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Rabindranath Tagore: A Legacy Beyond Borders and Time

Emran Emon

Rabindra Jayanti, observed on the 25th of Boishakh in the Bengali calendar, stands as one of the most significant cultural celebrations in Bengali history. Every year, on this day, we commemorate the birth anniversary of the polymath poet Rabindranath Tagore. This year, we are celebrating the 164rd Rabindra Jayanti.

The festival is celebrated with immense enthusiasm across West Bengal, other Indian states, Bangladesh, and Bengali-speaking communities around the world. Even the diaspora participates in these festivities. In West Bengal, the day is marked as a public holiday.

The essence of the celebration includes Rabindra Sangeet performances, dance, dramatizations of his plays, recitations of his writings, seminars, and various cultural events. Locations associated with Tagore, such as Jorasanko Thakur Bari, Rabindra Sadan in Kolkata and Santiniketan, draw large crowds during this time.

In Bangladesh, Rabindra Jayanti is celebrated extensively in both cities and rural areas. A major event is also organized at Shilaidaha Rabindra Kuthibari. Educational institutions across the country host special programs.

Even during Tagore’s lifetime, Rabindra Jayanti was observed. Through this ceremonious celebration, Bengalis acknowledge Tagore’s unparalleled contribution to the language, literature, education, and culture of Bengal. But the origins of Rabindra Jayanti hold a fascinating history, largely unknown to many. Let us explore that history and how Tagore viewed his own birthday.

In a letter dated 25th Boishakh 1293 (1886) to Shirish Chandra Majumdar, Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “Today is my birthday. Twenty-five years ago, on this very day, I descended upon this earth to bless it. May many more such days come in my life. Life is full of joy.”

Reading this might lead one to think Tagore was quite conscious of his birthday. However, that assumption is quickly challenged by another letter he wrote to Jadunath Sarkar: “The extent of discomfort I feel in all these elaborate outward celebrations is known only to the omniscient.”

Tagore was, in fact, never enthusiastic about the celebration of his own birthday. His first birthday celebration took place when he was 26 years old. Yet, for the next 22 years, his birthday remained largely a private affair, limited to the inner circles of the Thakur family. Eventually, he couldn’t deny the heartfelt appeals of his admirers across the world and gave in to their wishes.

The very first celebration of Rabindra Jayanti occurred in 1887 when Tagore was 26. In her autobiography “Jiboner Jharapata”, his niece Sarala Devi Chaudhurani recalled: “I was the one who organized Rabimama’s first birthday celebration. At the time, he lived with Mejomama and Notunmama at 89 Park Street. Early in the morning, I quietly entered his room with garlands I made from Bokul flowers from our house in Ulto Dinga’s Kashiabagan and added Bel flowers bought from the market. I laid the garlands and a pair of dhoti and chadar at his feet and gently woke him. Soon, everyone in the house stirred—it was Rabi’s birthday, and excitement spread. From that year, his birthday began to be celebrated among family.”

The first public celebration of Rabindra Jayanti occurred in 1910 at Santiniketan, as he transitioned from 49 to 50 years of age. It was celebrated with great enthusiasm by the Ashramites and was termed the “Festival of the Intimate.”

The first grand public celebration was in 1912, marking his 51st birthday. Along with the Ashram community, several prominent personalities from Kolkata, including Satyen Dutta, Sukumar Ray and Ramananda Chattopadhyay, joined the effort under the leadership of Prasanta Mahalanobis.

Tagore was welcomed with Vedic chants, flower garlands, and rituals. Though the poet remained silent that day, his sentiments were echoed in Nepal Chandra Ray’s speech, who said: “You all revere Gurudev, but never place him in the seat of God.” Indeed, Tagore never wished to be deified. He wrote:

Where the lowest of the low reside,

Even more destitute than the destitute—

There lies Your sacred path.

Behind all, beneath all, among the forsaken—

There I seek Your feet.

Tagore sought divinity among the downtrodden, the forgotten, and the broken. But people, in their admiration, would not let him remain just human. For he belonged to all. He was the Vishwakavi—the Poet of the World.

In 1931, Tagore’s 70th birthday was celebrated with grand grandeur, which celebration still remembered in Bengali history. The primary organizer was Amal Home. The celebration committee included an array of luminaries. Presided over by Jagadish Chandra Bose, its members included Haraprasad Shastri, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Prafulla Chandra Ray, Subhas Chandra Bose, Prasanta Mahalanobis, C.V. Raman, Rajshekhar Bose, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Indira Devi, Kalidas Nag, and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, among others.

On the occasion of the poet’s felicitation, two commemorative books were published—one in Bengali and the other in English. The English volume was titled The Golden Book of Tagore, a name given by Romain Rolland. This book featured tributes to Rabindranath from some of the most illustrious admirers of his time, including Albert Einstein, Knut Hamsun and Harold Laski.

The celebration extended beyond Boishakh. From December 25 to 31, 1931, Kolkata observed “Tagore Week.” Several events were held at the University of Calcutta and the Town Hall. An exhibition of Tagore’s paintings and manuscript works was arranged at the Town Hall. At Eden Gardens, traditional performances such as jatra, kirtan, jari, kathakata, raybenshe, and indigenous games were organized.

The last Rabindra Jayanti during the poet’s lifetime was on 25th Boishakh 1348 (May 8, 1941). It was observed quietly at Santiniketan. Sitting in “Udayan,” Tagore penned a few reflective lines—his final birthday message—a philosophical distillation of his life:

On this day of my birth,

I dissolve into the moment—

I seek the touch of friends,

The mortal essence of love—

So I may carry with me

Life’s final gift,

Mankind’s last blessing.

Even during his lifetime, the Rabindranath Tagore endured humiliation over the celebration of Rabindra Jayanti. In 1911, when the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad organized an event in his honor, a powerful faction in Kolkata rose in opposition. They went so far as to print and distribute leaflets denouncing the celebration—and even sent one directly to the poet himself.

Grief-stricken, the poet wrote a letter to Ramendra Sundar Tribedi on May 4, 1911. In it, Rabindranath wrote: “As I stand on the threshold of completing fifty years of my life, I have received yet another insult as a birthday gift—the accusation that I am greedy for self-glory. I accept this slander with bowed head and begin the fifty-first year of my life. May you bless me so that every humiliation I endure may be made meaningful.”

One could fill volumes writing about Rabindranath Tagore, and still, it would be insufficient. The scope of his thought, work and influence is vast—full of turns and transformations.

Ever since I began reading literature, Rabindranath has become inseparably intertwined with my being. From that very moment, he has become a part of my thoughts. I think, this is not unique to me—any Bengali is bound to feel the same. I believe that among all the realms of a Bengali’s consciousness, Rabindranath Tagore occupies a significant portion. I say this not only considering his literary works but also his way of life. That is why, to imagine Bengali identity without Rabindranath is utterly inconceivable.

Rabindranath Tagore holds many identities—poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, lyricist, and social reformer. But what is his foremost identity? At times, he appears to be the great poet; at others, a master prose writer or lyricist. Yet one cannot deny that through his poems, stories, and essays, he has portrayed the entirety of human life. Therefore, rather than confining his greatness to a particular genre, it seems more appropriate to say that the essence of his writing itself is what sets him apart.

In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Bengali to receive this prestigious honor for his outstanding contribution to the literary world. This landmark achievement brought global attention to the richness of the Bengali language and its literary tradition.

Rabindranath Tagore is a towering figure in Bengali literature—an immortal spirit whose presence can never be erased. Just as Shakespeare remains ever-present in English literature, so too does Tagore shine as a luminous star in Bengali literature—a star whose light will continue to radiate across the universe. Rabindranath was, is, and will forever remain enshrined in the deepest chambers of our hearts.

(Emran Emon is a journalist, columnist and global affairs analyst. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based news, views and analysis website, that describes itself as non-partisan and taking “the Side of the People!” It is edited by Binu Mathew.)

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When Tagore is Treason

Jawhar Sircar

Himanta Biswa Sarma is upto his reprehensible antics once again. This time, he has picked on a very popular Rabindranath Tagore song Amar Shonar Bangla (‘O! My golden Bengal’) to declare its singing as an act of treason.

His ‘culprit’ is a small-town Congress leader in Sribhumi district of Assam, a Bengali, who innocently exhibited his Bengali genetic emotions. The Assam chief minister’s logic was that as Bangladesh had picked it up as its national anthem after its liberation in 1971 – something which conferred neither proprietary right nor copyright to that country – its singing is treasonous. Since PM Modi has used the opening line of the very song/anthem to woo voters in West Bengal, the video evidence of which is available, would he like to broach the treason provision here, too?

Any educated South Asian would be aware that the new Bangla republic had a staggering vault of Bengali songs to choose as its anthem. It had those of Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, D.L. Roy, Atul Prasad, Farrukh Ali Qureshi, Rajani Kanta, Jasimuddin or even Farukh Ahmed who was known for his anti-colonial and political poems in favour of Bengali Muslims. Instead, Bangladesh chose the poet laureate, a Hindu of West Bengal, who was a scion of the landholding gentry that was much despised by the Muslim peasantry. There is no doubt that Tagore towered over others; that he was deeply in love with the eastern part of Bengal (today’s Bangladesh) and considered to be absolutely inseparable and passionate of the bond that unites the Bengali-speaking people all over.

But facts be damned: Himanta Biswa Sarma is ensuring that this poor Bengali-speaking Assamese citizen (who represents a significant chunk of Assam) be charged with treason, for the temerity of singing this Tagore song. Sarma would require a somewhat higher level or education or a wider worldview, both of which are not evident in him at present, to understand that the vast treasury of Bengali composition (and culture) is the common property of all Bengalis worldwide, whether they be in West Bengal, Bangladesh, Assam, Tripura, Britain, the United States or Nigeria. The fact that India chose one of Tagore’s songs as its national anthem and Bangladesh chose another (which is unique, as no single poet’s work has been shared thus) did not or does not ever preclude these beautiful compositions from being sung as a stand-alone songs or recited for the sheer profundity of their lyrics and sentiments.

What exactly are the words that CM Assam insists are tantamount to treason? Well, the opening verse reads thus:

My glittering golden Bengal I love you.

The ambience of your air and sky seems like playing a flute in my heart.

The aroma of the mango orchard in the spring time drives me crazy,

O mother dear.

Autumn time sees smiles all through mature fields of paddy…

It is an ode to ‘Bengal’, composed in 1905 when the province of Bengal was up in revolt against Viceroy Curzon’s order that dismembered its eastern half and added it to the Chief Commissioner’s province of Assam (set up in 1874) and made Dhaka the new capital. Incidentally, the very large and populous Bengali-speaking district of Sylhet of the East was forcibly attached to Assam, way back in 1874, despite protests. Then, in 1905, Lord Curzon ensured that a large section of eastern Bengalis were hopelessly mixed with the Assamese, to teach rebellious Bengal a lesson. To execute it, the British encouraged waves of Bengali peasants to settle in the fertile riverine regions of Assam. This explains why Assamese have been agitating, often violently, to get a large section (especially Muslim) of Bengalis out – though lakhs of them know no home other than Assam, for one and a half centuries. There are, of course, many Bangladeshis, both Muslims and Hindus, who infiltrated into Assam in recent decades. It is often (not always) difficult to segregate. Without this detour, we would hardly appreciate why many Assamese are so alarmed at the fragile demographic balance – that Sarma now plays upon, relentlessly. Nor would we realise that the vast majority of several generation-old Bengali settlers are an integral part of Assam and swear by it, come what may. Even the seven-hour planned slaughter of some 3,000 Bengali Muslims at Nellie in central Assam in 1983 has not had the desired result.

Tagore’s song, that is now considered almost seditious, was, in fact to protest against the British playing their dangerous chess games with human migration and misery in eastern India. By picking on this song as a treacherous recitation of an annoying neighbour’s national anthem, CM Sarma takes three potshots – first at Bengalis as such, which is kosher considering his rabble, then at the neighbouring country he has always considered hostile, even before Yunus, and finally, he also recharges his loyalty battery with the party he has defected to.

The major issue is that the philosophy of non-violence, tolerance, secularism and universal brotherhood of Gandhi and Tagore are so antithetical to the very soul of religious fundamentalism, that however hard the RSS-BJP may try to cover it, the worse it gets.

Though Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and their equally uninformed acolytes in the BJP of West Bengal often bend backwards to praise Tagore, especially before elections in the state, no one takes them seriously. Dina Nath Batra, the battering ram of Hindu fundamentalism, was more honest when his RSS-affiliated ‘Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas’ demanded in 2017 that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) remove Tagore’s thoughts on nationalism from its textbooks. A few years ago it was reported that the Adityanath government has actually removed a famous short story of Tagore from the Class 12 textbooks in UP and included Adityanath’s own writings and Baba Ramdev’s in its place. One recalls how the Hindu Right keeps insisting that our national anthem is anachronistic (according to Kalyan Singh, governor of Rajasthan in 2015) or spreads the canard that Tagore had written it to praise King George V who was visiting India in 1912.

Can anyone in his right senses match these iconic words of Tagore with the constricted ideology of hate of Modi or Savarkar or their unapologetic intolerance as rolled out through the UAPA, CAA, NRC, and various anti-Muslim campaigns?

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls…

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

The fact is that when the Hindutva rabble-rousers run out of incendiary missiles to ignite further hate and divisions in society, they resort to dangerous distortion and lies. It applies universally to this tribe, across decades and continents, and is based on a sound psychological premise called the ‘big lie’, that Goebbels theorised for Nazis in Germany. Goebbels’s open espousal of ‘big lies’ to convince gullible masses can be traced back to his article ‘Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik’ (‘From Churchill’s Lie Factory’) that was published in Die Zeit ohne Beispiel on January 12, 1941. This was, incidentally, 16 years after Hitler’s first public use of the phrase.

After all, provocateurs like Sarma, Adityanath (or even Suvendu Adhikari, the hyper-aggressive BJP leader in West Bengal) have all to prove and renew their loyalty to the RSS-BJP high command on a daily basis – as they are not from the pure crimson-blooded stock. ‘Yogi’ is from an more bigoted political lineage and the other two (like many others) defected brazenly to the highest bidder, the BJP, from their respective Congress parties, for power and other obvious reasons. Sarma’s extra-belligerence is to allay the fears of his new masters about turncoats and this explains why he needs to sustain his systematic oppression of Muslims and Bengalis, or preferably both.

[Jawhar Sircar was Secretary, Government of India, and CEO of Prasar Bharati. He is a former Rajya Sabha MP of the Trinamool Congress. Courtesy: The Wire, an Indian nonprofit news and opinion website. It was founded in 2015 by Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M. K. Venu.]