Rabindranath Tagore was an incredible man. To say that he was just a ‘great poet’ would be an understatement. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to equate his vision and philosophy to that of ‘a prophet.’ The book in reference provides a good overview of Tagore’s background and how it shaped his universal outlook, the tragedies he faced in his life, his rise to eminence of International stature and how during the last two decades of his life he was under ‘British suspicion’ especially after he returned his knighthood in the wake of Jallianwala Bagh incident.
He lived up his ‘Ekla Chalo’ principle in his life. In the early years of 1910-11 during the Swadeshi movement, Tagore differed with the violent streak of the movement and this brought him in conflict with several great revolutionaries like Aurobindo Ghosh and Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. Similarly, he also differed with Gandhi on many issues, though both had great admiration for each other. He advocated rural reconstruction for empowerment and his Swadeshi political thought gets reflected in the character of Nikhilesh in his powerful novel ‘Ghare Baire.’
Tagore forewarned us about the abuse of science a century back through his novels like ‘Mukhto Dhara’ (Free Current) and ‘Rakta-Karabi.’ Unlike Gandhi, Tagore advocated embracing science, quite Western development in his times, to improve the quality of lives of his poor countrymen. His critique of aggressive Nationalism led to ebbing of his popularity both in India and the West where it had peaked in the early twentieth century leading to conferment of the Nobel Prize in 1913.
His far-sightedness is revealed in his views on Provincialism & on Education which has proved to be valid a hundred years after he wrote them. His opposition to colonial education and advocacy of education in Mother tongue is totally lost on our educational think-tank. This explains why the education in our country is in the mess that it is now …
short stories 