Bisshya kobi Kobiguru Robindronath

Today is 25th Baishakh, Rabindranath Tagore's birthday according to the Bengali calendar.So I thought of writing this article.

I don’t remember when I first heard about Kobiguru. As far as I could recall, I heard a song when I was very young in some Bengali drama -

‘ami kaan pete roi o amar apon hridoy gohon dare, baare baare .. kaan pete roikon gopon bashir kanna haashir gopon kotha shuni baarebaare baare.. kaan pete roi’

…I had no idea what it meant at that time but some amazingly mystical tunes left me intrigued. Kobiguru became an inseparable part of my household but I have to admit that my knowledge and understanding of Rabindranath are very limited. So how much, if at all, do we or our next generation know about Kobiguru Rabindranath Tagore or do we even need to? Perhaps we don’t, if I was brought up under the influence of the western media and culture, dance to the hip-hop techno music, quite happy to be ignorant towards our wealthy Bengali culture - I probably do not need to.

Rabindranath Tagore is the most eminent modern Bengali writer to have appeared on the whole literary scene. He wrote his first poem when he was just 7 years of age while looking outside through the window in a rainy day, ‘Jol Pore, Pata Nore’ in 1868. Rabindranath was born on May 7, 1861 (25th Baishakh, 1268 – Bengali Year) in Jorasanko, Calcutta. He was one of the fourteen children and came from a cultural and wealthy family. During his sixty years of literary life, Tagore contributed to Indian and Bangladeshi literature with over one thousand poems, nearly two dozen plays and playlets, eight novels and several short stories, more than two thousand and eight hundred songs of which he wrote both the words and music.

Kobiguru never liked his school - due to the wealthy family background, his early education was through private tutors. Subsequently, he studied at several institutions and even went to England to study law in University College London, however, did not complete any degree program. Apparently, he was recalled back home by his father in 1880, possibly because his letters to his family indicated his attraction (which was mutual) to English girls. He also admitted that he didn’t like the English weather very much.

Rabindranath is known primarily for his poetry and music, but he also distinguished himself in another area and that is modern painting. He produced over 2,500 paintings over a decade and in 1930, "through a series of exhibition in Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow and New York, the world discovered the poet Rabindranath as an important modern painter."

Rabindranath became the first Asiatic recipient of Nobel Prize in literature in 1913 for his world class literary contribution for translating ‘Gitanjali’ into English just one year after it’s publication. In ‘Gitanjali ’, a collection of mystical-devotional poetry, “Tagore tried to find inner calm and explored the themes of divine and human love”. Much of Tagore's ideology comes from the teaching of the Upanishads and from his own beliefs that God can be found through personal purity and service to others. “

Almost all of his work prior to that time had been written in his native tongue of Bengali. He decided to do this just to have something to do, with no expectation at all that his first time translation efforts would be any good. Tagore was due to sail from Calcutta, but on the night before his departure he was suddenly taken ill and the doctors forbade an immediate voyage. He was disappointed at this unforeseen cancellation of his voyage and sought consolation and strength by retiring to Shelidah on the banks of his beloved river Padma. It was here that he began to translate, for the first time, some of his ‘Gitanjali’ songs into English.

“…It was the month of Chaitra (March-April), the air was thick with the fragrance of mango-blossoms and all hours of the day were delirious with the songs of birds. When a child is full of vigour, he does not think of his mother. It is only when he is tired that he wants to nestle in her lap. That was exactly my position. …… So I took up the poems of Gitanjali and set myself to translate them one by one….”

After spending a few days in Santiniketan he sailed for London from Bombay on 27 May 1912 accompanied by his son Rathindranath and the latter's wife, Pratima. Fortunately the sea was calm and he had enough rest and leisure to continue his translations of the Gitanjali songs in small exercise books. Arriving in London, while travelling in the Underground from Charing Cross to Russell Square, Rathindranath left behind the brief-case containing the ‘Gitanjali’ exercise book in the compartment and realised his mistake on the following morning when his father asked for it. Fortunately, the brief-case was recovered at the Lost Property Office.

Tagore and his ‘Gitanjali’ took the western writers and critics by storm. Among some of the great admirers were painter Sir William Rothenstein, poet and sculpture Ezra Pound, poetess May Sinclair, poet Ernest Rhys, Alice Meynell, Henry Nevinson, Charles Trevelyan, Fox-Strangway and Irish Poet W. B. Yeats who later recorded his feelings in the beautiful introduction for the first limited edition of ‘Gitanjali’ published by the India Society of London.
Not all the criticism was favourable, however; some were in fact downright hostile, often becoming mixed up in racial overtones and biases. For example, The Times, Los Angeles, complained that young modern writers in Europe and America had been discouraged by the award of the Prize "to a Hindu poet whose name few people can pronounce, with whose work fewer in America are familiar, and whose claim for that high distinction still fewer will recognize".
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.

In the field of music, Tagore’s background was classical Indian. However, as a composer he introduced a rich variety of form and content, enriched by Bangla folk music, such as the Baul and Bhatiyali. He is credited for both the words and music for over 2500 songs, popularly known as Rabindro Sangeet. This also includes the national anthems of both India (Jana Gano Mano Adhinayako) and Bangladesh (Amar Shonar Bangla), a unique accomplishment, indeed. The tune of ‘Amar Shonar Bangla’ reflects his admiration towards Baul songs and Lalon Shah as this is also the tune of well known Lalon geeti, ‘Ami Kothay Paabo Taare, Amar Moner Manush Jere’.

In 1940 Oxford University arranged a special ceremony in Santiniketan to honour the poet with Doctorate Of Literature. Tagore passed away on 7th August, 1941.

Few useful links and references, some of which was used here:

1.http://www.calcuttaweb.com/tagore/tagore.htm

2.http://www.virtualbangladesh.com/biography/tagore.html

3.http://alochona.hypermart.net/newsletter/2001/may/Tagore.htm

4.http://www.schoolofwisdom.com/tagore-einstein.html

5.http://www.journeymart.com/breakfree/India/shantiniketan/

6.http://www.santiniketan.net/

7. http://www.cs.brockport.edu/~smitra/sadhaka.html

8.Rabindranath Tagore ‘Amar Chelbala’ - Rabindra rachnavali’, Calcutta (1940)

9. Krishna Kripalani, ‘Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography, Visva-Bharati, Calcutta (1980).