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Elective English—IV

Notes 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 was key in resolving a Gandhi–Ambedkar dispute involving separate electorates
for untouchables, thereby mooting at least one of Gandhi’s fasts “unto death”.

10.2.8 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 center 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 was 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.

10.3 Theft of Nobel Prize

On 25 March 2004, Tagore’s Nobel Prize was stolen from the safety vault of the Visva-Bharati
University, along with several other of his personal belongings. On 7 December 2004, the
Swedish Academy decided to present two replicas of Tagore’s Nobel Prize, one made of gold
and the other made of bronze, to the Visva Bharati University.

10.4 Impact

Every year, many events pay tribute to Tagore: Kabipranam, his birth anniversary, is celebrated
by groups scattered across the globe; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois; Rabindra
Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Calcutta to Santiniketan; and recitals of his poetry,
which are held on important anniversaries. Bengali culture is fraught with this legacy: from
language and arts to history and politics. Amartya Sen scantly deemed Tagore a “towering
figure”, a “deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker”. Tagore’s Bengali originals—
the 1939 Rabîndra Rachanâvalî—is canonised as one of his nation’s greatest cultural treasures,
and he was roped into a reasonably humble role: “the greatest poet India has produced”.
Tagore was renowned throughout much of Europe, North America, and East Asia. He co-founded
Dartington Hall School, a progressive coeducational institution; in Japan, he influenced such
figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Tagore’s works were widely translated into English,
Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European languages by Czech indologist Vincenc Lesný,
French Nobel laureate André Gide, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, former Turkish Prime
Minister Bülent Ecevit, and others. In the United States, Tagore’s lecturing circuits, particularly
those of 1916–1917, were widely attended and wildly acclaimed.

182 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY