Rabeendra Nath Tagore & Bangla Language

RABEENDRA NATH TAGORE

Greatest writer in modern Indian literature, Bengali poet, novelist, educator,

who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore was awarded the

knighthood in 1915, but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the

Massacre of Amritsar, where British troops killed some 400 Indian demonstrators

protesting colonial laws. Tagore's reputation in the West as a mystic has

perhaps mislead his Western readers to ignore his role as a reformer and critic

of colonialism.

"When one knows thee, then alien there is none, then no door is shut. Oh, grant

me my prayer that I may never lose touch of the one in the play of the many."

(from Gitanjali)

Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta in a wealthy and prominent Brahman

family. His father was Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, a religious reformer and

scholar. His mother Sarada Devi, died when he was very young - her body carried

through a gate to a place where it was burned and it was the moment when he

realized that she will never come back. Tagore's grandfather had established a

huge financial empire for himself, and financed public projects, such as

Calcutta Medical College. The Tagores were pioneers of Bengal Renaissance and

tried to combine traditional Indian culture with and Western ideas. However, in

My Reminiscenes Tagore mentions that it was not until the age of ten when he

started to use socks and shoes. Servants beat the children regularly. All the

children contributed significantly to Bengali literature and culture. Tagore,

the youngest, started to compose poems at the age of eight. He received his

early education first from tutors and then at a variety of schools. Among them

were Bengal Academy where he studied Bengali history and culture, and University

College, London, where he studied law but left after a year without completing

his studies. Tagore did not like the weather. Once he gave a beggar a gold coin

- it was more than the beggar had expected and he returned it. In England Tagore

started to compose the poem Bhagna Hridaj (a broken heart).

In 1883 Tagore married Mrinalini Devi Raichaudhuri, with whom he had two sons

and three daughters. He moved to East Bengal in 1890. His first book, a

collection of poems, appeared when he was 17; it was published by Tagore's

friend who wanted to surprise him. In East Bengal (now Bangladesh) he collected

local legends and folklore and wrote seven volumes of poetry between 1893 and

1900, including Sonar Tari (The Golden Boat), 1894 and Khanika, 1900. This was

highly productive period in Tagore's life, and earned him the rather misleading

epitaph 'The Bengali Shelley.' More important was that Tagore wrote in the

common language of the people and abandoned the ancient for of the Indian

language. This also was something that was hard to accept among his critics and

scholars.

In 1901 Tagore founded a school outside Calcutta, Visva-Bharati, which was

dedicated to emerging Western and Indian philosophy and education. It became a

University in 1921. He produced poems, novels, stories, a history of India,

textbooks, and treatises on pedagogy. His wife died in 1902, followed in 1903 by

the death of one of his daughters and in 1907 his younger son.

Tagore's reputation as a writer was established in the United States and in

England after the publication of Gitanjali: Song Offerings, in which Tagore

tried to find inner calm and explored the themes of divine and human love. The

poems were translated into English by Tagore himself. His cosmic visions owed

much to the lyric tradition of Vaishnava Hinduism and its concepts about the

relationship between man and God. The poems appeared in 1912 with an

introduction by William Butler Yates, who wrote "These lyrics - which are in the

original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable

delicacies of colour, of metrical invention - display in their thought a world I

have dreamed of all my life long." His poems were praised by Ezra Pound, and

drew the attention of the Nobel Prize committee. "There is in him the stillness

of nature. The poems do not seem to have been produced by storm or by ignition,

but seem to show the normal habit of his mind. He is at one with nature, and

finds no contradictions. And this is in sharp contrast with the Western mode,

where man must be shown attempting to master nature if we are to have "great

drama." (Ezra Pound in Fortnightly Review, 1 March 1913) However, Tagore also

experimented with poetic forms and these works have lost much in translations

into other languages. Especially Tagore's short stories influenced deeply Indian

Literature, and he was the first Indian to bring an element of psychological

realism to his novels. Tagore wrote his most important works in Bengali, but he

translated his poems into English, forming new collections. Many of his poems

are actually songs, and inseparable from their music. His written production,

still not completely collected, fill 26 substantial volumes. At the age of 70

Tagore took up painting. He was also a composer, settings hundreds of poems to

music. Tagore's song Sonar Bangla Our Golden Bengal became the national anthem

of Bangladesh. He was an early advocate of Independence for India and his

influence over Gandhi and the founders of modern India was enormous.