Rabindranath Tagore : A Tribute to the Polymath on his Jayanthi.

Today, the 7th May, 2020, besides being Budha Poornima - the birth day of Bhagwan Gautam Buddha -  also happens to be the birth anniversary of one of the greatest sons of India - Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the first non European and also the first nonwhite to be conferred with the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature (1913). Rabindranath Tagore was a creative genius and a polymath; a versatile poet, a par excellence short story writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, artist, rationalist, as well as a talented painter, whose pictures with their mixture of representation and abstraction began to manifest late into his career. Rabindranath Tagore (Thakur) was born on 7th May, 1861, in a very rich Brahmin family to Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi in the famous Jorasanko mansion, the ancestral home of the Tagore family in Kolkata (Calcutta). He was the youngest sibling in his family. Tagore holds a unique distinction that two of his poems have been befittingly chosen as the national anthems of India and Bangladesh - “Jana Gana Mana” & “Amar Sonar Bangla” respectively, which is an extraordinary achievement that any poet can ever aspire for. Tagore used colloquial language, deviating from well established Sanskrit influenced Bengali, to reshape Bengali literature and music by introducing new prose and verse forms that could connect easily with the masses. The polymath Tagore’s contributions in the field of art, literature, playwright etc are well known all across the country and so also internationally but his extraordinary painting skills, which he acquired at the age of 67, are not much known beyond the boundaries of Bengal.

Therefore, when an opportunity came calling to commemorate Rabindranath Tagore’s sesquicentennial year of birth, the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, commissioned a monumental paintings exhibition: “The Last Harvest : Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore”, which was curated by Prof R Sivakumar, Shantiniketan with his insightful thoughts and understanding of the Poet painter - Tagore. This exhibition, of the original paintings of Tagore, was organised in nine major museums across three continents and on its return to India, it was presented in all the three National Galleries of Modern Art in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and so also in Bhopal and Hyderabad. I was privileged to be the Director of NGMA, Mumbai when this exhibition travelled to Mumbai during the period from April to June 2013. The exhibition was a treat for the art connoisseurs of the city of Mumbai and all through the exhibition period a series of outreach programs and activities were organised to connect Tagore and his creative endeavours with the people of Mumbai, courtesy Godrej Culture Lab and various other art and culture organisations in Mumbai, which made the exhibition all the more special.

Tagore lived a creative life for eight decades until his passing away at the age of 80 plus years, on 7th August, 1941 at his ancestral home in Calcutta (now Kolkata). His mortal remains may have been confined to the holy fire in the ritualistic Hindu cremation traditions and the fire may have consumed his physical body, but then he has left behind - for the world and India - a legacy and heritage that will remain etched in golden letters in the annals of history, which no fire or any other force can obliterate. He lived an extraordinary creative life, beginning his last aspects of creations - the paintings -  in his late sixties. Tagore has left behind a rich heritage of words, music, poetry, paintings, ideas and ideals and his legacy continues to have that power to move us even today and for eternity. On learning about Tagore’s death, Nehru, who was in Jail, wrote;  “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”.

Tagore is a national figure in India, whose stature comes very close to the Mahatma - the title given by Tagore, to the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi ji, for generations to come, will continue to be revered and considered as an embodiment of our country’s freedom struggle and for very strongly providing that extraordinary leadership for political action. Tagore on the other hand being a creative poet, playwright, novelist, musician, theorist, educationist and painter, all rolled into one, personified the cultural ethos of India with roots in an age-old heritage of this great nation of ours. Even today, and for eons to come, one cannot think of Bengali culture without Tagore being central to it. Tagore’s name and fame and his contributions to the field of literature, art and culture spread across the world. French Nobelist, Romain Rolland (1915, Literature), was fascinated both by Gandhi and Tagore. On completion of his book on Gandhi he wrote to one of the Indian academic ‘ I have finished my book on Gandhi, in which I pay tribute to your two great river-like souls, overflowing with the divine spirit - Tagore and Gandhi’. Tagore greatly admired Gandhi but he had many disagreements with him on a variety of subjects, particularly on the role of rationality and of science, and the nature of economic and social development. Tagore always encouraged room for reasoning, and for a less traditionalist view, and more respect for science and for objectivity, generally.

The clash between Gandhi and Tagore, on their poles apart attitude towards science and rationality, is evidenced in their outlook towards a tragic natural disaster, which struck India in 1934. Bihar was struck by a devastating earthquake in January 1934 and it killed thousands of people. During this period Gandhi ji had immersed himself in the fight against the age old Indian traditions of untouchability, which was plaguing our country. Unfortunately, when the earthquake tragedy struck Bihar, Gandhi ji, in an unscientific and irrational manner, connected this natural disaster with the purported sins of practising untouchability by Indians and that the earthquake was a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins of untouchability. He said “for me there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the untouchability campaign.” Rabindranath Tagore was also a great advocate of equality who too abhorred the irrational practise of untouchability and had joined hands with Gandhi in the movements against it. However, Tagore protested against Gandhi ji on his irrational interpretation of a natural calamity as a sin that was responsible for the suffering and death of so many innocent people, including children. He outrightly rejected Gandhi ji’s unscientific linkage of earthquake with human ethical failures. 

Down south there was another legendary engineer, Sir M Visvesvaraya, who was about the age of Tagore and his ideas on rationality and science and technology resembled Tagore. Sir MV had similar differences with Gandhi ji as that of Tagore on subjects like rationality, science and technology and so also on the concept and notion of economic development of the country. The irony is that there is not much that could find from archive on the personal connection between Sir MV and Tagore. However, in the year 1928 records suggest that Tagore stayed for three weeks in Bangalore, at the majestic colonial era building Balabrooie, on Palace Road. It was during his three weeks recuperating stay that Tagore wrote his famed Shesher Kobita and also some part of Yogayog. This building, which is a treasure trove of stories from Bengaluru's colonial past, was once home to its builder, Lord Mark Cubbon, Sir M. Visvesvaraiah and other illustrious stalwarts. It was also the residence of former Chief Ministers S.Nijalingappa and D. Devaraj Urs. Unfortunately over time this building has come to be known as a haunted place since the politicians (Chief Ministers) irrationally fear to stay in this building, strongly believing that it is haunted and anyone who stays in the building would quickly lose power. Sir MV who was just about a year senior to Tagore, loved reading Tagore and one of his favourite book was ‘Stray Birds’,  which was penned by Tagore. It provides a connect between nature, man and his environment as seen by a person sitting by a window where stray birds are seen singing and flying. The book also contained one-line poems, which are often just an image or the distillation of a thought, which stays with the reader in his mind and does not fly away as easily as the birds. Tagore was knighted in 1915, but gave up his knighthood after the massacre of demonstrators at the infamous Jallianwala bagh, in 1919. By then Tagore was beginning to be acclaimed globally. 

Tagore’s global recognition is evidenced in a book “The Golden Book of Tagore”, which was published as homage to Tagore, from India and the world, on the occasion of Tagore’s 70th birth anniversary, in 1930. This book is a testimony to the love and reverence that the intellectuals of the world bore for Tagore. The book has been sponsored by the leading intellectuals of the world such as Gandhi, Albert Einstein, and Kostes Palamas, and was brought out on the suggestion of French writer Romain Rolland. The book indicates how highly regarded Tagore was in India and around the world. The great Albert Einstein, who was one of the sponsors of the book, met Rabindranath Tagore in the same year in Berlin on July 14, 1930. This historic meeting between the two hogged the headlines ‘as the coming together of science and spirituality’. It was hailed as one of the most intellectually stimulating conversations in the annals of history. Their conversation, which mostly centred around science and the age old Indian traditions of spirituality has been chronicled in a book ; ‘Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore”  by David L. Gosling. 

Helen Keller, an American political activist and a deaf and blind author known around the world as a symbol of courage in the face of overwhelming odds, had this to say about Tagore ; “ Sitting beside Rabindranath Tagore and sharing his thoughts is like spending one's days beside the Sacred River, drinking deep of honeyed wisdom.” Tagore’s global recognition is also evidenced in the statements of several other international thinkers, writers and intellectuals. Russian author, Ms. Anna Akhmatova, who received the highest nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature, was also one of Tagore’s admirers and she translated his poems into Russian in the mid-1960s. She says “that mighty flow of poetry, which takes its strength from Hinduism as from the Ganges, and is called Rabindranath Tagore.” 

Tagore also had his influence on other thinkers of the world. His typical physical appearance – intellectual looking, handsome, bearded, dressed in non-Western clothes – to some extent may have helped him in being seen as a carrier of exotic wisdom. Yasunari Kawabata, first Japanese Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1968, treasured memories from his middle-school days of “this sage-like poet” - Tagore - and he goes on to add; ‘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’.

One of the greatest and an emotionally touching tribute to Tagore’s poetry comes from a World War I martyr, Wilfred Owen, who wrote some of the best British poetry on World War I. In November 1918 Wilfred was killed in action at an young age of 25, just one week before the Armistice. Susan Owen, the mother of Wilfred Owen, wrote a letter to Rabindranath Tagore in 1920, describing her last conversations, which she had with her son before her son left for the war, which would most unfortunately take his life. Susan wrote that her son said goodbye with those wonderful words of yours ‘When I go from hence, let this be my parting word”.  Among the remains of Wilfred, which were returned from the battle field to his mother, was a pocket notebook. She wrote to Tagore that her son’s pocket notebook contained  the writings of Tagore with his name written beneath those words”. This was a touching recognition and emotional tribute that Tagore had received from a very young World War I martyr, who himself was an outstanding poet. 

Tagore wrote most of his essays and poetry at the Shantiniketan (Abode of Peace), a small town, which grew around the school that Tagore had founded in Bengal in 1901. Tagore not only conceived an imaginative and innovative system of education at the Shantiniketan, but through his writings and his influence on students and teachers, he was able to use the school as a very strong base from which he could take a major part in India’s social, political, and cultural movements. Most of his essays covered subjects ranging from literature, politics, culture, social change, religious beliefs, philosophical analysis, international relations, and much else. Coincidentally the Cambridge University Press published Tagore’s ideas and reflections to the fore, which coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence (1997). This publication helped in examining what kind of leadership in thought and understanding, Tagore provided to his fellow citizens in the Indian subcontinent, in the first half of 20th century. 

Tagore’s recognition, particularly as a poet and also as a dramatist, essayist, short story writer, musician, humanist, philosopher and educationist, has been very well documented both nationally and internationally. However his paintings have not had the same impact as his other creative facets, especially among the common Indians and therefore the sesquicentennial exhibition of paintings of Tagore, which was organised at NGMA  Mumbai helped in creating awareness about the creativity of Tagore in paintings, which are now preserved as national treasures.

Tagore at the age of 67, to use his own words, "fell under the enchantment of lines" when he discovered that his hand was moving automatically across the pages of his manuscripts transforming the scratches and erasures into designs. For the next 12 years of his life he harnessed his new found love for painting and produced nearly 2,000 paintings. Although he used all kinds of paints and produced coloured chalk drawings, pastels, and later dry-points and etchings, Tagore's preferred medium was liquid colour. He often used ordinary fountain-pen ink and when this was not available; he crushed flower petals and used them as pigments. He rarely used a brush, instead he worked with a cloth soaked in colour, the back of a fountain-pen, his thumb, a stick or, more often, a knife. His original paintings, which are now declared as a National Treasure, from different collectors and sources, primarily from  the collections of Shantiniketan and NGMA Delhi, were used in the Last Harvest exhibition and these paintings illustrated that Tagore's art was peculiarly his own. 

Tagore, although took to painting very late into his career, did manage to organise some international exhibitions of his paintings, the first of which was held in 1930 in Paris. The same year a few of his  paintings were also shown in London, Berlin and New York. His first exhibition in India was organised in February, 1932 when 265 of his drawings, paintings and engravings were displayed to the public in Calcutta. A year after that (1933) Tagore held another exhibition in Bombay. In 1946, four of his paintings were included in an international exhibition of modern art organised by UNESCO in Paris. The UNESCO also featured an illustrated article on his works which figured in the issue of The UNESCO Courier, "Famous Authors as Artists", in August 1957.

Tagore said “My pictures are my versification in lines if by chance they are entitled to claim recognition, it must be primarily for some rhythmic significance of form which is ultimate, and not for any interpretation of an idea, or representation of a fact”. For him “painting was the language of the universe and that the world of sound is a tiny bubble in the silence of the infinite”. He further elucidates his love for painting by stating; “the Universe has its only language of gesture; it talks in the voice of pictures and dance”. He continues ‘every  object in this world proclaims in the dumb signal of lines and colors the fact that it is not a mere logical abstraction or a mere thing of use, but is unique in itself carries the miracle of its existence’.  In a picture the artist creates the language of undoubted reality, which every human being can see and interpret in his/her own ways, irrespective of the language, cast, creed, social structure that each one belongs to. For Tagore a piece of art has its own inner artistic significance.

Tagore, while speaking about his paintings, once said “People often ask me about the meaning of my pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is for them to express and not to explain. They have nothing ulterior behind their own appearance for the thoughts to explore and words to describe and if that appearance carries its ultimate worth then they remain, otherwise they are rejected and forgotten even though they may have some scientific truth or ethical justification”.

His concepts of education even today has great relevance and his dream for empowering the rural India continues to remain a challenge for all of us today. Tagore held that education must allow the child to develop in the context of nature. He believed that “the sweep of the earth and the expanse of the sky, the quietness of the evening and the promise of the morning, the beauty of the stars and the radiance of the sun must permeate the personality of the child”. From his own experience Tagore learnt that education divorced from social life and cultural traditions, and, more important still, bereft of contacts with nature became for the child an imposition and a burden. These very facts are effectively used by the science centres in creating interest in science among the students. 

For Tagore, art had its place along with mathematics and science. He believed, and he earnestly tried to carry out his beliefs in his school, that all aspects of the child's personality must develop harmoniously. He was one of the earliest among modern educational thinkers to emphasize activity as an essential principle of education. Education, for Tagore, was the foundation of society; that the teachers of today are the arbiters of the destiny of society of tomorrow and the day after.

Tagore worked tirelessly to empower his people in the villages. He believed that able men will stay in villages only when village life is reconstructed to provide educational facilities, health services, improved communications and adequate and wholesome water supply. Able men and women will stay in the villages only if there are opportunities for the fullest development of their personality. What a prophetic vision it has turned out to be. The current Covid pandemic played out the dying need in India for implementing the vision of Tagore for the development of villages. Had this got the attention of government post the independence, perhaps the pain and anguish that we are now witnessing on the faces of the stranded labours in most metropolitan cities during the current lockdown due to the Covid Pandemic would have been largely reduced. Hopefully the lessons that we have learnt during the Covid pandemic will make policy makers to rethink on the prophetic vision of Tagore and aim to develop our villages and help in creating job opportunities for our village brethren.

There can never be an end when one starts writing about Tagore, and therefore I am ending this tribute to Tagore by wishing that May he continue to inspire us, from the heavenly abode that is now home to him.

Jai Hind. Jaya he Jaya he Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya he.