Rabindranath
Tagore’s Nobel Prize has been in the news for the past few months, more
for the manner in which the medallion disappeared from the Vishwa Bharati
Museum at Shantiniketan. Much has been spoken about the loss of the medal
and the event has been politicized to great lengths. No doubt it is a
great loss for the country’s heritage, as much or maybe even more than the
loss of the Kohinoor Diamond or the Peacock Throne. But, an interesting
comment was offered on the subject by Dr. Amartya Sen. Sen, another Nobel
laureate, was bold enough to state that, if looked at in perspective, it
was still the loss of a material possession and not something as
horrifying as communal riots or deaths by starvation on account of abject
poverty. While the national channel, Doordarshan, reported Dr. Sen’s
comment, most of the media failed to pick up this angle.
With Tagore’s
143rd birth centenary being celebrated between the 7th and 9th of May, it
would be interesting to speculate on what Tagore himself might have
thought of the loss. Gurudev Rabindranath was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1913 and was its first Indian recipient. The masterpiece
that won him this recognition was the Gitanjali, a touching book of
verses that he penned in Bengali in 1910 after he lost his father, wife,
second daughter and youngest son. He later translated this work into
English, and the story goes that the Nobel Committee decided to go with
his own translation, since they did not have a Bengali translator on their
panel. William Butler Yeats, who wrote the introduction for the English
translation of the Gitanjali had this to say: I have carried the
manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in
railway stations, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I
have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved
me. These lyrics … display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all
my life long.
Tagore, who was brought up in an atmosphere of spirituality, was a
precocious child and started writing verse from the age of 13 years. For
the next 67 years, till his death in 1941, he had to his credit a
voluminous amount of writings comprising poems, dramas, novels, short
stories, songs, discussions and essays, all of which flowed effortlessly
from his thoughts on to paper. It is very difficult to put Rabindranath in
a particular category, as he was a multi-faceted personality. He composed
the music for his own songs (drawing inspiration from sources as varied as
Western classical and Indian Carnatic), sang them, painted, evolved his
own language style and wrote lyrical letters and essays, besides being a
genius as a poet, mystic, philosopher, humorist, novelist and dramatist.
Tagore was one of the pioneers of the Indian Renaissance and used his
creativity and talent for half a century to give a direction to the
political and spiritual revival of India.
Tagore’s religious beliefs were shaped by the Upanishadic
philosophy that he imbibed from his father, Maharishi Devendranath, who
was one of the early leaders of the Brahmo Samaj. Like Raja Ram Mohan Roy,
the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, Tagore’s ideals encompassed a blend of
Western science and practical efficiency, along with the spiritual legacy
of the East. His philosophy was one of Personal Idealism, which
subscribes to the belief that the human mind at its highest is the best
example of experienced reality, and this idealism was manifest in all of
Tagore’s creative output. Tagore explains this best in The Religion of
Man when he speaks about the personal feeling that a man has for his
son as being an ultimate truth - the truth of relationship, the truth
of a harmony in the Universe, the fundamental principle of creation.
Parallels have been drawn between the metaphysical nature of Tagore’s
poetry to that of poets like John Donne and Herbert, but while they were
narrowed by a Christian and often theological approach, Tagore’s work was
of a universal nature in true Vedantic tradition. Tagore’s poetry could
well be compared to some of England’s best poets, though he may not have
achieved their degree of worldwide recognition. Tagore is known to have
covered all aspects of human life and emotions in his writings, and there
are those who firmly believe that he would have surpassed the best of
Western dramatists, poets and writers, had he been born in the West and
written in the language of the West.
Tagore was intensely preoccupied with world peace and the brotherhood of
man. He was deeply distressed by the I World War and anxious about the
looming war clouds prior to the Second. He expressed the feeling that
while countries had been brought closer by science, this coming together
had not always been of a sympathetic nature. He lamented that in addition
to creating objects that men fought over, science and technology had also
led to the creation of devastating weapons that give rise to war and
destruction. In the Religion of Man he wrote: The primitive
barbarity of limitless suspicion and mutual jealousy fill the world’s
atmosphere today, the barbarity of the aggressive individualism of
nations, pitiless in its greed, unashamed of its boastful brutality.
About the loss of his Nobel medallion (which the Nobel Committee has
offered to duplicate), Gurudev Rabindranath might well have said as he did
in his Gitanjali in anticipation of death: From now, I leave off all
petty decorations. Lord of my heart, no more shall there be for me waiting
in corners, no more coyness and sweetness of demeanour. Thou hast given me
thy sword for adornment. No more doll decorations for me! This is
certainly understandable from a savant who returned his knighthood after
the Jalianwallah Bagh massacre. Tagore, if he lived in this day and time,
would rather have mourned the loss of humanism in Iraq, Gujarat, Palestine
and elsewhere in the world. His vision was for a world that has not
been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls whilst his
prayer was for a heaven of freedom into which his country might
awake.
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Rabindranath
Tagore’s Nobel Prize has been in the news for the past few months, more
for the manner in which the medallion disappeared from the Vishwa Bharati
Museum at Shantiniketan. Much has been spoken about the loss of the medal
and the event has been politicized to great lengths. No doubt it is a
great loss for the country’s heritage, as much or maybe even more than the
loss of the Kohinoor Diamond or the Peacock Throne. But, an interesting
comment was offered on the subject by Dr. Amartya Sen. Sen, another Nobel
laureate, was bold enough to state that, if looked at in perspective, it
was still the loss of a material possession and not something as
horrifying as communal riots or deaths by starvation on account of abject
poverty. While the national channel, Doordarshan, reported Dr. Sen’s
comment, most of the media failed to pick up this angle. 