topics: |  biography | tagore | bengal

Young Tagore: the iconoclast: ~ 1900

At Bengali political and social gatherings in the 1890s, not a word of
the speeches would be in Bengali, and everyone would dress impeccably
in the English manner. ...  Once [Tagore] and three nephews set off
for a party dressed in dhoti and chadar with long-nosed Punjabi
sandals... [but legs were covered] with socially acceptable
stockings. However, ... Rabindranath pulled off his stockings saying,
'Why keep them? Let us be really nationalistic.'... [Abanindranath
wrote later] "It was really bad turning up in Indian clothes, but to
appear with bare legs was really too much! Especially before ladies!"
p.121

[Tagore's children: Bela, Rathindranath, Renuka, Mira and Somindranath.
Bela was married when she was 15 and Renuka at 10... although Rabindranath
was strongly opposed to child marriage.]
In Bela's case his decision was perhaps excusable, at least as far as her age
was concerned, but in Renuka's it most certainly was not.  - 130

[When Mrinalini died] Rabindranath did not nurse Mrinalini for two months day
and night, as loyally claimed by his biographer Kripalini, he remained
absorbed in the running of the school, often away from Jorasanko.  After she
died he showed no visible emotion and soon returned to Shantiniketan. ... [In
the series of poems, Smaran] his grief was notably impersonal and
generalized. - p. 137

Opposition from young Bengali writers: 1928

A younger group of writers were trying to to escape from the penumbra of
Rabindranath, often by tilting at him and his work.   In 1928 he decided to
call a meeting of writers at Jorasanko and hear them debate the issues.
... Tagore did not speak.  [Among those present was Nirad Chaudhuri,
recounted in Thy hand, great anarch, p. 228-9]  p. 281

---
Gandhi's favourite song: [jIbana Jakhan shukAye jAy / karuNAdhArAy eso]

In September 1932, Gandhi launched his fast against the Communal
Award - dividing the electorate into hindus, muslims, europeans and
the untouchables. Tagore, despite being 61 years old then -
decided to visit him in
distant Poona. There Gandhi broke his fast, after discussions with
Ambedkar ("the Poona pact"), and Gandhi had some orange juice,
squeezed by a fifteen-year old girl called Indira Nehru.
Tagore was then asked to sing
"one of his Bengali songs, the Mahatma's particular favourite. It was
from Gitanjali: 'When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me
with a shower of mercy . . .' Tagore duly sang it, but not
correctly, for he discovered he had forgottten the melody."  [p. 306-307].

---

The so-called educated classes had come to regard themselves as a
completely separate caste, he said, by virtue of having been taught
in English; they
looked down upon the rest of India as 'untouchables.' To them, the word
'country' had come to mean the educated classes only, 'as if a peacock
were all feathers or an elephant all tusks.' - p.310

According to the [Iso]Upanishad the reconciliation of the
contradiction between tapasya (austerity) and ananda (joyfulness) is
at the root of creation - and Mahatmaji is the prophet of tapasya and
I am the poet of ananda. - Tagore to Gandhi disciple Miraben, p.311/449

[Tagore visited a Bedouin camp in the desert.] The chief told him,
'Our prophet has said that a true Muslim is he by whose words and
deeds not the least of his brother-men may ever come to any harm..'
Tagore noted: 'I was startled into recognizing in his words the voice
of essential humanity.' -p.317

Other reviews

A beautifully written life of India's once-famous Nobel laureate who is now
largely unknown to Western readers. In the first half of the 20th century,
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was widely known in the West as a mediator
between Eastern and Western culture. His poems, plays, paintings,
and music remain enormously influential in India, especially in
Bengal.

Dutta, a Calcutta-born teacher now living in England, and Robinson,
literary editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement, assume that Western
readers need a complete reintroduction to Tagore. The result is a leisurely,
life-and-times biography written from a detached, objective point of view and
full of useful explanatory detail. Dutta and Robinson balance the cultural,
political, family, and religious influences on Tagore without settling on any
one as predominant. ... the authors are also
sensitive to Tagore's contradictions. A beneficiary of British rule, he
agonized over the plight of peasants on his family estates but never
questioned the legitimacy of private ownership. He supported British rule
until the national movement made it unfashionable. After embracing
nationalism, he distanced himself, not only from violent extremists, but from
political mainstreamers such as Gandhi.

The book becomes livelier when the authors lose patience with Tagore,
particularly over his hypocrisy in advocating rights for women that he never
extended to the women of his own family. ...  - Kirkus