rabindra nath tagore revere reverse

8/3/2019 Rabindra Nath Tagore Revere Reverse

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Tagore-Revere & Reverse

Vidyut Chakraborty

Many Indians do not evaluate in what extent a true Indian he was,the ideologues of internationalism did not even care to assess how heextends himself to internationality. Around the world his 150th birthanniversary was celebrated in 2011, now ahead is 2013, the centenary offirst Nobel Prize in Asia is expected to be celebrated with much fan andfare. The next hundred years may his presence be alive. He shapedBengali in his own hand and presented its worth to the world. Bengalisranks the fifth in international language community.

With German intellectuals in 1926

A simple man, modest lifestyle , strong grip over his pen, feet on earth, eyes in space,

at the old age fit to be called young, one who can foresee his verses (1400 B.S.) to

be read after a century- every Bengali know him, respect him, worship him. 250

million of Bengali speaking persons (mainly inhabitants of entire Tripura and

West Bengal partly Assam and Orissa and entire Bangladesh), they are born with

Rabindra Sangeet (songs) and dies with it. There is not a single Bengali who can

not memorize either a poem or a song of Rabindranath.

My intention is to analyze and synthesize this great man in the context of

international acceptance.

Santiniketan (the Abode of Peace) was the brain child of Rabindranath Tagore (in

Bengali it is Thakur). It is an admixture of Ancient Nalanda and Taxila and a bit of


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wrongful uses toward destruction of the world peace. The contemporary scientist

Albert Einstein could share his view because he was a modern man with scientific

attitude. He tried to his best to build up an Asian Community binding the

mainstream culture of China Japan and India. His teachings can be treated as

preaching and not mere writing something for fame only. Many scholars of his time

failed to understand him and many did not. Going ahead he welcomed an union of

East and West, which was to the contrary of Joseph Rudyard Kiplings view East is

east, and West is west, and never the twain shall meet (The Ballad of East and

West).D H Lawrence, at first look to his book, wrote to Otoline Morel in 1916- Miss

Volkhovsky has lent me Tagore.I dont think, so much of the translations-they have

some beauty. I think, in this novel of mine, is some of the same sort of feeling as in

Tagore. He is very popular too, isnt he? That is hard to understand. Actually WBYeats wrote a forward ofGitanjali(Offerings of Songs) and helped Tagore a lot.

Yeats was happy up to the Tagores biography written with weak translation by

Edward Thompson. As Tagore advanced further with other writings and earned fame

amongst the world scholars, Yeats commented caustic against him. Was there any

confusion in Yeats to count a poet as a philosopher or was it his jealous ego? The

criticism was in such a length that Sir Valentine Chirol, a columnist of Guardian

remarked that Gitanjaliwas actually written by WB Yeats. Then DH Lawrence

commented-.this fraud of looking up to the East-this wretched worship of Tagore

attitude-is disgusting. Russian author Vladimir Nabokov lectured saying why

should we continue to mislead students by teaching them that Mann, Galsworthy,

Faulkner, Tagore and Satre are great craftsman? Germany saluted Tagore as well as

went against him too. Riner Maria Rike. Franz Kafka,ad nauseam, named him

Gangeshoferthe worthless writer.

The major debate ran in India was based on the comments of a Stalinist German

Marxist George Lukas who went arrogant on reading Tagores GhareBaire(Home

and the world).In this story book(1915) Rabindranath Tagore unmasked the ugly

reality of politics in the name of nationalism in India, perhaps that is the real face of

nationalism all over the world, which enraged Lukas as because he


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treated the negativity of nationalism as revisionism. Lukas remarked-It is difficult to

assess wisdom in itself in the vacuum of pure theory (and within the walls of an

elegant salon).But it will reveal itself the moment that it comes out with the claim to

act as mens guide.Mr. Tagore has come out with that claim in this novel. As we

noted, his wisdom was put at the intellectual service of the British police. He was

annoyed with the impression of the great man whom German intellectuals have

treated like a prophet. (Die rote Fahne,1922,Berlin Periodical). Nobel Laureate

economist Dr. Amartya Sen, a student of Santiniketan, observed in hisTagore and

his India to a great extent this

Tagore was the Wests 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.What made these intellectuals flare up against Rabindranath! The Indian

Philosophy, the racialism, the nativity, popularity among the whites, or

misconception about Bengal and as a whole India? The answer is each and every one

factor may probably be right. Added to, there was inappropriate translation from

Bengali. He criticized his biographers translation saying where the Bengali language

is concerned, if he(Edward Thompson) forgets that this language is mine, that much

of it I have shaped with my own hands, then the only reason for it I can think of is

that he is an Englishman and I a Bengali..on the other hand there is his utterly

shallow acquaintance with our language, and on the other his profound contempt for

our country.( Michael Collins in Sept14,2011-Misrepresentation of Rabindranath).

Christianity was so dominating that it did not allow a non-Christian or anti Christian

to reign over its cultural hegemony. Many Christian writers had to face adversity for

thinking aloud about their humanitarian concept above the religion. A few war

loving Marxist theoreticians could not affirm theirselves as the peace making force of

the world, perhaps they were more Stalinist than Stalin. The crash in capital market

(The Great Depression of 1929) found the war as a solution which gave birth of

fascism, and in his Crisis of Civilization Rabindranath addressed fascism a menace

to the civilization. There sprang forth the uprising of social democrats who also

advocated socialism as well as nationalism. This dichotomy and pretension turned


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the behavior of nationalist and pseudo socialist into a fanatic fascist. Mussolini,

Hitler, Tojo, Franco were the rulers who preached either nationalism or socialism.

Later every one of them turned against socialism and democracy.Tagore was prima

facie misled by the pet authors of the rulers of Italy Germany and Japan, but did not

take much time for disillusion. He praised the Bolshevik Russia, commented

adverse against Japans aggression on China, expressed condemnation of the

massacre of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy, on first visit to Italy he praised a lot but

knowing the reality from Charles Andrews he withdrew. He wrote to Noguchi

refusing support to Japans invasion on China-You claim that Japans situation is

unique, forgetting that military situations are always unique, and that pious war-

lords, convinced of peculiarly individual justification for their atrocities have never

failed to arrange for special alliances with divinity fir annihilation and torture on alarge scale.

Regarding religion he was humanist even after devotion to Brahmo Samaj.There was

a socio-religious upheaval in India to make it a secular nation, Ramakrishna

Paramhansadev preached union of all religions, Swami Vivekananda followed his

doctrine of religious humanism,Devendranath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen

started with Brahmo discipline of pragmatism and later switched over to one

Brahmanism and another to Chaitanyadevas Vaishnabism, Swami Dayanandas

Arya Samaj came forward to reform of the Indian society. Ram Mohan Roy and

Dwarka Nath Tagore, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay not only reformed Bengal with western touch,

but the entire India. The politicians like Jawaharlal Nehru, an atheist, believed in

casteless, religion less, socialist nation, Karamchand Gandhi believed in upgrading

backward classes and coexistence of Hindus (non-Islamic) and Muslims (Islamic),

and so many reforms in political economy and sociological economy were in the

whirlwind in Indian context which built a composition that was universality of

humanism which Tagore tried to justify in his lecture and writing. He let out his

philosophy at the time when the international community went mad on war and

toward fascism to rid of the crash and a newer idea (Leninism) has taken its root in

Russia. Indian intellects were overshadowed with the prevalent Monarchy,


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Feudalism, Caste Hatred and Class-Consciousness; they did not pay heed to the

worlds economic debacle that was replenished by Indian produces and products and

minerals siphoned at cheaper cost of labour and wages. To notice the cumulative

effect of economic wretchedness of Bengal only. one can go back to 1853 and can

imagine the disastrous phenomenon after 1900 and then one should consider the

efficacy of various types of socio-political movements in India. During the depression

of 1830-1840, Bengal saw an industrious genius; he was credited with introduction

of steam engine technology and modern corporate forms in India. He was

Rabindranath Tagores grandfather, the founder of Tagore legacy in Bengal; he had

business interests in coal mining, tea gardens, insurance companies, banking, joint

stock companies, silk, indigo, newspapers, landed estates and ocean going ships. In

his corporate vision he sought interracial cooperation in business. He also dreamedof an industrialized India to attain a status of equal partner in Commonwealth of

Nations.

Karl Marx wrote in 1853, From 1818 to 1836 the export of twist from Great Britain to Indiarose in the proportion of 1 to 5,200. In 1824 the export of British muslins to India hardlyamounted to 1,000,000 yards, while in 1837 it surpassed 64,000,000 of yards. But at thesame time the population of Dacca decreased from 150,000 inhabitants to 20,000. Thisdecline of Indian towns celebrated for their fabrics was by no means the worst consequence.British steam and science uprooted, over the whole surface of Hindostan, the union betweenagriculture and manufacturing industry."[Source: MECW Volume 12, p. 125; Written: June10, 1853; First published: in the New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853].

Rabindranath was neither a politician nor an economist nor a religious messiah; he

was a saviour of humanity with his mighty pen in hand. Universal humanism was the

rationale that attracted so many scholars of the world to the side of Tagore.But the

gospel of Peace failed flat in the war zone. He wrote that the female serpents were

exhaling venom all around where the polite tune of peace would seem to be failed

and farce(Naginira charidike felitechhe bisakto niswas santir lolit bani sonaibe

byartho porihas).

In 1920 there was criticism on Tagore in Oxford, reported Yeats, and the Oxford

University on August 7, 1940, offered him Honorary D.Litt. although he refused

British honour (Knighthood) in 1919 protesting against the Jalianwala Bag massacre.

The very few did it. He had the guts to say in presence of Franklin Roosevelt, the


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then governor of New York - The age belongs to the West and humanity must be

grateful to you for your science. But you have exploited those who are helpless and

humiliated those who are unfortunate with this gift. A great portion of the world

suffers from your civilization. (Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson-Rabindranath

Tagore an anthology/p300-331)

In 1952, Nobel Laureate Albert Schweitzer, remarked-This completely noble and

harmonious thinker (Tagore, the Goethe of India,) belongs not only to his people

but to humanity. In 1961, American Nobel Laureate, Pearl Buck, wrote to Dr. Radha

krishnan-In a very real sense, he was a world poet.

The Guardians Ian Jack in May7,2011, wrote a column - ..but Tagores neglect is

extraordinaryShakespeare and Dickens dont come into picture; the popularity

of Burns in Scotland 100 years ago may be his nearest equivalent in Britain. Tagoreis indebted to Burns to take up the Scottish tunes from AULD LANG SYNE, FLOW

GENTLY AND SWEET AFTON etc.

In fact there was not a single poet in the world whose contribution to chant thenational anthem of four nations-India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Prof. Mohammed A.Quayum of Malaysian Islamic University observed-

Tagore believed in interactive, dialogic world, given to a deep sense of sympathy,

generosity and mutuality, and in which nations would not be parochial, xenophobic

and centripetal, or guided by mere selfishness.( Imagining One World).

Rabindranath Tagore had dreamt of the free universe, in his words :

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 words come from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of

dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.


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rabindra nath tagore revere reverse

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