Rabindranath Tagore – 150th Birth Anniversary
He turned his observations of Bengali life into songs, over 2000 songs, each change of season, each aspect of Bengal landscape, every sorrow and joy found a place in his songs which became Bengali “folk music”.
The third current was national. As Tagore wrote “The national was not fully political, but it began to give voice to the mind of the people, trying to assert their own personality. It was a voice of indignation at the humiliation constantly heaped upon us by people.” Tagore was the first to make popular the term of ‘Mahatma’ for Gandhi. “So disintegrated and demoralized were our people that many wondered if India could ever rise again by the genius of her own people, until there came on the scene a truly great soul, a great leader of men, in line with the tradition of the greatest sages of old — Mahatma Gandhi. Today no one need despair of the future of the country, for the unconquerable spirit that creates has already been released. Mahatma Gandhi has shown us a way which, if we follow, shall not only save ourselves but may also help other peoples to save themselves.”
For Tagore, the national was always linked to the universal as reflected in excepts from one of his best known poems:
“Where the mind is without fear, And the head is held high. Where the world has not been broken up Into fragments by narrow domestic walls, Where the clear stream of reason has not yet lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit, Into that heaven of freedom, let my country awake.”
(1) Amiya Chakravarty (Ed). A Tagore Reader (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961, 401pp.)