TAGORE, RABINDRANATH (1861–1941)

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.

The above poem from Tagore’s Gitanjali collection (1913) in several ways epitomizes his thought. The paramount importance for people to ‘live and reason in freedom’ (Sen 1997:57); the importance of openness, as opposed to a world ‘broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls’—be the walls national, colonial, religious, cultural; the importance of rationality and the need for reason to be left to do its work free from the paralysing effects of ‘dead habit’; and the evocation of a heavenly Father, indicative of his (far from easily classifiable, yet strong) religiosity. Finally, all these ideas are evoked in the form of a poem: reminding us that Tagore served many genres. He published some 200 books, including poetry, songs, plays, short stories, novels, and essays, and his letters were to some of the greatest figures of his time as well as to less eponymous recipients. He was also a quite idiosyncratic and talented painter.

He came from a very wealthy and influential Bengali family. His grandfather, Dwarkanath (1794–1846), was a successful businessman as well as a generous philanthropist. Rabindranath seems to have rejected his legacy, probably due to his business-mindedness and worldliness (Dutta and Robinson 1997:8–9). In this, Rabindfanath was closer to his father, Debendranath (1817–1905), who had no interest in the family firm and occupied himself instead with a spiritual and religious search for true Hinduism. He rejected many contemporary Hindu practices (like what he saw as idolatry and the practice of suttee) and joined a reformist religious group, the Brahmo Samaj. In his footsteps, his youngest son, Rabindranath, was deeply religious, yet his beliefs were quite unorthodox and nondenominational.

In 1901, Rabindranath founded a school, Santiniketan (Abode of Peace). He used innovative educational methods that seem to have been particularly appreciated by those

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who were exposed to them. His influence from there on generations of Indian elites can hardly be overestimated. He is probably the only person ever to have created the national anthems of two different nations: India after independence chose his ‘Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka’; and Muslim Bangladesh has also chosen one of his songs (‘Amar Sonar Bangla’) to be its national anthem. This is only fair, given how conspicuously nonsectarian and syncretic Tagore showed himself throughout his life, acknowledging and celebrating all the diverse traditions that made up India’s rich inheritance, including, besides Hindu tradition, the Muslim and the English.

For some time in the early twentieth century Tagore received astonishing acclaim in Europe and the USA. Characteristically, his selection of poetry Gitanjali, published in English translation in March 1913, ended up being reprinted ten times by November that same year, when the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Tagore for that book was announced. W.B.Yeats, Ezra Pound, Romain Rolland and many other major figures were among his staunchest admirers in the West. He was also translated into Russian by no less than Anna Akhmatova.

He was the first person to call his great contemporary, MOHANDAS GANDHI, ‘Mahatma’ (Great Soul), generously acknowledging Gandhi’s contributions to India, despite their many and major differences on subjects such as nationalism/ patriotism (with Tagore being critical and suspicious of nationalism), the advisability or otherwise of cultural cross-fertilization and interchanges (with Tagore celebrating and recommending it as long as it did not do away with the indigenous stem on which the foreign influences would be engrafted), the role of rationality (Tagore defending reasoning valiantly against the pitfalls of traditionalism), the importance of science (Tagore being in favour, Gandhi at best sceptical), the significance and presuppositions of economic and social development (with Tagore showing himself a staunch realist about the necessity for India to become powerful through economic and social development in order for her to be able to emancipate herself and interact with the English and the rest of the world on equal terms) (Sen 1997).

His position on British colonialism and the Raj is subtle and often misunderstood. He was very critical of the British administration of India, but, at the same time, he was always at pains ‘to dissociate his criticism of the Raj from any denigration of British—or Western—people or culture…unlike Gandhi, Tagore could not, even in jest, be dismissive of Western civilization’ (Sen 1997:60). Tagore believed that there were some extremely valuable things about British culture and influences, and that it was fortunate for his countrymen that they were able to access them in English. At the same time he was against aping the West and rejecting India’s own heritage. He had confidence in Indian culture and believed that it could only be enriched by contact with the West as well as other cultures. It is not surprising therefore that Tagore was all his life deeply suspicious of nationalism (Berlin 1997; Sen 1997). In his novel The Home and the World

he offers a subtle allegory about the impasses of narrow, exclusive patriotism (See Nussbaum 1996:3–4).

Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 642

TAGORE, RABINDRANATH (1861–1941)