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Elective English—III

Notes nodir tire rohinu poºi/Jaha chhilo loe gêlo shonar tori—”all I had achieved was carried off on
the golden boat—only I was left behind.” Gitanjali is Tagore’s best-known collection
internationally, earning him his Nobel.
Tagore’s poetry has been set to music by composers: Arthur Shepherd’s triptych for soprano and
string quartet, Alexander Zemlinsky’s famous Lyric Symphony, Josef Bohuslav Foerster’s cycle
of love songs, Leoš Janáèek’s famous chorus “Potulný šílenec” (“The Wandering Madman”) for
soprano, tenor, baritone. There were also the male chorus—JW 4/43, which was inspired by
Tagore’s 1922 lecture in Czechoslovakia that Janáèek attended, and Garry Schyman’s “Praan”,
an adaptation of Tagore’s poem “Stream of Life” from Gitanjali. The latter was composed and
recorded with vocals by Palbasha Siddique to accompany Internet celebrity Matt Harding’s 2008
viral video. In 1917, his words were translated adeptly and set to music by Anglo-Dutch composer
Richard Hageman to produce a highly regarded art song: “Do Not Go, My Love”. The second
movement of Jonathan Harvey’s “One Evening” (1994) sets an excerpt beginning “As I was
watching the sunrise ...” from a letter of Tagore’s, this composer having previously chosen a text
by the poet for his piece “Song Offerings” (1985).

10.6 Politics

Tagore opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists, and these views were first
revealed in Manast, which was mostly composed in his twenties. Evidence produced during the
Hindu – German Conspiracy Trial and latter accounts affirm his awareness of the Ghadarites,
and stated that he sought the support of Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake and former
Premier Ôkuma Shigenobu. Yet he lampooned the Swadeshi movement; he rebuked it in
“The Cult of the Charka”, an acrid 1925 essay. He urged the masses to avoid victimology and
instead seek self-help and education, and he saw the presence of British administration as a
“political symptom of our social disease”. He maintained that, even for those at the extremes of
poverty, “there can be no question of blind revolution”; preferable to it was a “steady and
purposeful education”.

Such views enraged many. He escaped assassination—and only narrowly—by Indian expatriates
during his stay in a San Francisco hotel in late 1916; the plot failed when his would-be assassins
fell into argument. Yet Tagore wrote songs lionising the Indian independence movement Two
of Tagore’s more politically charged compositions, “Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo” (“Where the
Mind is Without Fear”) and “Ekla Chalo Re” (“If They Answer Not to Thy Call, Walk Alone”),
gained mass appeal, with the latter favoured by Gandhi. Though somewhat critical of Gandhian
activism, Tagore played a major role in resolving a Gandhi – Ambedkar dispute involving
separate electorates for untouchables, thereby mooting at least one of Gandhi’s fasts
“unto death”.
10.7 Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati

Tagore despised rote classroom schooling: in “The Parrot’s Training”, a bird is caged and force-fed
textbook pages—to death. Tagore, visiting Santa Barbara in 1917, conceived a new type of
university: he sought to “make Santiniketan the connecting thread between India and the world
[and] a world centre for the study of humanity somewhere beyond the limits of nation and
geography.” The school, which he named Visva-Bharati, had its foundation stone laid on
24 December 1918 and inaugurated precisely three years later. Tagore employed a brahmacharya
system: gurus gave pupils personal guidance—emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Teaching
was often done under trees. He staffed the school, he contributed his Nobel Prize monies, and
his duties as steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: mornings he taught classes;
afternoons and evenings, he wrote the students’ textbooks. He fundraised widely for the school
in Europe and the United States between 1919 and 1921.

128 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY