We have been witnessing the much-propagated 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in Bangladesh, India, and other countries around the world. Though some of them might prove unpopular, I am taking the opportunity to append the following observations.
The anniversary was overly-propagated in official circles by the governments of India and Bangladesh, as well as the state government of West Bengal. It may be noted that though Tagore is the national poet of India, yet no Indian state except West Bengal officially celebrated the anniversary.
The various programmes celebrating the anniversary around the world seem to be more motivated by political impetus rather than literary and artistic taste.
Honestly speaking, we rarely found the notable response from the younger and new generations of Bengalis from Bangladesh, India, or the Diaspora. In fact, the response in Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Far East and south-east Asia was very poor. There was hardly any new notable publication marking the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore in these areas.
Perhaps it will be more interesting to note that even in the core areas of Kolkata and Dhaka, there was hardly any new publication, except only by the traditional propagators of Tagore.
The melodious songs of Rabindranath Tagore are indeed enjoyable for their relaxing, effeminate lyrical tunes evoking Indian religious songs and music. Tagore made his remarkable songs rich with the mixture of Western elements. But out of his thousands of songs, only around 200 were found to be repeatedly sung during the 150th birth anniversary celebrations. The question arises: why is this so? The answer is simple: because only these songs are popular.
Tagore was essentially an orthodox Indian poet who made a Western artistic and spiritual impact. We find the influence of Christianity in his school of religious beliefs, called the Brahmo Samaj. This point in addition to the close obedience and appreciation of the Tagore family, including Rabindranath himself, helped him win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1913. Perhaps this may become clearer from excerpts of the Nobel Committee’s presentation speech by Harald Hjärne, chairman of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy:
“The true inwardness of this work is most clearly and purely revealed in the efforts exerted in the Christian mission-field throughout the world. In times to come, historical inquirers will know better how to appraise its importance and influence, even in what is at present hidden from our gaze and where no or only grudging recognition is accorded. They will undoubtedly form a higher estimate of it than the one now deemed fitting in many quarters. Thanks to this movement, fresh, bubbling springs of living water have been tapped, from which poetry in particular may draw inspiration, even though those springs are perhaps intermingled with alien streams, and whether or not they be traced to their right source or their origin be attributed to the depths of the dreamworld. More especially, the preaching of the Christian religion has provided in many places the first definite impulse toward a revival and regeneration of the vernacular language, i.e., its liberation from the bondage of an artificial tradition, and consequently also toward a development of its capacity for nurturing and sustaining a vein of living and natural poetry.
“The Christian mission has exercised its influence as a rejuvenating force in India, too, where in conjunction with religious revivals many of the vernaculars were early put to literary use, thereby acquiring status and stability. However, with only too regular frequency, they fossilised again under pressure from the new tradition that gradually established itself. But the influence of the Christian mission has extended far beyond the range of the actually registered proselytising work.
“It was in Bengal, the oldest Anglo-Indian province and the scene many years before of the indefatigable labours of that missionary pioneer, Carey, to promote the Christian religion and to improve the vernacular language, that Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861. He was a scion of a respected family that had already given evidence of intellectual ability in many areas. The surroundings in which the boy and young man grew up were in no sense primitive or calculated to hem in his conceptions of the world and of life. On the contrary, in his home there prevailed, along with a highly cultivated appreciation of art, a profound reverence for the inquiring spirit and wisdom of the forefathers of the race, whose texts were used for family devotional worship. Around him, too, there was then coming into being a new literary spirit that consciously sought to reach forth to the people and to make itself acquainted with their life needs. This new spirit gained in force as reforms were firmly affected by the government, after the quelling of the widespread, confused Indian Mutiny.
“Rabindranath's father was one of the leading and most zealous members of a religious community to which his son still belongs. That body, known by the name of Brahmo Samaj, did not arise as a sect of the ancient Hindu type, with the purpose of spreading the worship of some particular godhead as superior to all others. Rather, it was founded in the early part of the nineteenth century by an enlightened and influential man who had been much impressed by the doctrines of Christianity, which he had studied also in England. He endeavoured to give to the native Hindu traditions, handed down from the past, an interpretation in agreement with what he conceived to be the spirit and import of the Christian faith. Doctrinal controversy has since been rife regarding the interpretation of truth that he and his successors were thus led to give, whereby the community has been subdivided into a number of independent sects. The character, too, of the community, appealing essentially to highly trained intellectual minds, has from its inception always precluded any large growth of the numbers of its avowed adherents.”
Many Hindus were converted into the Christian faith, hardly requiring any religious practice or adherence. Also, many other Bengali Hindus of the nineteenth century were, if not converted into Christianity, at least possessed of such a persuasion in their way of life. Rabindranath’s grandfather, the then multi-millionaire Dwarkanath Tagore, was one such individual.
The propagators of Tagore have also tried to reintroduce his paintings, and unsung songs, to mark the anniversary year. But it has been a failure due to poor response from the public. Is it due to the declining values of Tagore? Even irrespective of the year’s goings-on, this is a possibility that cannot be ignored.
Tagore was a great success during a vacuum in Bengali literature. From 1900 to 1940, Bengali literature revolved around Rabindranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore only. Today it almost sounds funny, yet this is true.
He was indeed a great patron for Bengali arts, and wrote and fought for the glory of his motherland, but he was ambivalent on liberation from British rule for too long. As the cruel legacy of colonialism becomes ever-clearer, Tagore’s resonance may continue to fade in the years ahead.
A. B. M. Shamsud Doulah is a freelance writer and advocate, Bangladesh Supreme Court
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