Rabindranath Tagore (Critical Lives)

246 Pages·2019·6.014 MB·English

by  Bashabi Fraser

Rabindranath Tagore
Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book
explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works.
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Simone de Beauvoir Ursula Tidd Pierre Loti Richard M. Berrong
Samuel Beckett Andrew Gibson Jean-François Lyotard Kiff Bamford
Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie René Magritte Patricia Allmer
John Berger Andy Merrifield Stéphane Mallarmé Roger Pearson
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Joseph Beuys Claudia Mesch Gabriel García Márquez Stephen M. Hart
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Constantin Brancusi Sanda Miller Herman Melville Kevin J. Hayes
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Charles Bukowski David Stephen Calonne Yukio Mishima Damian Flanagan
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Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird Arnold Schoenberg Mark Berry
Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis
Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony Dmitry Shostakovich Pauline Fairclough
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Gustave Flaubert Anne Green Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell
Michel Foucault David Macey Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel
Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen Stendhal Francesco Manzini
Jean Genet Stephen Barber Igor Stravinsky Jonathan Cross
Allen Ginsberg Steve Finbow Rabindranath Tagore Bashabi Fraser
Günter Grass Julian Preece Pyotr Tchaikovsky Philip Ross Bullock
Ernest Hemingway Verna Kale Leon Trotsky Paul Le Blanc
Victor Hugo Bradley Stephens Mark Twain Kevin J. Hayes
Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth Richard Wagner Raymond Furness
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Carl Jung Paul Bishop Tennessee Williams Paul Ibell
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Rabindranath Tagore
Bashabi Fraser
reaktion books
My father, Bimalendu Bhattacharya
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Indra Nath Choudhuri
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
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First published 2019
Copyright © Bashabi Fraser 2019
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publishers
Exclusively distributed in India by Speaking Tiger
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78914 149 8
Contents
Introduction 7
1 The Tagores of Jorasanko 16
2 Growing Up in the Tagore Household 35
3 English Interlude 51
4 Loss and the Journey to the Banks of the Padma 67
5 The Abode of Peace 100
6 From Shantiniketan to the World Stage 117
7 The Renunciation of Knighthood 136
8 Where the World Meets in a Nest 145
9 ‘The Call of Truth’ and ‘The Great Sentinel’ 160
10 Waves of Nationalism and The Religion of Man 176
11 Tagore’s Modernity 192
12 The Legacy: At Home and in the World 207

References 219
Select Bibliography 237
Acknowledgements 242
Photo Acknowledgements 245
Rabindranath Tagore, c. 1916.
Introduction
Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-Westerner to win
the Nobel Prize in Literature, when he was awarded the prize in
November 1913. He was immediately catapulted onto the world
stage, much to his and the world’s surprise. In a lecture in 2014
on the artistic output of Tagore, Mijarul M. Quayes said that by
conferring the Nobel Prize on Tagore, the Prize was transformed
from a European award to an international one.1 Though there is
a general belief that Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize on the
basis of Gitanjali (1912, Song Offerings), the poet’s own poetic prose
translations of 103 songs, with an ecstatic introduction by W. B.
Yeats, this study notes that the Nobel Library had several other
works by Tagore and had a full account of his illustrious family, his
multifaceted talents and his pioneering work in education and rural
uplift (which are mentioned in the Nobel citation). In 1913 Tagore
was already a household word in his native Bengal for his writing,
and was well known for his early association with the Swadeshi
movement – a nationalist struggle in the early twentieth century
promoting home-grown industries and goods – his public lectures,
his educational project at Shantiniketan and as a remarkably
talented son of the highly respected Tagore family. With the Nobel
Prize, Tagore became a global figure and was recognized as a
bilingual writer, as he took to writing several of his essays and
lectures in English while continuing his creative output in Bengali.
He soon became internationally known as, simply, the Poet. He
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continued writing and working on his various projects right up
to his death in 1941. No other poet has had his songs adopted as
national anthems of two countries (India and Bangladesh) and
inspired a third one (in Sri Lanka).
Tagore’s body of work remains staggering, as he wrote not only
poetry, but novels, short fiction, plays, essays, dance dramas, lyrics,
lectures, primers, innumerable letters, science pamphlets and
sermons. He was a lyricist, a composer, a critic, a translator, an
artist, a historian, a philosopher and an environmentalist. He was
also an educationist who established a school, an international
university, Visva-Bharati at Shantiniketan, a rural reconstruction
centre at Sriniketan and cooperatives on his estates, in what is a
remarkably comprehensive programme of creative achievement.2
In order to understand Tagore’s creativity and vast output, he
needs to be placed against his familial background. The Tagore
family was exceptional not only because of its sociocultural
dominance and its economic contribution to Bengal, but because of
the multiple talents of its various members through the generations,
who provided the rich cultural atmosphere that marked Tagore’s
early years at his family home at Jorasanko, north Calcutta.
Jorasanko was a veritable hive of creativity and experiment, where
tradition and modernity, Eastern and Western modes of thought,
culture and art forms, were cultivated and transfused at the time of
the Bengal Renaissance, in which the Tagore family played a leading
role. The close family relations who nurtured and encouraged
Rabindranath in diverse spheres and at different periods of his life,
whose impetus and influence shaped and facilitated his creativity,
become crucial to an engagement with the times and the man
himself: his father, Maharshi Debendranath; his fifth brother, the
dynamic Jyotirindranath, and his wife, Rabindranath’s sister-in-law,
Kadambari, who was his muse and literary critic; his wife and
companion Mrinalini; his artistic niece, Indira Devi; and his
agriculturist and environmentalist son Rathindranath – all
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A contemporary image of Jorasanko Thakurbari.
were important to Rabindranath Tagore’s life. The Tagore family’s
significant socio-political role as India moved from the position
of a subservient nation to one rediscovering, reviving and reaffirming
its heritage becomes the backdrop in an assessment of Tagore’s
unswerving belief in freedom at all levels, emotional, political and
creative.
This inherent sense of freedom can be traced back to the socio-
religious ostracism the family suffered as Pirali Brahmins. It is
believed that their ancestors had inadvertently compromised their
caste status, and thus fallen from grace, during an unfortunate
incident when they were guests in a Muslim house. The resulting
social aspersion accounts for the entrepreneurial diversions made
by the Tagore family, as they sought their fortunes and an anchor
beyond their native place, beyond constricting social boundaries.
Tagore’s questioning of orthodoxy and authoritarianism, both
patriarchal and political; his attacks on superstitious beliefs, social
evils and divisions; and his transformation of his educational
institution from a Bramhacharya institution to a modern one,
marked by its secular curriculum and activity, can be seen as an
inevitable result of his upbringing and environment.3
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