MESSAGE
Self-knowledge, is the basis of all individual or national advancement in all the wakes of life. The sages of ancient times, whether of the East or of the West, always gave this as the most important message: Know thyself (Atmanam Janihi : Gnothi Seauton : Nosce Teipsum). For a people, its self-knowledge must include a knowledge of the great personalities which have given expression to its aims and ideals and to the highest things in its culture.
In the present age, Rabindranath Tagore represented the eternal soul of India. He manifested in himself, in the words of the Gita, “a fragment of the glory of the Divinity itself.’’
He himself wanted to be known primarily as a poet and a Singer of songs. But his was a personality of a most comprehensive type—it was a diamond with many faces. He was not only one of the greatest lyric poets of any age—there are some 200 and more songs composed by him, hundreds of which would be masterpieces in any language, but also he was a poet who gave expression to the entire gamut of human aspirations and experiences in the noblest form of narrative and reflective poetry. He was a short-story writer and novelist, to whom the life of our people, with its joys and sorrows and hopes and fears has opened itself out; and at the same time, he has, with wonderful introspective vision, been able to give most truthful and convincing pictures of the human mind.
Apart from these aspects of pure literature, Rabindranath was something more. He was an educationist who loved children and adolescents, and wanted to see the unfoldment of their mind and personality as a natural process, like the blooming of the bud into the flower. He was a creative artist not only in education but also in village uplift. He with a prophet’s eye envisaged long ago many of the lines of our present-day welfare endeavour which has been taken over by the State after our independence. The Sri Niketan Institution is ample testimony of that. He was in the forefront of our political struggle for freedom, and for that he also had to suffer; and it was his inspiration which was largely responsible for the enduring strength and the creative endeavour behind our national movement.
In the domain of the pure arts, for sheer joy, Rabindranath’s contribution to Indian Music, has been both extensive and profound, and he has to be ranged with the immortal composers like Tanasena and Tyagaraja. In the drama and in the revival of the dance in India, Rabindranath made significant and enduring contributions. He, towards the end of his life, developed a latent artistic tendency in his intellectual and aesthetic make-up, and we have as a result, Rabindranath the Painter—his paintings also have their message, in their colour and in their composition.
He has been a Lover of Man, and as such he has been a great Humanist who worked for the unity of mankind through culture and through the appreciation of the deeper things of life. This aspect of his personality endeared him most to people abroad.
Rabindranath, like all great writers who are international, was in the first instance most intensely national. We cannot conceive of a poet through whom the spirit of India shines with more conspicuous brilliance than Rabindranath Tagore; and yet he has been claimed all over the world as a poet of all Humanity. Like Shakespeare, the most English of English Poets, who is at the same time the universal poet of all Humanity, Rabindranath the most Indian of Indian Poets, is at the same time a poet for all Mankind.
Finally in the character and personality of Rabindranath there was that sense of realisation. It was through his love of beauty that he could penetrate into the Ultimate Reality that is behind this manifest universe, and in his deeper and more thoughtful poetry as well as in the poetry where he is mystical and lyrical at the same time, we find glimpses of the unseen that is both immanent and transcendent which exalts and transforms his readers also. As a Man, this great personality was an exceedingly loveable person who could enter into fellowship with all and sundry with the magic wand of his sympathy for all, young and old, men and women, the highest and the lowest.
Such a person is indeed a gift from God to any nation. We are reminded of the tribute paid to him by another eminent Indian, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. When after a severe illness during the closing years of his life, he rallied for some time and entered into a new, although short, spell of creative effort : “That he is still with us shows that God has not forsaken us.’’
Another distinguished person, the American Will Durant, in sending to Rabindranath one of his books wrote on it : “You are the reason why India should be free.’’
The best tribute to the memory of Rabindranath would be to familiarise one self with and to saturate one’s mind with the deathless thought and the wonderful fairy world of beauty which he has left in his writings. For this purpose, the available English versions of fragments of his work will not be enough. The Bengali language will be worth while acquiring only for the sake of reading Tagore.
Without the background of India, unseen and wise, mediaeval and pietistic, modern and progressive, there would have been no Rabindranath. At the same time, it must be said that with the advent of Rabindranath it has been, for the Indian People and the Indian Motherland.
“Kulam Pavitram,
Janani Ca Krtartha’’
(The race has been sanctified, and the Mother has attained to her soul’s desire.).
SUNITI KUMAR CHATTERJEE
Chairman, West Bengal Legislative Council.
[Tagore Souvenir, Tagore Academy, Madras 1955]