Tagore: The voice of a universal heritage

Shalini Nair

It was the summer of 1867. In the spacious courtyard of the opulent mansion where the Tagore household lived, a young boy of six was presiding over his imaginary ‘class’. He moved around with conviction and lectured his imaginary students in all seriousness. Three years later, the young boy is sitting in the garden, squeezing a bunch of flowers. His elder brother asks him what he was doing. “I am looking for the nectar of flowers, to write sweet poetry with,” the boy replies. The world should have known then. It soon did find out. The young boy, with imagination as fertile as the plains of Ganga and talent as vast as the earth itself, grew up to be a living institution whose legacy continues to enthrall generations over sixty years after his death. Rabindranath Tagore is a name synonymous with path-breaking literature, luminous art, evocative music and above all, a completely unorthodox view of life, mankind and the universe. Born as the youngest son of social reformer Debendranath Tagore, on May 7, 1861 in Calcutta, Tagore grew up to become the voice of India’s spiritual heritage. As the saying goes, ‘You are what your upbringing is’. Tagore’s genius was beautifully shaped by the atmosphere in which he was brought up. The prominent Tagore family of Calcutta was known for its socio-religious and cultural innovations during the 19th century Bengal Renaissance. The cultural involvement of his family played a major role in the formulation of Rabindranath’s priorities and thought process. The tremendous excitement and intellectual richness of his extended family, including thirteen brothers and sisters, involved in fields as varied as mathematics and music, theatre and law, permitted young Rabi to absorb knowledge through a dynamic, open model of education. That is why, despite never completing his formal education, he had an authority on so many subjects. He understood the importance of education and was convinced about the futility of strait-jacketed learning by rote. This is where the seeds of Santiniketan were sown. Apart from his cosmopolitan upbringing, Rabindranath had a further experience which shaped his ideas. In the 1890s, he was put in charge of the family’s rural properties in East Bengal. He therefore saw from close quarters the great divide between uneducated rural areas and the city elite. He became determined to do something for rural uplift. These influences are vividly discernable in all of Tagore’s work, whether as a poet, a novelist, a composer, an artist or a philosopher. Although Tagore was a master of all the literary genres, he was first and foremost a poet. It is perhaps his poetic sensibility and subtlety that twinkles in his other works too. Among his numerous volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890), Sonar Tari (1894) and of course, the much known Geetanjali (1912), which made him Asia’s first Nobel Laureate in 1913. Tagore wrote 15 plays, 90 short stories, 11 novels, 13 volumes of essays, prepared Bengali textbooks and composed over 2000 songs. He was Knighted by the British in 1917 but returned the title two years later in protest against the ghastly ‘Jallianwala Bagh’ massacre by General Dyer. He always supported the Indian National Movement in his own non-sentimental visionary way. The father of India, Mahatma Gandhi, was his devoted friend. If the world was mesmerized by Tagore the writer, then it was no less charmed by Tagore the painter. The artist in Rabindranath surfaced much later, in the 1920s. He transformed his lack of formal training in art into an advantage and opened new horizons in the use of line and colour. His art did not conform to orthodox norms and he loved to explore the mysterious, primordial world through his landscapes using a great deal of violets, blues and greens. He wrote in the article ‘My Pictures’, ‘My pictures are there to express, not explain…they have nothing ulterior behind their own appearance.’ Much before he wielded the brush himself, Tagore had set up an art-wing, Kala Bhavan, at his innovative university Viswa Bharati, in Santiniketan, West Bengal. The institution also comprised Sriniketan, a centre for rural education, and an unorthodox school for children. The emphasis throughout was on encouraging new thought and expanding horizons. The non-conformist in Tagore shows up in his music as well. Despite being trained in Indian classical, he rebelled as a composer against its set parameters, and incorporated many variations, notably Bengali folk music, to give us what we now cherish as Rabindra Sangeet. As he himself put it, “The world speaks to me in colours, my soul answers in music.” It is hard to believe that one man could do so much - and so well at that. The fact is, all his diverse activities were inter-linked by the same effusive simplicity, egregious originality and a sense of innocent curiosity. That was the wonderful thing about all Tagore’s endeavours. Tagore breathed his last in Calcutta on August 7, 1941. Most of his work is preserved at Santiniketan and attracts hordes of admirers. They all come to look at the legacy of the man whose every move became a decisive landmark in the course of history.