Last night, I gave some “pondering” over Tagore, the reasonist, the educationist, the reformist and the romancer. I read of him recently and was amazed by the contradictions in his life. Lemmi bullet some points

• He happens to be the only lyricist in the world, whose songs are sung as National Anthem by two nation simultaneously, i.e India ( Jana Gana Mana) and Bangladesh (Amar Sonar Bangla).
• Tagore had even argued with Einstein over the nature of truth. Tagore believed in absoluteness of the truth, he argued, “Will Hellen cease to be beautiful if all the human beings die ? “. It is said that even Einstein agreed this absoluteness of truth ( especially in case of beauty)
   
  

  Tagore with Einstein

• Being a perfect Bengoli Brahmin,his life and works are greatly affected by the three ‘clashing’ civilization, Hindu, Moslem and christianity.

• He was a school dropout, he never did his diploma but was such an ardent educationist that he opened the skool “Shantiniketan” in kolkata that produced many great Indians like Indira Gandhi, Satyajit Ray, Amrtya Sen and the list goes on. I choked on my tea when I read that ,sometimes, they wud not have any exams in the skool
• His (Platonic ?) relationship with his sister-in-law,her suicide after his marriage  and his works on her comemmoration.
• His uninitiated, unadvanced rapport with few other Foreign girls( He remained unmarried after the death of his wife after the 9th year of thier marriage)
• It was Tagore who addressed Gandhi as Mahatma. Tagore Thought Gandhi to be the greatest man of his time, but with much reservation, despite the ambvialnt appriciation for each other, they both had a huge contradiction, let me put here some, Gandhi was a diehard nationalsit but Tagore was a diehard Humanist. Gandhi thought the spinning of one’s own fabric ( Charkha aandolan) can be a great move towrds the self-realization, self- relaince of Indian independent culture and economy, whilst, Tagore thought it to be the Education that can help Indians with self-realization and self-realiance. Because this rationlist man “Tagore” revered reason as the most important element of humanlife. He said “No one actually have to ‘think’ anything while spinning” .
  

  Tagore with Gandhi

• W. B Yeats, Ejra Pound and other prominient western writers of that time loved Tagore so much so that Yeats even helped him translating “Geetanjali”…but later on, those writers changed their views towards him, scathingly castigating him afterwards.
• He was also a great Painter
• He renounced his knighthood after the Amritsar Mascarre

There are much more fascinating facts .Bengoli language and litreture in India still happens to be the most sophisticated one. May be its Tagore’s contribution that there are great Bengal names in Indian Litreture, education and even in Cinema.

( Inspired by The Amartya Sen’s essay on Tagore in the book “The Argumentative Indians”)