TAGORE, THE FULL MAN AND IRAN
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), whose Birth-Centenary India is celebrating with proper éclat this year, and who is also being honoured by the intelligentsia all over the world, was one of the towering personalities of the present age. He was a man, but one of the greatest of his own time, and indeed of all time. The manifold character of his genius and his activities makes him as near the Full or Complete or Perfect Man (PÚrna-mánava, Insán al-Kámil), as is humanly possible. Although he used to say repeatedly that he considered himself just a poet and a composer of songs who sought to reflect joys and sorrows and the aspirations and achievements of man, and although he is generally known to be a poet and writer only, he was much more than a mere poet and man of letters. He was of course an outstanding poet and writer, one of the greatest in the history of literature. In fact, in literature, “there was no branch of it that he did not touch, and there was nothing he touched that he did not adorn’’. As Poet and Seer, he was the creative artist. As Prose-writer and Novelist he was both a creative and a reflective genius. He has to his credit an astonishing output of literary works in the various genres, and by far the larger quantity of it all is of highest significance for man. A distinguished statistician of India, who is known internationally, once made a rough computation, a few years before the Poet’s death, of the extent of his literary output. It was then over 75 thousand lines in verse, and thrice the number in prose. His songs (apart from other lyrical compositions) number over 2,000, and to each of these he has given the melody. In poetry he has sung not only of man’s life and love and his yearnings and aspirations, but he has also given us glimpses of the Mystery—the Unseen Reality—that is behind life and therein is perhaps the supreme and the universal appeal of his poetry, apart from his deep fellow-feeling for man and his internationalism and universalism. He was a novelist and short-story writer who had seen life, and seen it whole, and described it with fidelity and sympathy. His essays give his mature reflexions on problems of life and literature. His prose-poems and devotional utterances bring joy and solace to his readers. The appeal of his writings is both intellectual and aesthetic as well as spiritual.
But as said before, literature did not form the sole expression of his personality. He was a Musician, who has own place of honour beside the great music-makers and melody-writers of India and the World. He was a practical Dramatist, who not only composed some of the finest dramas in literature, social and farcical as well as historical and mystic, but showed himself to be a fine histrionic artist and a talented producer. Late in life, he sought to express himself in painting also, and he has his place among the exponents of Modern Art in this age, with a personality of his own. He started as an Educationist, and following the ideal and practice of the hermitage schools of ancient India, he re-created the old system of the School in Open Air at Santiniketan. His educational concepts gave a new impetus to India, and he founded his celebrated international University of Visva-Bharati. His desire to lift up the neglected masses of people in India led him to build up his great Institute of Rural Reconstruction at Sriniketan, as a sister institute to his school at Santiniketan. He was a champion of the oppressed and the down-trodden, and that is why he wholeheartedly joined India’s fight for freedom. He made effective protest against the policy of terrorising the people and of cruel repression which the die-hard supporters of British imperialism started in India. His Mánavikatá, his Sense of Human Values, was not confined to any particular country or people, but was all-embracing, and this made him one of the greatest Internationalists of the age. He was consequently the great Traveller, moving on the five continents to meet his brother man in his own environment and to bring him his message of friendship and of joint endeavour. He could be the friend of the world’s greatest in all lands, and at the same time the world’s humblest in all countries found something in what he said which they could not forego. Such a Full or Complete Man comes to the world at but rare intervals, and after the great spirits of the Renaissance and the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and in the East, Rabindranath Tagore was such an advent.
India and Iran are two of the greatest countries of Asia and the World, and 2,500 years ago India and Iran were like twin sisters. These two countries, together with China, produced cultures with original ideals and concepts as well as characteristic ways of civilised life which have profoundly influenced not only the rest of Asia but also the entire world. The ancient sages of India beginning with the Rishis or Seers of the Vedas, and the sages of Iran like Zarathushtra gave expression to some of the most impressive and vital and significant faces of the Truth. Indian Vedánta and the Iranian form of Tasawwuf or Muslim Mysticism have now perhaps the greatest appeal among Humanity in search for the Ideal and the Reality that is behind life.
Tasawwuf as a perfected system went from Iran to India after Northern India was conquered by the Turks from Afganistan and Central Asia in the 11th-12th centuries. Even during its formative period, on the basis of Arabic Islam, when Greek Gnosticism and Indian Vedánta were helping to give it shape, MansÚr al-Halláj (who was of Iranian origin although he expressed himself in Arabic) brought it in contact with Indian thought when he visited India early in the 10th century of the Christian era. Tasawwuf became one of the common platforms on which the seekers of Truth in both Muslim Iran and Central Asia on the one hand and Hindu or Brahmanical India on the other could meet and enrich each other’s minds. The Persian work Majmáu-l-Baharain composed by Prince Dárá ShikÚh, son of Emperor Sháh Jahán and Great grandson of the illustrious Akbar the great, with its Sanskrit the Samudra-San˙gama,indicates this kind of Indo-Iranian reapproachment and cooperation in higher spiritual endeavour. We need not go into the details of this international fellowship in the domain of mysticism. The history certainly requires to be fully investigated and the beginnings of it go to the earliest Indo-Iranian times, when the two immediate sections of the Aryan or Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language-culture group, in Iran and in India, started adventuring in the domain of spiritual intuition and return immediately after their separation during the closing centuries of the Second Millennium Before Christ.
And we are happy to find that great Rabindranath Tagore himself formed a golden link during this century in the chain of spiritual friendship binding up India and Iran. His father Devendranath Tagore, who was a religious leader and is venerated in India as a Maharshi or ‘Great Sage’, was captivated by the spirituality of Iranian Tasawwuf, and used to recite in Persian the verses of Háfiz and other mystics of Iran in an indirect way, some of the lines of approach of the Iranian mystics thus reached Rabindranath Tagore. He has indicated in some of his poems his wistful appreciation of the great culture of the Iranian people; and he was able to realise what he had desired for a long time—to visit Iran, which he did in the month of April in the year 1932.
A poet or writer who is most intensely national can alone be truly international. Rabindranath is a Poet who has been the greatest representative of the Indian spirit, and he is also the Poet who has his appeal for entire mankind. He has been appreciated in Iran and will be further appreciated and understood in that great country if the message which he gave out in verse and prose of such power and beauty could be brought before the Iranian people in their own beautiful language. Already translations have been made from his writings in the Speech of Iran. Rabindranath infact has been translated in most of the advanced languages of the World after he got the international Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. But most of his translations could come to the various peoples only second-hand—from versions or adaptations in English made by either the Poet himself, or by others who knew him and his work intimately. It was a happy thing, however, that so far as Persian was concerned, one selection of 100 poems was rendered into this language directly from the original Bengali by my friend the late Professor Ziauddin, a scholar from Punjab, who had lived as a teacher in Tagore’s school at Santiniketan and was closely associated with the poet for a number of years. This version in Persian had the privilege of being looked over by the great scholar and humanist of present-day Iran, Professor Pouré Davoud when he was in Rabindranath Tagore’s University as Visiting Professor sent by the Government of Iran; and it also obtained the blessings of the Poet himself.
In this year of the Poet’s Birth-Centenary, and on the auspicious day of his birth, a fresh translation of a Selection of Poem by Rabindranath has been offered to the lovers and students of Persian by Sri Girdharilal Tikku, M.A., of the Indian Embassy in Tehran. During a very short visit of mine to Iran and Tehran which I undertook early in April this year (1961), I had the pleasure of meeting Sri Tikku and appreciating not only his great competence in Persian but also his high poetic sensibility and the keenness of his intellect as well as the integrity of his literary conscience. I was very pleased to hear that he intended to offer his little Volume of Translations from Tagore as a homage to the spirit of Indo-Iranian friendship and understanding, and I gladly accepted his request to help him in this matter. I suggested to him, and read with him in the original Bengali, a few of the most characteristic and most beautiful as well as significant poems of Tagore. These he has rendered into Persian, and included them in his book. It will now be for Iranian lovers of poetry to give their imprimatur to the most laudable efforts of Sri Tikku; and judging from the fruitful devotion with which Sri Tikku has pursued his studies of the Persian language and literature (both medieval and modern) for the past 20 years, I feel confident that they will be accepted with full appreciation.
My visit to Tehran enabled me to come in touch with some Iranian Professors and others who remembered having met or seen Rabindranath, and they were full of a reverent reminiscence. In Tehran University, I was privileged to speak on the topic of “Iranianism’’ (Irán-manish). Iranianism, as enriched by Islam and Tasawwuf, is perfectly in harmony with our Indianism—the Indian Way of Thought and Behaviour—our Bhárata-dharma or Tahannud, which was found such great exponents in Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in recent years. Iranianism and Indianism, Irán-manish and Bhárata-dharma, or Tafarrus and Tahannud, can work together in the cause of a Humanistic Internationalism, which alone can bring about good understanding and peace and harmony among the nations more than any sectarian religion or intolerant or exploiting politics. The gentle soul of Rabindranath Tagore, which could be moved and roused to action when a crucial situation demanded, has always striven for this. And may this be realised for the good of Humanity, through Iran and India, among other nations, marching hand in hand as Fellow-travellers in the Quest for Truth.
Indo-Iranica, Vol. XIV, No. 2, Tagore Centenary Volume, June 1961