലാണ് കോണ്‍ഗ്രസില്‍ അംഗമാവുന്നത്. ബ്രിട്ടിഷ് ഗവൺമെന്റ് ഏകപക്ഷീയമായി തീരുമാനിച്ചു നടപ്പിലാക്കിയ ബംഗാൾ വിഭജനത്തിന് എതിരായി 1905-ൽ ആരംഭിച്ച സംഘടിത പ്രക്ഷോഭത്തിൽ അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ പങ്ക് നിർണ്ണായകമായിരുന്നു. മഹാത്മ എന്ന് ഗാന്ധിജിയെ വിശേഷിപ്പിച്ച ടാഗോറിനെ ഗുരുദേവ് എന്ന് ബഹുമാനര്‍ത്ഥം വിളിക്കുന്നു. ഇന്ത്യയുടെയും ബംഗ്ലാദേശിന്‍റെയും ദേശീയഗാനരചയിതാവും ടാഗോറാണ്. 1911-ല്‍ രചിച്ച ജനഗണമന എന്ന തുടങ്ങുന്ന ഗാനം സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യാനന്തരം ഇന്ത്യയുടെ ദേശീയഗാനമായി മാറി. 1912-ല്‍ പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിക്കപ്പെട്ട ഇന്ത്യയുടെ ദേശീയഗാനം ആദ്യം അറിയപ്പെട്ടിരുന്നത് ഭാരത്‌ വിധാതാ എന്ന പേരിലാണ്. 1912ലെ കോണ്‍ഗ്രസ് സമ്മേളനത്തില്‍ അദ്ദേഹം 'ജനഗണമന' പാടിയവതരിപ്പിച്ചു. ബംഗ്ലാദേശിനായി "അമര്‍ സോന ബംഗ്ല" എന്ന് തുടങ്ങുന്ന ഗാനം അദ്ദേഹം രചിച്ചു. ഇന്ത്യയുടെ ദേശീയഗാനത്തെ ‘Morning Song of India’ എന്ന പേരില്‍ അദ്ദേഹം തന്നെ ഇംഗ്ലീഷിലേക്ക് വിവര്‍ത്തനം ചെയ്തു. 1919-ല്‍ നടന്ന ജാലിയന്‍വാലാബാഗ് കൂട്ടക്കൊലയില്‍ പ്രതിഷേധിച്ച് ടാഗോര്‍ 1915-ല്‍ ബ്രിട്ടീഷ് രാജാവ് ജോര്‍ജ് അഞ്ചാമന്‍ നല്‍കിയ സര്‍ പദവി ഉപേക്ഷിച്ചു. 1941 ആഗസ്റ്റ് ഏഴിന് അന്തരിച്ച അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്‍റെ കഥകള്‍ കൊളേണിയല്‍ കാലത്തെ ഇന്ത്യയുടെ സാമൂഹികപശ്ചാത്തലം ഊറിക്കൂടിയതാണ്.

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Who was Rabindranath Tagore?

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Rabindranath Tagore

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• Victoria and Albert Museum - Rabindranath Tagore: Poet And Painter
• Cultural India - Biography of Rabindranath Tagore
• Poetry Foundation - Rabindranath Tagore
• The Nobel Prize - Biography of Rabindranath Tagore
• Poet.org - Biography of Rabindranath Tagore
• IndiaNetzone - Rabindranath as a Poet
• Rabindranath Tagore - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet , short-story writer, song composer, playwright, and painter. He introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into  Bengali literature , helped introduce Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of early 20th-century  India .

What did Rabindranath Tagore write?

Rabindranath Tagore published several poetry collections, notably Manasi  (1890),  Sonar Tari  (1894;  The Golden Boat ), and Gitanjali  (1910); plays, notably  Chitrangada (1892;  Chitra ); and novels, including Gora  (1910) and  Ghare-Baire  (1916). He also wrote some 2,000 songs , which achieved considerable popularity among all classes of Bengali society.

What awards did Rabindranath Tagore win?

In 1913 Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to receive the  Nobel Prize for Literature . Tagore was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he repudiated it in 1919 as a protest against the  Amritsar (Jallianwala Bagh) Massacre .

Rabindranath Tagore (born May 7, 1861, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died August 7, 1941, Calcutta) was a Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist, and painter who introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature , thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit . He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of early 20th-century India . In 1913 he became the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature .

The son of the religious reformer Debendranath Tagore , he early began to write verses, and, after incomplete studies in England in the late 1870s, he returned to India. There he published several books of poetry in the 1880s and completed Manasi (1890), a collection that marks the maturing of his genius. It contains some of his best-known poems, including many in verse forms new to Bengali , as well as some social and political satire that was critical of his fellow Bengalis.

In 1891 Tagore went to East Bengal (now in Bangladesh) to manage his family’s estates at Shilaidah and Shazadpur for 10 years. There he often stayed in a houseboat on the Padma River (the main channel of the Ganges River ), in close contact with village folk, and his sympathy for them became the keynote of much of his later writing. Most of his finest short stories, which examine “humble lives and their small miseries,” date from the 1890s and have a poignancy, laced with gentle irony , that is unique to him (though admirably captured by the director Satyajit Ray in later film adaptations). Tagore came to love the Bengali countryside, most of all the Padma River, an often-repeated image in his verse. During these years he published several poetry collections, notably Sonar Tari (1894; The Golden Boat ), and plays, notably Chitrangada (1892; Chitra ). Tagore’s poems are virtually untranslatable, as are his more than 2,000 songs, which achieved considerable popularity among all classes of Bengali society.

In 1901 Tagore founded an experimental school in rural West Bengal at Shantiniketan (“Abode of Peace”), where he sought to blend the best in the Indian and Western traditions. He settled permanently at the school, which became Visva-Bharati University in 1921. Years of sadness arising from the deaths of his wife and two children between 1902 and 1907 are reflected in his later poetry, which was introduced to the West in Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (1912). This book, containing Tagore’s English prose translations of religious poems from several of his Bengali verse collections, including Gitanjali (1910), was hailed by W.B. Yeats and André Gide and won him the Nobel Prize in 1913. Tagore was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he repudiated it in 1919 as a protest against the Amritsar (Jallianwalla Bagh) Massacre .

From 1912 Tagore spent long periods out of India, lecturing and reading from his work in Europe , the Americas, and East Asia and becoming an eloquent spokesperson for the cause of Indian independence. Tagore’s novels in Bengali are less well known than his poems and short stories; they include Gora (1910) and Ghare-Baire (1916), translated into English as Gora and The Home and the World , respectively. In the late 1920s, when he was in his 60s, Tagore took up painting and produced works that won him a place among India’s foremost contemporary artists.

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Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2022: ഇന്ത്യയുടെ ബഹുമുഖ പ്രതിഭ; ഇന്ന് രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍ ജയന്തി

Rabindranath tagore jayanti 2022: ഇന്ത്യയുടെ മാത്രമല്ല, ബംഗ്ലാദേശിന്റെയും ദേശീയ ഗാനം രചിച്ചതിന്റെ ബഹുമതി രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറിനാണ്..

IT Malayalam

• 09 May 2022,
• (Updated 09 May 2022, 12:03 AM IST)

ലോകപ്രശസ്ത കവിയും ഇന്ത്യന്‍ സാഹിത്യകാരനും തത്ത്വചിന്തകനും നോബെല്‍ സമ്മാന ജേതാവുമായ രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറിന്റെ 161-ാം ജയന്തി ദിനമാണ് 2022 മെയ് 9. ഗ്രിഗോറിയന്‍ കലണ്ടര്‍ പ്രകാരം 1861 മെയ് 7 നാണ് രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍ ജനിച്ചത്. എന്നാല്‍, ബംഗാളി കലണ്ടര്‍ അനുസരിച്ചാണ് രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍ ജയന്തി ആഘോഷിക്കുന്നത്. അത് ബംഗാളി മാസമായ ബോയ്ഷാക്ക് 25-ാം ദിവസമാണ്. ഇതനുസരിച്ച് കണക്കാക്കിയാല്‍, സാധാരണയായി ഗ്രിഗോറിയന്‍ കലണ്ടറിലെ മെയ് മാസത്തിലാണ് രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍ ജയന്തി വരുന്നത്. 

ബംഗാളി സാഹിത്യത്തെയും സംഗീതത്തെയും അതുപോലെ, ഇന്ത്യന്‍ കലയെയും സന്ദര്‍ഭോചിതമായ ആധുനികത ഉപയോഗിച്ച് പുനര്‍രൂപകല്‍പ്പന ചെയ്യുന്നതില്‍ അഗ്രഗണ്യനായിരുന്നു ടാഗോര്‍. മാതാപിതാക്കളായ ദേവേന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറിന്റെയും ശാരദാ ദേവിയുടെയും മകനായി 1861 മെയ് 7 ന് കൊല്‍ക്കത്തയിലാണ് അദ്ദേഹം ജനിച്ചത്. മാതാപിതാക്കളുടെ പതിമൂന്നാമത്തെ കുട്ടിയായിരുന്നു രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ്. കുട്ടിക്കാലത്ത് അദ്ദേഹത്തെ സ്‌നേഹപൂര്‍വ്വം 'റബി' എന്നാണ് വിളിച്ചിരുന്നത്. എട്ടാം വയസ്സില്‍ അദ്ദേഹം തന്റെ ആദ്യ കവിത എഴുതി, പതിനാറാം വയസ്സില്‍ കഥകളും നാടകങ്ങളും എഴുതാന്‍ തുടങ്ങി.

പ്രകൃതിയുടെ കൂട്ടായ്മയാണ് ടാഗോറിന് ഇഷ്ടപ്പെട്ടത്. വിദ്യാര്‍ത്ഥികള്‍ പ്രകൃതിയുമായി സഹകരിച്ച് വിദ്യാഭ്യാസം നേടണമെന്ന് അദ്ദേഹം വിശ്വസിച്ചു. ഈ ചിന്ത മനസ്സില്‍ വെച്ചാണ് അദ്ദേഹം ശാന്തിനികേതന്‍ സ്ഥാപിച്ചത്. 1913-ല്‍ ഗീതാഞ്ജലിക്ക് സാഹിത്യത്തിനുള്ള നോബല്‍ സമ്മാനം നേടിയ ആദ്യ ഇന്ത്യന്‍ വ്യക്തിയാണ് ടാഗോര്‍. 

മഹാത്മാഗാന്ധി രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറിന് ഗുരുദേവന്‍ എന്ന പദവി നല്‍കി ആദരിച്ചു. ഇന്ത്യയുടെ ദേശീയ ഗാനമായ 'ജന-ഗണ-മന' രചിച്ചതും രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറാണ്. ഇന്ത്യയുടെ മാത്രമല്ല, ബംഗ്ലാദേശിന്റെയും ദേശീയ ഗാനം രചിച്ചതിന്റെ ബഹുമതി രവീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറിനാണ്. ബംഗ്ലാദേശിന്റെ ദേശീയ ഗാനമായ 'അമര്‍ സോനാര്‍ ബംഗ്ലാ' അദ്ദേഹം രചിച്ചു.

ലണ്ടനില്‍ ഉന്നത വിദ്യാഭ്യാസം നേടിയ ശേഷം മകനെ ബാരിസ്റ്ററാക്കണമെന്നായിരുന്നു രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോറിന്റെ കുടുംബാംഗങ്ങളുടെ ആഗ്രഹം. ഇതിനായി അദ്ദേഹത്തെ ഇംഗ്ലണ്ടിലേക്ക് അയച്ചു. പക്ഷേ അവിടെ അദ്ദേഹത്തിന് ഇഷ്ടം തോന്നിയില്ല. ഇതിനുശേഷം പഠനം പാതിവഴിയില്‍ ഉപേക്ഷിച്ച് ഇന്ത്യയിലേക്ക് മടങ്ങി. പഠനം പാതിവഴിയില്‍ ഉപേക്ഷിച്ചതിനാല്‍ കവിതയെഴുതുന്ന ഹോബി വീട്ടുകാര്‍ക്ക് ഇഷ്ടപ്പെടില്ലല്ലോ എന്ന ഭയമായിരുന്നു. രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ് തന്റെ ആദ്യ പുസ്തകം ബംഗാളിയിലല്ല, മൈഥിലി ഭാഷയിലാണ് എഴുതിയത്. ഇതില്‍ തന്റെ പേരിന് പകരം വേറെ ചില പേരുകള്‍ ഉപയോഗിച്ചു എന്നതാണ് പ്രത്യേകത. കുടുംബത്തില്‍ നിന്നും എതിര്‍പ്പുകള്‍ ഉയരുന്നില്ലെന്നു കണ്ടതില്‍ പിന്നെ ബംഗാളി ഭാഷയില്‍ തന്റെ രചനകള്‍ എഴുതാന്‍ തുടങ്ങി.

ഒട്ടേറെ രാജ്യങ്ങളില്‍ സന്ദര്‍ശനം നടത്തിയിട്ടുള്ള കവി, ജീവിതത്തിന്റെ അവസാന ദിവസങ്ങളില്‍ കൊല്‍ക്കൊത്തയിലായിരുന്നു. 1941 ഓഗസ്റ്റ് 7ന് എണ്‍പതാം വയസ്സില്‍ രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ ടാഗോര്‍ അന്തരിച്ചു. പക്ഷേ, അനശ്വരമായ അക്ഷരങ്ങളിലൂടെ രചനകളിലൂടെ ഇന്നും ജീവിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു. 

• Rabindranath Tagore Jayanti 2022

ഏറ്റവും പുതിയത്‌

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Tagore and his india, rabindranath tagore.

by Amartya Sen *

Voice of Bengal

Rabindranath Tagore, who died in 1941 at the age of eighty, is a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal. Anyone who becomes familiar with this large and flourishing tradition will be impressed by the power of Tagore’s presence in Bangladesh and in India. His poetry as well as his novels, short stories, and essays are very widely read, and the songs he composed reverberate around the eastern part of India and throughout Bangladesh.

In contrast, in the rest of the world, especially in Europe and America, the excitement that Tagore’s writings created in the early years of the twentieth century has largely vanished. The enthusiasm with which his work was once greeted was quite remarkable. Gitanjali, a selection of his poetry for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, was published in English translation in London in March of that year, and had been reprinted ten times by November, when the award was announced. But he is not much read now in the West, and already by 1937, Graham Greene was able to say: “As for Rabindranath Tagore, I cannot believe that anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously.”

The contrast between Tagore’s commanding presence in Bengali literature and culture, and his near-total eclipse in the rest of the world, is perhaps less interesting than the distinction between the view of Tagore as a deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker in Bangladesh and India, and his image in the West as a repetitive and remote spiritualist. Graham Greene had, in fact, gone on to explain that he associated Tagore “with what Chesterton calls ‘the bright pebbly eyes’ of the Theosophists.” Certainly, an air of mysticism played some part in the “selling” of Rabindranath Tagore to the West by Yeats, Ezra Pound, and his other early champions. Even Anna Akhmatova, one of Tagore’s few later admirers (who translated his poems into Russian in the mid-1960s), talks of “that mighty flow of poetry which takes its strength from Hinduism as from the Ganges, and is called Rabindranath Tagore.”

An air of mysticism.

Confluence of cultures

Rabindranath did come from a Hindu family – one of the landed gentry who owned estates mostly in what is now Bangladesh. But whatever wisdom there might be in Akhmatova’s invoking of Hinduism and the Ganges, it did not prevent the largely Muslim citizens of Bangladesh from having a deep sense of identity with Tagore and his ideas. Nor did it stop the newly independent Bangladesh from choosing one of Tagore’s songs – the “Amar Sonar Bangla” which means “my golden Bengal” – as its national anthem. This must be very confusing to those who see the contemporary world as a “clash of civilizations” – with “the Muslim civilization,” “the Hindu civilization,” and “the Western civilization,” each forcefully confronting the others. They would also be confused by Rabindranath Tagore’s own description of his Bengali family as the product of “a confluence of three cultures: Hindu, Mohammedan, and British”. 1

Rabindranath’s grandfather, Dwarkanath, was well known for his command of Arabic and Persian, and Rabindranath grew up in a family atmosphere in which a deep knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient Hindu texts was combined with an understanding of Islamic traditions as well as Persian literature. It is not so much that Rabindranath tried to produce – or had an interest in producing – a “synthesis” of the different religions (as the great Moghul emperor Akbar tried hard to achieve) as that his outlook was persistently non-sectarian, and his writings – some two hundred books – show the influence of different parts of the Indian cultural background as well as of the rest of the world. 2

Abode of peace

Most of his work was written at Santiniketan (Abode of Peace), the small town that grew around the school he founded in Bengal in 1901, and he not only conceived there an imaginative and innovative system of education, but through his writings and his influence on students and teachers, he was able to use the school as a base from which he could take a major part in India’s social, political, and cultural movements.

The profoundly original writer, whose elegant prose and magical poetry Bengali readers know well, is not the sermonizing spiritual guru admired – and then rejected – in London. Tagore was not only an immensely versatile poet; he was also a great short story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, and composer of songs, as well as a talented painter whose pictures, with their mixture of representation and abstraction, are only now beginning to receive the acclaim that they have long deserved. His essays, moreover, ranged over literature, politics, culture, social change, religious beliefs, philosophical analysis, international relations, and much else. The coincidence of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence with the publication of a selection of Tagore’s letters by Cambridge University Press 3 , brought Tagore’s ideas and reflections to the fore, which makes it important to examine what kind of leadership in thought and understanding he provided in the Indian subcontinent in the first half of this century.

Gandhi and Tagore

Since Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi were two leading Indian thinkers in the twentieth century, many commentators have tried to compare their ideas. On learning of Rabindranath’s death, Jawaharlal Nehru, then incarcerated in a British jail in India, wrote in his prison diary for August 7, 1941:

“Gandhi and Tagore. Two types entirely different from each other, and yet both of them typical of India, both in the long line of India’s great men … It is not so much because of any single virtue but because of the tout ensemble, that I felt that among the world’s great men today Gandhi and Tagore were supreme as human beings. What good fortune for me to have come into close contact with them.”

Romain Rolland was fascinated by the contrast between them, and when he completed his book on Gandhi, he wrote to an Indian academic, in March 1923: “I have finished my Gandhi, in which I pay tribute to your two great river-like souls, overflowing with divine spirit, Tagore and Gandhi.” The following month, he recorded in his diary an account of some of the differences between Gandhi and Tagore written by Reverend C.F. Andrews, the English clergyman and public activist who was a close friend of both men (and whose important role in Gandhi’s life in South Africa as well as India is well portrayed in Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi [1982]). Andrews described to Rolland a discussion between Tagore and Gandhi, at which he was present, on subjects that divided them:

“The first subject of discussion was idols; Gandhi defended them, believing the masses incapable of raising themselves immediately to abstract ideas. Tagore cannot bear to see the people eternally treated as a child. Gandhi quoted the great things achieved in Europe by the flag as an idol; Tagore found it easy to object, but Gandhi held his ground, contrasting European flags bearing eagles, etc., with his own, on which he has put a spinning wheel. The second point of discussion was nationalism, which Gandhi defended. He said that one must go through nationalism to reach internationalism, in the same way that one must go through war to reach peace.” 4

Tagore greatly admired Gandhi but he had many disagreements with him on a variety of subjects, including nationalism, patriotism, the importance of cultural exchange, the role of rationality and of science, and the nature of economic and social development. These differences, I shall argue, have a clear and consistent pattern, with Tagore pressing for more room for reasoning, and for a less traditionalist view, a greater interest in the rest of the world, and more respect for science and for objectivity generally.

Rabindranath knew that he could not have given India the political leadership that Gandhi provided, and he was never stingy in his praise for what Gandhi did for the nation (it was, in fact, Tagore who popularized the term “Mahatma” – great soul – as a description of Gandhi). And yet each remained deeply critical of many things that the other stood for. That Mahatma Gandhi has received incomparably more attention outside India and also within much of India itself makes it important to understand “Tagore’s side” of the Gandhi-Tagore debates.

In his prison diary, Nehru wrote: “Perhaps it is as well that [Tagore] died now and did not see the many horrors that are likely to descend in increasing measure on the world and on India. He had seen enough and he was infinitely sad and unhappy.” Toward the end of his life, Tagore was indeed becoming discouraged about the state of India, especially as its normal burden of problems, such as hunger and poverty, was being supplemented by politically organized incitement to “communal” violence between Hindus and Muslims. This conflict would lead in 1947, six years after Tagore’s death, to the widespread killing that took place during partition; but there was much gore already during his declining days. In December 1939, he wrote to his friend Leonard Elmhirst, the English philanthropist and social reformer who had worked closely with him on rural reconstruction in India (and who had gone on to found the Dartington Hall Trust in England and a progressive school at Dartington that explicitly invoked Rabindranath’s educational ideals): 5

“It does not need a defeatist to feel deeply anxious about the future of millions who, with all their innate culture and their peaceful traditions are being simultaneously subjected to hunger, disease, exploitations foreign and indigenous, and the seething discontents of communalism.”

How would Tagore have viewed the India of today? Would he see progress there, or wasted opportunity, perhaps even a betrayal of its promise and conviction? And, on a wider subject, how would he react to the spread of cultural separatism in the contemporary world?

East and West

Given the vast range of his creative achievements, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the image of Tagore in the West is its narrowness; he is recurrently viewed as “the great mystic from the East,” an image with a putative message for the West, which some would welcome, others dislike, and still others find deeply boring. To a great extent this Tagore was the West’s own creation, part of its tradition of message-seeking from the East, particularly from India, which – as Hegel put it – had “existed for millennia in the imagination of the Europeans.” 6 Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling, Herder, and Schopenhauer were only a few of the thinkers who followed the same pattern. They theorized, at first, that India was the source of superior wisdom. Schopenhauer at one stage even argued that the New Testament “must somehow be of Indian origin: this is attested by its completely Indian ethics, which transforms morals into asceticism, its pessimism, and its avatar,” in “the person of Christ.” But then they rejected their own theories with great vehemence, sometimes blaming India for not living up to their unfounded expectations.

We can imagine that Rabindranath’s physical appearance – handsome, bearded, dressed in non-Western clothes – may, to some extent, have encouraged his being seen as a carrier of exotic wisdom. Yasunari Kawabata , the first Japanese Nobel Laureate in Literature, treasured memories from his middle-school days of “this sage-like poet”:

His white hair flowed softly down both sides of his forehead; the tufts of hair under the temples also were long like two beards, and linking up with the hair on his cheeks, continued into his beard, so that he gave an impression, to the boy I was then, of some ancient Oriental wizard. 7

That appearance would have been well-suited to the selling of Tagore in the West as a quintessentially mystical poet, and it could have made it somewhat easier to pigeonhole him. Commenting on Rabindranath’s appearance, Frances Cornford told William Rothenstein, “I can now imagine a powerful and gentle Christ, which I never could before.” Beatrice Webb, who did not like Tagore and resented what she took to be his “quite obvious dislike of all that the Webbs stand for” (there is, in fact, little evidence that Tagore had given much thought to this subject), said that he was “beautiful to look at” and that “his speech has the perfect intonation and slow chant-like moderation of the dramatic saint.” Ezra Pound and W. B. Yeats, among others, first led the chorus of adoration in the Western appreciation of Tagore, and then soon moved to neglect and even shrill criticism. The contrast between Yeats’s praise of his work in 1912 (“These lyrics … display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long,” “the work of a supreme culture”) and his denunciation in 1935 (“Damn Tagore”) arose partly from the inability of Tagore’s many-sided writings to fit into the narrow box in which Yeats wanted to place – and keep – him. Certainly, Tagore did write a huge amount, and published ceaselessly, even in English (sometimes in indifferent English translation), but Yeats was also bothered, it is clear, by the difficulty of fitting Tagore’s later writings into the image Yeats had presented to the West. Tagore, he had said, was the product of “a whole people, a whole civilization, immeasurably strange to us,” and yet “we have met our own image, … or heard, perhaps for the first time in literature, our voice as in a dream.” 8

Yeats did not totally reject his early admiration (as Ezra Pound and several others did), and he included some of Tagore’s early poems in The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, which he edited in 1936. Yeats also had some favorable things to say about Tagore’s prose writings. His censure of Tagore’s later poems was reinforced by his dislike of Tagore’s own English translations of his work (“Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English,” Yeats explained), unlike the English version of Gitanjali which Yeats had himself helped to prepare. Poetry is, of course, notoriously difficult to translate, and anyone who knows Tagore’s poems in their original Bengali cannot feel satisfied with any of the translations (made with or without Yeats’s help). Even the translations of his prose works suffer, to some extent, from distortion. E.M. Forster noted, in a review of a translation of one of Tagore’s great Bengali novels, The Home and the World, in 1919: “The theme is so beautiful,” but the charms have “vanished in translation,” or perhaps “in an experiment that has not quite come off.” 9

Tagore himself played a somewhat bemused part in the boom and bust of his English reputation. He accepted the extravagant praise with much surprise as well as pleasure, and then received denunciations with even greater surprise, and barely concealed pain. Tagore was sensitive to criticism, and was hurt by even the most far-fetched accusations, such as the charge that he was getting credit for the work of Yeats, who had “rewritten” Gitanjali. (This charge was made by a correspondent for The Times, Sir Valentine Chirol, whom E.M. Forster once described as “an old Anglo-Indian reactionary hack.”) From time to time Tagore also protested the crudity of some of his overexcited advocates. He wrote to C.F. Andrews in 1920: “These people … are like drunkards who are afraid of their lucid intervals.”

God and others

Yeats was not wrong to see a large religious element in Tagore’s writings. He certainly had interesting and arresting things to say about life and death. Susan Owen, the mother of Wilfred Owen, wrote to Rabindranath in 1920, describing her last conversations with her son before he left for the war which would take his life. Wilfred said goodbye with “those wonderful words of yours – beginning at ‘When I go from hence, let this be my parting word.'” When Wilfred’s pocket notebook was returned to his mother, she found “these words written in his dear writing – with your name beneath.”

The idea of a direct, joyful, and totally fearless relationship with God can be found in many of Tagore’s religious writings, including the poems of Gitanjali. From India’s diverse religious traditions he drew many ideas, both from ancient texts and from popular poetry. But “the bright pebbly eyes of the Theosophists” do not stare out of his verses. Despite the archaic language of the original translation of Gitanjali, which did not, I believe, help to preserve the simplicity of the original, its elementary humanity comes through more clearly than any complex and intense spirituality:

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee! He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust.

An ambiguity about religious experience is central to many of Tagore’s devotional poems, and makes them appeal to readers irrespective of their beliefs; but excessively detailed interpretation can ruinously strip away that ambiguity. 10 This applies particularly to his many poems which combine images of human love and those of pious devotion. Tagore writes:

I have no sleep to-night. Ever and again I open my door and look out on the darkness, my friend! I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path! By what dim shore of the ink-black river, by what far edge of the frowning forest, through what mazy depth of gloom, art thou threading thy course to come to see me, my friend?

I suppose it could be helpful to be told, as Yeats hastens to explain, that “the servant or the bride awaiting the master’s home-coming in the empty house” is “among the images of the heart turning to God.” But in Yeats’s considerate attempt to make sure that the reader does not miss the “main point,” something of the enigmatic beauty of the Bengali poem is lost – even what had survived the antiquated language of the English translation. Tagore certainly had strongly held religious beliefs (of an unusually nondenominational kind), but he was interested in a great many other things as well and had many different things to say about them.

Some of the ideas he tried to present were directly political, and they figure rather prominently in his letters and lectures. He had practical, plainly expressed views about nationalism, war and peace, cross-cultural education, freedom of the mind, the importance of rational criticism, the need for openness, and so on. His admirers in the West, however, were tuned to the more otherworldly themes which had been emphasized by his first Western patrons. People came to his public lectures in Europe and America, expecting ruminations on grand, transcendental themes; when they heard instead his views on the way public leaders should behave, there was some resentment, particularly (as E.P. Thompson reports) when he delivered political criticism “at $700 a scold.”

An ambiguity about religious experience.

Reasoning in freedom

For Tagore it was of the highest importance that people be able to live, and reason, in freedom. His attitudes toward politics and culture, nationalism and internationalism, tradition and modernity, can all be seen in the light of this belief. 11 Nothing, perhaps, expresses his values as clearly as a poem in Gitanjali:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; … Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; … Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Rabindranath’s qualified support for nationalist movements – and his opposition to the unfreedom of alien rule – came from this commitment. So did his reservations about patriotism, which, he argued, can limit both the freedom to engage ideas from outside “narrow domestic walls” and the freedom also to support the causes of people in other countries. Rabindranath’s passion for freedom underlies his firm opposition to unreasoned traditionalism, which makes one a prisoner of the past (lost, as he put it, in “the dreary desert sand of dead habit”).

Tagore illustrates the tyranny of the past in his amusing yet deeply serious parable “Kartar Bhoot” (“The Ghost of the Leader”). As the respected leader of an imaginary land is about to die, his panic-stricken followers request him to stay on after his death to instruct them on what to do. He consents. But his followers find their lives are full of rituals and constraints on everyday behavior and are not responsive to the world around them. Ultimately, they request the ghost of the leader to relieve them of his domination, when he informs them that he exists only in their minds.

Tagore’s deep aversion to any commitment to the past that could not be modified by contemporary reason extended even to the alleged virtue of invariably keeping past promises. On one occasion when Mahatma Gandhi visited Tagore’s school at Santiniketan, a young woman got him to sign her autograph book. Gandhi wrote: “Never make a promise in haste. Having once made it fulfill it at the cost of your life.” When he saw this entry, Tagore became agitated. He wrote in the same book a short poem in Bengali to the effect that no one can be made “a prisoner forever with a chain of clay.” He went on to conclude in English, possibly so that Gandhi could read it too, “Fling away your promise if it is found to be wrong.” 12

Tagore and Gandhi, in Shantiniketan, 1940.

Tagore had the greatest admiration for Mahatma Gandhi as a person and as a political leader, but he was also highly skeptical of Gandhi’s form of nationalism and his conservative instincts regarding the country’s past traditions. He never criticized Gandhi personally. In the 1938 essay, “Gandhi the Man,” he wrote:

Great as he is as a politician, as an organizer, as a leader of men, as a moral reformer, he is greater than all these as a man, because none of these aspects and activities limits his humanity. They are rather inspired and sustained by it.

And yet there is a deep division between the two men. Tagore was explicit about his disagreement:

We who often glorify our tendency to ignore reason, installing in its place blind faith, valuing it as spiritual, are ever paying for its cost with the obscuration of our mind and destiny. I blamed Mahatmaji for exploiting this irrational force of credulity in our people, which might have had a quick result [in creating] a superstructure, while sapping the foundation. Thus began my estimate of Mahatmaji, as the guide of our nation, and it is fortunate for me that it did not end there.

But while it “did not end there,” that difference of vision was a powerful divider. Tagore, for example, remained unconvinced of the merit of Gandhi’s forceful advocacy that everyone should spin at home with the “charka,” the primitive spinning wheel. For Gandhi this practice was an important part of India’s self-realization. “The spinning-wheel gradually became,” as his biographer B.R. Nanda writes, “the center of rural uplift in the Gandhian scheme of Indian economics.” 13 Tagore found the alleged economic rationale for this scheme quite unrealistic. As Romain Rolland noted, Rabindranath “never tires of criticizing the charka.” In this economic judgment, Tagore was probably right. Except for the rather small specialized market for high-quality spun cloth, it is hard to make economic sense of hand-spinning, even with wheels less primitive than Gandhi’s charka. Hand-spinning as a widespread activity can survive only with the help of heavy government subsidies. 14 However, Gandhi’s advocacy of the charka was not based only on economics. He wanted everyone to spin for “thirty minutes every day as a sacrifice,” seeing this as a way for people who are better off to identify themselves with the less fortunate. He was impatient with Tagore’s refusal to grasp this point:

The poet lives for the morrow, and would have us do likewise …. “Why should I, who have no need to work for food, spin?” may be the question asked. Because I am eating what does not belong to me. I am living on the spoliation of my countrymen. Trace the source of every coin that finds its way into your pocket, and you will realise the truth of what I write. Every one must spin. Let Tagore spin like the others. Let him burn his foreign clothes; that is the duty today. God will take care of the morrow. 15

If Tagore had missed something in Gandhi’s argument, so did Gandhi miss the point of Tagore’s main criticism. It was not only that the charka made little economic sense, but also, Tagore thought, that it was not the way to make people reflect on anything: “The charka does not require anyone to think; one simply turns the wheel of the antiquated invention endlessly, using the minimum of judgment and stamina.”

Celibacy and personal life

Tagore and Gandhi’s attitudes toward personal life were also quite different. Gandhi was keen on the virtues of celibacy, theorized about it, and, after some years of conjugal life, made a private commitment – publicly announced – to refrain from sleeping with his wife. Rabindranath’s own attitude on this subject was very different, but he was gentle about their disagreements:

[Gandhiji] condemns sexual life as inconsistent with the moral progress of man, and has a horror of sex as great as that of the author of The Kreutzer Sonata, but, unlike Tolstoy, he betrays no abhorrence of the sex that tempts his kind. In fact, his tenderness for women is one of the noblest and most consistent traits of his character, and he counts among the women of his country some of his best and truest comrades in the great movement he is leading.

Tagore’s personal life was, in many ways, an unhappy one. He married in 1883, lost his wife in 1902, and never remarried. He sought close companionship, which he did not always get (perhaps even during his married life – he wrote to his wife, Mrinalini: “If you and I could be comrades in all our work and in all our thoughts it would be splendid, but we cannot attain all that we desire”). He maintained a warm friendship with, and a strong Platonic attachment to, the literature-loving wife, Kadambari, of his elder brother, Jyotirindranath. He dedicated some poems to her before his marriage, and several books afterward, some after her death (she committed suicide, for reasons that are not fully understood, at the age of twenty-five, four months after Rabindranath’s wedding). Much later in life, during his tour of Argentina in 1924-1925, Rabindranath came to know the talented and beautiful Victoria Ocampo, who later became the publisher of the literary magazine Sur. They became close friends, but it appears that Rabindranath deflected the possibility of a passionate relationship into a confined intellectual one. 16 His friend Leonard Elmhirst, who accompanied Rabindranath on his Argentine tour, wrote:

Besides having a keen intellectual understanding of his books, she was in love with him – but instead of being content to build a friendship on the basis of intellect, she was in a hurry to establish that kind of proprietary right over him which he absolutely would not brook.

Ocampo and Elmhirst, while remaining friendly, were both quite rude in what they wrote about each other. Ocampo’s book on Tagore (of which a Bengali translation was made from the Spanish by the distinguished poet and critic Shankha Ghosh) is primarily concerned with Tagore’s writings but also discusses the pleasures and difficulties of their relationship, giving quite a different account from Elmhirst’s, and never suggesting any sort of proprietary intentions.

Victoria Ocampo, however, makes it clear that she very much wanted to get physically closer to Rabindranath: “Little by little he [Tagore] partially tamed the young animal, by turns wild and docile, who did not sleep, dog-like, on the floor outside his door, simply because it was not done.” 17 Rabindranath, too, was clearly very much attracted to her. He called her “Vijaya” (the Sanskrit equivalent of Victoria), dedicated a book of poems to her, Purabi – an “evening melody,” and expressed great admiration for her mind (“like a star that was distant”). In a letter to her he wrote, as if to explain his own reticence:

When we were together, we mostly played with words and tried to laugh away our best opportunities to see each other clearly … Whenever there is the least sign of the nest becoming a jealous rival of the sky [,] my mind, like a migrant bird, tries to take … flight to a distant shore.

Five years later, during Tagore’s European tour in 1930, he sent her a cable: “Will you not come and see me.” She did. But their relationship did not seem to go much beyond conversation, and their somewhat ambiguous correspondence continued over the years. Written in 1940, a year before his death at eighty, one of the poems in Sesh Lekha (“Last Writings”), seems to be about her: “How I wish I could once again find my way to that foreign land where waits for me the message of love!/… Her language I knew not, but what her eyes said will forever remain eloquent in its anguish.” 18 However indecisive, or confused, or awkward Rabindranath may have been, he certainly did not share Mahatma Gandhi’s censorious views of sex. In fact, when it came to social policy, he advocated contraception and family planning while Gandhi preferred abstinence.

Tagore with his wife Mrinalini Devi in 1883.

Science and the people

Gandhi and Tagore severely clashed over their totally different attitudes toward science. In January 1934, Bihar was struck by a devastating earthquake, which killed thousands of people. Gandhi, who was then deeply involved in the fight against untouchability (the barbaric system inherited from India’s divisive past, in which “lowly people” were kept at a physical distance), extracted a positive lesson from the tragic event. “A man like me,” Gandhi argued, “cannot but believe this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins” – in particular the sins of untouchability. “For me there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the untouchability campaign.”

Tagore, who equally abhorred untouchability and had joined Gandhi in the movements against it, protested against this interpretation of an event that had caused suffering and death to so many innocent people, including children and babies. He also hated the epistemology implicit in seeing an earthquake as caused by ethical failure. “It is,” he wrote, “all the more unfortunate because this kind of unscientific view of [natural] phenomena is too readily accepted by a large section of our countrymen.”

The two remained deeply divided over their attitudes toward science. However, while Tagore believed that modern science was essential to the understanding of physical phenomena, his views on epistemology were interestingly heterodox. He did not take the simple “realist” position often associated with modern science. The report of his conversation with Einstein, published in The New York Times in 1930, shows how insistent Tagore was on interpreting truth through observation and reflective concepts. To assert that something is true or untrue in the absence of anyone to observe or perceive its truth, or to form a conception of what it is, appeared to Tagore to be deeply questionable. When Einstein remarked, “If there were no human beings any more, the Apollo Belvedere no longer would be beautiful?” Tagore simply replied, “No.” Going further – and into much more interesting territory – Einstein said, “I agree with regard to this conception of beauty, but not with regard to truth.” Tagore’s response was: “Why not? Truth is realized through men.” 19

Albert Einstein and Tagore, in New York, 1930.

Tagore’s epistemology, which he never pursued systematically, would seem to be searching for a line of reasoning that would later be elegantly developed by Hilary Putnam, who has argued: “Truth depends on conceptual schemes and it is nonetheless ‘real truth.'” 20 Tagore himself said little to explain his convictions, but it is important to take account of his heterodoxy, not only because his speculations were invariably interesting, but also because they illustrate how his support for any position, including his strong interest in science, was accompanied by critical scrutiny.

Nationalism and colonialism

Tagore was predictably hostile to communal sectarianism (such as a Hindu orthodoxy that was antagonistic to Islamic, Christian, or Sikh perspectives). But even nationalism seemed to him to be suspect. Isaiah Berlin summarizes well Tagore’s complex position on Indian nationalism:

Tagore stood fast on the narrow causeway, and did not betray his vision of the difficult truth. He condemned romantic overattachment to the past, what he called the tying of India to the past “like a sacrificial goat tethered to a post,” and he accused men who displayed it – they seemed to him reactionary – of not knowing what true political freedom was, pointing out that it is from English thinkers and English books that the very notion of political liberty was derived. But against cosmopolitanism he maintained that the English stood on their own feet, and so must Indians. In 1917 he once more denounced the danger of ‘leaving everything to the unalterable will of the Master,’ be he brahmin or Englishman. 21

The duality Berlin points to is well reflected also in Tagore’s attitude toward cultural diversity. He wanted Indians to learn what is going on elsewhere, how others lived, what they valued, and so on, while remaining interested and involved in their own culture and heritage. Indeed, in his educational writings the need for synthesis is strongly stressed. It can also be found in his advice to Indian students abroad. In 1907 he wrote to his son-in-law Nagendranath Gangulee, who had gone to America to study agriculture:

To get on familiar terms with the local people is a part of your education. To know only agriculture is not enough; you must know America too. Of course if, in the process of knowing America, one begins to lose one’s identity and falls into the trap of becoming an Americanised person contemptuous of everything Indian, it is preferable to stay in a locked room.

Tagore was strongly involved in protest against the Raj on a number of occasions, most notably in the movement to resist the 1905 British proposal to split in two the province of Bengal, a plan that was eventually withdrawn following popular resistance. He was forthright in denouncing the brutality of British rule in India, never more so than after the Amritsar massacre of April 13, 1919, when 379 unarmed people at a peaceful meeting were gunned down by the army, and two thousand more were wounded. Between April 23 and 26, Rabindranath wrote five agitated letters to C.F. Andrews, who himself was extremely disturbed, especially after he was told by a British civil servant in India that thanks to this show of strength, the “moral prestige” of the Raj had “never been higher.”

A month after the massacre, Tagore wrote to the Viceroy of India, asking to be relieved of the knighthood he had accepted four years earlier:

The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilized governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote. Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organisation for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification … The universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers – possibly congratulating themselves for imparting what they imagine as salutary lessons … I for my part want to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who for their so-called insignificance are liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings.

Both Gandhi and Nehru expressed their appreciation of the important part Tagore took in the national struggle. It is fitting that after independence, India chose a song of Tagore (“Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka,” which can be roughly translated as “the leader of people’s minds”) as its national anthem. Since Bangladesh would later choose another song of Tagore (“Amar Sonar Bangla”) as its national anthem, he may be the only one ever to have authored the national anthems of two different countries.

Tagore’s criticism of the British administration of India was consistently strong and grew more intense over the years. This point is often missed, since he made a special effort to dissociate his criticism of the Raj from any denigration of British – or Western – people and culture. Mahatma Gandhi’s well-known quip in reply to a question, asked in England, on what he thought of Western civilization (“It would be a good idea”) could not have come from Tagore’s lips. He would understand the provocations to which Gandhi was responding – involving cultural conceit as well as imperial tyranny. D.H. Lawrence supplied a fine example of the former: “I become more and more surprised to see how far higher, in reality, our European civilization stands than the East, Indian and Persian, ever dreamed of …. This fraud of looking up to them – this wretched worship-of-Tagore attitude is disgusting.” But, unlike Gandhi, Tagore could not, even in jest, be dismissive of Western civilization.

Forthright in denouncing the brutality of British rule in India.

Even in his powerful indictment of British rule in India in 1941, in a lecture which he gave on his last birthday, and which was later published as a pamphlet under the title Crisis in Civilization, he strains hard to maintain the distinction between opposing Western imperialism and rejecting Western civilization. While he saw India as having been “smothered under the dead weight of British administration” (adding “another great and ancient civilization for whose recent tragic history the British cannot disclaim responsibility is China”), Tagore recalls what India has gained from “discussions centred upon Shakespeare’s drama and Byron’s poetry and above all … the large-hearted liberalism of nineteenth-century English politics.” The tragedy, as Tagore saw it, came from the fact that what “was truly best in their own civilization, the upholding of dignity of human relationships, has no place in the British administration of this country.” “If in its place they have established, baton in hand, a reign of ‘law and order,’ or in other words a policeman’s rule, such a mockery of civilization can claim no respect from us.”

Critique of patriotism

Rabindranath rebelled against the strongly nationalist form that the independence movement often took, and this made him refrain from taking a particularly active part in contemporary politics. He wanted to assert India’s right to be independent without denying the importance of what India could learn – freely and profitably – from abroad. He was afraid that a rejection of the West in favor of an indigenous Indian tradition was not only limiting in itself; it could easily turn into hostility to other influences from abroad, including Christianity, which came to parts of India by the fourth century; Judaism, which came through Jewish immigration shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, as did Zoroastrianism through Parsi immigration later on (mainly in the eighth century), and, of course – and most importantly – Islam, which has had a very strong presence in India since the tenth century.

Tagore’s criticism of patriotism is a persistent theme in his writings. As early as 1908, he put his position succinctly in a letter replying to the criticism of Abala Bose, the wife of a great Indian scientist, Jagadish Chandra Bose: “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.” His novel Ghare Baire (The Home and the World) has much to say about this theme. In the novel, Nikhil, who is keen on social reform, including women’s liberation, but cool toward nationalism, gradually loses the esteem of his spirited wife, Bimala, because of his failure to be enthusiastic about anti-British agitations, which she sees as a lack of patriotic commitment. Bimala becomes fascinated with Nikhil’s nationalist friend Sandip, who speaks brilliantly and acts with patriotic militancy, and she falls in love with him. Nikhil refuses to change his views: “I am willing to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.” 22

As the story unfolds, Sandip becomes angry with some of his countrymen for their failure to join the struggle as readily as he thinks they should (“Some Mohamedan traders are still obdurate”). He arranges to deal with the recalcitrants by burning their meager trading stocks and physically attacking them. Bimala has to acknowledge the connection between Sandip’s rousing nationalistic sentiments and his sectarian – and ultimately violent-actions. The dramatic events that follow (Nikhil attempts to help the victims, risking his life) include the end of Bimala’s political romance.

This is a difficult subject, and Satyajit Ray’s beautiful film of The Home and the World brilliantly brings out the novel’s tensions, along with the human affections and disaffections of the story. Not surprisingly, the story has had many detractors, not just among dedicated nationalists in India. Georg Lukács found Tagore’s novel to be “a petit bourgeois yarn of the shoddiest kind,” “at the intellectual service of the British police,” and “a contemptible caricature of Gandhi.” It would, of course, be absurd to think of Sandip as Gandhi, but the novel gives a “strong and gentle” warning, as Bertolt Brecht noted in his diary, of the corruptibility of nationalism, since it is not even-handed. Hatred of one group can lead to hatred of others, no matter how far such feeling may be from the minds of large-hearted nationalist leaders like Mahatma Gandhi.

Admiration and criticism of Japan

Tagore’s reaction to nationalism in Japan is particularly telling. As in the case of India, he saw the need to build the self-confidence of a defeated and humiliated people, of people left behind by developments elsewhere, as was the case in Japan before its emergence during the nineteenth century. At the beginning of one of his lectures in Japan in 1916 (“Nationalism in Japan”), he observed that “the worst form of bondage is the bondage of dejection, which keeps men hopelessly chained in loss of faith in themselves.” Tagore shared the admiration for Japan widespread in Asia for demonstrating the ability of an Asian nation to rival the West in industrial development and economic progress. He noted with great satisfaction that Japan had “in giant strides left centuries of inaction behind, overtaking the present time in its foremost achievement.” For other nations outside the West, he said, Japan “has broken the spell under which we lay in torpor for ages, taking it to be the normal condition of certain races living in certain geographical limits.”

But then Tagore went on to criticize the rise of a strong nationalism in Japan, and its emergence as an imperialist nation. Tagore’s outspoken criticisms did not please Japanese audiences and, as E.P. Thompson wrote, “the welcome given to him on his first arrival soon cooled.” 23 Twenty-two years later, in 1937, during the Japanese war on China, Tagore received a letter from Rash Behari Bose, an anti-British Indian revolutionary then living in Japan, who sought Tagore’s approval for his efforts there on behalf of Indian independence, in which he had the support of the Japanese government. Tagore replied:

Your cable has caused me many restless hours, for it hurts me very much to have to ignore your appeal. I wish you had asked for my cooperation in a cause against which my spirit did not protest. I know, in making this appeal, you counted on my great regard for the Japanese for I, along with the rest of Asia, did once admire and look up to Japan and did once fondly hope that in Japan Asia had at last discovered its challenge to the West, that Japan’s new strength would be consecrated in safeguarding the culture of the East against alien interests. But Japan has not taken long to betray that rising hope and repudiate all that seemed significant in her wonderful, and, to us symbolic, awakening, and has now become itself a worse menace to the defenceless peoples of the East.

How to view Japan’s position in the Second World War was a divisive issue in India. After the war, when Japanese political leaders were tried for war crimes, the sole dissenting voice among the judges came from the Indian judge, Radhabinod Pal, a distinguished jurist. Pal dissented on various grounds, among them that no fair trial was possible in view of the asymmetry of power between the victor and the defeated. Ambivalent feelings in India toward the Japanese military aggression, given the unacceptable nature of British imperialism, possibly had a part in predisposing Pal to consider a perspective different from that of the other judges.

More tellingly, Subhas Chandra Bose (no relation of Rash Behari Bose), a leading nationalist, made his way to Japan during the war via Italy and Germany after escaping from a British prison; he helped the Japanese to form units of Indian soldiers, who had earlier surrendered to the advancing Japanese army, to fight on the Japanese side as the “Indian National Army.” Rabindranath had formerly entertained great admiration for Subhas Bose as a dedicated nonsectarian fighter for Indian independence. 24 But their ways would have parted when Bose’s political activities took this turn, although Tagore was dead by the time Bose reached Japan.

Tagore saw Japanese militarism as illustrating the way nationalism can mislead even a nation of great achievement and promise. In 1938 Yone Noguchi, the distinguished poet and friend of Tagore (as well as of Yeats and Pound), wrote to Tagore, pleading with him to change his mind about Japan. Rabindranath’s reply, written on September 12, 1938, was altogether uncompromising:

It seems to me that it is futile for either of us to try to convince the other, since your faith in the infallible right of Japan to bully other Asiatic nations into line with your Government’s policy is not shared by me …. Believe me, it is sorrow and shame, not anger, that prompt me to write to you. I suffer intensely not only because the reports of Chinese suffering batter against my heart, but because I can no longer point out with pride the example of a great Japan.

He would have been much happier with the postwar emergence of Japan as a peaceful power. Then, too, since he was not free of egotism, he would also have been pleased by the attention paid to his ideas by the novelist Yasunari Kawabata and others. 25

Yasunari Kawabata

International concerns

Tagore was not invariably well-informed about international politics. He allowed himself to be entertained by Mussolini in a short visit to Italy in May-June 1926, a visit arranged by Carlo Formichi, professor of Sanskrit at the University of Rome. When he asked to meet Benedetto Croce, Formichi said, “Impossible! Impossible!” Mussolini told him that Croce was “not in Rome.” When Tagore said he would go “wherever he is,” Mussolini assured him that Croce’s whereabouts were unknown.

Such incidents, as well as warnings from Romain Rolland and other friends, should have ended Tagore’s flirtation with Mussolini more quickly than it did. But only after he received graphic accounts of the brutality of Italian fascism from two exiles, Gaetano Salvemini and Gaetano Salvadori, and learned more of what was happening in Italy, did he publicly denounce the regime, publishing a letter to the Manchester Guardian in August. The next month, Popolo d’Italia, the magazine edited by Benito Mussolini’s brother, replied: “Who cares? Italy laughs at Tagore and those who brought this unctuous and insupportable fellow in our midst.”

With his high expectations of Britain, Tagore continued to be surprised by what he took to be a lack of official sympathy for international victims of aggression. He returned to this theme in the lecture he gave on his last birthday, in 1941:

While Japan was quietly devouring North China, her act of wanton aggression was ignored as a minor incident by the veterans of British diplomacy. We have also witnessed from this distance how actively the British statesmen acquiesced in the destruction of the Spanish Republic.

But distinguishing between the British government and the British people, Rabindranath went on to note “with admiration how a band of valiant Englishmen laid down their lives for Spain.”

Tagore’s view of the Soviet Union has been a subject of much discussion. He was widely read in Russia. In 1917 several Russian translations of Gitanjali (one edited by Ivan Bunin , later the first Russian Nobel Laureate in Literature) were available, and by the late 1920s many of the English versions of his work had been rendered into Russian by several distinguished translators. Russian versions of his work continued to appear: Boris Pasternak translated him in the 1950s and 1960s.

When Tagore visited Russia in 1930, he was much impressed by its development efforts and by what he saw as a real commitment to eliminate poverty and economic inequality. But what impressed him most was the expansion of basic education across the old Russian empire. In Letters from Russia, written in Bengali and published in 1931, he unfavorably compares the acceptance of widespread illiteracy in India by the British administration with Russian efforts to expand education:

In stepping on the soil of Russia, the first thing that caught my eye was that in education, at any rate, the peasant and the working classes have made such enormous progress in these few years that nothing comparable has happened even to our highest classes in the course of the last hundred and fifty years …. The people here are not at all afraid of giving complete education even to Turcomans of distant Asia; on the contrary, they are utterly in earnest about it. 26

When parts of the book were translated into English in 1934, the under-secretary for India stated in Parliament that it was “calculated by distortion of the facts to bring the British Administration in India into contempt and disrepute,” and the book was then promptly banned. The English version would not be published until after independence.

Education and freedom

The British Indian administrators were not, however, alone in trying to suppress Tagore’s reflections on Russia. They were joined by Soviet officials. In an interview with Izvestia in 1930, Tagore sharply criticized the lack of freedom that he observed in Russia:

I must ask you: Are you doing your ideal a service by arousing in the minds of those under your training anger, class-hatred, and revengefulness against those whom you consider to be your enemies? … Freedom of mind is needed for the reception of truth; terror hopelessly kills it …. For the sake of humanity I hope you may never create a vicious force of violence, which will go on weaving an interminable chain of violence and cruelty …. You have tried to destroy many of the other evils of [the czarist] period. Why not try to destroy this one also?

The interview was not published in Izvestia until 1988 – nearly sixty years later. 27 Tagore’s reaction to the Russia of 1930 arose from two of his strongest commitments: his uncompromising belief in the importance of “freedom of mind” (the source of his criticism of the Soviet Union), and his conviction that the expansion of basic education is central to social progress (the source of his praise, particularly in contrast to British-run India). He identified the lack of basic education as the fundamental cause of many of India’s social and economic afflictions:

In my view the imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education. Caste divisions, religious conflicts, aversion to work, precarious economic conditions – all centre on this single factor.

It was on education (and on the reflection, dialogue, and communication that are associated with it), rather than on, say, spinning “as a sacrifice” (“the charka does not require anyone to think”), that the future of India would depend.

Tagore was concerned not only that there be wider opportunities for education across the country (especially in rural areas where schools were few), but also that the schools themselves be more lively and enjoyable. He himself had dropped out of school early, largely out of boredom, and had never bothered to earn a diploma. He wrote extensively on how schools should be made more attractive to boys and girls and thus more productive. His own co-educational school at Santiniketan had many progressive features. The emphasis here was on self-motivation rather than on discipline, and on fostering intellectual curiosity rather than competitive excellence.

Much of Rabindranath’s life was spent in developing the school at Santiniketan. The school never had much money, since the fees were very low. His lecture honoraria, “$700 a scold,” went to support it, as well as most of his Nobel Prize money. The school received no support from the government, but did get help from private citizens – even Mahatma Gandhi raised money for it.

The dispute with Mahatma Gandhi on the Bihar earthquake touched on a subject that was very important to Tagore: the need for education in science as well as in literature and the humanities. At Santiniketan, there were strong “local” elements in its emphasis on Indian traditions, including the classics, and in the use of Bengali rather than English as the language of instruction. At the same time there were courses on a great variety of cultures, and study programs devoted to China, Japan, and the Middle East. Many foreigners came to Santiniketan to study or teach, and the fusion of studies seemed to work.

I am partial to seeing Tagore as an educator, having myself been educated at Santiniketan. The school was unusual in many different ways, such as the oddity that classes, excepting those requiring a laboratory, were held outdoors (whenever the weather permitted). No matter what we thought of Rabindranath’s belief that one gains from being in a natural setting while learning (some of us argued about this theory), we typically found the experience of outdoor schooling extremely attractive and pleasant. Academically, our school was not particularly exacting (often we did not have any examinations at all), and it could not, by the usual academic standards, compete with some of the better schools in Calcutta. But there was something remarkable about the ease with which class discussions could move from Indian traditional literature to contemporary as well as classical Western thought, and then to the culture of China or Japan or elsewhere. The school’s celebration of variety was also in sharp contrast with the cultural conservatism and separatism that has tended to grip India from time to time.

The cultural give and take of Tagore’s vision of the contemporary world has close parallels with the vision of Satyajit Ray, also an alumnus of Santiniketan who made several films based on Tagore’s stories. 28 Ray’s words about Santiniketan in 1991 would have greatly pleased Rabindranath:

I consider the three years I spent in Santiniketan as the most fruitful of my life …. Santiniketan opened my eyes for the first time to the splendours of Indian and Far Eastern art. Until then I was completely under the sway of Western art, music and literature. Santiniketan made me the combined product of East and West that I am. 29

India today

At the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence, the reckoning of what India had or had not achieved in this half century was a subject of considerable interest: “What has been the story of those first fifty years?” (as Shashi Tharoor asked in his balanced, informative, and highly readable account of India: From Midnight to the Millennium ). 30 If Tagore were to see the India of today, more than half a century after independence, nothing perhaps would shock him so much as the continued illiteracy of the masses. He would see this as a total betrayal of what the nationalist leaders had promised during the struggle for independence – a promise that had figured even in Nehru’s rousing speech on the eve of independence in August 1947 (on India’s “tryst with destiny”).

In view of his interest in childhood education, Tagore would not be consoled by the extraordinary expansion of university education, in which India sends to its universities six times as many people per unit of population as does China. Rather, he would be stunned that, in contrast to East and Southeast Asia, including China, half the adult population and two thirds of Indian women remain unable to read or write. Statistically reliable surveys indicate that even in the late 1980s, nearly half of the rural girls between the ages of twelve and fourteen did not attend any school for a single day of their lives. 31

This state of affairs is the result of the continuation of British imperial neglect of mass education, which has been reinforced by India’s traditional elitism, as well as upper-class-dominated contemporary politics (except in parts of India such as Kerala, where anti-upper-caste movements have tended to concentrate on education as a great leveller). Tagore would see illiteracy and the neglect of education not only as the main source of India’s continued social backwardness, but also as a great constraint that restricts the possibility and reach of economic development in India (as his writings on rural development forcefully make clear). Tagore would also have strongly felt the need for a greater commitment – and a greater sense of urgency – in removing endemic poverty.

At the same time, Tagore would undoubtedly find some satisfaction in the survival of democracy in India, in its relatively free press, and in general from the “freedom of mind” that post-independence Indian politics has, on the whole, managed to maintain. He would also be pleased by the fact noted by the historian E.P. Thompson (whose father Edward Thompson had written one of the first major biographies of Tagore: 32

All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secular; Stalinist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East that is not active in some Indian mind. 33

Tagore would have been happy also to see that the one governmental attempt to dispense generally with basic liberties and political and civil rights in India, in the 1970s, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (ironically, herself a former student at Santiniketan) declared an “emergency,” was overwhelmingly rejected by the Indian voters, leading to the precipitate fall of her government.

Rabindranath would also see that the changes in policy that have eliminated famine since independence had much to do with the freedom to be heard in a democratic India. In Tagore’s play Raja O Rani (“The King and the Queen”), the sympathetic Queen eventually rebels against the callousness of state policy toward the hungry. She begins by inquiring about the ugly sounds outside the palace, only to be told that the noise is coming from “the coarse, clamorous crowd who howl unashamedly for food and disturb the sweet peace of the palace.” The Viceregal office in India could have taken a similarly callous view of Indian famines, right up to the easily preventable Bengal famine of 1943, just before independence, which killed between two and three million people. But a government in a multi-party democracy, with elections and free newspapers, cannot any longer dismiss the noise from “the coarse, clamorous crowd.” 34

Fearless reasoning in freedom.

Unlike Gandhi, Rabindranath would not resent the development of modern industries in India, or the acceleration of technical progress, since he did not want India to be shackled to the turning of “the wheel of an antiquated invention.” Tagore was concerned that people not be dominated by machines, but he was not opposed to making good use of modern technology. “The mastery over the machine,” he wrote in Crisis in Civilization, “by which the British have consolidated their sovereignty over their vast empire, has been kept a sealed book, to which due access has been denied to this helpless country.” Rabindranath had a deep interest in the environment – he was particularly concerned about deforestation and initiated a “festival of tree-planting” (vriksha-ropana) as early as 1928. He would want increased private and government commitments to environmentalism; but he would not derive from this position a general case against modern industry and technology.

On cultural separation

Rabindranath would be shocked by the growth of cultural separatism in India, as elsewhere. The “openness” that he valued so much is certainly under great strain right now – in many countries. Religious fundamentalism still has a relatively small following in India; but various factions seem to be doing their best to increase their numbers. Certainly religious sectarianism has had much success in some parts of India (particularly in the west and the north). Tagore would see the expansion of religious sectarianism as being closely associated with an artificially separatist view of culture.

He would have strongly resisted defining India in specifically Hindu terms, rather than as a “confluence” of many cultures. Even after the partition of 1947, India is still the third- largest Muslim country in the world, with more Muslims than in Bangladesh, and nearly as many as in Pakistan. Only Indonesia has substantially more followers of Islam. Indeed, by pointing to the immense heterogeneousness of India’s cultural background and its richly diverse history, Tagore had argued that the “idea of India” itself militated against a culturally separatist view – “against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others.”

Tagore would also oppose the cultural nationalism that has recently been gaining some ground in India, along with an exaggerated fear of the influence of the West. He was uncompromising in his belief that human beings could absorb quite different cultures in constructive ways:

Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin. I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine. Therefore it hurts me deeply when the cry of rejection rings loud against the West in my country with the clamour that Western education can only injure us.

In this context, it is important to emphasize that Rabindranath was not short of pride in India’s own heritage, and often spoke about it. He lectured at Oxford, with evident satisfaction, on the importance of India’s religious ideas – quoting both from ancient texts and from popular poetry (such as the verses of the sixteenth-century Muslim poet Kabir). In 1940, when he was given an honorary doctorate by Oxford University, in a ceremony arranged at his own educational establishment in Santiniketan (“In Gangem Defluit Isis,” Oxford helpfully explained), to the predictable “volley of Latin” Tagore responded “by a volley of Sanskrit,” as Marjorie Sykes, a Quaker friend of Rabindranath, reports. Her cheerful summary of the match, “India held its own,” was not out of line with Tagore’s pride in Indian culture. His welcoming attitude to Western civilization was reinforced by this confidence: he did not see India’s culture as fragile and in need of “protection” from Western influence.

In India, he wrote, “circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world.” There seems to me much force in Rabindranath’s argument for clearly distinguishing between the injustice of a serious asymmetry of power (colonialism being a prime example of this) and the importance nevertheless of appraising Western culture in an open-minded way, in colonial and postcolonial territories, in order to see what uses could be made of it.

Rabindranath insisted on open debate on every issue, and distrusted conclusions based on a mechanical formula, no matter how attractive that formula might seem in isolation (such as “This was forced on us by our colonial masters – we must reject it,” “This is our tradition – we must follow it,” “We have promised to do this – we must fulfill that promise,” and so on). The question he persistently asks is whether we have reason enough to want what is being proposed, taking everything into account. Important as history is, reasoning has to go beyond the past. It is in the sovereignty of reasoning – fearless reasoning in freedom – that we can find Rabindranath Tagore’s lasting voice. 35

1. Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man (London: Unwin, 1931, 2nd edition, 1961), p. 105. The extensive interactions between Hindu and Muslim parts of Indian culture (in religious beliefs, civic codes, painting, sculpture, literature, music, and astronomy) have been discussed by Kshiti Mohan Sen in Bharate Hindu Mushalmaner Jukto Sadhana (in Bengali) (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati, 1949, extended edition, 1990) and Hinduism (Penguin, 1960).

2. Rabindranath’s father Debendranath had in fact, joined the reformist religious group, the Brahmo Samaj, which rejected many contemporary Hindu practices as aberrations from the ancient Hindu texts.

3. Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore , edited by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (Cambridge University Press, 1997). This essay draws on my Foreword to this collection. For important background material on Rabindranath Tagore and his reception in the West, see also the editors’ Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), and Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology (Picador, 1997).

4. See Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence, with a Foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru (New Delhi: Government of India, 1976), pp.12-13.

5. On Dartington Hall, the school, and the Elmhirsts, see Michael Young, > The Elmhirsts of Dartington: The Creation of an Utopian Community (Routledge, 1982).

6. I have tried to analyze these “exotic” approaches to India (along with other Western approaches) in “India and the West,” The New Republic, June 7, 1993, and in “Indian Traditions and the Western Imagination,” Daedalus, Spring 1997.

7. Yasunari Kawabata, The Existence and Discovery of Beauty, translated by V.H. Viglielmo (Tokyo: The Mainichi Newspapers, 1969), pp. 56-57.

8. W.B. Yeats, “Introduction,” in Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (London: Macmillan, 1913).

9 Tagore himself vacillated over the years about the merits of his own translations. He told his friend Sir William Rothenstein, the artist: “I am sure you remember with what reluctant hesitation I gave up to your hand my manuscript of Gitanjali, feeling sure that my English was of that amorphous kind for whose syntax a school-boy could be reprimanded.” These – and related – issues are discussed by Nabaneeta Dev Sen, “The ‘Foreign Reincarnation’ of Rabindranath Tagore,” Journal of Asian Studies, 25 (1966), reprinted, along with other relevant papers, in her Counterpoints: Essays in Comparative Literature (Calcutta: Prajna, 1985).

10. The importance of ambiguity and incomplete description in Tagore’s poetry provides some insight into the striking thesis of William Radice (one of the major English translators of Tagore) that “his blend of poetry and prose is all the more truthful for being incomplete” (“Introduction” to his Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories, Penguin, 1991, p. 28).

11. Satyajit Ray, the film director, has argued that even in Tagore’s paintings, “the mood evoked … is one of a joyous freedom” (Ray, “Foreword,” in Andrew Robinson, The Art of Rabindranath Tagore, London: André Deutsch, 1989).

12. Reported in Amita Sen, Anando Sharbokaje (in Bengali) (Calcutta: Tagore Research Institute, 2nd edition, 1996), p. 132.

13. B.R. Nanda, Mahatma Gandhi (Oxford University Press, 1958; paperback, 1989), p. 149.

14. The economic issues are discussed in my Choice of Techniques (Blackwell, 1960), Appendix D.

15. Mohandas Gandhi, quoted by Krishna Kripalani, Tagore: A Life (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1961, 2nd edition, 1971), pp. 171-172.

16. For fuller accounts of the events, see Dutta and Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man , Chapter 25, and Ketaki Kushari Dyson, In Your Blossoming Flower-Garden: Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988).

17. Published in English translation in Rabindranath Tagore: A Centenary Volume, 1861-1961 (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1961), with an Introduction by Jawaharlal Nehru.

18. English translation from Krishna Kripalani, Tagore: A Life , p. 185.

19. “Einstein and Tagore Plumb the Truth,” The New York Times Magazine , August 10, 1930; republished in Dutta and Robinson, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore.

20. Hilary Putnam, The Many Faces of Realism (Open Court, 1987). On related issues, see also Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford University Press, 1986).

21. Isaiah Berlin, “Rabindranath Tagore and the Consciousness of Nationality,” The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), p. 265.

22. Martha Nussbaum initiates her wide-ranging critique of patriotism (in a debate that is joined by many others) by quoting this passage from The Home and the World (in Martha C. Nussbaum et al., For Love of Country, edited by Joshua Cohen, Beacon Press, 1996, pp. 3-4).

23. E.P. Thompson, Introduction, to Tagore’s Nationalism (London, Macmillan, 1991), p. 10.

24. For a lucid and informative analysis of the role of Subhas Chandra Bose and his brother Sarat in Indian politics, see Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (Columbia University Press, 1990).

25. Kawabata made considerable use of Tagore’s ideas, and even built on Tagore’s thesis that it “is easier for a stranger to know what it is in [Japan] which is truly valuable for all mankind” (The Existence and Discovery of Beauty, pp. 55-58).

26. Tagore, Letters from Russia, translated from Bengali by Sasadhar Sinha (Calcutta: Visva-Bharati, 1960), p. 108.

27. It was, however, published in the Manchester Guardian shortly after it was meant to be published in the Izvestia. On this, see: Dutta and Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, p. 297.

28. Satyajit Ray, Our Films, Their Films (Calcutta: Disha Book/Orient Longman, third edition, 1993). I have tried to discuss these issues in my Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture, “Our Culture, Their Culture,” The New Republic, April 1, 1996.

29. The Guardian, August 1, 1991.

30. Arcade Publishing, 1997, p. 1.

31. On this and related issues, see Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity (Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1996), particularly Chapter 6, and also Drèze and Sen, editors, Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives (Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1996).

32. Edward Thompson, Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist (Oxford University Press, 1926).

33. Quoted in Shashi Tharoor, India, p. 9.

34. I have tried to discuss the linkage between democracy, political incentives, and prevention of disasters in Resources, Values and Development (Harvard University Press, 1984, reprinted 1997), Chapter 19, and in my presidential address to the American Economic Association, “Rationality and Social Choice,” American Economic Review, 85 (1995).

35. For helpful discussions I am most grateful to Akeel Bilgrami, Sissela Bok (Harvard Professor; the daughter of Gunnar Myrdal , recipient of The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974, and Alva Myrdal , who was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize in 1982), Sugata Bose, Supratik Bose, Krishna Dutta, Rounaq Jahan, Salim Jahan, Marufi Khan, Andrew Robinson, Nandana Sen, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Shashi Tharoor.

* With permission from The New York Review .

First published 28 August 2001

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Rabindranath Tagore (southasiajournal.net)

Rabindranath tagore was an indian writer, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter.., he reshaped bengali literature and music as well as indian art., he was born in calcutta, india, on may 7, 1861., rabindranath tagore started writing poetry at an early age of 8 years., gitanjali, gora and ghare-baire are his best-known works., tagore published numerous novels, short stories, plays, letters, essays, memoirs and criticism., he received the nobel prize in literature in 1913 and was the first non-european., for more webstories visit:.

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, novelist and painter best known for being the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 with his book Gitanjali, Song Offerings . He was highly influential in introducing Indian culture to the West and is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of modern India. He was hailed by W.B Yeats and André Gide.

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Rabindranath Tagore

Poet, writer and humanitarian, Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and he played a key role in the renaissance of modern India. Tagore is most widely known for his poetry, but he was also an accomplished author of novels, short stories, plays and articles. He took an active interest in a widespread range of social, cultural and artistic endeavours. He has been described as one of the first Twentieth Century’s global man.

“So I repeat we never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity.”

— Sadhana: The Realisation of Life, (1916)

Short Biography Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath began writing from an early age and impressed with his free-flowing style and spontaneous compositions. He mostly rejected formal schooling; he spent much time being taught at home. In 1878 he travelled to England and sought to study law at University College, London, but he left before finishing the degree.

After returning to India, in 1901, Tagore moved to Shantiniketan to found an ashram which became his focal point for writing and his view on schooling. He chose the name for the ashram – Shantiniketan meaning ‘Abode of Peace.’

“Love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation.”

– Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

Friendship with Gandhi

Tagore was firm friends with Gandhi and admired him very much. But, despite this friendship, he could be critical of his views. For example, he disagreed with Gandhi’s views on Swaraj protests and upbraided Gandhi when Gandhi claimed an earthquake was ‘divine retribution for the mistreatment of Dalits in India.’ Yet despite the frequent divergence of opinions, they could admire each other. When Gandhi went on a fast unto death, it was Tagor who was able to persuade Gandhi to give up his fast and look after his health.

Nobel Prize for Literature 1913

In 1913, Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for his work ‘ Gitanjali ‘ This made his writings internationally known and his fame spread throughout the world.

“My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.” – Gitanjali

Rabindranath Tagore with Einstein

This gave Tagore the opportunity to travel extensively giving lectures and recitals in many different countries. He also became acquainted with many of the leading cultural contemporaries of the day; this included W.B.Yeats, George Bernard Shaw , Romain Rolland, Robert Frost and Albert Einstein .

Tagore had a great love for nature and many of his poems invoke the simple beauties of the natural world. For Tagore, his religion could be found in the wonders and mysteries of nature – as much as in temples and sacred books.

Tagore was a prolific composer of music. He composed over 2,000 songs which have been popularised and sung widely across Bengal. Like his literature, he broke away from classical constraints to offer a great emotive and spiritual appeal. Tagore is unique for being the official composer for the national anthem of two countries – India’s Jana Gana Mana and Bangladesh’s Amar Shonar Bangla .

Tagore was an opponent of British imperialism, though he also felt Indians had a duty to improve their self-education; he said that British rule was partly due to the state India had fallen into. In particular, he was very denigrating about India’s obsession with caste.

‘the ultimate truth in man is not in his intellect or his possessions; it is in his illumination of mind, in his extension of sympathy across all barriers of caste and colour, in his recognition of the world, not merely as a storehouse of power, but as a habitation of man’s spirit, with its eternal music of beauty and its inner light of the divine presence.’ – Tagore, The Poet’s Religion’ in Creative Unity (1922) [ 1 ]

In 1919, Tagore returned his knighthood in protest at the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, in which many peaceful Indian protesters were killed.

Tagore was a polymath, and towards the end of his life he took up art and also pursued an interest in science. Tagore was also very much an internationalist, criticising nationalism, though also writing songs and articles in support of the general principle of the Indian independence movement.

“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live. “

– Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore view on Religion

Tagore had mixed views on religion. He was brought up in a traditional Hindu family and taught to pray and meditate from an early age. He remembers the peace of mind he developed from chanting the Gayatri Mantra, but at the same time was detached from the more formalistic aspects of religion. He tended to see religion as not scriptures and places of worship but the life we lead. As he explained:

“My religion is my life – it is growing with my growth – it has never been grafted on me from outside.” ~ Tagore to Robert Bridges, 8 July 1914.

He was keen to avoid any fanaticism and saw the strength of his own Hindu religion as its ability to see more than one path to the goal. His life-long aspiration was to see a harmony of religions flourish in India – not from mere tolerance but an appreciation of the different merits other religions had.

‘The Idea of freedom to which India aspired was based upon realization of spiritual unity…India’s great achievement, which is still stored deep within her heart, is waiting to unite within itself Hindu, Moslem, Buddhist and Christian, not by force, not by the apathy of resignation, but in the harmony of active cooperation.’ ~ Tagore in Berlin, 1921.

However, he was also critical of the Hindu caste system.

Tagore’s poetry frequently hint at a mystical view of the world.

“In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and here have I caught sight of him that is formless.” – Gitanjali “The human soul is on its journey from the law to love, from discipline to liberation, from the moral plane to the spiritual.” Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

Tagore died on 7th August 1941, after a long and painful illness, aged 80. He died in his family home.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Rabindranath Tagore ”, Oxford, UK www.biographyonline.net , 1st Jun. 2009. Last updated 1 March 2019.

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Rabindranath Tagore Age, Death, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Rabindranath Tagore

Who is rabindranath tagore, grew up in an affluent family.

Rabindranath Tagore grew up in Jorasanko Thakur Bari, where his family members, predominantly poets, musicians, playwrights, and novelists, engaged actively in musical, literary, and dramatic activities.

Jorasanko Thakur Bari, where Rabindranath Tagore grew up

His ancestors relocated from their hometown to Govindpur (now Gobindapur), one of three villages that eventually formed Calcutta (now Kolkata). Through their involvement in commerce and banking, they gathered considerable wealth, acquiring numerous properties in the region. It is believed that the Tagore family prospered due to the increasing influence of the British East India Company.

A childhood photo of Rabindranath Tagore clicked in 1867

An elite and educated family

His father, Debendranath Tagore, was a Bengali thinker and spiritual expert who established the Brahmo religion in 1848. His father deeply studied European philosophy and was regarded as a prominent figure in the emerging era of Bengali society. Although deeply religious, he didn’t follow all the concepts of Hinduism, a characteristic later inherited by Rabindranath. His paternal grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore, is recognized as among the initial Indian industrialists who played a crucial role in advancing the Bengal Renaissance. In 1828, Dwarkanath Tagore joined the nineteenth-century social and religious reformer Raja Rammohan Roy in the Brahma Samaj Movement, which aimed to reform Hindu society.

Rabindranath Tagore’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore

Later, Debendranath Tagore, Rabindranath’s father, also became a participant in this movement and founded a meditation center named ‘Santiniketan’ (the Abode of Peace) on land situated approximately 100 miles away from Calcutta in 1863.

A rare photo of Rabindranath Tagore’s family

Upanayana (coming-of-age rite)

When Tagore turned eleven, he underwent his upanayana, a coming-of-age ceremony. Following this ritual in 1873, he travelled across various cities in India, such as Dalhousie and Amritsar. Tagore spent nearly a month in Amritsar, where he was deeply moved and influenced by the Gurbani and Nanak Bani at the Golden Temple. While mentioning his Golden Temple experience in his My Reminiscences (1912), Tagore wrote,

The golden temple of Amritsar comes back to me like a dream. Many a morning have I accompanied my father to this Gurudarbar of the Sikhs in the middle of the lake. There the sacred chanting resounds continually. My father, seated amidst the throng of worshippers, would sometimes add his voice to the hymn of praise, and finding a stranger joining in their devotions they would wax enthusiastically cordial, and we would return loaded with the sanctified offerings of sugar crystals and other sweets.” [20] Mainstream Weekly jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_20').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_20', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Rabindranath Tagore after his upanayana

Mostly home-tutored

London days.

Rabindranath Tagore in England in 1879

A letter to his wife

After 19 years of marriage, his wife, Mrinalini Devi, died. Tagore once wrote a letter to his wife, expressing his feelings for her. Tagore wrote,

If you and I could be comrades in all our work and in all our thoughts it would be splendid, but we cannot attain all that we desire.” [24] The Economic Times jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_24').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_24', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Rabindranath Tagore with his wife, Mrinalini Devi

Tagore and his daughters

Tagore’s first child, Madhurilata, also called “Bela,” was very beautiful, and she was, reportedly, the most dearly loved daughter to Rabindranath. Tagore, while admiring Bela, once said,

My eldest daughter Bela… was exceptionally beautiful in body and mind.” [25] The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_25').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_25', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });

Tagore’s daughter Renuka Tagore (1890-1904) died at the tender age of thirteen. Tagore shared a close bond with Renuka. When she fell ill with tuberculosis, he took her to the Himalayas in May 1903, seeking a healthier climate. The journey to the Himalayas was long and difficult. During this trip, Tagore composed numerous poems for children, later compiled and published as “Sisu” (The Child, 1903), which gained popularity under the title ‘The Crescent Moon.’ Tagore’s third and youngest daughter, Mira (1892-1962), also known as Atasi, had a troubled marriage due to her husband’s volatile temperament and addiction issues. Tagore once expressed regret over the choice of husband for his daughter Mira and said,

How can I be so cruel to Mira when it was I who had dealt the first blow in her life by marrying her off without thinking carefully enough about it? … There is a barbarity about Nagen which Mira has come to dread. … Her life is already destroyed, now it is for me to protect her and make her as happy as possible. I must bear as much pain for it as I can because I am responsible for her misery.” [26] The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_26').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_26', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Rabindranath Tagore’s son Rathindranath Tagore (standing behind) and daughters Madhurilata Devi (Bela) (sitting on the chair), Mira Devi, and Renuka Devi

Tagore’s Muse

It is said that Kadambari Devi, who was married to Tagore’s elder brother Jyotirindranath, was his muse. Kadambari was two years younger than Tagore. The tale of their affection still holds a sense of mystery even today. In his renowned autobiography “Chelebela” (My Boyhood Days), Tagore described his initial encounter with Kadambari. He wrote,

A new bride came to the house, slender gold bracelets on her delicate brown hands…I circled around her at a safe distance, but I did not dare to go near. She was enthroned at the centre of affection and I was only a neglected, insignificant child …” [27] Feminism in India jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_27').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_27', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });

Despite lacking formal education, Kadambari reportedly had a better understanding of poetry than the poet himself. It’s believed that she played an important role in Tagore’s life. Kadambari served as the muse behind many of Tagore’s compositions, offering creative insights and feedback to him. Tagore affectionately nicknamed her after Hecate, the Greek goddess associated with the night, moon, and magic. 19 years old Tagore once dedicated his famous lyrics to Kadambari –

Tomarei koriachhi jibaner dhrubo tara (Thou art the guiding beacon of my life)” [28] Feminism in India jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_28').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_28', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Kadambari Devi

On 21 April 1884, Kadambari died under mysterious circumstances, suspected to be a suicide. Her demise deeply shattered Tagore. Following her death, Tagore penned a letter to his trusted confidant C. F. Andrews, expressing his deep sorrow over the loss of Kadambari. Tagore wrote,

But where is the sweetheart of mine who was almost the only companion of my boyhood and with whom I spent my idle days of youth exploring the mysteries of dreamland? She, my Queen, has died and my world has shut against the door of its inner apartment of beauty which gives on the real taste of freedom.” [29] Feminism in India jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_29').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_29', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });

Later, Tagore wrote numerous poems and songs in Kadambari’s memory. In a popular Rabindra Sangeet lyrics, Tagore wrote,

Tobu Mone Rekho (Pray, love, remember)”

In another song that Tagore composed in Kadambari’s memory, he wrote,

Amaar praner pore chole gelo ke (The one who went out of my life)” [30] Feminism in India jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_30').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_30', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });

A romantic encounter

Rabindranath Tagore shared a brief romantic connection with an Argentine writer and intellectual, Victoria Ocampo (7 April 1890 – 27 January 1979). Victoria deeply admired Tagore’s literary works. In November 1924, while Tagore was on his way to Peru for independence centenary celebrations, he made a stop in Buenos Aires on 6 November 1924 due to health reasons. When Victoria got the news of Tagore’s visit to the city, she offered to care for him during his 58-day stay in the city during which Tagore became romantically involved with her. Victoria was undergoing a transition phase after her separation from her husband and during a love affair with her cousin. In the midst of this, Ocampo viewed Tagore as an Eastern spiritual guide who could illuminate her path forward. However, the 63-year-old widowed poet misunderstood the 34-year-old Ocampo’s devotion as a romantic interest. For Tagore, it was a form of affection he had long awaited to remove his intellectual loneliness. He expressed these sentiments in his poem “Shesh Basanth” (the last spring) that he wrote on 21 November 1924 during his stay as Ocampo’s guest. He wrote,

While walking on my solitary wayI met you at the dusk of nightfall I was about to ask you take my hand When I gazed at your face and was afraid For I saw there the glow of the fire that lay asleep In the deep of your heart’s dark silence” Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo (both sitting)

While describing Tagore’s advances in her autobiography, Ocampo wrote,

One afternoon, as I came into his room while he was writing, I leaned towards the page which was on the table. Without lifting his head towards me he stretched his arm, and in the same way as one gets hold of a fruit on a branch, he placed his hand on one of my breasts. I felt a kind of shudder of withdrawal like a horse whom his master strokes when he is not expecting it. The animal cried at once within me. Another person who lives inside me warned the animal, ‘ be calm… fool’ It is just a gesture of pagan tenderness. The hand left the branch after that almost incorporeal caress. But he never did it again. Every day he kissed me on the forehead or the cheek and took one of my arms, saying “such cool arms.”

Victoria Ocampo presented Tagore with an armchair to bring back to India from Buenos Aires. Tagore regularly used this chair during his stay as Ocampo’s guest for approximately two months, from November to December 1924. The chair remains preserved in Shantiniketan. According to reports, in his final years, Tagore often found solace in that chair, and in April 1941, he even composed a poem about it. Tagore wrote,

Yet again, if I can, will l look for that seatOn the top of which rests, a caress from overseas I knew not her language Yet her eyes told me all Keeping alive forever A message of pathos” Rabindranath Tagore sitting on the armchair gifted by Victoria Ocampo

On Tagore’s demise, Ocampo dispatched a telegram to Tagore’s son, conveying the message ‘Thinking of him’ (pensando en él), which served as the inspiration for the title of the 2018 Argentine film ‘Thinking of Him.’ The film depicts the connection and relationship shared between Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo.

Thinking of Him film poster

Early literary works

The rich cultural and literary environment in the Tagore family encouraged Rabindranath to start writing poetry at a very young age. Initially, he published numerous poems, some anonymously and others under his pen name “Bahanusingha.” Tagore soon began contributing to various Bengali publications, such as “Balak” and “Bharati.” He wrote his first short story titled “Bhikharini” (The Beggar Woman) in 1877, which is considered the first Bengali-language short story. In 1882, Tagore published Sandhya Sangeet, a volume of Bengali verse that included his famous poem Nirjharer Swapna Bhanga (The awakening of the fountain). From 1884 to 1890, he wrote many poems, prose articles, criticism, plays, and novels.

Bhikharini by Rabindranath Tagore

Shelaidaha (1878–1901) Days

In 1890, Tagore made his second visit to the United Kingdom but returned within a month to look after the family estate, Kuthibari, a three-story pyramid-shaped terraced bungalow set within eleven acres of land in Shelaidaha (now part of Bangladesh). It was during this time that he gained a close understanding of the harsh life suffered by the poor Bengali peasants. Tagore’s wife and children later joined him at Shelaidaha in 1898. His stay there exposed him deeply to the social, political, and economic hardships faced by the peasants. Tagore expressed his observations of the peasants’ suffering in an article in which he wrote,

Our so-called responsible classes live in comfort because the common man has not yet understood his situation. That is why the landlord beats him. The money-lender holds him in his clutches; the foreman abuses him; the policeman fleeces him; the priest exploits him; and the magistrate picks his pocket.” Rabindranath with his tenant farmers in Shelaidaha

Most productive phase

Amidst the rural reforms in Shelaidaha, Tagore continued his writing. The lush landscapes, flowing rivers, and simplicity of rural Bengal inspired him to compose numerous renowned essays, short stories, and poems, such as “Sonar Tori,” “Kotha o Kahini,” “Chitra,” and “Chaitali.” In 1890, he released “Manasi,” a collection of poems that stands as one of his most acclaimed literary works.

Manasi by Rabindranath Tagore

In 1900, he published his masterpiece Galpaguchchha, a three-volume composition of 84 stories.

Hardcover of Galpaguchchha by Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore family boat, Padma

Brahamacharyashram: A boarding school

In 1901, Tagore moved from Shelaidaha to settle in Santiniketan, establishing the Brahamacharyashram (or Ashram) School. Beginning with a handful of students, including his own son, the school aimed to develop close connections between teachers and pupils. Tagore chose not to charge any fees, personally bearing all financial responsibilities.

Rabindranath Tagore (seated, to the left of man at blackboard) at an open-air classroom, Shantiniketan, West Bengal

Literary work at Santiniketan

During his stay in Santiniketan, Tagore wrote about India’s history including the stories of noble self-sacrifice. It was during this phase that he wrote some of his widely acclaimed realistic novels like “Choker Bali” (1901), “Naukadubi” (1903), and “Gora” (1910).

The cover of Naukadubi by Rabindranath Tagore

Nobel Prize

The noted English painter Sir William Rothenstein and poet W.B. Yeats were deeply impressed by Tagore’s poems and writings, previously translated into English. During his third trip to the United Kingdom in 1912, Tagore gained recognition as a distinguished poet and intellectual. In November 1913, Rabindranath Tagore received the Nobel Prize in Literature for “Gitanjali,” his most renowned poetry collection, making him the first Asian and non-European to receive this prestigious award. The Swedish Academy, in its statement, said,

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.” A newspaper cutting about Rabindranath Tagore winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913

When Gitanjali was lost

When his nobel prize was stolen.

Nobel Chor film

In the Birthday Honours of 1915, King George V bestowed a knighthood upon Rabindranath Tagore. However, following the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, Tagore gave up this honor by addressing a letter to Lord Chelmsford, the British Viceroy of India at that time. Tagore wrote,

The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments…The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of my country men.” Rabindranath Tagore wrote a letter to Lord Chelmsford to return his Knighthood conferred on him by British Government

Visva Bharati University

In 1916, Tagore went to Japan and the United States, delivering lectures that were later published in two volumes titled “Nationalism” (1917b) and “Personality” (1917c). Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore travelled across more than thirty countries, covering five continents. These global experiences influenced his vision to establish an institution gathering the world’s cultures and knowledge systems in one place. On 24 December 1918, he laid the foundation stone of Visva Bharati in Shantiniketan, West Bengal, which evolved into an international hub for cultural exchange and humanistic studies.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati University

Sri Niketan: Tagore’s dream project

Between 1901 and 1921, Santiniketan experienced significant growth. However, Tagore aimed to introduce a different educational approach for rural Indian children centered on rural living. In 1921, Tagore collaborated with agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst to establish a new school named Shikshasastra at Sri Niketan in Surul. This institution’s primary focus was to provide an all-round education to village children, mainly agricultural research. At Sri Niketan, handicrafts played an important role, where every student had to learn a specific trade. Later, the entire programme followed at Sri Niketan for rural development was adopted by India’s five-year plans.

A boy studying the microscope at the Sri Niketan school

Mahatma and Gurudev

Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi , two prominent figures of Modern India, held a deep mutual respect. They are famously identified as “Mahatma” (a title given to Gandhi by Tagore) and “Gurudev” (a title given to Tagore by Gandhi). Tagore reportedly coined the term “Mahatma” for Gandhi, and in response, Gandhi referred to Tagore as “Gurudev.” Charles Freer Andrews, an Englishman, served as the bridge connecting these two personalities. When Mahatma Gandhi returned to India, Andrews proposed that Tagore invite members of Gandhi’s “Phoenix family” to Santiniketan. In March 1915, Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore met for the first time at Santiniketan.

Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi at Santiniketan in March 1915

Later, they met on various occasions during which they would discuss various things, from politics and philosophy to food and diet. Mahatma Gandhi was a strict fruitarian, and he once told Tagore,

To fry bread in ghee or oil to make puris is to turn good grain into poison. It must be a slow poison.”

Tagore responded,

I have been eating puris all my life and it has not done me any harm so far.” [35] mkgandhi.org jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_35').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_35', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });

I started with a disposition to detect a conflict between Gurudev and myself, but ended with a glorious discovery that there was none.” [37] mkgandhi.org jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_37').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_37', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi greeting each other

In 1940, Mahatma Gandhi’s visit to Santiniketan along with his wife, Kasturba, proved to be his last meeting with Tagore during which Tagore requested Gandhi to take Santiniketan under his protection to which Gandhi replied,

Who am I to take this institution under my protection?… It carries God’s protection because it is the creation of an earnest soul.” [38] mkgandhi.org jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_38').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_38', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Rabindranath Tagore with Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba at Santiniketan

In 1945, Mahatma Gandhi made his last visit to Santiniketan; however, Tagore was not present to welcome him as Tagore had passed away in 1941. While addressing the Santiniketan community, Mahatma Gandhi said,

It is my conviction arrived at after a long and laborious struggle that Gurudev as a person was much bigger than his works; bigger even than this institution.” [39] mkgandhi.org jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_538672_1_39').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_538672_1_39', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });

International Travles

Throughout his international travels, from 1878 to 1932, Tagore interacted with many intellectuals including Mussolini (in May 1926), Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein (in April 1930), Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and Romain Rolland.

Rabindranath Tagore travelling in Europe

On 14 April 1930, Albert Einstein interviewed Tagore during which Tagore said,

Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization?” Rabindranath Tagore with Albert Einstein

Tagore’ Poetry

Tagore’s most acclaimed poetry collection, “Gitanjali,” made him the first Asian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tagore composed several other remarkable works, including “Manasi,” “Sonar Tori” (Golden Boat), and “Balaka” (Wild Geese). His poetic expression has a broad spectrum, including classical formalism, elements of humor, visionary themes, and moments of intense ecstasy. Tagore’s poetic technique is inspired by the writings of Vyasa, Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen, and it also reflects the impact of mystical Baul ballads, especially those by the bard Lalon.

The original version of the manuscript of Gitanjali written by Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore’s Novels

Tagore’s drama, tagore’s short stories, rabindra sangeet – tagore’s songs.

Tagore was a notable songwriter and composer. He composed approximately 2,230 songs, creating a distinct genre known as Rabindra Sangeet. These songs mainly draw inspiration from the thumri style of Hindustani music. Known for their depth, Tagore’s songs cover a wide spectrum of human emotions. It is believed that –

In Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath’s songs are not sung or at least attempted to be sung… Even illiterate villagers sing his songs.”

National Anthem

Tagore’s Artworks

Apart from his literary achievements, Tagore is known for his work in visual arts such as drawing and painting, which he started at the age of sixty. His artworks have been displayed in many art galleries, in Paris and across Europe.

Rabindranath Tagore as a painter

Colour Blind

Later years.

In late 1940, Tagore fell unconscious and remained in a comatose state for a long time, and the 80-year-old Tagore eventually passed away on 7 August 1941, in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion, where he spent his childhood years. Earlier, he had experienced a similar episode of being comatose in late 1937 and had undergone a surgical procedure on his kidneys. On 30 July 1941, nearly a week before his death, Tagore dictated a few lines to A. K. Sen (the brother of Sukumar Sen, India’s first chief election commissioner), which likely became his last poem. The lines read,

I’m lost in the middle of my birthday. I want my friends, their touch, with the earth’s last love. I will take life’s final offering, I will take the human’s last blessing. Today my sack is empty. I have given completely whatever I had to give. In return if I receive anything—some love, some forgiveness—then I will take it with me when I step on the boat that crosses to the festival of the wordless end.” Rabindranath Tagore’s last photo clicked in 1941

References/Sources: [ + ]

Rabindranath Tagore Biography

Article abstract: Nobel laureate Tagore, known for his lyric poetry, synthesized Eastern and Western spirituality in his numerous literary and philosophical works. He described a “religion of man,” which emphasized the divinity of humanity and the humanity of God.

Rabindranath Tagore was born on May 7, 1861, into a prosperous Bengali family in Calcutta, India. The fourteenth child and eighth son of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi, he grew up surrounded by the artistic and intellectual pursuits of his elders. Agricultural landholdings in East Bengal supported the family’s leisurely lifestyle, and their Calcutta mansion was a center for Bengalis who, like the Tagores, sought to integrate Western influences in literature, philosophy, arts, and sciences into their own culture. Young Tagore was a sensitive and interested child who, like his siblings, lived in awe of his father, a pillar of the Hindu reform group Brahmo Samaj. Cared for mainly by servants because of his mother’s ill health, he lived a relatively confined existence, watching the life of crowded Calcutta from the windows and courtyards of his protected home.

From an early age, Tagore’s literary talents were encouraged. Like the other Tagore children, he was thoroughly schooled in Bengali language and literature as a foundation for integrating culturally diverse influences, and, throughout his long career, Tagore composed most of his work in Bengali. In 1868, he was enrolled in the Oriental Seminary, where he quickly rebelled against formal education. Unhappy, transferring to different schools, Tagore nevertheless became appreciated as a budding poet during this time both in school and at home. In 1873, he was withdrawn from school to accompany his father on a tour of northern India and the Himalayas. This journey served as a rite of passage for the boy, who was deeply influenced by his father’s presence and by the grandeur of nature. It also provided his first opportunity to roam in the open countryside.

Returning to Calcutta, Tagore boycotted school and, from 1873 on, was educated at home by tutors and his brothers. In 1874, he began to recite publicly his poetry, and his first long poem was published in the monthly journal Bhārati . For the next four years, he gave recitations and published stories, essays, and experiments in drama. In 1878, Tagore went to England to prepare for a career in law at University College, London, but he withdrew in 1880 and returned to India. Tagore’s stay in England was not a happy one, but during those fourteen months, his intellectual horizons broadened as he read English literature with Henry Morley and became acquainted with European music and drama.

Life’s Work

Returning to India, Tagore resumed his writing amid the intellectual family life in Calcutta, especially influenced by his talented elder brothers, Jyotirindranath (writer, translator, playwright, and musician) and the scholarly Satyendranath. Tagore’s view of life at this time was melancholy; yet, with the metrical liberty of his poems in Sandhya Sangit (1882; evening songs), it became clear that he was already establishing new artistic and literary standards. Tagore then had a transcendental experience that abruptly changed his work. His gloomy introspection expanded in bliss and insight into the outer world, and Tagore once again perceived the innocent communion with nature that he had known as a child. This vision was reflected in Prabhat Sangit (1883; morning songs), and his new style was immediately popular. By his mid-twenties, Tagore had published devotional songs, poetry, drama, and literary criticism and was established as a lyric poet, primarily influenced by the early Vaishnava lyricists of Bengal and by the English Romantics. In 1883, he married Mrinalini Devi and continued to reflect his optimism in a burst of creativity that lasted for the next twenty years. During this period, he began to write nonsymbolic drama, and his verse Kari O Komal

(The entire page is 2,492 words.)

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