REMEMBERING
RABRINDRANATH TAGORE
Today is the 159th birth anniversary of
Rabindranath Tagore. He was born on 7th May 1861 in Kolkata and
passed away on 7th August in 1941. He was the first Asian who was awarded Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1913 because of his profound, sensitive, fresh and beautiful
verse by which, with consummate skill, he had made his poetic thoughts
expressed in his own English words, a
part of the literature of the west.
Tagore was a versatile genius. He was a poet, writer,
philosopher, educationist, musician, painter,
and what not. Most of all he was a
cultural ambassador and a great spiritualist. In fact, his dedication to God
was limitless. It occupied a good deal of space in whatever he wrote . His best known poetic anthology is Gitanjali
which won him the Nobel Prize in literature. However, he is the author of a
number of literary and non-literary works.
Given below are two short extracts taken from the article “Tagore
And Rural Reconstruct ion” contributed
by Shri D. N. Dutta to the Tagore Number
of ‘ Cultural Forum’ published by the
ministry of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs in November 1961. They shed
a lot light on Tagore’s total personality .
Firs t
Extract: “Though Tagore was growing in poetic stature and received the Nobel
Prize in 1913, and though the Brahma Vidyalaya of Santiniketan took more and
more of his time and energy as it developed, he never wavered in his resolve to
give a practical shape to his ideas of rural reconstruction. An opportunity came to him after two decades.
In 1920, while he was touring in America, he met a young Englishman named
Leonard K. Elmhirst , who after graduating from Cambridge and serving in the
First World War was studying Agriculture at the Cornell University,. Elmhirst
was impressed with Gurudeva’s philosophy of rural reconstruction as a way to
the development of human civilization. He volunteered to help Gurudeva in
founding an Institute of Rural reconstruction on Tagore’s ideas. The Institute
was started with Elmhirst as the first Director in 1922. “
Second Extract: “The world knows Tagore as the most
outstanding poet and literary figure of modern India. It also knows him as a
philosopher and a seer. He is known even as an educationist though not
adequately appreciated in that role. He preached internationalism when most of the
leaders of different countries of the world were working for narrow national
interests. He also showed a way to build a non-authoritarian human society
cutting across the barriers of race, colour, language and nationality on the
basis of mutual aid and common welfare and not on that of exploitation or
application of force. We shall be paying real homage to Gurudeva if we try to
understand his philosophy of social reconstruction and work it out in practice
which may be able to save human civilization from self-annihilation. “
7th May 2020 G.
R. KANWAL
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