The Essence of Tagore

In front of me sang the local Baul (mystic minstrel), clad in saffron robes with a turban on his head, playing the khamak (a single-string instrument) while brothers of the Santhal tribe ploughed the red soil with their cattle on a pleasant winter morning in the heart of Shantiniketan. The song was a heart-warming rendition about the men of the red soil, palash flowers (flame of the forest), meandering dirt roads, grazing cattle, palm trees and the very essence of the place around which Tagore founded his unconventional university, Visva Bharati.
The song evoked a deep sense of nostalgia, especially in the recurring refrain ‘Lal paharir desheja, rangamatir desheja; Hethake toke maniachhena re, ikkebare maniacchena re’ meaning ‘Come to your country of the red soil. Where you are, it doesn’t suit you’, as if to call you back to your roots.

The Beginning

In 1861, Rabindranath Tagore was born into an affluent Brahmin family in then Calcutta. No one could’ve imagined that this little boy – the youngest of the brood – would one day, become an eminent poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist and composer.
From the late 19th century till the early 20th century, Tagore brought a whole new dimension to Indian literature and music, and went on to become Asia’s first laureate winner of the Nobel Prize in 1913. His best works – Gitanjali, Gora and Ghare-Baire – gained him worldwide acclaim. Tagore initiated a cultural reform, by modernising art with western influences, yet strictly adhering to classical Indian structures. His style has western influences woven around core Indian forms. His composition Jana Gana Man was adopted as India’s national anthem.

Around 1862, Tagore’s father, Maharishi Debendranath Tagore, while on a boat journey to Raipur in Central India, came across a landscape of red laterite soil and meadows of lush green paddy fields that he found extremely peaceful – ideal for meditation. Here, he built a small retreat for meditation, naming it Shantiniketan, which means abode of peace. In the next few years, Maharishi developed this retreat into a hermitage or ashram, which became a spiritual centre for meditation. Today, the prayer hall here, called the Upasana Griha, stands within the Visva Bharati University complex, and features marble stairs leading up to the wrought iron-structured hall, mounted with multi-coloured Belgian glass windows, a must-see for all visitors.

However, this is a prayer hall without a deity, representing the ideas of the reformist Brahmo movement initiated by Maharishi and Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Considered a monotheistic reformist and renaissance movement, the Brahmo movement was one of the most influential religious movements, responsible for the reformation of the prevailing Brahmanism of the time.

However, Shantiniketan’s real fame came in 1901, when Tagore started his famous experimental school, Patha Bhavana. The school aimed to tear down barriers between students and teachers, and worked on the belief that education must go beyond the confines of the classroom. Patha Bhavana flourished, becoming the Visva Bharati University in 1921, and attracting some of the most creative minds in the country.
Visva Bharati is one of the country’s foremost schools, offering a holistic scheme of education, from nursery to PhD level. It includes several schools of learning including music, fine arts, education, and rural reconstruction. Classes are still held under the shade of mango trees where, as Tagore envisioned and wrote, ‘the mind can have its own dreams’.

Of The Soil

Tagore was heavily influenced by Shantiniketan’s landscape and people. One can spend many a sultry hour reading his compositions under the shady trees that line the Kopai River, which shows up frequently in the poet’s work. Tagore named the area beside the Kopai river ‘Khoai’, which is a word for the laterite formations here that resemble undulating craters. Tagore’s art – his novels, songs and paintings – celebrates Khoai’s pastoral beauty, its red mud paths, tribal men working in the fields, women returning home, children running around colourfully painted mud houses, sprawling mustard fields, and even the Saraswati puja (worship of the clay idol of the Hindu goddess Saraswati – known as the goddess of knowledge, wisdom, music, art and learning).
In every nook and corner of Shantiniketan, every tree and bird seems to rejoice at having been part of Tagore’s legacy. It’s like visiting an ocean of knowledge. Every flower has a story to tell, and that’s because Tagore’s innumerable poems and paintings were created here.
Tagore was always inspired by the smallest of things, even while just taking a stroll in the gardens. There are stories of Tagore instantly composing poems and converting them into songs, singing them himself for the first time. For Tagore, who was essentially a poet and artist, the realisation and expression of beauty was the supreme objective in human life. His concept of beauty, according to true Indian tradition, was inseparable from truth and goodness. He believed aesthetic sense to be a fundamental aspect of spiritual education. Tagore professed that proper aesthetic culture should include the perception and expression of beauty in human life and social conduct, as well as in art and literature. Tagore stated in no uncertain terms that man’s sensory encounter with the environment was as important as his mind’s enquiry into its inner mystery, and any worthwhile society must provide for both.

Shantiniketan & The Philosophy

The landscape of Shantiniketan is also dotted with creations of Tagore’s pupils: Ramkinkar Baij and Nandalal Bose. Their larger than-life figures of Santhal people depict their reality as part of the landscape.
Pioneers of modern art, Ramkinkar and Nandalal were key figures of contextual modernism and they shaped Shantiniketan according to Tagore’s thoughts and ideas – the key ingredient being the life of the original inhabitants of the red soil.
The beauty of the place stems from the splendour of its natural setting and its dazzling heritage. Set amidst a vast, rustic landscape – of rain-fed rivulets and patchy forests of palash, sal, mango and palm trees – this place stands as an authentic botanist’s paradise.

Tagore’s Vision

Rabindranath Tagore was highly influenced and inspired by Bauls, as evident in some of his creations. Bauls are bards, composers, musicians and dancers all put together, and their mission is to entertain. They sing and dance, conveying folk tales and contemporary issues, and their performances are profusely emotional and universally appealing.

Tagore strove to invent a language that would convey to the masses the inspiration drawn from this land. Today, his literature transcends local barriers, and is known throughout the world.

His social reforms are clearly visible in and around Shantiniketan. In his experimental school of Visva Bharati and subsequently, at the second campus in the nearby town of Sriniketan, Tagore’s mission was to create a zone of bonding that would sensitise the urban population to the plight of the rural milieu, for it was in this setting that the liberal philosophy of the Baul became so vital to him. The Baul believe in a world free of caste and social constructs, where people are liberated from outside influences and able to reveal their true hearts or moner manush, as they say in Bengali.
Travelling to this land is perhaps the closest that one can get to experiencing Tagore’s essence. A visit to Shantiniketan is an immensely rich and culturally stimulating experience for anyone who would want to bask in the glory of Tagore’s creativity and intellect.

Song Offerings

‘My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union, they would come between thee and me, their jingling would drown thy whispers… My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music’ – verse from The English Gitanjali or Song Offerings.
Song Offerings is a collection of 103 poems translated by Tagore from his own Bengali poems, and first published in November 1912 by the India Society of London. It contains translations of 53 poems from the original Bengali Gitanjali, as well as 50 other poems from his drama Achalayatan and eight other books of poetry, mainly Gitimalya, Naivedya and Kheya. With his flowing white beard, robes and riveting brown eyes, the famous polymath is fondly remembered for his hundreds of poems and songs, popularly known as Rabindra Sangeet. His vast collection of works include paintings and drawings, as well as novels, plays, operas, essays, short stories, travel diaries and autobiographies. Tagore’s life and works have made him a cultural icon, studied the world over, even into the 21st century.

Did You Know ?

Tagore is the only person who has written the national anthems of two countries: Bangladesh and India. For his excellent work, the British Crown knighted him in 1915. But, due to his political views, which were critical of British rule in India, especially after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, he later returned his knighthood.

Tagore’s Best

Tagore’s literary reputation is disproportionately influenced by regard for his poetry. He also wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore’s prose, his short stories are perhaps some of his most highly regarded works. He is credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic and lyrical nature, with stories mostly written around deceptively simple subject matter like the lives of ordinary people. Famous short stories by Tagore include Kabuliwala (The Fruitseller from Kabul) and We Crown Thee King. Popular dramas by Tagore include Raja, Visarjan, Balmiki Pratibha and hundreds of other mystical pieces.