Kobiguru Remembered

Rabindranath- at the age of 35 (Rare photographs collected from Rabindra Rachanabali)

If any body lives in the daily memory of millions-- that is Rabindranath Tagore.

And there is a special reason why he should be in our minds today.

Rabindranath is often called the last of our Renaissance men. Nineteenth century Bengal produced a galaxy of men endowed with the quality of a Renaissance man.

Though they were members of a subject race-- they had achieved a freedom of the mind which enabled them to look to the West-- to Europe with a clear vision. West was in the vanguard of civilisation for atleast two centuries. It had absorbed much that was best in the cultures of the orient and the occident. And its contribution to modern science and technology had naturally put it in position of leadership in the present day world. Rabindranath was a humanist to the core of his being, a profoundly religious man, without being a strict follower of any religious creed. And at the same time his mind was always open to the achievements of modern science.

The poet had always been a staunch believer in the unity of mankind-- rising above the passions of narrow nationalism. True, his faith in the basic sanity of the West had occasionally been tested but this never prompted him abandoning what he called a faith in man.

In the closing years of his life,however, the poet's faith in the essential goodness of the West was rudely shaken and that included his long cherished belief on British rule in India. We remember his angry reply to Miss Rathbone, a British parliamentarian, when she charged Indians for their ingratitude for what the British had done for India.The sharp tone and the bitterness of the poet's reply shows how complete was his disillusionment with the British rule.

Rabindranath, as he grew up in the environs of his family and in an all pervasive climate of creativity and optimism, had come in contact with the West quite early in his life. He had experiened West in the city of his birth, may be in a limited even corrupt version but he had also been in England and he had had a very good exposure to the Western culture, to its literature, its liberal and liberating thoughts, and particularly its music, during his first, and a few years later a second stay in England. In his family, and through the influence of his saintly father Maharshi Debendranath, his mind was already steeped in Upanishad and the classical lores of India. Exposure to the West only meant a further enrichment of the mind and a positive attitude to the best that it represented.

In his forties, especially in the years following the partition of Bengal, Rabindranath was an ardent Bengali. But soon after, in the twenties, in the years of India"s political reawakening, under the spell of Mahatma Gandhi, the poet had come to believe in the nationhood of India, confident of India's political destiny. Without being actively involved in politics -- one remembers his concern for and his advice to Nazrul Islam on hunger strike in jail, not to waste his talent in politics -- the poet had enjoyed the confidence and homage of political leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, Subhas and Fazlul Haq.

Remembering how deeply disturbed Rabindranath was as the world plunged into the tragic second world war, remembering his utterance, his heart's agony in that unforgettable poem addressed to God, Bhagaban tumi juge juge doot pathayechha barey barey, we can only guess what he would have felt after the recent rape of Afganistan and Iraq. We, the hapless peoples in Asia and elsewhere, looked on and if we remembered anybody at this crisis of civilisation more than any one else it was Rabindranath. In our hours of agony and despair, we draw sustenance from all he left us, in verse and prose.

The author is a former Vice Chancellor of Jahangir Nagar University.