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PASTEL DRAWING

·TAGORE
THE PROPHET OF PEACE
by
RI PAUL
TAGORE MEMORIAL PUBLICATIONS
LAHORE
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·CONTENTS
I
IN SEARCH OF PEACE
7
II THE PATRIOT IS BORN
21
III
QUEST FOR SELFHOOD
31
IV THE GREAT WORLD SOUL
38
V
THE HUMANF LABORATORY
0
VI THE TWO ANGELS OF PEACE
69
VII INDIAS AMBASSADOR IN RUSSIA
78
VIII
THE GOLDEN PATH
91
Three Plates

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·met IN SEARCH OF PEACE b& f gott in mb Wht th to b poet Ik Te Ph! ddd th hool fph! phy h& db K& 1 da d died d wh th th m d dyn! thyf dd2 G ih h glory dbf8H Beth poil f h Ifidyk? th he f to m Wd poet ik Igor wh lodh ty w tn у нь fh b & yi yh f husha y rich dd o fh bld -SAROJINI NAIDU thh 1 THE Victorian Age was the age of peace Sand wiched between the stormy times that preceded and the still stormier decades that followed it may be looked upon as the Golden Age of the present civilisa tron Let us go back to the early period of the nineteenth century when the history of the Bengal Renaissance was in the making the sixteenth century is parti cularly known for the revival of art and letters under the influence of classical models in the Western Europe The course adopted by the Bengal Renaissance Movement in the nineteenth century was surprisingly similar to that of Europe in the sixteenth century Of course similar efforts conclude in similar manner and similar actions have similar reactions The history of mankind has preserved thousands of such instances that go a long way to bear testimony to this fact The history of the Ancient Indta is dyed red with the blood of the Drivadians so ruthlessly shed by the Aryans The orber chapter of the history opens with the murder and massacre of the Aryan the tyrants by the foreigners The Brahmins pu 7 ·the Sudras with hot melted lead in their ears che Brahmins were disgraced and disregarded by the Mohammedans The Mohammedans with avance of victory plundered the freedom of the world the Mohammedans were compelled to be on their knees before the superior might in the same way when we look into the pages of the history of Europe we find that the Roman emperors while riding their horses used to put their feet on the shoulders of the submissive sovereigos but the time came when Romans had to suffer for the oppression and barbarity they had rendered to other nations intoxicated with their imperialistic pride kingly grandeur and grand civilisa tion The invisible hand of Nemesis gave such a heavy slap on the majestic face of the Old Rome that the Roman imperialism was obliged to knock out its true nature--the mockery of civilisation Similarly we can take the case of an individual a group a nation or a country and can very confidently say that Nature according to its unchangeable principle does not exempt any party from getting proper reward or retallation for its good deeds or misdoings Just in the same manner efforcs put forth for the right couse produce good results though at one time at an early stage and at the other at a later one In accordance with the law of Nature the Renarssance Movement of Europe brought out the best results awakening che people of Europe to a new life Exactly the same law was applicable to the results of the Renaissance Movement of Bengal To the West the shock was given by the concussion of the Arabic civilisation and the faith of Islam The asensibility of the intellectual sufferings of Europea visible insignia of the Dark Ages turned into the sense of season This shock was the foreshadow of the intellectual progress in Europe There happened afterwards the revival of the Latin and Greek ants qaities giving rebirth to Latin and Greek art and culture The shock was also followed by a new interpretation of the Christian Scriptures Both revival and interpretation acting together formed the S ·full Reformation and Renaissance To the East the shock was given by the concussion of the Western cıvılısation which infu ed something uncommon and new in the East helping forward its remarkable rebirth There happened afterwards the movement for bringing back into vogue the Sanskrit clasics--the treasures of the early Aryan Age The shock was also followed by the reformation from within of the ancient Hindu mythology Both revival and reformation acting together gave prominence to the Bengal Renaissance Movement led by the most enthusiastic leader-Rabindranath Tagore During the time of Sir Wlliam Bentinck Lord Macaulay planned for introducing the English language as the medium of instruction in India His famous minute was written in 1835 In support of his scheme he himself said that it should be their endeavour as far as possible to create such a mass in India as would do the intermediary work by conciliation and com promise between them and millions of subjects In Bengal it was then a burning question whether the introduction of the English language in accordance with Macaulay s minute should be encouraged or not It was on of the most momentous question ever discussed und r the sun Perhaps one may doubt the importance of the question but no wise brain aware of the issues involved not for Bengal only but for the whole of the East will find any exaggeration in the significance of the question It was no less than Macaulay s folly to distegard Sanskrit classics and Bengal literature guilty in the eyes of our countrymen of pouring contempt upon the Sanskrit language Nevertheless Macaulay had the upper hand people s voice fell on However the people received a shock Their sentiments were aroused and they were naturally compelled by their conscience to go deep into the Sanskrit cl ssics and there came the hour of tevival Prof Wilson in 1853 while delivering a speech before the Parliament espressed his opinion about Macaulay s minute saying that in reality they had He was deaf ears 9 ·created a mass of the English knowing people who had no sympathy with their countrymen and if they had had any it was of no asad to them In a way Prof Wilson was right just after the introduction of the English language the new life which first appeared led to the shaking of old customs and ancient convictions and the social sphere was disturbed to an utmost extent The people were thrown in a vast ocean and they had to strain every nerve to reach the shore They needed from without a shock and they had got it They struggled to get out of the commotion At this stage Wilson & insight proved practically at fault Quite reverse to his expectations the English knowing people proved true sympathisers of their countrymen and every unit of their sympathy was of real use to their motherland The language which can express most modern and scientific ideas immensely increased the potentiality of our Indian vernaculars Raja Rammohan Roy was the one prominent personality whose noble presence played a great part at this juncture in saving Bengal from misfortune H19 selt command distinctive character and curelry spirit singled him out among his contemporaries His prom phetic vision made him one to gauge quite accurately the force of every new current He also had the qualities to foresee the results of every movement and guide the people in his own way with an accuracy incapable of missing the mark Raja Rammohan Roy was not the least of an opportunist He could never tolerate to wait for dead men shoes He was rather of the belief that chances are always at our threshold and we are to pick them up He paved out a new road vehemently promoting the new Western learning and helping forward Macaulav s programme with all his est and zeal But his efforts put forth in this respect did not in any way correspond to Prof Wilson : version The best spirit of his remark able life was prone to fill the hearts of Bengaleer with a tru reverence for the Indian past It would naturally Jad to the revival of the Sanskrit classics for the 20 ·Indian past was bright mostly with the same Taken in this sense Raja Rammohan Roy was the cron of the revival movement Besides he never neglected his own vernacular the Bengali language rather recognised its full value by bringing it back into literary u e Our Poets father Maharshi Devendranath Tagore was the next prominent personality known for the literary revival in Bengal The Maharshi got his early education at the school founded by Raja Rammohan Roy and was influenced by the teachings of the latter received by him through his teachers in the school The Maharshi was same to Raja Rammchan Roys kingdom of thought as Albar was to Babar s kingdom of India The Raja rooted a plant deep in the soil of Bengal and the Maharshi watered it protected it and made it grow into a fruitful tree The Maharshi enjoyed a life of eighty eight years During this long period of his life he ever remained busy with his Brahma Samay work He personally went from place to place preaching the Brahma religion and establishing branches of the Brahtaa Samai To him ancient India was the cradle of all that was pure in morals and religion He was a man says his son Satyendranath more deeply imbued than any one in modern times with the genuine spirit of the ancient rishis It is singular that the one field of religious inspiration which was foreign to him was the Hebrew Scriptures He was never known to quote the Bible nor do we find any allusion to Christ or his teachings in his sermons For him the Indian Scriptures sufficed His religion was Indian in origin and expression it was Indian in ideas and in spirie The Maharshi s religious character and moral strength gate spiritual light to that age with an eminence of its own His holy personal influence was immensely impressive and he was known as Maharshi not only among his Brahma Samaj circle but the title was given to him by universal consent Du ing the days of the collision of foreign and Indian civilisations his spiritual authority held his country close to its on historic past Raja 11 ·His indefatigable meal for revival of ancient Indian culture accomplished more than any other of his contemporaries Bankım the celebrated novelist has been called the pioneer of the Bengal Renais ance Tagore may be called the high priest of this move ment Art comes easy to Rabindranath Highest art it has been said : unconscious and Rabindranath s art is undoubtedly unconscious It is said of hit that a certain gentleman approached him to interpret a poem of his which had baffled his understanding for long and Tagore s retort was Ahi who knows what it means? He wrote through vision and his vision was quick and open Though not on purpose much of his works are replete with the gospel of his father in his own inimitable simple style It was not more than three decades back that he came into the lime light Even his countrymen did not recognise his genius before he was lionised by the West with the Nobel Prize His early poems arc subjective but the subjective tone is replaced by the prophetic one in his later verse No longer he sits in the remote corner to enjoy him elf the ravishing delights of Nature He is out to rub houlders with the common humanity to share their lot of sorrows and sufferings to face the pangs of bunger and poverty to make a bold stand against the icy hand of death without any fear and realise God in his contemplations Fame and honour did not take him intoxicated He never forgot his humbler friends He was never indifferent to them even when at the highest rung of the Fortune s ladder He drew his inspiration from the soil of Bengal and in turn his songs and poems inspired enchanted and guided the Bengalee youth Most of his compositions are symbol of the rising hopes and aspirations of his own people He has filled their hearts with rosy dreams of Golden Bengal Benpal is the acknowl edged land of song and music and through Rabindra Baths influence all the song and music has been directed at realising that dream ·The Poet is a man of vision and in his sub conscious mind there is a sacred sense of ave that God has visited his people and through his music and literature he has hilled the mind of his people with this awe Verily India retains even today her living faith in the Unseen For a true understanding of the temperament and cha acter of Rabindranath Tagore it 13 i ell worth to recall the environment in wh ch he was nourished and brought up When his father the Maharsh was present in the house all the household became still and hushed as if anxious not to disturb his meditations He was quite young when his mother died Het face when he saw it for the last time was calm and beautiful in death and awakened in him no sense of childish terror it did not excite even wonder all eemed so peaceful It was much later that he was conscious of death s real meaning In his childhood he was too much given to lone liness He remained away from his father vet his fathers influence was the deepest on Tagore s life To him he was literally the founta n head of inspiration When the icy hand of death had bereft him of mother s fond love he s as kept in the charge of the servants of the household He would sit day fter day in his room and peeping through the window would roam in a world of imagination Since his infancy he vorshipped Nature To him a mere piece of cloud coming up in the blue sky would make feel with joy Nature supplied him the food for his imagination in his leisure He never telt the lone liness of his early life To hm Nature was a lo ing companion that never forsook him and always revealed to him new treasures of beauty and joy He would get up from sleep early in the morning and would roam about in tis garden and the meanest flower that grew there filled him with thoughts too deep for tears A mere breath in the open sunshine would awake him to ner I fe The trees green grass the chirping of sparrows all conspired to thrilllim through and through 15 ·The Poet realised the inner beauty of the out one fine morning in the Free Scbool Lane Calcutta He felt as if the thick veil of 1 orance was rent asunder with a dramatic suddenness His mind was unu ually calca and reposefu! He was lost in watching the sunrise from the Free School Lane All of a sudden he felt da led of an inner listan The eil aas rent the darkness had gone He felt that everything a elf luminous esery noue a perfect rhythm csery creature saturated with godhood He reali cd that there was units behind all diversity He beheld one behind many The distinction of form and colour as lost Every, per on even the tiniest of Inving beings was invested with the glory and freshness of a dream A solemn glee possessed his oul He was wrapped in meditation His heart was full of love and gladness both of ac Then he went to the remote places he caled the domy herghts of the Himalayas in earch of such ethereal joy such inner vision of thirgs but he adly failed He felt ever since that this world is brunful with ray and glory visible to tho e who have pierced the thick veil of ignorance The thick wall of DITON vanishes like a cloud in the radiant light of love Lo e transforms the most commonplace thing to a thing of beauty and joy It eemed as if his capacity for love was challenging all limitations He loved everything great as well as small He saw his God where the pathmaker was breaking stones where the tiller was tilling the ground He loved the labourers whose garments were covered with dust and faces withered with fatigue This ecstatic mood possessed him for several days on end His brothers decided to have a pleasure trip to Darjeeling Tagore accompanied them He thought he might have a greater thrill of this blissful code rence-oneness at the core of all things He expected to find more Sercruy in the height of the busy thoroughfare of the that all along he bad Howrongly thought ६ ·The majestic that truth could be got from outside and Jofry peaks could whisper no truth into his eager ears but the concourse and noise of people in the Sadar Street had done that The Almighty Lord His wonder works He works alone unfathomed and unknown He can open the whole universe in the narrow space of a single line He can exhibit the whole world in a grain of sand can hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour The volume of his poems entitled Morning Songs is the expression of Poets ecstatic period-his first vi ion He is impatient to realise th beauty of the world But for lack of practical experience his lyrics though full of imagination are not intimately related to common human experience Circumstances however so conspired that it was po longer possible for him to live in an enchanted land of dream and ima ination His father soon gauged the sensibilities of the poetic genius of his son and felt that his intellectual development was tending to be come lop-sided if he did not rub shoulders with the practical men of the world With this end in view he sent him away to supervise the family estate right on the bank of the Ganges This change was a double blessing to the youthful Tagore. Firstly it brought him into contact with moral life of Bengal Day after day he moved and talked with the native village folk and dealt with the practical affairs He began to un derstand and appreciate their rising hopes and also the fears that were looming large before their eyes He awoke to the pangs of poverty and mi ery He had never understood these monsters before The second advantage that he derived from the charge of environ ment was that he had a fine scope to commune with Nature He could find no tetter place th n the sacred bank of the Ganges for Nature study The calm and tranquillity inspired him to ecstatic heights in thought and thyme He would ro m from village to village in his boat and breathe fresh life Most of his time he pas ed in silence For many days at a stretch he would not exchange a single word 17 ·any living being till his voice became thin and weak through lack of use During his boat escursions he had the chance to study and converse with the village foll to watch their custom and traditions to share their joys and sorrows and feel their wants and limita tations This gave him enough material to take to short story writing Many of the short stories written In those days are excellent and some think these to be superior to many of his well known lyrics Next phase in the life of Tagore begins since he went to Santiniketan from Shilardah When he was supervising his father s estate he was feeling restless like a young eagle to fly away and find wider scope for his talents The mnonotonous life at Shylaidah was only a long period of preparation As time passed on he was becoming aware of an Inner call to give up the present work and dedicate his life to the sertice of his country At last he could not control this passion He first came to Calcutta and then to Santiniheran and decided to found a chool The difficulties to realise th salta were many The main was of raising funds He spared nothing that belonged to him He sold his books his copy tight and everything that he could lay hand on but the task he had assigned for himself demanded much more that he could give For a time it appeared that the mission he had cho en would fail but he carried on the struggle and the trials and tribulations that beret his way worked a great and wholesome change into the life of the Poer These very obstacles proved to be the birth chroes of a greater man in him They worked a great change in his own inner life At forty his wife died He bad scarcely recovered from this rude shack when 12e daughter developed symptoms of consumption Her precarious condition compelled him to give up school and nurse and tend her but all his efforts proved in vain She succumbed to allness leaving gap in the Poets sensitive heart to be filled again But the worst had yet to be The Poets youngest son upon whom he bestoned more care than others fel suddenly ill with cholera and 18 ·died within a few days Death had preved upon three of his dearest ones Within a small interval but made herself the loved com panion of the Poet--no longer an object of fear but a bosan friend He had realised by this so-called calamity that death was a great blessing in disguise It was his belief that not even an atom in this universe is lost He was aware of a sense of completen ss To him death in the last analysis was not a calamity but a perfection It was during this period of travail that Gitanjali was written The original was written in Bengalı I wrote these poems the Poet said for myself 1 did not think of publishing them when I was writing He has attempted to express fullness of human life in its its beauty as perfection These lyrics are full of subtlety of rhythm of untranslatable delicacies of colour of metrical inventions The work of a supreme culture they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes The last phase of his life is that of the traveller the pilgrim He began to keep indifferent health and was compelled to set out to Europe for a change But the outward change worked a spiritul change as well He felt a new spiritual unfoldment As soon as be left the Indian shores he realised that his own soul was overgrow ng the limitations imposed by outside factors He imagined himself a voyager to the open road I to the emancipation of the self 1 to the realisation of Love In a letter to Deenabandhu Andrews dealing with the meeting of the conflicting races of the world and tbe removal of colour prejudice he observed that the meeting of the races on equal footing was the greatest question that concerned the fate of Homo Sapiens and that no sacrifice would be too great to solve this vexing problem once for all and achieve the victory of God in Man Oversea els had completely his out look He began to face questions and problems of international interest He cast aside the narrow 19 ·nationalism which had been the dominant and the mos insistent feature of most of his poetry and songs The philo opher was awake in the Poet He began to Heave a philosophy of his life and thoughts and inter pret the de per meaning of life It should not however be construed from the above that his lyrical seal had cooled down by this time He had been pouring his musical strains till the very last day of his life The Gitanjali has resulted in bringing the East and the West close together in a common fellowship and understanding The Poet has been able to bring about a remarkable synthesis of culture of the East and the West To achieve success in this field in the face of so much sacial prejudices and religious conflicts is no mean achievement The coming generations will hail him as an angel of peace and goodwill towards mankind and by following in his footsteps shall so behave towards one another that struggle and strife will become a thing of the past 20

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·TACONE IN MARCH 1941 ·THE PATRIOT IS BORN You th hid of -WILL DURANT THIS land of ours is no sand bank thrown up by some rec nt caprice of earth It is a stately growth with roots striking deep through the centuries Nations have a history as well as a geography They live and grow not by the forces of wind and rain sun and stars but by the passions and ideals which animate them Any one who has studied and meditated on the ancient classics of this country will testify to their peculiar greatnes their power to yield new meanings and their inexhaustible value as a criterion of present day modes of life Rabindranath Tagore was the veteran of the Eastern culture He was proud of the Indian past and with all his est and zeal awakened in the people the desire to live like a free cultured nation Rabindranath saw the light of the day in 1861 He was born and brought up when the echo of the Indian War of Independence of 1857 was resounding bis environment His father Mabarshi Devendranath Tagore although known for his zeal for social reform was out and out a nationalist in his outlook Maharshi was a prominent member of the British India Associa tton for his social eal Sir Richard the then Governor of Bengal referred this institution as a society of free thinkers and ruthless critics of the British Government Shri Rajnarayan Basu the maternal grandfather of Shri Aurbindo Ghosh while remarking in his autobiography about the strong nationalist views of C Babu observes that he had never been keen to 21 ·manya Tilak bis influence and eloquence to raise funds for the defence committee organised to fight the case of Lok The people of Bengal are known for their taking prominent part in the public demonstra tions held to protest against the arrest of the Lokmanya and the improper attitude of the British Government The stir was the natural outcome of the impressive and inspiring writings of the Poet When section 124 A (sedition) came into force he started a strong agitation against it in Bengal His poem Kanthrodh which was written in those days enables us to witness the reaction on the Poet s heart of this outrageous law It was just in those days that plague spread over different parts of the country and the Poec tried his best to make arrangements to soothe the sufferers The Poet said chat if the Government wanted that there should be no unrest in the country they should change their course of action and harness all recourses in their power to drive away the epidemic In 1902 Lord Cur on charged Indians of being given to falsehood Rabindranath did not spare him and refuted the charge in no uncertain terms In his Bang Dar han he proved by recounting instances of che malacious propaganda of the English against the Boers that that was a common practice of the English unworthy of a civilised nation The Poet quoted Herbert Spencer in support of his arguments In 1903 poems were chiselled out in quick succes sion by his fascile pen all purporting that injustice must be resisted and that the aggressor must be paid in his own coin As early as 1901 he drew up a complete scheme for the reorganisation of our villages with the revival of cortage industries to help remove the poverty of the masses with the co-operation of the peasant him self His idea of national regeneration through his comprehensive scheme of rural reconstruction now being worked out at Sriniketan 15 undoubtedly his great contribution to constructive politics His well known work Su adeshi Samaj was published 24 ·in 1904. It sums up the Poet s political ideology of those days He delivered his speech on Boycot on 7th August 1905 in the open session of the Indian National Congress with a view to encouraging Indian goods In 1905 to demonstrate the unity of the Bengal province the Raksha Bandhan Festival was observed with great grandeur and glory For the occasion Rabindranath wrote a beautiful poem entitled Rakh which was recited in a large procession On 16th Octobe a grand public meeting was conducted under the presidentship of Anandmohan Basu the president of the Madras Congress Committee In this meeting Rabindranath acted as interpreter On the dispersal of the meeting the audience started in procession singing songs and shouting slogans This procession was led by the Poet who was singing a song of his own and the processionists were reciting in chorus after him In the Congress session of 1913 held at Calcutta Lokmanya Tilak proposed the name of Dr Anne Besant for presidentship Rabindranath strongly supported him He himself was elected chairman of the reception committee In this session he recited a poem entitled India s Prayer On the other day his play Post Office was staged The audience including Lokmanya Tilak Annie Besant M M Malaviya and many other notable patriots appreciated the Poets patriotic spirit His artistic genius was in full bloom those days His poems full of lofty patriotism are unique and unsurpassable They are sure to leave their mark in the literary annals of India He was a pioneer in the cause of national education He took sides with Suren dranath and opposed Sir B Fuller That he was a man of practical imagination was apparent from his work in those days When terrorism began to make its way in Bengal Tagore withdrew himself from the political field But at heart he was a staunch nationalist all along The British Government always looked upon him with 25 ·shorn of all special distinctions by the side of those of my countrymen who for their sc called insignificance are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings And these are the reasons which have painfully compelled toe to ask Your Etcellency with due deference and regret to relieve me of my title of knighthood which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the hing at the hands of your predecessor for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration This act of the Poet is not only a proof of his lofty patriotism but goes a long way to make it clear to the aggressors that in spite of centuries of subjection che sons of Mocher Indta still have place in their hearts for the spirit of freedom and that when they are pressed with high handedness they will not spare any descinction to be sacrificed in the name of their Great Miother Indians were those days cursing Sir Michael O Dwyer General Dger and others but the Poet by relinquishing his title acknowledged what Lala Lajpat Ras has said in the following words In my humble judgment it is the system which needs cuising if that can give any satisfaction to the persons aggrieved The men are the mete tools of circumstances They may overdo a thing but so long as they are cold that the mainte nance of the system is the main chung and that it has to be done at any cost their fault is only secondary In 1920 Gandhyje started non co operation move ment It was Rabindranath who first conceived the programme of encouragement to the use of Indian goods and boycott of the foreiga ones There existed a deep and abiding mutual love and reverence between Gandhi and Rabindranath Rabindranath did not have so much eal for khadı and charkha but for Gandhi these were the articles of fasth in spite of this variance the tro agreed on the principle of non co operation In his youthful days it was the express opinion of Rabindranath Tagore that it was a good thing to start country ride agitation But agitation he said should ·be directed towards our own country rather than to the foreign Government and that when the people realised the necessity of civic rights the deliverance from the British yoke of bondage would not be a distant dream Although his Muse underwent a revolution yet there had not been the slightest change in his political outlook His subsequent writings especially his reply to Miss Rathbone s letter give us a peep into his mind I should have thought he said that the decent Britisher would at least keep silent at these wrongs and be grateful to us for our inaction but that he should add insult to injury and pour salt over our wounds passes all bounds of decency Through the official British channels of education an India he reveals tad flowed to our children in schools not the best of English thought but its refuse which has only deprived them of a wholesome repast at the table of their own culture A nation is always judged by the eminence of its great men India which gave birth to Rabindranath the greatest man of this age can claim her due share of respect and recognition among all n tions Rabindra nath was a towering genius who discovered all the main problems of humanity and the methods of up lifting it to a higher plane With the lamp of his personality he approached the great wisdom of India as embodied in the Upanishads and the past heritage of our culture H was a patriot in the true sense of the word He was ealous not only for the freedom of his own country but for the rights of humanity Un like the modern patriots who have been in de to aim at their gaining superiority to their fellow beings and their using all means fair and foul in their power with the purpose to rule over others he hated this belief the insanity in honour of which the man has suffered division and dispersion at the cost of complete unity and has blindly sacrificed candour and co operation resulting in disturbance of the peace of the world His patriotism never lay in violently capturing the territories of the weak nations He was rather pto 1 20

·that his countrymen did not possess the spirit of
aggression He was not a man of India alone He
was a great torch bearer whose business it was to
illuminate the future path of the unfortunate and
s easy nations of the world To them all he showed
through the burning experiences of his own intuition
the true heritage of mankind for the salvation of
humanity
Rabindranath stands before us a true lover of
humanity The elegance of the soul of a cosmopolitan
is too dear to him to accept the limitations imposed
by space and time or even by the sographical
boundaries
30

·NII QUEST FOR SELFHOOD M t wh wh d hd th 20 hm -RABINDRANATH TAGORE TAGORE blew the great trumpet of peace in the war worn world Having discovered the fountain head of eternal tranquillity in his own soul he moved heaven and earth to quench the desire of the blood thirsty world with the elixir of everlasting peace Tagore summed in himself a momentous era and has been the mouthpiece of great ideals The mission of Tagore has been indeed the mission of India He was a glorious internationalist whom Mother India brought forth out of her womb in a travail of political upheaval He was not merely a versifier building an ivory tower in a rose garden Practical idealism was the golden thread of his fature His words had an electrical effect even on the hearts of the war lords whom the fresh red wine of blood has made so giddy as to be indifferent to the happiness of others Rabindranath Tagore_has been well described as the Plato of his age To the world at large he is known only as a mystic poet of India other fields he was even greater He was a great short story writer Many of his short stories rank with the world s classical literature He was a novelist of repute In the field of fiction Tagore is one of the three greatest novelists that Bengal has produced He was a well known social critic an eminent journalist and a shrewd essayist He has done a yeoman s service in carrying the torch of education among the millions of his country Above all he was a 31 But in many ·a thinker and a religious preacher As a social re former his work will be appreciated by many gene rations to come Of course he was a first rank political thinker He was caught up unaware in the whirl of turbulence which Delhi London pivot is generating But his political achievement was not the child of blind sentiment It was based on cold logic He did not like to adhere himself to any one single party creed or dogma He never subscribed to the conventional kind of views on men manners and matters He was a poet in the truest sense of the term a composer and a creator Towards the declining years of his life he surprised the world by producing some of the finest specimens of painting These have reserved for him a unique niche in the temple of fame The painters of Bengal acknowledge him as the fountain head of inspiration Verily he has been one of those few rich personages who left the world richer by their foot prints on the sands of time In spite of an immense range of his deeds and doings he has been unflittered and whole As a matter of fact Rabindranath has been successfully struggling to realise himself through his manifold activities His life and achievements can be judged by the yard with which we measure Goethe and Shakespeare Tagore is a romantic poet of the highest order And yet it would appear strange to a romanticis like Keats that Tagore should ply art for the sake of self realisation and not for its own ake And yet Tagore is not the first in this novel adventure А tradition says Yeats where poetry and religion are the same thing has passed through the centuries gathering from leared and unlearned metaphor and emotion and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble The great unifying force in Rabindranath s life is the search for a formula of universal happiness For that one noble goal he has burnt the candle of his life at both ends He tried many paths but his centre 33 ·one of approach was He did not care only for artistic self expression or personal enrichment All his activities are only part of a ceaseless quest for self realisation He was never in favour of leading the life of a hermit He wanted to live and breathe among men His faith in life on this earth is as unshakable as his faith in life to come In different eras of history there have been great men who ceased to take a continued inte est in life Tolstoy thought that death was the most baffling dilemma of life Many a moralist has been much overawed by death But right vision has dawn d on the men of true spiritual temper like Tagore He sought refuge in contemplation Eternal beatitude lies in the he rt of all the good things of the world Mystical faith has nothing to do with sterile brand of religiosity That makes men live in the Slough of Despond They turn upon life as certain fierce snakes are believed to turn upon each other Thus mysticism 1s a double edged knife It stands on the cross roads of awry pathways of hope and fea optimism and gloominess The mysticism of Tagore is a joyous creed It transforms the joy of life into a higher a purer and a more enduring form of joy It creates a mood of unworldly elation which tends to blunt the keen edge of the human joy of life It blanches its radiance as the sun does that of the moon It is only necessary to turn to St Francis Esen the most childlike and sincere adoration of Nature can turn away the true thystic from voluntary abnegation of all the gracious things that the physical universe has to offer to us That one should say is the mystic way Rabindr nath Tagore is an erception to that rule He is a mystic and a humanist at the same time He has staunch faith in the life which is believed to lie beyond death Rabindranath Tagore s philosophy of life h s anchored itself in the faith in an eternal existence IC h s not fastened itself less exultantly to the existence which will be cut off by the unexplained mystery of death For all the strength of his faith in an aftr life he is a clinging trusting child of mother earth Her ·supreme gift so far as the individuais memory is con cer ved comes but once to man He is unable to get ove the fact that within the bonds of one birth and one death alone are we given the sule unbroken stretch of consciousn ss There alone we can fuel esperience enriching previous experience tint laid on tint That is what gives the poems of Tagore a great humane touch and he ceases to be a mere mystic merry maker of light and colour Thus WB Yeats writes about Gua jalt in his eminent introduction I have carried the manuscript of these translations about me for days reading it in callway trains or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me The subtle philosophy of Tagore s mind has cast ses indelible stamp on his life and life work Without st one finds no key to the variety of hss interests He values life He feels equally strongly its evanes cence Therefore he has turned to life and the world with all the strength of his immense yucality He garners his harvest while it is day He has feit his way toru acd to each kind of activity that could contribute to the sum total of his being Like a creeper he spreads out his tendrils towards the sun He has gone about with his wand and struck at each source of life giving water From poetry to politics he has spread out the tentacles of his consciousness whole world seemed to be of the very stuff of his own being There is something elemental and stark in this quest for selfhood No wonder there is much of vegetable worship in the poetry of Tagore Like Wordsworth he is the high priest of Nature Angelic simplicity is the chief halo ot Tagore s poetry His poems have an untranslatable delicacies of colour as we tind in flowers The work of a supreme culture says Years they yet appear as much th growth of the common soil as the grass and rushes In one of his letters Tajore compared himself to a plant on th newly emerging earth The ·I can very well remember ages ago when the young earth had just raised her head from her sea bath and was greeting that day s just risen sun I coming from where no one knows and carried on the crest of the first wave of life had shot up as a plant in her virgin soil Then it was that in rhis earth I first drank the light of the sun with my entire body under the blue sky I waved myself like a little child in blind but glad stirrings of life I hugged my earthy mother with all my roots and took my fill my flowers blossomed and my shoots came forth in unreasoning delight It is notable that Tagore holds our mind spell bound while the European saints have ceased to hold our attention since the Renaissance We know says a great European writer that we must at least forsak the world and we are accustomed in moments of weariness or exaltation to consider a voluntary forsaking but how can we who have read so much poetry seen so many paintings listened to so much music where the cry of the flesh and the cry of the soul se mone forsake it harshly and rudely ? What have we in common with St Brnard covering his eyes that they may not dwell upon the beauty of the lakes of Switzerland or with the violent rhetoric of the Book of Revelation? The entire body of Tagore s artistic intellectual and social activities is part of his quest for selfhood He is one of magic master minds in painting music or poetry Yet he does not throw aside gems of art for regard or disregard Rabindranath exactly remembers what milestone each of his works forms in the growth of hs personality This is a common happening with men of letters His studies go to form a personality no less than a book The most important product of study is not the book but the man This attitude is rare among creative artists Rabindranaths versatility and eclecticism are ama ing They include activities rarely ever undertaken by a single individu I They also embrace emotional ethical and intellectual shades toutually destructive, 35 mans ·Rabindranaths liberalism has not presented him from giving one of the best expositions of Hindu conservatista Yet his contempt for Hindu con servatism as popularly practised is well known He has felt alternatively drawn towards nationalism and internationalism towards extreme aloofness as well as folk cultures and beliefs in certain of his short stort s he has shown himself to be in perfect imaginative contact with certain types of life Versatility is one side of Rabindranaths quest for selfhood Yet he has all through his life been a rebel He has received his share of loyal devotion from a small band of followers Oiten he has voyaged alone in strange silences with his soul He has had to fight his way out through an environment stonily unsympathetic The bitterness of Rabindranath s struggle is owing to commonplaceness in the society in which he was born and had to work He has not rhymed handily with his fellows Nor has he put his feet in shoes which rere a little too large so that every foot could get into and get out of them The common man s search for selfhood bears no proportion to Rabindranath s so uncompromising so idealistic has he been He has driven himself hard But he has not trodden on the toes of the men among whom he has had to work Naturally they are not as sore as he himself 15 Rabindranach s struggie started with his school days Any other man would certainly have been left morally scurred by it There is in Rabindranath too a strain of dis illusioned bitterness Certain of his sentences rasp out a lack of charity about his fellow countrymen It hurts and rankles But these rate and passing moods do not mar the permanent courage of his Thas 13 due above everything else to the incernal discipline of the man He has tempered on almost morbidly sensitive nature He tamed his antı social philosophy of life For one less chastened it would have been a sout e of untold agonies No one can say that Rabindranath has not suffered It is all too evident in his life and works For all that he has nature 30

·gone through he has not succumbed
Rabindranath s anger is not for us Many have
misunderstood him His pen his sword are re erved
for a higher cause Against tyranny of every sort he
has nursed a hatted He is lik a child made to suffer
in silent un understood anguish He ha hated cruelty
with all the strength of his masculine hatred It is only
against injustice that he has all along been the great
rebel But no that word does him an injustice
has been more than a rebel he has been a fighter a
fighter without fear and favour
Thus the rhymer of divine songs dedicates his life
to the Creator and his creation The last verse of the
last poem in Gitanjali aptly sums up Tagore s įdeals
of self realisation
Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night
and day back to their mountain n sts let all my life
take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutat on
tothee
37

·THE GREAT WORLD SOUL 7h d tadftfh tory hh th 1 & ou 2 d (my pro Im &m) dm do o the omth fom th Hou ISR 11 A et + trwfmth Est df mih 11 sm &* m smp fou dh mo y f me my oul RABINDRANATH TAGORE art LET us for a while think of the significance Tagore had in his personality in his poetry in his in his music that he was so commonly adored so respectfully honoured and so universally loved He was born in Bengal he was nurtured in the traditions of Bengal he spoke the language of Bengal Why chen are his works enshrined in the hearts of millions of human beings of the world? What is the secret? What is the season ? The secret is his inner self his innes light bus deeper insight that could at once probe into unfathom able reality and for the emotional sincerity of his mind Throughout his vast output of poetry short stories and philosophy and miscellaneous writings he always swings back to the ever recurring refrain retrain of the ideal unity the fultilraent of the human soul through the Divine and the urge for emancipation of the fettered soul by doing away with the disruptive passions which tear gap in our vision of the One and create isolation in our self from the universal humanity Even casual uden of his biography will feel that he chose his religion through a process of gradual growth and not through inherirance or 100portation 38 2 ·sun th He was born in a family which since long had been pinning their faith on the teachings of the Upan shadas and consequently developing a sort of monotheistic religion In his early life religion did nat captivate his heart at all He was too sensitive to accept any school of religion on authority All dogmatic creeds repelled him He could not persuade himself to imagine that he had a religion simply because all tho e whom he loved and trusted believed in its value He was therefore brought up in an atmosphere of freedom of thought and action No creed could appeal to him that had its sanction in the authority of some Scripture His mind was never influenced by the teaching of any organised body of worshippers Even in his early years he was meditative and susceptible to scenic beauties Every phase of landscape seascape and cloudscape inspired him to read into the riddle of the Unknown The torrid fierceness of the burning blessedness of the welcome rain the bright ness of the clear sky the incarnate fury of the storm the lov ltness of tropical summer noon and the pleasant sight of the morning sunrise filled his mind with thoughts too d ep for tears In short his religion was a poet s religion-neither that of an orthodox man of piety nor that of a theologian The beauty of the visible world struck his prismatic imagination and dissolved into rainbow colours the very personality of the singer welted into his song until he ceases to be a man and becomes a vorce a lytic inc rnate It was not until he was eighteen that he had the first trance of religious experience a vision of the One One day he was watching the silent suntise behind the dewy veil of autumn morning his mind was serene and enraptured as never before Suddenly he felt as if the worst of ignorance had thawed into the morning light and revealed the inner beauty of the world The thick veil of ignorance was rent asunder and all things and men assumed looks He was conscious ot an ineffable 39 ·in Its ice super personal world of man The trance lasted for four days On the first day of this sudden awakening of the soul he wrote a poeta entitled Awakening of the Waterfall Through this poem the Poet depicts his vision by an analogy of a waterfall The waterfall suffers the tortures of aloofness until it adheres to 1ts individuality and remains bound isolation Suddenly it is illumined and touched by the sun a hich exhorts it to merge its little indivi duality and seek a continual union with the sea It bursts into a cataract of freedom and seeks its finality After a few days the vision passed away and all things and all men faded into the light of the common day Years later when he was in charge of his father : estate he had another vision of this kind One fine evening when he had disposed of the ordinary work of the day and was peeping through his window at the market place welcoming the sudden shower of rain he felt that his world of experience which had baffled his understanding before was iniciating him into its deeper meaning His mental exaltation was like that of a man who ultimately reach s his destination after facing many a storm and most which had slackened his pace and narrowed his vision All things became luminous with truth He found that everything was in a state of flux but tending to reach the same One Goal These successive mystical experiences filled the youth with the conviction that there must be some being who was guiding him and his world and was seeking His best expression in all his experiences He felt that this very Being was working with and through him towards the process of creation This gave him a great joy-this idea of mystery of a meeting of the two in a creative comradeship The sting of his bygone SOTTOws was lost as he had found his te ligion at last It was the religion of man in which the infinite became defined in humanity and came close to him so as to need bis love and co operation He was blessed with a subtle sense of mystery 40 ·which on analysis may be found to be a complex emotion compounded of awe in the presence of the Unknown wonder in the presence of the known and an exquisite response to the manifestations of beauty wherever they may be found that we may call for want of a better world-rapture His unusual sense of wonder gave him a niche into the depth of existence He gave up his scholastic studies because he did not want to keep away from the world In the school he felt like a bird in a cage conf ned to the four walls of the alma mater This will perhaps explain the meaning of hi religion He never wanted to lose contact with the world which was permeated with a subtle touch of relationship and which added to the value of his own being In his youth Rabindranath came in possession of a collection of lyrical ballads composed by the saints of the Vaishnava sect He was so much moved by these love poems He would often speak on universal love and freedom and say My heart is not mine to give to one only it is given to many Through these words he definitely gave the message of unity in diversity for again he says The Lord 19 in me the Lord 13 in you is life is in every seed At anott er instance he explains his implication of freedom in the true sense of the term I am able to love my God because He gives me freedom to deny Him From this source spring all his thoughts of universal love and freedom and he would preach in the words of Lord Krishna There is true knowledge Learn thou it is this To see One Changeless Life in all the lives And in the Separate One Inseparable (Tb S 80lt 1) He sings of love that ever flows through innumer able hindrances between man and his Creator the eternal relation which has the relationship of mutual dependence for a fulfilment that needs perfect union of individuals and the Universal The lover in his sens 13 the Supreme L whose touch we experience in all our relations 41 ·of universal love comes to the temple gate he who loves teaches the shrine You can do good consciously or unconsciously to a vicious man or a mean person but you cannot lose him unless you follow the Poet with a staunch belief in his sayings the Lord 18 in me the Lord is in you as the fife is in every seed You can do good to a diseased mind-a lunatic run amuck-by avoidir g the use of force against his brute might but your good devoid of love cannot mend the wrong doer If you ay I shall not use force and stick to it merely because you think that the use of force is violent and not good you certainly misunderstand the implication of universal love and non violence There must be within you an upwelling of love and pity towards the wrong doer When there is that feeling it will express itself through some action It may be a sign a glance even silence But such as it is it will melt the heart of the wrong doer and check the wrong The world is the creation of the Almighty The Almighty 15 within me the Almighty is within you the Almighty is within fe within the mallest of the flowers within every particle of the dust So if you feel you must love God you must love His creation One who opens his eyes and tries earnestly to see the world to him the world puts off its mask of vast ness and becomes small as one thing as one kiss of the eternal This is what Tagore has preached through his poetry This is the brightest ray of the Sun which had risen to give light to us through his message of universal love the message of unity in diversity This is the feeling that Blake has crystallised in the Iines To see a world in a grain of sand And a Heaven in a wild flower Holding infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour So the true lover in the full sum of the word 15 one who knows there is unity under diversity at the centre of all existence Tagore says The fish in the water is silent the ·animal on the earth is noisy the bird in the air is singing But man has in him the silence of the sea the noise of the earth and the music of the air Or in other words the Poet explains that the man 1s the masterpiece of God s creation He further says Men are the children of light Whenever they fully realise themselves they feel their immortality Or in other words the Poet says that God has created the man after Him The human love therefore 15 symbolic to Div ne love It is governed by similar laws and gives rise to similar re uits To love ones ownself is also the same as to love another person because love in both cases is the human love Such a lo e exerci ed by the lover w th the consciousness of the immortality of t is being goes to prove the self suftic ency of the lover And none is self sufficient except God And none is immortal except God But the man is self sufficient the man is immortal and so the man is God Truly the man is God if he is conscious that his Gods was Mans ir as was Sh mas Love is another name for what the Poet calls the truth of h iman untty We have our grearest mo ments of delight when we merge and realise our selves in others This is the finition of love This love bear proof of the One whole from which emerge m ny and which is th final truth of man Love is the great magici n which clothes the bare ness of earth with the glory of Summer Love and selt surrender ate es ential for success for releasing us from the sole monarchy of hunger of the grouling voice snarling teeth and tearing claws from the do minance of the limited matenal means the source of cruel envy and ignoble deception Love brings about del verance of our consciousness from the ill sory bond of separateness of self It kindles our hearts and illumines the human * with a light that never was on ea nc- land 42 ·Says the Poet Our union with a Being whose activity is world wide and who dwells in the heart of humanity cannot be a passive one In order to he united with Him ve have to divest our work of selfishness and become Visua kaima (the world worker) we must work in all In Buddha s words he would say Above you below you on and all around you keep on the whole world your sympath and immea surable loving thought which is obstruction without any wish to injure without enmity It may b observed in this connection that Buddha s conception of infinite was not the unbounded cosmic activity but the infinite whose meaning is the positive ideal of goodness and love which cannot be other wise than human According to him no state of Noruana is attainable by the cultivation of negative virtues but by the removal of all barriers to love The selt must rise above all crivialities and realise the truth which is love itself which links us with the rest of the humanity through the bonds of sympathy and service When Buddha had preached his gospel to the chief among his disciples one of them ro e up and asked All along you have now here mentioned about God about the original cause of existence Should we then take that there is no God? Buddha s quick and unequivocal retort was I do not say chat there is no God but I do not say that there is God but surely such a speculation goes beyond the human sphere as our goal Ic has nothing to do with man s dharma his inner nature in which love finds its utter fulfilment This is the ultimate truth that we need to know in this sojourn of lite Tagore defines religion as an attempt to recon cile the contradiction between the brute nature of man and his transcendental nature Prompted by his original cravings man is always after fulfilling his immcdiate vital needs-but he is also conscious of a supreme spirit deep within hraself which often af not always runs in contrary direction to that of 16 ·the former Sometimes this contradiction is so great that o e nature has to be willingly sacrificed over the other A mahaima (great soul) sacrifices his vital needs and often courts death in order to express the Supreme spirit within him Religion inspiresus to be constantly moving across the obstructive facts and realising our true self The desire for this higher life prompts men to go through an endless struggle for survival Let us now see what his idea of goodness is Goodness according to him is the feedom of the selt in the world of man as is love It is not sufft cient that the outer good work of inan may continue to produce good results but at the same time the individual should be true in his goodness The inner perfection of his personality has its own immense value Goodness repre ents the detachment of our spirit from the exclusive ess of sm We are good when we merge ourselves in the universal hu manity The value of good does not cons st in ome benefit for our fellow brothers but it lies in the emancipation of our spirit from its fetters of passion In order to be good we have to be true within not for worldly duties but for our spiritual fulfilment Life even in the face of stern reality of death de mands the fulfilment of several duties All the material_phenomenon bends low before the might of death The greatest prosperity comes to an end the mightiest empi e in the cour e of tim dissolve into shreds The heyday of glory vanishes into emptiness and all our mortal relationships come to their end but we cannot afford to ignore our duty towards them If we behave as if all these things do not exist the iron grip of Nemesis will not spare us Any attempt to disreg rd tle mortal bonds results in strengthening and prolonging them We cannot attain our goal by destroying our path In his moral life man has the sens of his obligation and his freedom at the same time and this is goodness H can attain freedom in his mottal relationship by owning sibility for community thus utilising its col 47 ·power for his own benefit He realises the freedom of the consciousness by feeling one with the rest of the humanity and can find fulfilment in life by con secrating it to the cause of truth and love We cannot better conclude this thesis than by having a bird s eye view of the Poets ideas on modern times Acquisition of money he holds has come to occupy a prominent place in society and has brought about a great change in our mental oucloak It has called in and of scence to get into our brain and affect our heart The modern age has become $0 money rainded that saturated with the insatiable desire for its acquisition man has resorted to his primitive barbarism and an unscrupulous system of propaganda Money has evolved the cult of power as its ally The net result of this new outlook has been an ever growing unhappiness among the masses, A large part of the masses have been deprived of their humanity The eval forces are rarapant in the society and the ideal of wholeness has lost its ca hesive force therefore it has been loosened into sections of fragmentary character Labour is a force so also is the capital so are the Government and the people $0 are the men and women This dis ruption has generated a great amount of mutual strife rivalry and competition and has lost the whole someness of creation According to the Poet oir present day education is producing a type of mind which is not conducive to the spiritual understanding of truth which is the ultimate reality of existence The resgn of machine and of scientific method has dethroned spiritualty from its niche and has reduced man to a homeless tramp The Western man coming after such a long voyage has only tried to exploit the Eastern spirituality for lust of material gain In modern civilisation the reeraing multitudes of m n are betog employed as tools for the accumulation of wealth and power and thus it has tevealed man imperfectly for man s true expres sion does not consist in the fact that he is a power but that he is a spirit The result has been as ething disa S ·content in the individuals as also the races A sure disaster is looming large before their eyes which is sure to affect even the most successful people of the world and put an end to their intemperate indulgence in material luxuries All the big powers of the world cry for peace but the methods that they adopt to secure their end defeat their own purpose Instead of putting a check to their ever growing greed and lust and giving up their exclusive prerog tive of exploiting those who are weaker they are multiplying their destructive weapons for mutual security In the light of their spiritual ignorance they do not realise that by so doing they are generating an unseen force which some day is sure to rend that power into pieces How beautifully has he said somewhere Politicians calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the sword hilts they do not possess the third eye to see the great invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and waits its time The strong form their league by a combination of their powers driving the weak to form their own league alone with their God ·THE HUMANE LABORATORY my nat kt & my pt SD 0 me mint did my d yw th II my mght d po b1 Alo tmtfil to my ? La be reach diddth work wh! hidly bd & my Ifta d find gg Adwk 88d md BI$$ my If lom NI!! 14 af mf th m thod vol by my w th & sh! ghbo ng! nelo a dr end th fic to my m thod ܕ ܐ 5 מ RABINDRANATH TAGORE I WAS in my early teens when she happened to see me She was a young German lady approach ng her extreme twenties She told my father that she belonged to the Christian Mission Her simple appear ance and pleasant nature had a great attraction for my father. He ascended to the talk she had with me and gave ear to the apologues she related to me deeply absorbed in thought He was touched by her true heartedness so much so that he could not help calling her Christ & True Apostle Her humbleness could not find words to acknowledge my father she conveyed to him her thanks with a light smile on her lips which were ready to kiss his child whom she had held close a moment before to her bosom I do not remember her name but I can recall even after thirteen years that gracious noble figure with the ame gentle smile on her lips and motherly look in her eyes I can also safely recall to my memory one of che interesting questions she put to me Whats the population of your country? she asked About three hundred thirty million was my prompt 50

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·reply Turning to my elder brother who is about two years senior to me she said Can you count three hundred thirty million one by one? Why not? he replied instantaneously Then how much time will you take? A few hours A few hours 1 repeated the German lady Yes a few hours he replied with confidence Then count my dear boy One two three four five he began to count He had hardly counted one hundred before he said Two minutes are over Dividing 330 000 000 by 100 and multiplying by 2 she said Dont forget my dear boy it will take 6 600 000 minutes 1e 12 years 203 days and 8 hours even to count the population of your country It was quite an ordinary talk and at that moment the correct answer of the question carried no value for me more than the solution of a riddle But now when I am conscious of the qu lities of my head and heart I can look into its background which carried with it a very strong idea- a logical representation of the mightiest man power According to the latest census report the popula tion of India has increased by seventy million making a total round number of 400 000 000 the biggest popul tion in the world next to China Of its people it can be sa d without fear of being accused of boasting that all in all they are not inferior in intelligence to any other race Indians are in no way inferior to the Japanese Tagore stresses upon the fact either in intellect or capacity The fundamental difference between the two lies in the fact that whereas India is not only overcome but is also overwhelmed by the British Japan has never allowed her interests to be clouded over by the benevolent protectorate of some European power There is no gainsaying the fact that Indians have a glorious civilisation and an ancient culture behind them There have been occasions when Indians fought for the British and thrust 51 ·Very well themselves into the danger zones so bravely that even the enemies could not help praising their martial spirit There have also been occasions when Indians were put to work alongside of the people of other races on a footing of equality and they held their own India is a country which has all types of men all kinds of climate and all sorts of land It is as such no exaggeration to say that in India we can grow or make almost all things we require for the use of our countrymen In comparison with all other countries on the globe Ind a has first place in sugar produc tion second place in rice tobacco cotton and tea production and third place in wheat production Nature has al o blessed the huge area of India with valuable minerals below the ground thick forests above it and with a large stock of cattle India is fortunate enough to have one third of the cattle of the world But still India is a miserable country The bred and born of this country go about in torn and shabby rags and shiver in winter owing to lack of money with which they can buy clothes they need I have seen with my very eyes not once but very often poor starving beggars with their hands put into the dustbins in search of eatables I look around remarks Poet Tagore famished bodies crying for bread I have seen women in villages dig up mud for a few drops of drinking water for wells are even more scarce in Indian villages than schools Just imagine the misery of millions of path makers who break stones all day long and bear the scorching heat of the sun on their naked bodies but fail to get a handful of grain in return to the sacat of their brow India has the most fertile land but most of us do not have the chance to enjoy even one proper mealproper in the true sense of the word in the whole of their lives India has decidedly the best climate but most of us are too unfortunate to g t fresh air 52 and see ·ou India is rich in minerals but its people are poor in wealth India possesses huge area of two million square miles but its people live huddled together in dismal dark and smelly slums India has as much as one third of the animals of the world but our children do not get enough milk We are one fifth of the population of the world but have absolutely no say in the matters of shaping the destinies of the world I hate poverty speaks Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru addressing the meeting of All India Congress Commit tee on 7th August last My grievence against the British is that they have made Indians miserable poverty stricken wrecks of humanity I look around and see riots raging all over the country says Dr Tagore in the same spirit When crores of Indian ves are lost our property looted women dishonoured the mighty British arms stir In no action Only the British voice is raised from overseas to chide us for our unfitness to put our house in order At another instance he regrets that from ancient times the people of our country have been accustomed to rely upon others Referring to his early experiences in village Shilaidah he says It was difficult to help them because they despised themselves They would say We are dogs-only whipping and beating will keep us tight Shilaidah is one of the seven hundred thousand villages of India Nine out of ten people of India live in villages But none out of the nine is educated They believe in out of date old convictions They are of the belief that God has made them poor and that it is just according to the will of God that they are in a wretched miserable plight disgraceful to humanity For centuries long they have been deprived of education and its true spirit They fail find out means for their own welfare unless they are led by some outward power because the long periods of illiteracy have deprived them of the sense of responsi bility for their own lives India is a country of villages Whenever any ·No step among us or a foreigner is to describe an Indian he will to make his description correct describe a typical villager with his body bate to the waist his feet bare the rather thin pagri on his head a short torn dhot being all the clothing he wears and some implement an insignia of his labour of cultivationin his hand Out of every hundred among us there are about seventy two who depend upon culti vation or in other words two hundred and eighty eight million people of India are cultivators Whenever there arises any question of the interests of India such a vast majority of people cannot be ignored at any cost No democratic government will ever work successfully in free India unless and until the rights of our peasants are safe and secure No reform ever introduced will be in the interest of the country unless that is beneficial to the peasant millions towards freedom is ever possible unless this majority of our teeming millions is aroused right of freedom Our national leaders today are fully conscious of these facts For the last few years Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress have been doing their best for rural uplift according to their well planned programme and their endeavours have no doubt resulted into an enormous success The peasants are however still poor but they have begun to re lise that they are poor and what their poverty owes to They are still uneducated but they will not object of their coming generations welcome education When Tagore began the work of rural reconstruc tion he did not think in terms of the whole country He could not take responsibility for the whole of India He rather wished to win only one or two small villages because in his opinion if he could free only one or two villages from the bonds of ignorance and weakness there would be built on a tiny scale an ideal for the whole of India Tagore was a fellow citi en bred and born of the biggest city of India His forefathers were among the earliest settlers of Calcutta He had never had the opportunity of experiencing the pleasures and priva 54 ·tions of the country folk He had started his Santi niketan as early as 1901 In the midst of Santiniketan work when he was busy heart and soul with his activities he happened to be engaged in the manage ment of his ancestral property In connection with this work he had to live at Shilaıdah and Potisar That was the first time that he saw the life of the villages He was then a emin dar and his tenants used to bring before him their delights and their difficulties He was never tired of hearing their complaints and demands His door was open upon all at all hours People could come to see him at any time from daybreak till night They could talk to him as if he was one of them They never hesitated to put before him what they had in their mind to sav It was a general practice with Tagore that he never displeased a visitor A friend says that he would be all ears when he was attending to a visitor whether the visitor might be an acquaintance or a stranger While seeing him busy in talk with a visitor one would certainly wonder as to how he could get time for so many other businesses Even in correspondence he had set the same example He never left any letter unanswered He never seemed to care whether the writer of the letter was a stranger or known to him He would reply to every letter in due course W s only a little chap quite unknown to him he would receive a reply If it was a mere tiny doll with heart and soul she would get an answer Similar was his attitude when he was living at Shilaidah and Potisar Several times it so happened that he spent his whole day in receiving his village guests and did not notice even if the time for food had passed He would feel very happy in these busy hours because he knew that he was gaining something wł ich would go a long way to give some day shape to his dreams Since the day he was engaged in his zamindar work he had been a keen observer of all matters concerned with the rural uplift Naturally he had most of the 52 ·capacity to grasp and know He grasped what he $3 He knew what he grasped He knew that his Santiniketan work would remain incomplete ut he did not care for tural reconstruction People used to put before him their sorrors and sufferings wheretrom he could have practical knowledge of their real needs and demands He would think over the complaints and tried restlessly to satisty th needs of the poor villagers By and by the sorrow and poverty of the villagers became crystal clear to him He feit humiliated to spend his days among the poor in a princely fashion He could like most ot the emundars keep his concern only with money making But such an outlook would certainly degrade his personality in his own eyes if not in the eyes at the world He hated this attitude He put forth has endeavours in thinking out as to how he could arouse the villagers rounds so that they magbe themselves feel the responsibility for their ownselves He was of the opinion that if help was rendered to the villagers from outside it would not be as bene ficial as to make them stand on their own feet Such 1 help would in no case make them self supporting He disapproved outside help for outside help could be withdrawn at any moment His definite aim was to stir them to life It was a problem which required much thinking The people were not capable to absorb any help There was a vast current of inferiority complex preva lent in the mentality of the village people They condemned themselves to an undesirable extent To start rural uplift work was quite a ditticult task those days but with Tagore it was quite natural not to submit to difficulties He disliked to lead a dull life with no difficulties His temperament rose in sebellion against obstacles Suddenly one day fire broke out in the neighbour ing village Villagers lost their heads but could not do anything Unfortunately there was no water in the sillage Perhaps the people had no sense of their 56 ·own interests They were forcibly driven out of their houses by Tagore s men The latter had to effect violence They had to do good with blows They broke up the roofs of the affected houses to bring the fire under control The village people were not too intelligent to spoil their own small to save their own big If they were not supplied with outside support they would certainly have lost their part as well as their whole But outside help is neither sure nor respectable Tagore did not like them to look for help at others faces and to suffer the violence of the others to ensure safety His aim could be achieved only if he could educate them to have full confidence in themselves There has been a custom in our India that rich persons spend a part of their wealth for the welfare of the general public of their town city or village by erecting for their use some wells nandırs or sarars or by providing them with other facilities they may require Hundreds of schools in India many 1 small villages or towns and the others in cities are also entirely supported by the rich individuals According to the same traditional custom the big emındars have been responsible for the protection of their villages They have to look after the health and education of the people Ac ording to Tagore th system is nothing but to weaken our self reliance By the benevolence of the rich he said tle village was kept in good condition But as soon as they began to leave the villages and live in the city the water died up cholera and malaria became tampant and in village after village the springs of happiness were choked I have never been one to accept old traditions says the Poet He was of the opinion that the people must be self upporting they must not cry for help when they are in distress They may be poor but they must have the courage and spirit to live like çivili ed people They should learn to dislike to be disgraced by the rich who care not a bit for the feelings of the poor if they are not in mood 57 ·night schools Above all he could infuse in his people the spirit of self reliance Tagore would not call his activities a success if he had failed to make them realise that they suffered not because God wanted them to be so but because they had never tried to probe the potentialities that lay dormant within them That was really a happy time for him and for his people He had truly met them because he had come to them with his afferings and not with his wants He worked earnestly for the revival of weavings and other arts and crafts of the country writes Rimananda Chatterjee an old friend of the Poet particularly village arts and crafrs and contributed his full sbare to making education in India Indian as well as human and humane in the broadest sense and to the sanitation reconstruction IE Organisation and rejuvenation of villages Official reports have also praised him as a model landlord for his activities for village reconstruction in his estate In spite of his form will to serve the people in villages he did not have sufficient practical expe tience He noted the peasants coming to their fields with their own ploughs and bullocks and ploughing only their own small fields He suggested them that to work separately on their fields was sheer waste of strength They should mix up their capital and resources and buy one traction engine to get their ploughing done eastly He also advised them that when the harvest would be ready they would store the hole in a place in the village where the merchant would come and buy all at a night price and that the sale proceeds would be distributed among them The villagers acknowledged the proposal in good spirit but they were afraid as to who would carry it our When they put their question before the Poet he felt sorry that he was too inexperienced to give a practical shape co his own proposal and realised that inexpert service Has as much a dangerous thing as liccle knowledge Thenceforth he sent his son and late Santosh 60 ·For a Kumar Mojumdar abroad to learn agriculture and animal husbandry As also he strove to learn himself accord ing to his immediate needs though later he could study farming pottery village economics production of hides manures looms tractors and so many other subjects concerned with the rural reconstruction It was in 912 that the Poet was in a suburb of London named Ealing where a transaction was made with Major Sinha the brother of Lord Sinha whereby the old house of Sriniketan was purchased Very easily the whole matter between the two friends was settled The price offered was immedrately accepted It seemed to come like a flash to the Poet that there on that very spot something great was going to happen and today after thirty years we see how right he was He thought of continuing the work there which he had begun in Shilaidah The house was in a dilapi dated condition and people said that that was haunted A considerable amount of money was required to get it repaired time nothing was done and it remained as it was Deenabandhu Andrews advised him to dispose of this house How cсuld he do so ? His achievement had begun as a picture in his mind He had imagined 1t He had thought of a great thing that ought to be done He hoped that one or two purposes of his life would come to fruition there Any great man would do well to remember that his promotion depends largely upon his power to foresee and plan His spirit to do adventures was roused by his imagination Tagore was well experienced to make mind pictures Most of us say that to make imag nary pctures is the pastime of an idle brain This may be their way of saying tbat idle people always make visionary projects and perform nothing The truth is that imagination is the foreshadow of every great work For an instance there was a poor boy of elevenia Swit erland He could work well with his pencil He drew the sketch of the bridge running over the river in his village Suddenly came the picture of a 61 + ·bridge into his mind He first became an architect then an engineer then a bridge builder When he was over fifty ke was afforded an opportunity of building one of the largest bridges in the world The dream thar he had when a boy became the master purpose of his life There are thousands of similar instances which can be added to the length of this article Let me say that Tagore had the most ama ingly creative imagi nation He did not know how this house would help him to achieve his aim but the mind picture ot his aim was clearly visible to him He started the work et Sucul To Surul he gave the name of Sriniketan and laid the foundation of the Rural Reconstruction In stitute of the Visvabharatı He sosed the seed in an unproductive field and expected that some day a shoot may suddenly spring up Elrahirst a friend of the Poer helped him a great deal in his endeavours It was he who developed this place into a epatate freld of work Mrs and Ms LK Elmhurst have been for years helping to mastain the institute by an annual grant of more than Rs 40 000 That ss the main if not the only appreciable source of its income Our national leaders were yet thraking about rural uplift when Tagore started his experiments at Surul He had a love for the villages and the villagers He was helped in his mission by Elmhirst at whose hands the work met with great success The seed which in the beginning did noc show any sign of giving frust sprung ups & green plant mited up with a sweet fragrance and thmgs which seemed to be lacking resulted into a tremendous success followed by a delightful fucure Every reformer 18 apt to bear insults at the hands of bis opponents Even Mahomet and Christ the greatest reformers the world has ever produced were treated in accordance with the same unchangeable principle of this ever changing world There had been many an instance in the life of the Holy Prophet that he was abused by the non Moslems that filth was 62 ·thrown upon him that he was strangled by infidels with a piece of cloth in his neck Tagore was rather fortunate that neither he was abused by his people not ill treated in any other way of some serious nature He had to defy some of his own pear and dear ones who opposed him he had to stand against the rich who were never inclined to accept any re orm and above all he had to hear bitter words of the illiterate people who were too much depraved to accept any new idea There is an important event in the history of the Prophet and the Islam that Omar a leading man of the Quraish was bitterly opposed to Islam and the Prophet One day he thought it would be better to slay Mahomet and finish the whole affair at a single stroke Accordingly be took his sword and went in search of hin On the way he met a relation of his who asked hina where he was going To kill Mahomet replied Omar Why don t you look to your own family first? said the man Your sister F tima and her husb nd have also become Moslems Hearing this Omar turned his steps towards his sister s house On seeing Omar they concealed the leaves of the Koran they were reading What were you reading ? enquired Omar I have heard you have joined Mahomet Saying this he fell upon his brother in law and beat him very severely His sister came forward to protect her husband but he beat ber also At last she cried out Omat do wbt you w ll e ha e accepted Islam and will stick to it Her tone was very firm Omar turned to look at her Her face and clothes were covered with blood He felt very sorry His heart softened He begged her pardon and asked her to read to him also what she had been reading She read Whatev r is in the heavens and the earth declares the glory of God and He 15 maighty and wise She went on reading. In a few moments Omar s heart was won and he declared himself a Moslem In a simil r aay the people of Tagore s estate wbo once disregarded his suggestions and frankly refused to act in accordance with his proposals felt 63 ·spiritual pleasure to devote themselves to his will They respected his counsel with all their heart and revered him as their spiritual father Once the Poet had to go out with an English magistrate of the district 101 which his estate was situated Those were the days when Government officials particularly English ones were held in great reverential tear A ryot was asked to arrange for the conveyance of the Poet and the thagistrate The ryat brought only one palanquin When he was accused of the fault he explained that he thought it only natural and proper that any body who chose to accompany Gurudev should walk Again when he was asked he brought a gouty pony for the a Risprate Like Deenzbandhu Andrews Elmhurst has been a true friend of India and Indians Since the beginning of his relations with Gurudev he has been a devotee of his and his ideal Elmhurst, devotion was formed in the light of his knowledge and not in the darkness of his beliet The traveller has to knock at every alen door to come to his own Elmhurst had to wander through all the amplitude of the outer world to reach the inner trost sanctuary of his purpose Courageously he passed over the dreadful difficulties he came across fought tooth and nail all the obstacles He strained every nerve to ascend the summit of success and struggled to the best of his invincible will to bring out the accomplishment of his purpose out of his strenuous efforts Tagore was assisted by such a genus as Eimhirst who was at the same time a sincere worker Tagore himself was a man who as he says never shicked responsibility Their sont efforts were a source of favourable accomplishment and a matter of pleasure to both of them At the very outset of their work they had to infuse in the villagers the spirit of self reliance It could be accomplished by imparting education to them So under the Village Welfare D partment night schools for the boys and adults of the working classes were and ·started In 1913 writes Deenabandhu when I first came to Santiniketan one of the teachers took me over the upland across the moor to Surul in order to visit the house where this new venture was to be made and where our agricultural work was likely to begin My heart sank within me as I noticed the dilapidated state into which everything had fallen Indeed the land all round the great central house had gone back into the jungle It was clearly a deadly breeding place for malarial mosquitoes When the Poet himself came back from Europe I told him how I had marvelled at his act of farth and openly expressed to him my own misgivings but he simply brushed them aside and remained quite re olute about the future He seemed already to have foreseen in his wide vision what was going to happen As we all fully expected malaria became from the start our most relentless fae Nearly every one who went over to live at Surul espec lly after the monsoon rains were over was stricken by a malignant fever We soon began to realise from our own painful experience why the whole building and court yard had thus fallen to ruin For the place was a hot bed of tnosquitoes and no one could live there for long with safety Yet we had one singular advantage in carrying on our anti malarial campa gn For Sant niketan itself standing on a rising ground was out of the danger one and comparatively free from malarial infection This was due to the fact that its soil differed entirely from that of Surul which was on the allu ial mud soil of the Ganges valley Possibly at one time Santinike tan had been a sand bank jut ing out into the sea for the sandy soil seems to go down more than a hundred feet and the heaviest monsoon rains always dry off in a few hours So it was possible to conduct a great part of the antı malarial campaign in the earliest days of the experiment from Santiniketan though from the serv first there were tho e also ho had to live at Suru! 60 ·the year round Little by little the chick undergrowth was cleared away the great tank was cleaned new houses were built and things were put in order It was the marvellous achsevement of the Poet and others who worked in Surul that they wiped out the disease of malaria from Surul and the neighbouring villages Malaria is really the gravest of all agricultural Issues in a large area of India today With millions of deaths every year from malaria and tenfold that number of disessed human beings leading an enfeebied existence how can India be happy or prosperous? It has been reckoned that as many as one in every four of the Indian population is thus debilitated The Poet laid great stress on his work at Surul being regarded as a laboratory where they had to try out experiments an rural reconstruction on an intensie scale They also had a medical co operatse work and experienced the same amount of success as in the malarial research The whole village was united in a co operative plan admitably conducted which gave them a doctor of their on who might be called in at any time of serious illness and who looked aiter the health of the whole village The cooperative plan was also introduced with regard to the primary education and boy scout torga nisation Through the enthusiasm of the chldren themselves new life and energy was flowing back to revive the villages Today after a lapse of thirty years nes e Srinaketan a very big institute and an ideal for the motherland The institute consists of the following departments working in a constructive way I Village Welfare Department (a) Agricultural improvement with the help of the central farm at Srinketan (b) Introduction of suitable home industries as subsidiary occupation & making vf palm lezt tans and mats spinning of sunn hemp and other fibres aeiving dairy (Aduit education through the circulatiog library publication ot bulletin: In simple 66 ·Bengali magic lantern lectures and talks exhibitions (d) Improvement of the village primary schools (e) Establishment of night chools for the boys and adults of working classes (f) Organisation of Bratz B lak troops (village boy scouts) (8) Recreational use of leisure time by organising seasonal festivals eg Vraksha ropan (tree planting) Saradotsaia (autumn festival) Na anna (new harvest festival) Jatra and Kazi (h) Improvement of health by organising co operative health societies (wh re possible) by health education and propaganda and by organising sanitary measures by voluntary effort () Organisation of cooperative societies of different types through the Visvabharatı Central Co operative Bank Limited 6) Flood and famine relief work II Department of Education (a) Siksha Sata (Poets school for village boys) (b) Siksha Charcha Bhavana (gu u training school under the Government scheme with slight modifications) (c) Supervision of village schools boy scouts and village education generally III Department of Health (a) Central dispensary and clinical laboratory at Sriniketan (6) Hospital w th a few beds (c) Proposed Andrews Memorial Hospital (d) Maternity and child welfare centre in charge of a lady health visitor di training centre (e) Co operative health society for the villages IV Womens Welfare (a) Sriniketan girls school with two lady teachers (b) Three schools for adult women in the villages managed by I dy workers 67

·V Farm
(a) Farm proper for experiment and demonstra
tion
(b) Nursery
(c) Orchard
(d) Experiment in antı soil erosion
(e) Experiment in afforestation
(F) Dairy with Sind cattle
(g) Fodder farm
(h) Bee keeping
(1) Pisciculture
VI Sulpa Bhavana (Department of Organised
Village and Cottage Industries)
(a) Carpentry
(6) Weaving
(c) Carpet making
(d) Leather craft and shoe making
(e) Bookbinding
(f) Lacquer work
(8) Pottery
(h) Fruit preserves
(1) Batrk (artistic dyeing of silk Introduced from
Java Balı)
VII Department of Socio Economic Survey
Research
Several bulletins have been published and some
are under preparation
VIII The Visvabharati Central Cooperative
Bank Limited
ES

·VI THE TWO ANGELS OF PEACE on m 3 Iw y re in dfm bu Tg t d T f Mh th th h dh dgy th fth orld Rbd hr 8 DM him Gdh Th Bh my h d !g pht h 1 db h mp bd # th Id Idfb d 8 da Tkish B th Th d hgh po 9 d bo dilika ma 8 Jgdh B Pfll Ry d Rm thlm d sph f th P d Gdh th My did fra d bo d pl d her I & wh th th g id cu! d vil -ABDUR RAHMAN SIDDIQI TAGORE and Gandou are the two counterparts of the New Life Movement 10 India The one thinks The other acts Thus they move forward the two whe is of the golden chariot of idealism The poetry of Tagore has a spark of shrewd statesmanship The statesmanship of Gandhi has a music of sublime poetry Combining idealism and practicability none of them 15 a glorifier of the past If Tagore was a mystic his mysticism is deeply hued in the realities of a hard mechanical age It Gandhi is a Christ he is es entially a Christ of the twentieth century Each of them lives in the present as a soldier of eternity With eyes fixed in the distant hort on they do not trail behind looking backwards With a set face they ga e at the Pole Star of per manent peace and prosperity for the world They alone can pilot the shipwrecked humanity Words can be things of power Our scriptures talk of a time when words had magic The 69 ·mant ams were just words bur words with this magic Men perfected through discipline uttered thes mantrams It was the ancient Wisdom The Yrshus opened their mouths and spoke In the world of our ancient scriptures the elements obeyed The tempest ceased The seas calmed The very dead anoke From the tapoianas hid in the heart of forests wards leapt forth words of flame words of laght The words that come out of the burning heart of a mother do not the hardest quail before them ? Indian philosophy recognises the force of pano Whenever words come charged with prana they are things of power indeed As the words pour forth rising and falling the hsteners sometimes gasp for breath They are lulled into dumb fascination The speaker becomes the master of the moment the potent charmer His words be come symbols of power When 3 people are in des par great words spoken greatly can put new life into hearts that droop They mould 18300 dynamic forces of action meaklings and cowards When the orator opens his mouth cho ses his words and wings them with the flame hearts are tlung about Dead and drooping things leap into life But the oratorical word with its particular mould and the magic are rather passing things They are quickly When the soice becomes hushed they cease to burn In the moment of flow great movements of emotion might be started They pass like a summer storm But there are words which find a different rhythm These constitute the poetscord The poeric word when it is truest is the Soul nord The poetic word seeks its own thythm mould and music The poetic sord has its moods and moments of vision in the buman soul The poetic word is generally the vessel holding some aspect of reality glittipged during fleeting moments ike a colout ed crystal bowl that holds liquid borrons the colour of t dew beauty The bosl with put out ·had to endure the cold dignity of emptiness Thus poetry is a creation of enchantment Out of noth ng spring the currents of emotion that lash us to cense less activity in mind and matter All poetry is written on the Mount of Transfigura tion There is revelation in it It is the mingling of Heaven and Earth The poet becomes in th moment of creation an instrument for the expression of the highest visions To arrive at truth the seeker must become profoundly imperson 1 None can be come absolutely detached but the poetic mood 15 perhaps the nearest example But to the poet the objective world acts merely as a stimulus and not as a bondage If the objective world assumes undue importance the fountain of the poetic world begins to dry up The poetic mood refuses to be drawn into the bondage of the objective world It has its supreme offering to the highest needs of the human spιΣ Ths offering is the Soul word The Soul word energises into eternal life the Visions of Re lity And the poet is he who cns ng Others too might see kindred visions but their mood is not the mood of the poet They It them go and are not vitally aftected The poet s genius tends i a different manner altogether He weaves around the vision the exquisite web of his art He seeks to hold the vision in this web Tagore unlike Mahatma Gandhi does his head with politics Pol tics is a devıl s game It 18 a dull amusement in the doing Mr Tagore like the Indian civilisation itself has been content to discover the soul and surrender himself to its sponta neity His poetry has a deep touch of innocence and simplicity Birds nd leaves are as near to Tagore as they ar to children And this quality again we find in Gandhi Gandhi is happy with children and children are happy with Gandhi The utter misery of the poor their tragic lone liness touch the mind of the poet into life The poet loses himself in his contemplation He broods i pon this tragedy His mind becomes a burn 71 not full ·thing And then slowly there dawns in his mind a Vision The God of his passionate imagination is there among these despised ones clothed as one of them He is their friend their guide their comrade The heart of the poet rejoices God is great An ifresistible impulse of adoration takes hold of him He must needs boty and touch Gods feet This is the vision Jt is held in the exquisite web of the Soul word We who know the Soul word can thrill wick the poet And throb to his vision The world of objective teality cats not catch the poer so easily The poet just eludes its grip He things in its face the poetic word But the kaymajo ein passes through fire and flood The path of his expression becomes the Soul deed The Soul word and the Soul deed are fruits of the same spiritual mood The same spiritual experi ence strikes difterent notes on their mounds The harmony of the Soul word produces the heroism of the Soul deed The difference is not that while the one acts the other lives in a state of poetic inaction Soul word of the poet seer is as much an action as the concrete labour Only the poet acts in a finer plane of human emocions Rabindranath stands for the Soul word Gandhi scands for the Soui deed Tagore 33 the Poet Laureate of Asia The great thinker has offered to awakening India some of the most concrete ideals He 13 the servant of humanity He claims his place in the ranks of the toilers of the earth Sriniketan endeavours to recon Struct the shattered life of the villager It is the crea tion of the very mind from which have flowed the melodies of the Gutanj Mahatma Gandhi is great not merely in the field of action He has hrs pisce in the realm of thought and imagination He too has dreamt 1 st at a hite dream of love com passion and beauty He has created ideals that sur us to the depths of our being These adcals call us out of our little nartow Ines into the past world of promise and adventure When Tagore enters the world of Gandhi he sees 72 ·spinning wheels and carding bows The one humming and the other thrumming He watches the workers clothed in raiment looking like gunny bags He intellectually grasps the fact that all these are inspired by love and compassion He yet asks himself in bewild red anxiety whether this world with its round of labour can compare with his own radiant world of movement and music There God daily paints the skies with silver and gold The very leaves murmur love songs Gandhi has disciplined his senses He has brought his volcanic impulses under the control of a searching intellect and an iron will As he enters the world of Tagore he cannot help asking what possibly could be the meaning of this riot of colours ? Out in the wide world men are dying of bunger Darkness is creeping into the cottages of the poor and even into their souls The mind of Gandhı does not give free scope for the aesthetic impulses He does not wander after the lotus feet of Beauty In an article written in answer to the Poets criticism of the charkha Gandhi wrote referring obviously to the Poet The world easily finds a place of honour for the magician who produces new and dazzling things The creations of art are not merely da ling or glittering There can be precious gold too in it in fact every great creation of art has a vital message to the human spirit These songs the fair blossoms of a poet s creation have a vital value These are as much a part of truth as acts of compus ion and service These song too are in a sense act of compassion Not that Candhi is unmoved by beauty But beauty is only a minister to his soul It nables him as a friend to go forward on his ceaseless search But to the post Beauty becomes enthroned in Heaven Gandhi who has brought his own impulses under the control of a searching intellect and an iron will holds that art merely da les He once sa drome The skeletons of Orissa haunt my dreams and saking hours What will ·in them is beautiful to my eyes Here we have the toundation of eren his aesthetics The ideal of ultimate perfection is a perfection in harmony Life 13 complex There are rt many conflicting elements To harmonise is highest and the most alluring of ideals None might ever have achieved Nor found this ultimate harmony Perhaps none ever till But it certainly is given unto us to make our lives a dedication to that ideal Christ has said Be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect It is for us to project for our guiding scar the very highest aspiration The mode of movement is not the same Gandhi mo es along the straight narrow pach of incessant endeavour Every endeavour leaves a transforming touch on his personality It is a slow and toulsome march In the case of Rabindranath the Poet seer the progres is by rapid warward movements His poetic soul breaks out into echoes of laughter He must feel along the bye paths He dare not pass by angching He goes a certain way and then varshes In another mood of che soul he rises on wings of lightning He is one with the heart of Reality If the philosophy of Gandhi is a popular philosophy the pa try of Tagore is also a popular poetry the generations pa: travellers will hum them on the highway and men rowing upon Lovers bile they await one another shall find in murmuring them this lose of God a magic gult wherein thest own more bitter passion may bathe and renew its youth A great poet 13 possess d with a purpose beyond his own He is in the grip of a great sea He be dreves that he has come into the world with a mis sion He feeis an urge It comes from & Higher Being This interior command stronger than words is felt by all men of genius This realtsation gives them the power to fight for an idea with a gamblers recklessness As an egotist man is hopel ssly well As a sehicle of mighty idea he is formidable The same thought is expres ed by Bernard Shak in his As says Year's riters ·Man and Superman through the mouth of Don Juan Man who in his own selfish affairs is a comard to the backbone will fight for an idea like a hero When a man imagines that he is fighting for a great idea nothing can stop him He would struggle against great odds He would welcome the fronn of his enemy He would look torture face to face He would remain unmoved when his dearest compan ons desert him He would mount the scafford with per fect nonchalance This heroic virtue of the soul we see in the case of Mahatma Gandhi Nothing can sh ke his faith He remains firm like a rock in his conviction amidst an encircling gloot Th agony of his soul he can not hide He feels lonely like a star But how ever lonely the path may be a pioneer 1 ke Gandhi must travel it alone His soul has been wedded to the ideal of non violence and how can he forsake it? A message from the he vens whispers to him He he ps aloft the flag of his faith and marches on fearlessly toward the goal And he writes For me non violence is a creed I rust act up to it whether I am alone or tave companions Since propagation of non violence is tn mission of my life I must pursue it in all weathers Had Gandhi been an egotist his strength would surely have failed him The almost inevitable tragedy was avert ed He believed that he ws an astrument in the hand of a Supreme Being This faith sustained him when the ho ion was the darkest He gives expres sion to his belief in many of his writings Thus he writes in Harijan of 28th July 1940 I believe that my footsteps are guided by God and all my life is based on this belief The poetry of Tagore Ithe the Inner Voice of Gandhi has a divine origin Thus Tagore addre es God in Gitanjalt IVhen theu commande m to sing it seems that my heart would bre ku tn pride and I loob to the face and tea s come to my eyes Thus Tagore has never considered his et 75 ·Bing ne author of his verse as Gandhi has never regarded him self as the author of his actions This faith in the existence of a God has been the main source of his strength Again and again we come across lines in Gandhis writings which show unmistakably that he believes in an Overspul It animates all his actions and has shaped all the mo mentous decisions of his life This kind of faith in some mysterious Being characterses Rabindranath s writings too He calls this Being Jovan Der are the Lord of his life His life was a flure in che hand of a divine must C1811 The Lord of his life was continually shaping his being as a porters wheel shapes the pitcher What he felt at that supreme moment has been recorded in one of his Hibbert Lectures There we come across the following lines I felt sure that sotse who comprehended and my world was seeking his best expression in all my experiences uniting them into an ever widening in dividuality which is a spiritual work of art Here we discover the reason why genius has been called reli grous by Emerson A great poet sings what he is ordered to sing by the indwelling Deity His pen records joyfully what as dictared to him by a sprat higher than his own In Rabindranath s poems we find again and again the joyous recognition of a Being that is continually seeking expression through the songs of the Poet This is the reason why we find both in the Poes and the Mahatma the same craving to reduce themselves to so that they might be perfect instruments in the hand of God In the lowest state of life the world is made of electrons In the bighest stage of bite the whole world made of feelings Thus it 15 well knoun among the critics of art the poetry is a painting in hords while painting 15 poetry in colours Thus action and thought become one and the same on high level # Rabindranath Tagore acts through speeches Gandas speaks through actions Both are the facers of one Divine Diamond They dip their pens in 76 ero

·divinity The Hidden Voice speaks through every
fibre of their frame And it is the Voice which
like electrons will one day mould itself into the
Brave New World--The kingdom Come!

·VII INDIAS AMBASSADOR IN RUSSIA 1 mde IVA 7 mpe fth ub) h 09 USSR d tt mot h&md to $ f th 044 } 1 W Dol d Oh dy $be & Ith me! f h be f f I sa to ZAJ M10 m d be & DE h Ip d the pa he 5 ha a na wh h 2 1 of dei lp d me d my dh I look b my d ya ghly Iddrel ir pl d ft & h dud fbb tem 1 6 d ope ! A 3 tarra wkhha mad uch d po 61 RABINDR 1 VATH TAGORE RUSSIA has wrought a miracle said Dr Tagore in an interview given by him in America in 2930 after his Visit to Russia I went to Moscow he continued and found that the sort of instruction that the Russian peasants and workers receive does not make them merely factors hands but develops them cul turally Under the Car the Russian masses were as ignorant and stupid as the masses of India are today In India only seren per cent of the people are even nominally lirerate nor educated just literate Russ512 was no better ten years ago But now I was sastly impressed by the spread of Iiteracy and elements of true culture the love for beauty among the humblest Russians 78 ·were Formerly racial and religious conflicts common in Russia as they are in India up to this day Now in Russia all these conflicts have disappeared Jews Armenians Christians and Moslems have learned to co operate Of course the Russian authorities use their educational institutions as a means to propagate their own economic and political doctrines But with those views I have no concern I shall not pss judgment upon economic teachings of anybody since that is not my field It is the Russian method of enlightening the people that interests me Russians are not believers in old theologies Service of mankind might be their religion One of the interviewers suggested that the mass education in Russ a might be conducted for the purpose of propaganda and to influence their ou n people towards a certain system of government Of course they have their own propag nda replied the Pot but that is quite nat ral What must be realised is that there is a general interest in education My object was to see the interest us d in their work Their education is not entirely materialistic They are not merely mak ng peasants into factory workers Creative art is thriving in Russia The theatres are crowded with people who ten years ago had no opportunity to ent r them for the first time the lower classes have been able to take advantage of what the the tres and operas offer them Let us think of the Bolshevik Revolution in terms of a drama The first act was represented by the period from the est blishment of the Soviet Govern ment in November 1917 until the declaration of the New Economic Policy or Nep in March 1971 a declaration which closely coincided with the end of foreign intervention and civil wr The second act was characterised by the gradual reconstruction of the country under the compromise between socialism and capitalism which was created by the Nep The third 79 ·act of the revolution beginning in 1928 represented a determined effort on the part of the ruling Commun 1st Party to cut the Gordian knot of social and economic contradictions inherent in the Nep by tearing out the last roots of capitalism in Russia When Tagore visited Russia it was the period representing the third act This act mainly consisted of the ants religious demonstrations The psychology of making a clean break with the Russian past was a very important characteristic of the Soviet regime Such method were adopted as had previously been considered inadvisable eg huge parades holding up to mockery the objects of reverence of various faths public burning of icons and so forth To these measures there bare been added the melting down of church bells and the turning of copper and bronze to industrial uses the inauguration of systematic antı r ligious teaching in the schools the extended and intensified u e of the theatre the motion picture and the musevra as media tor anti religious propaganda Though we have no concern to deal wich religion yet we cannot help saying that the religion of the Car Russia was the religion of wide spread injustice resulting in demolishing the liberty of the country was a religion-certainly se was but with mere idea and no expression The people of the Car Russia were mostly Christians the Bible was their holy book what a fun it was! The teachings of Christ were honoured by them more in breach than in observance Russia today is free of the religious bondages We need not discuss here hether Russia should have one religion or no but we must not avoid saying that a spite of the Bolshevik Russia s baving no beliet in religion she has been appreciated for her cosmopoli tan activities as also for her efforts for posting peace and happiness to Gods world by so many godly men like Tagore and others She has worked wonders in removing all the ancient sources of weakness and misers which formerly had lamed the sed race and haunted at either with definite terrors or vague and scarcely conscious despond and in bringing about a 80 ·pervading buoyancy and optimism impossible to the people if they had been again in the religious days of the Car Russia Religion is the opium of the people said Karl Marx Mars also s id Destroy the social world of which religion is the spiritual aroma and you destroy religion Religion is the flowers that cover the chains Destroy the flowers and the chains will be seen Communism is convinced of the truth of Marx $ words There have been two ideas in them One is that if the present politico economical system is destroyed religion will also decay The other is that if religion is directly attacked it will expose the chains hidden by religion and thereby the creation of the new system will be hastened Russian Communism has been earnestly carrying both lines of att ck and this has been the SI nificance of the Russian struggle Religion has often times allied itself with the powers that be especially in the West and especially so in Russia where the car was the head of both the State and the Church Unlike India the tendency of the Czar Russia was to allow no possible liberalism in religion Bolshevil Russia stood against such religion She wanted to ensure equal opportunities and rights for all in the body politic And she had In today Russia all have equally the blessings of life Accord ing to it 13 only an outer spect The lite they say find satisfaction only in realis ng itself as Eternal Being in detail we roay disagree with the Communists we sincerely want that all should have as far as possible equal rights and privileges in lif Since the time the Bolshevikı sei ed control of the Russian State they have never tired of putting through the most revolutionary changes in order to socialise the country and make it a fit place for the helpless masses to live in Being strongly convinced that capitalistic countries would sooner or later meet with economic disaster because of the revolt of labour and the conflicting economic interests of nations the Bolsheviki declared that Russia must be socialised in order to survive the approaching fall of capitalism. some 87 ·act of the revolution beginning in 1928 represented a determined effort on the part of the ruling Commun ist Party to cut the Gordian knot of social and economic contradictions inherent in the Nep by tearing out the last spots of capitalism in Russia When Tagore visited Russia It was the period Tepresenting the third act This act mainly consisted of the ant) religious demonstrations The psychology of making a clean break with the Russian past was a very important characteristic of the Soviet regime Such method were adopted as had previously been considered snadvisable eg huge patades holding up to mockery the objects of reverence of various faiths pubhc burning of cons and so forth To these measures there bave been added the melting down of church bells and the turning of copper and bronze to industrial uses the inauguration of systematic antı sligious teaching in the schools the extended and intensified u e of the theatre the motion picture and the museum as media for anti religious propaganda Though we have no concern to deal with region et we cannot help saying that the religion of the Car Russia was the religion of wide spread injustice resulting in demolishing the hberty of the country It was a religioncertainly st was but with mere idea and no expression The people of the Car Russia were mostly Christians the Bible was their holy book what a fun it was! The teachings of Christ were honoured by them more in breach than in obsenance Russia today is free of the religious bondages We need not discuss here whether Russia should have one religion or no but we must not avoid saying that in spite of the Bolshevik Russia 8 baving no belet in religion she has been appreciated for her cosmopoli tan activities as also for her efforts for impartis peace and happiness to Gods world by so many godly men like Tagore and others Sac has worked wonders in removing all the ancient sources of weakness and misery which formerly had lamed the red race and haunted it cither with definite terrors os vague and scarcely conscious despond and in bringing about 3 BO ·to make the peasants conscious of their position of their inherent rights wbich they did not enjoy of all the possibilities that lay open to them They were not ashamed to be propagandists and their propaganda was educative it was scientific it was human it was moral and carried all the fervour of social service that they were capable of igniting in their minds and heart Whatever they attempted to organise had always the welfare of the people as its direct inspiration They did not want to enjoy any exclusive privilege at all because that kind of enjoyment was anti social and therefore non human perhaps even inhuman All the store houses of wisdom of joy of well ordered social benefits were open to every one of them because every one of them had equal human right to them The Poet had his Santiniketan in India which was linked up with the surrounding villages He also had his Sriniketan (the Rural Reconstruction Institute) situated at villa e Surul The inmates of Santiniketan and Sriniketan were trying there best to serve their neighbours to invite them to their festi als to supply them with medicine to demonstrate to them the efficiency of the up-to date methods of agriculture, The educational work of Russia was therefore of great use to the Poet He wished he had more time and energy to study their woth properly However he tried his best to ut lise bis visit to Russia In the evening of 12th September a concert was arranged in the Poet s honour under the joint auspices of the Society for Cutural Relations and the Moscow Association of Writers About sixty persons repre senting the Soviet public life art and science responded to the invitation Professor Petroff in his opening speech of welcome sard We who have taken part in the October Revolution and assisted at the construction of new forms of human culture extend a warm welcome to one who has come amongst us as a profound thinker to study our culture to study our strivings for the re newal of human society and thus of human personality Itselt ·Rabindranath Tagore is an active worker on the front of popular education as well as a poet and a thinker He is endeavouring in the pedagogical institution founded by himself in Santiniketan to solve problems regarding the formation of human personality This branch of work occupies an important place in his activities and males great demands upon his energy and strength Now he wishes to learn of the en deavours of our country to understand how in new and revolutionary conditions the human personality destined to ad ance human progress in economic in social and in cultural conditions which are 71 new expands and formulates Rabindranath Tagore wishes co understand how the human personality can in the conditions of socialist reconstruction perfect itself and become a veritable creator in the spheres of art science and in human progress of every description We welcome the visits of friends who come with an open heart and a pure soul to our country to study our structure to try and understand the aspirations of the masses towards a new human life a new and free system for the perfection of human nature The people of Russia already knew Tagore They had read Tagore and they loved Tagore with all their heart They had at that time over twenty five editions of the Poet s hooks and a vast majority of the nume rous nationalities of the USSR were enjoying the constructive reading from those books They were therefore very happy and proud to show to the Poet whatever he wanted to see of their work and they felt sure that he would appreciate their educational The Poct had gone to Russia to learn something which would he thought go a long way to solve the great problems of his own country as also the world problem of civilisation Civilisation had as it bas today taken man far away from his normal hu manity It had given birth to an extraordinary artificial life It had created disease evoked specific sufferings created many anomalies The Poet was profoundly interested in problems of education His idea his dream had been to create activities ·free humın beings sho should be surrounded by an environment of creative work In Russia the Socialit Government had put an end to the evil of human existence in a kind of cage cut off from the rest of society The Poet was convinced that Russia s ideas were very much like his own dieam his dream for a full life for the individual for complete education The Poet s idea of education was that it should be in contact with life itself it should be a part of life By living a true life one can have proper education and not through the detachment from it which is so often seen in the colleges and schools in the civilised world which the Poet would call the brick built prisons in which children are denied the true goods of life The entire country scattered with the peasants houses A great deal of cultural social and educa tional work is carried on in these places These houses also serve the purpose of re reation clubs From time to time lectures are arranged to inform the masses on social and agricultural problems to initiate them into the scientific methods of tilfing the land and reaping the maximum crops Every such house is equipped with a museum of natural history the rise and development of religion social and educational welfare They are also used as information bureaux for dealing with different subjects like agriculture taxation education Peasants coming from the surrounding vill ges with the intention of eliciting information about their own particular problems con nected with the village life are allowed to stay in these houses for a few days at a nominal charge Thes houses ate the chief vehicle of disseminating the necessary education among the one time illiterate peasantry and turning them into the useful and res ponsible citi ens of Russia Tagore vis ted one such house at Moscow on 16th September He was iacroduced to the peasants present there by the superintendent of the house with the remarks that the Poet ha i come to study t life at first hand and to learn about their vay of 85 that ·11 their hopes and aspirations and he concluded his remarks with the wish that that meeting might estah fish a deeper contact betn een the peasants of thu Soviet Russia and those of India In he reply to their address of welcome the Poet said that he aas very much impressed by the kind of constructive work that was being carried on in Russia ro uplift the masses from the slough of polerty igno. munce disease and literacy He admised che heroic eal of the Soviet masses who were co operating with the Government of their country in the uplift work in the course of a talk which he had wich the peasants some one among them asked the Poet to account for the perpetual communal tension in India Tagore $ quick and pointed reply was that it was all due to the ignorance and literacy If these were liquidated all setife and hostilities would come to at end However the Poet was not very hopeful about the possibilities of mass scale education his country When another peasant asked him to express his opinion about collectivisation that was being carried an in Russi3 Tagore said that he could not answer the question because he did not understand the working syster of this scheme and desired that he wauld like to be informed from the peasants them selves about collectivisation ond its bearing on the pesantry He was told that the basic idea of collec tivisation was the social voluntary participation in the organisation of these collective farms About two hundred individuals farms were merged into common unit Where about three thousand workers acre putting their efforts for the common good the land was cultivated by their concerted efforts and advanced methods of agriculture such as scientific manuring and the use of tractors and other modern machinery had been introduced There was an eight hour working day and each fifth day was the holiday Those peasants who worked longer received overtime allanance When winter came the work on the land was not sufficient to engage all the members of 86 ·al collective unit About tvo thirds of them were permitted to leave the farm and seek employment in the big cities During their period of stay in the town they received one third of their summer wages from the farm and their families were permitted to reside in the rooms which were allotted to them in the farms About tıfty per cent of the Russian peasants had become the members of the collective farm before the Poer had visited Soviet Russia and the scheme was gaining popularity day by day The Poet was inform ed that the collective method of land exploitation was yielding a far better and hi her ratio of crops than the old individual system The reason is not far to seek The individuals cannot afford the modern scientific appliances nor could they utilise them in their small strips of land which each individual pensant owned Collective farms were the source of a new order of social existence New living houses had been built for each collective unit There vas a common dining hall and a school was attached with every unit The peasants were glad at this change of their former small dirty huts to their large sanitary hygienic collectivist houses Under the collectivist social sy tem the condition of the women was much ameliorated They are not ignorant and helpless as is the case in India They have received the light of the new age in order to find their place in the world of humanty The women social workers of Russia have organised them selves into small collectivist brigades and travel in different parts of the country to rouse their sisters from theit lethargy and to enlighten them about the economical and cultural benefits of collectivisation The women collectivists worked in the land side by wete side their men comra les There every collective farm a kindergarten a nursery and a common kitchen The women under the collective social system were really building up a new life in their country in which they were participating They were no longer in the clutches of superstition ·ignorance They had become responsible to ens with a keen sense of duty Tagare had taken some of his paintings with him shich were displayed in the peasants meeting The verdict of the best critics present there was that he was the first class artist as every picture was making a very strong impression and was thrilling the au dience He was told that his work was expressing the spirit of youth and this constituted the element of interest The exhibition of the pictures of the Poet was opened at the State Museum of Moscow on 17th September it was largely attended by the public as well as the representatives of the various art and cducacional institucions of the councty. The hall was packed to its fullest capacity on the first day of ethibiron Pofessor Petrott performed the opening ceremony and extended a cordial welcome on behalt of the Coviet Republic. He introduced Tagore to the audience with the words that he was not only a great poet and a philosopher but also a great paintes of his age He appreciated his vision and understanding of life s deeper realities in conclusion he hoped that h* 252t to the Sosiet Union would prove a new link in the chain of uniting the toiling masses of the two countries The Poet returned warm thanks for the welcome extended to him on behalf of the Stare and the public and said that his pictures were the most 10tmate gifts that he could offer them for a true mutual understanding He had brought his pictures to them because he hoped that through his pictures he could come into direct touch with the mind while with his words he could not owing to che linguistic barrier He said that his pictures would speak to them asthout the medium of interpreter which was always unsatisfactory His pamtings won warm approval from the art critics present there They considered those works to be a great man testa Cion of the aristic life During the remaining day, at the exhsbision the muscum was daily visited by more than five hundred 83 ·people In the afternoon of 21th September the Poet visited an industrial labour commune for children and incorrigible children There were about one hundred children who lived in the colony Another hundred (non residents) dined there during the day The ages of those children ranged from fourteen to eighteen years The idea of this labour commune was to im part industrial training to those one time homeless waifs who had a definite tradition imbued in them of their former street life and also to mould them into honest conscientious ocial workers This commune had a self government All the affairs were managed by the youngsters themselves The period of reten tion did not exceed three years Each such labour commune was equipped with a school and a workshop The children did four hour practical work in the workshop and devoted three hours to the theoretical study in the class room They had their evenings entirely spare to be devoted to the social work or mental recreation For the sake of convenience they were divided into small groups If any of the children wanted to leave the colony to visit the town he did not require any special permit All that he had to do was to inform about it to his squad leader Insti turion of this kind have proved very useful in winning the children back from the street The Poet had also the occasion to visit the cer tral State museums for the study of the people of the USSR These two museums are located in a big mansion which previously belonged to Catherine the Great and present the scientific and illustrated de scription of the ethnographic I and economical region of the Soviet Union In this connection it may be observed that there are more than one hundred and twenty nations inhabiting the jurisdiction of the Sovie Union wh ch covered an area of one s xth of the world The last big function held in connection with the Poet s visit to the Soviet Russia was a big Literature and Concert Evening which was attended by more A number of than two thousand persons 89

·Soviet writers poees and actors were present at the
function The famous Russian poet Shingalee reci
ted bis ode to Rabindranıth Tagore Seseral of the
pieces of ragore s poems were read out by the authos
Galperin A well known actor recited two poems
in prose of Tagore s works The Poet himself read
several of his poems which aroused tremendous
applause from the public An opera party gave a
demonstration of Russian village dances in the satire
A peasant choir gave a recital of the Russian folk
song
When the function came to a close the Poer
Bas given a tremendous applause as a parting act of
appreciation for the Poets versatile genius
SO

·VIII THF GOLDEN PATH q #door F my If k ght th w th my It w they wh led me f m doo wth 1 m ha If bm hg drich mn orld It w my g that ghtm Il the ? h 1 mnt th y hwdm tph Wyb gh hef my gh: m y - 1 + Th yg d d m El th d y lo & th my terze of h cou tyf pl 52 d d lt thepi 8 h th y b ghem 5 8 1 th df mit y ! f my RABINDRANATH TAGORF THE record of the past interpreted in practical life by noble men and women supply the moral tonic which must be administered to each generation lest it should perish of ethical inanition and debility History sounds the prean of triumph of great movements in religion politics art and science The self sacrifice of the earnest lovers of humanity was the price always paid for the victory It seems to be a mysterious law that no progress can be made without sacrifice Some men and women must be prepared to de as martyrs or face death as heroes co risk their lives as daring pioneers or bold heretics to practis abnormal absti nence to drill and discipline the body like the merciless partinets to scorn rank and honour to suffer hunger and thirst cold and fatigue to despise contumely and clumny to renounce money and marriage to forgo fame and tortune and family life to endure torture and imprisonment exile and loneli 91 ·Dass ---thus to master Sense and conquer Self and thereby to 1112 the mass of mankind to ever higher levels of Wisdom and Virtue History preserses the names and words and deeds of the most remarkable representatives of this small elite of martyrs apostles and amethysts whose lite as GB Shaw puts it belong to the whole community and as long as they live it is their privilege to do for whatever they can They want to be thoroughly used up when they die for the harder they work the more they live Lite is no briat candle for them It is a sort of splendid rorch which they have got hold of for the moment and they want to burn it as brightly as possible before banding on to furore genera nons Nothing is more natural to man than to admire what is good and great He is not satisfied with bread and butter but hankers after something which will give him abiding solace and comfort Hrs physical nature is satisfied with material things food clothing hou es and riches but his spiritual nature craves food for his mind and soul He teals that mon does not live by bread alone but by every word of God This 18 wby even the man rolling in the lap of futury feels chat a}} is not right with his and seeks for better food This desire to bring nourishment to his soul leads men to approach and know great men It has been said that the search of the great is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of mankind No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than onesele dwells in the breast of man Whence comes this feeling-this admiration of the Greaca te oves its origin to a strong innate human desire to claim kisship between man and man More often than not do we feel that there is a common bond between the man on the pedestal and man in the street We humans each of us have common frailtres common morality common hopes and common fears This feeling of kinship gives rise to the curiosity that goads us on to the personal qualities and idiosyncrasies of the great men and women As of touched by a magic sand the man of genus 02 ·shines forth aloof from others around him but we wish to assure ourselves that he is one of us unlike u in some respects but very like us in others Death and annihilation bury all the pageant of humanity into oblivion Most of us come into this world live our span of existence and go from the stage of life quite unknown unwept and unsung Not a trace of us is left in this work a day world---nothing to identify us from the heap of cold ashes and the hand ful of dust Dust thou art and to the dust returnst exhorts the Holy Writ Rarely enough from this vast mass of surging man kind is someone born to leave a trail of glory behind hum a footprint on the sands of time Sometimes it is by virtue of a living thought that be wins the estima tion of his fellow brothers at other times he rises to eminence because of his eternal message of hope illustrated with the bitter struggles and the grim determination with which he faced the difficulties the Patience with which he ultimately triumphed As we go through these accounts languor and ap thy vanish a new enthusiasm comes over us and a desire to fight well the battle of 1 fe comes back Sometimes a man of genius towers above his f llows because of creation of beauty that n ver perishes that with tands the on slaughts of time and lifts the soul of the percipient 11 stantaneously and irresistibly out of the reg on of self consciousness There is a lot of difference between the man who le ds a napeless life and goes the way of all flesh and the towering personality marked by some uncommon attr bute of mind The spoken thou hts of these great souls awaken the słumbering thoughts of others what they say all m n of that age wete longing to say but w re finding no language to express and all of a sudden the thoughts of these men start up as from an enchanted sleep The voice of the universe speaks through them with their advent new thoughts new m anings n w forces float in the air The e great souls are the beacon 1 ghts in the voyage of life they come to inspire to guide and comfort us and take us to our destination Bs appreciating their Ines 93 ·make our own lives sublime They are at once our friend philosopher and guide They serve as pillars of light to guide us to the promised land Vein gratitude and joy say to them At your voice Parc despair flee away Ye move through the ranks recall The stragglers refresh the outworn Praise reinspire the brave Order courage return Eyes rekındhing and prayers Follow your steps as you go Ye fill up the gaps in our files Strengthen the wavering line Stablish continue our march On to the bound of the waste On to the city of God It is because we recognise the serviceable relation of such rare souls to their age that we have an abiding passion to probe into main rest details of their lives When in an age or in a country there is the ten dency of men being lumned unco a lifeless mass et is che presence and worship of great men that stir it and break it up They gie a rude shaking and dis integracion begins With disintegrarion comes new energy and with it new life Such men bare handed down the essence of these inspired moments to posterity, ind posterity shall ever build there noble id als of life on those inmortal gospels of truth The beritage left by the great is to the young mand what the warming sun and the re Ireshing rain of spring ate to the seeds which have lain dormant in the frosts of sintet It is more for it may 831e from that which 5 wors than death as well as bless us with that what is better than life The teeming millions of Indians look up Rama as an incarnation of God and repeat his name in weal and we as open sesame for deliverance from the bondage of birth and dea k Yer how few of them have ever realised what a great debs at gratitude shes, owe to the saint who comipo ed Ramayanamthe Bible of the Hindus 941 ·There are some heretics as there are always are who look upon all the principal characters of Ramayana as the mere figment of imagination They little feel that the whole nation regard i ma as real as the conception of a deity is in many other lands In this great panorama of time history is a thing of yesterday and most of the memorable things took place long before the art of writing came in vogue The Ramayana is not of an age but for all times it is not merely a book to be read at leisurely hours and put back on the shelf but for aeons it has been the fountain head of Moral in piration to one of the time honoured races of the world The living influence of this sublime epic tinged the warp and woof of an entire nation Perhaps no other book has such power to lift the wretched out of his misery the poor out of his poverty to make the burden bearer forget his burden the down trodden his degeneration The characters of Rama and Sita have been the rarest literary achievement Rama whose divinity has never been quest oned is intensely human in his trials and tribulations Sita who faced a storm of an outrageous fortune has set up an ideal for all women Every year the Hindu India commemorates these beloved heroes by staging the passion play of Ramavana and try to imb be the lofty idealism and teachings of the epic. And yet how much do we know about the bad Valmik: the creator of these immortal characters ? Besides what has been mentioned in the Ramayana itself we do not know anything about this king among the poets of all ages Kalidasa the peerless poet of beauty suffers from the same fate-oblivion But as says the Poet Beauty lives though lilies die the man may pass away without being accorded the honour worthy of him but his achievement if it bears the hall mark of immortality will li e for age And hence this human and normal interest in the latest Indian Poet whos fame pervades far and away in the entire world No modern poet has been acco ded o much honour and recognition as this Shelley Bengal as he was one time called works. 95 His a ·place on shelves of all cultured people and have been translated into almost all the spoken languages of the world He has visited all the important cities of the world and has personally communicated his message in his own subtle way His niche among the galaxy of the classical poets is already assured And already so much has been said and written about the dignity and magne tic qualities of his personality Apart from the unique quality of his genius his personality mahes 1 lasting impression on his fellow men Like Socrates a great man of genius may be physically unattractive but Mother Nature has been bountiful in the case of this Bengali Poct inside and out The personality of the man is as conspicuous as genius of the poet is great As he appeared when the sunset of life was coming on apace with the fine lineaments of his face and his silver locks flowing beard and flashing eyes he resembled an ancient seer stepping out of a sylvan glade in ancient Aryavarta or a patriarch full of wisdom moving in the sight of God Coleridge might have anticipated him when he uttered Beware I betare ! Of his flashing eves and floating hair And weave a circle round him thrice For he of honey dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise He was lionised even when he was just a youth of twenty with a tall stately figure and long curly hair In the rich variety of lyrical measures the original tunes that he constantly struck up predicted a great future for him Babu Akshay Chandar Sirkar a B ngalı writer of no mean repute hailed him as the precursor of a new epos in the Bengalı poetry but in view of the ever rising tide of his fame he warned him not to be intoxicated and carried away by the plaudits of the public One may wonder what that eminent writer would have thought if he had been living today and had been an eye witness to the world wide homage that has been paid to this Plato of all ages As a matter of fact an answer to this writer was anticipated in one of the early sor gs of the Poet 00 1 ·Have I come into this world as a beggar for fame to win handclaps by stringing words together? Who will awake today who will work who wants to wipe out the shame of the mother Babu Bankım Chandar Chatterjee the celebrated Bengalı novelist and the author of Bande Mataram the Indran National Anthem once suggested to Tagore that he should write an epic poem to establish a niche in the temple of fame in the domain of poetry The teply came much later in the form of a beautiful address dedicated to the Lyrical Muse as his beloved I had a mind to enter the list for the composition of an epic poem but I do not know when my fancy Struck your jingling bangles and broke into a thousand songs Owing to that unexpected accident the epic poem shattered into atoms is lying at your feet In his Reminiscences Rabindranath mentions with characteristic modesty that he was at one time called the Shelley of Bengal Some of his English admirers have compared him with Byron We believe him to be greater than both-in insight in wisdom in calm vision of the Beautiful If highest poetry is to be the emotion recollected in tranquillity as Wordsworth says then we may claim Tagore to be the greatest poet of all ages Tagore was nourished on the wisdom of the East His poetic muse thrived on the inspiration that came to him from Upanishads and from Bengal Vaishnava poets This wisdom of the East he interpreted in his lectures in Europe on The Meeting of East and West and My Ideal of Education The two notes of Ancient Wisdom are Human Solidarity and Supre macy of Spiritual Values These Tagore emphasises when exposing the weaknesses of Western civilisation Speaking to the English people be says come in contact with alien peoples with other races your want of love of humanity becomes apparent Again Think of the ruthlessness and the com mercialism present in the modern politics of Europe and America Europe has trampled upon the of the Eternal and the truth of Human Fellowship 97 When you ·0 F 1 cu Ease leen earicbed by 15 satz tas shed fresh lustre una rannsd of Esto eboleks s free Lite pous to us to be deeper by to ceral color mats Vehaneen is za n's ne Ir atzordag to him is erke om write to rags ag3!) and a gazd of cry life Trim2 r's throes of struggle is event that cthz bu erg ruskong resckess Tate its ki2 ml 5 bim ss erdinta hele nas o treedom 1981 socul Britn Jual tr 2 191033 35 little as L Shaper depths are not there Luca isc an station ya e-sharu and tallou hu 1 tlul se prro do as he like That * Le cha salararcher 13$ znother poet wines Thurflo & tells with great * Smuldah the members of bhabink they a Salut i hapun Bur sure! 108 the moral la Triad 12 rererer e tor the roralla Tucs he ner-Hau 1990 His locele story ho lea e ps Th Joy fry is that of an 3 h 19 role with a bezututul n mph Le or Halftimon Bur ss char the coal wc - Coman with th & unulis mean ith t court hus for telloa ship The Belgian drama 10 qua 5 AC and lowly and those a ho are med menirs and sin fapt ' cfis an i tace a bo Tagore resemble o e remexts. The Blue Bid is the happines vs Broken we a k the question Where to 1 Vaeterlinck gnes us no det Srls ltes meaning must be omething Th truch as it is not we alone brbo ate de $ of the Ideal the ideal to in sale rus ces to us again and again 8.] ku orn our enses a d minds and bear's He cones comes ever comes SIT! it fua is God but God also seeks Nia 728 179osible with His quest His ·Us grimage of Man He comes into the very storm of life but with silent steps And they that sit in the silence hear the voice that speaks beyond the walls of this world Througl the forest path He comes says the Poet In the forest is silence in the forest is the call to communion with Nature to a life of sadhana self discipline tapasya self purification in the forest the tapoiana is the shantiniketanhe abode of peace Modern civilisation is in agony for it has lost touch with Nature and will not be healed of its wounds till It sings life again to Nature Ae you in quest of Happiness? Then note that to run after silver and gold and the honours of the world is to run away from Him and who can be happy in running away from Him His coming is the law which binds and builds the world Yet we run away from Him again and again we run away from lite to take refuge in con ventions and unrealities We run away afraid to touch the Infinite 10 afraid to take up the challenge of life anxious only to have agreeable emo tions anxious to make fools of ourselves From the poit t of view of technique Tagore is only an English poet by the courtesy of the freest possible interpretation of the term free verse He does not write in li es he writes in areas and he indulges in repeated refrains that are not in line with the practice of free verse Moreover Tagore does not unite hs poetry he sings his poetry music and poetry born together in India In this land music has always been regarded as the greatest of the arts and this for several reasons Other arts are at their best when they show a musical quality Coleridge remarks very pertinently that wherever you find a sentence musical ly worded or true rbythm and melody in the word there is something deep and good in the ords too For body and soul word and idea, go strangely together here as everywhere it is only when the heart of him 18 rapt into the true passion of melody and the very tones of him become musical by the greatness and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to thyme and sing that we call him a re ·common crowd unknown to be my king thou didst press the signet of eternity upon many a fleeting moment The Poet often seems to contrast his life with the generality of people who live a crowded life in mak ing money and filling the heads with politics and have more seeming weight in the world and always humbly as though he were only sure his way is best for him Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame I sit hike a beggar maid drawing my skirt over my face and when they ask me what it is I want I drop my eyes and answer them not At another time remembering how his life had once a different shape he will say Many an hour have I spent in the strife of the good and the evil but now it is the pleasure of my playmate of the empty days to draw my heart on to him and I know not why is this sudden call to what useless inconsequence An innocence a simplicity that one does not find else where in literature makes the birds and the leaves seem as near him as they are near to children Indeed when he is speaking of chuldren so much a part of himself this quality seems one is not certain that he is not also speaking of the saints They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep Children have their play on the seashore of the worlds They know not how to swim they know not how to cast nets Pearl fisbes dive for pearls merchants sail in their ships while children gather pebbles and scatter them again They seek not for hidden treasures they know not how to cast nets Tagore has familiarised us with the finest elements of Western thought and has brought about a remark able synthesis of the culture of the East with that of the West This is particularly to be seen in his love poems He has lifted love to an imaginatı height bitherto undreamt of in Bengali poetry He has caught up the far flung radiations of the passion in the magic web of his poetry Before him there were certain 104 ·stereotyped moulds in which love was thrown to be treated more as convention than is an authentic experience There was nothing to indicate that the thrill of love had ever been felt by our earlier poets The manner in which Rabindranath transformed it and introduced into it a new fermentation a new thrill of passion is indeed wonderful and the credit is all the greater when we remember the trammels within which Bengali literature is bound He is able to give expression to a range and width of feeling a rapture and an ecstasy that seem to be quite unknown to the Cramped soul of Bengal In poet s treatment of Beauty in the abstract he combines the spiritual quality of Shelley with the Sensuous quality of heats The rich glow the fine sensuousness, the concrete imagery remind us of Keats Urvasi might be regarded the Rabindran th Hymn to the Abstract Spirit of Beauty-the counterpart of Shelley & Song of Asia But the thrilling vagueness of Shelley is substituted by a sensuousness in the manner of Keats Rabindranath has interpreted old myths and legends endowir g them with new symbolism and significance Our old myths have become dim and vague and un Suitable to poetry beca se of their dissociation with Other aspects of life it is the credit of Rabindranath that he has revived them in the light of a new inter pretation in his own inimitable way They have been lifted to higher imagination and sp ritu l plane If Keats is great as a Hellenistic poet Rabindran th also has installed the breath of a new life over old 10yths In the rich variety of lyrical measu es the original tunes that the Poet constantly strike up he is as great as Swinburne He is one of the very greatest lyrical poets the world has bnown-lyrical in thought and lyrical in command over melodies Rabindranaths achievem nts as a great litera He is our first and fine critic may be touched upon literary critic if we e çept the few tentative efforts Babu B nhin Chandat In fact some of the 105 ·translations in English are by hitaselt and these bave been translated into several other languages Critics in Europe and America have bestoned high praise on his wettings and ranked him among the great poets of the world Poetry divides itselt easily into three main sections epic dramatic and lyric the three clearly demarcated and separated by wide stretches of time and the evolution of the human intellect these epic poetry is somewhat easy of translation but Its essence is hatrative Drama 18 comparatively diffi cult but the excellent renderings into English of the powerful tragedies prove that the difficulties of trans Jation after all 3re not msuperable A fine lyrical poem is the despair of the translation To be fully appreciated a lyrical poem must be read in the original with due understanding of the language in which ir IS written It is a compact and a component whole from which no past can be separated from another The words the figures the merre are all wedded together Rabindranath has translated his poems with 2 phenomenal success but still at 15 impossible co con vey in another language the grace the metrical Arrangement and the musical harmony of the words of the original poems Several English admirers of the Poet also hundreds of Indian readers ourside Ben gal have learnt the language of Bengal ta read the works of the Bengali Poet as originally written The Sate Gopal Krishna Gokhale the well known Indian politician and mathematician also learnt the Bengali language for the express purpose of reading Rabindra nach s poems in the original Bengah An English crtac of Tagore has likened him to Victor Hugo Comparisons between two writers in Ito different languages are often not helpful for con structive criticisut At times it may have the mere of suggestion The simslarity beineen the French and the Indian writers is in their versatility and range of creative genius Both are masters of prose and serse both are writers of prose fiction both have written dramatic and lyrical poetry both are child lovers and have tendered the homage of exquisite 108 ·song to the sovereignty of childbood But the students of literature will not fail to observe that the two writers belong to two divergent schools Tenny on has tightly called Victor Hugo Stormy Voice of France The great French poet was Lord of human tears The muse of the Indian Poet moves in the glory of early dawn and seeks the gathering shadows of evening She finds her pleasure not in the torm and stress but in the smiling beauties of Nature She listens to the voice of the sandal scented wind from the south and knocks gently at the door of the human heart The genius of Victor Hugo was not only dramatic but even melodramatic He was a master of the big bow wow style Rabindranath in his later writings has touched spintual heights seldom reached by any poet No estimate of Rabindranaths life and works would be complete without touching upon his phil osophy of the Intinite The Poet never loses sight of the Infinite in the finite the Unlimited in the limited This is interwoven in the warp and woof of tis writings In his famous novel Gora he makes Gora the hero of the piece speak thus Unless there be finite the Intınte cannot express Itself It is through the finite that the Infinite mani fests itself Again in another passage the Poct sings Within the finite Oh Thou Infinite Thou playest Thy own tune Hence so rapturously sweet is Thy manifestation in me The Poet has found in must the manifestation of the Infinite through the finite The passage last quoted 13 an illustration in his masterpiece Chitrangada As in a song in a momentary rhythm there is as if a mystical echo from the Eternal There is a parallel idea in another of his songs But music soats The mind cannot approach Him higher and kisses His chrane This is the Poet s faith in music which brings him such a beatific vision as we see in the folloning 109

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