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CHAPTER XV
SINGER OF DAWN
That the sun of India's destiny would rise again and herald the dawn of a new day of greatness and glory was the vision of almost all those who led the progressive movements in nineteenth-century India. Some of them also held that India's future would be greater than her great past. Vive-kananda's however was a Yogic vision. In the certitude of this vision he saw 'the Ancient Mother rejuvenated to conquer the world by her spirituality'. He perceived the rebirth of India into the light and strength of her soul, which would, in God's own time, bring about a resurgence of the world's soul. Sri Aurobindo said that this is how man would open to the truth, the truth that would liberate him into a perfect living in the Spirit—the only permanent solution of all human problems. The seed of this solution, as seen before, lay preserved in the soul of India for its dissemination in the mind of man at a propitious hour. The hour came and the work began, the work of the Mother, whose chosen instrument revived for the first time in the modern age the ancient cultural links between India and the Western world and gave a fresh impetus to the expansive movement of Indian thought, which, because of Vivekananda's drive, had been growing and making possible the success of later attempts in the same direction. To the seeing eye the spiritual renaissance of modem India would presage the spiritual renaissance of the whole world.
An ancient tradition has it that every dawn of heaven's light on earth, every awakening of man to a new truth throws up a poet or poets whose inspired utterances reflect the character and spiritual ideal of the age and indicate the path to its realisation. It is said that poetry was one of the formative forces in the rise of even the earliest civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In China 'a prolific and enchanted forest of poetry sprang up in the fertile soil of the T'ang period', 'among the most prosperous and culturally brilliant in the history of China.' The Epics of the Heroic Age of India and Greece are the world's greatest creations of their kind and history has shown how they have ever continued to shape and influence peoples and their cultures both within and without the regions of their origin. In India earlier than her Heroic Age was the Age of the Spirit in whose characteristic poetry is founded her immortal culture the aim of which is the attainment by man of his spiritual perfection envisaged by the Vedic and Vedantic Poets. The later epochs in which man's creative life rose to heights of classical excellence had their singers who were either their makers or inspirers or fosterers. In fact, many of the ancient texts
including the Epics were given their final forms in the Classical age in which were also written many of the Puranas and the Tantras—great poetical creations of the age—whose deep and abiding influence on Indian life and spirituality is a fact of great importance to the historic and cultural evolution of the people. The song of the medieval mystics, both in the North and the South, sustained the inner life of the race when its outer life was subjected to various untoward conditions.
The rise of neo-Vaishnavism in Bengal mainly through its exquisite lyric poetry of incomparable sweetness delineating man's love for God was a wide spiritual upheaval that has given to the life of Bengal its characteristic tone and rhythm. Is not her greatest poet of modern times, who is also the greatest poet of the modern world, a fine flowering of neo-Vaishnavic and neo-Vedantic idealism ? That a true spirit of poetry should saturate the entire being of Bengal and become its dominant trend and form an invaluable heritage of her immediate past is mostly due to the Vaishnavic lyrics and esoteric poetry of the medieval mystics. Many of these mystics could trace their lineage to the authors of the tenth-century caryāpadas or esoteric hymns—the earliest literary form of the Bengali language. And this has a significance for the future too, since the poetry of Rabindranath influenced by these ancient poetic utterances, points, if anything, to the dawn of a new age of a truer greatness for the whole world. It was not for nothing that the Vaishnava poets dreamt of a Nava Vrindavan, a heaven where free souls one with the Divine would take part in His eternal lila. One may read into this a promise of the spiritualised humanity of the future in a new world of delight. It is note worthy that similar visions with slight variations due to regional traditions were seen and proclaimed by the medieval mystics of the whole of India, from north to south, east to west.
From the early days of the Vedic seers the evolution of Indian culture has maintained an almost unbroken continuity of poetic creation,—one of the greatest marvels in the literary history of mankind. Indeed, at every stage of this creation it proved its excellence and when it found its superb form in the work of modern India's master-singer it again expressed her soul in conformity with the life-line of her continuous cultural evolution.
Thus the dawn in India of a new age of greatness is found to have been almost invariably heralded by divinely-ordained singers of the coming glory, their eyes fixed on its golden glints.
That poetry conduces to the well-being of man, and is a factor in his progress and evolution has begun to be admitted even by its modern votaries who 'reassert the classical concept of poetry as a public good', while Collingwood holds that 'as an art poetry is the community's medicine for the worst disease of mankind, the corruption of consciousness'. A more positive function of poetry is affirmed by Matthew Arnold and Sri Aurobindo both of whom regard poetry as a most necessary, powerful and formative force in the evolution of the human race towards perfection. The national significance of poetry is expressed in the view that 'nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting and music are destroyed or flourish.' Says Carlyle : 'The history of a nation's poetry is the essence of its history, political, scientific, religious.' An 'ode' by the Irish poet, A.W.E. O'Shaughnessy, has been the favourite of many of his brethren the world over including one of the foremost of them, Rabindranath Tagore who used to intone, as canticle of a poet's faith, the lines :
'We are the music-makers And we are the dreamers of dreams Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers On whom the pale moon gleams : Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems.'
To Shelley, another favourite of Rabindranath, poetry is 'a divine activity', capable of saving the world, and poets are 'unacknowledged legislators of the world.' To Wordsworth they are adept
'In framing models to improve the scheme Of Man's existence and recast the world.'
An historic example of the influence of inspired poetry are the visions of the Vedic and Upanishadic Seers, visions which, says Sri Aurobindo, 'created ancient India, her spiritual culture, and made a people'. These visions have since been upbearing both her culture and her people waiting for the hour when their secret meaning will be rediscovered and revealed for the liberation of man 'into a higher life in which God will reign for ever'. Those who will revision these truths and utter them in inspired word will be the Poets of the Future. But before them must come those who will recognise and welcome 'the first rays of the Dawn' and sing of them, preparing the way for higher and higher ascensions of man towards 'the Fuller Glory, the Sun of Truth'. That is why Sri Aurobindo calls them 'the forerunners of the new spirit' whose poetic creation is the marching-song of man impelling his pace towards his divine destiny. What is also significant about them is that they represent the Time-Spirit, mirroring in their poetry the aspirations of the age, its quest for the deeper meaning of life. The quest intensifies as the new and well-timed trend of this poetry touches the soul, moves the heart, fires the imagination, creates a world within the world. This is how these poets become world-poets and their appeal stirs the whole of humanity. One such had the unique distinction of receiving universal homage during his lifetime even though he wrote in his native tongue. Indeed Rabindranath is an incomparable phenomenon in the recent cultural history of mankind.
What then was it that marked the age in which he was born and lived a large part of his long life ? How does his poetry reflect the spirit of the age, or rather, give voice to mute upheavings of the soul ?
It was, again, the momentous nineteenth century and after, which witnessed the wonderful discoveries in science and the emergence of new thoughts and ideas that enriched and energised the mind of the age. And all these, as seen in a previous chapter, blossomed out of the nineteenth-century upsurge of the creative soul of Europe. The impact of these scientific and cultural ideas on Asia modernised the mind of her ancient peoples releasing forces that moved them to recover their own soul. As this quickened ethos penetrated the progressive minds of Europe they looked deeper in their search for the truth of life and universe whose laws already discovered by science could no longer satisfy their quest. Man's soul was yearning for a deeper and higher truth than science and reason could give him. The spiritual urge of awakened India stimulated the growth of this tendency in the higher mind of the race. Apart from the spiritual power emanating from the Yogis in their quiet retreats—a silent factor in the inner regeneration of man—the wonderful lives and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda were dynamic forces in this new movement of the human spirit. There were next the visions of the new luminous worlds of supramental infinities which Sri Aurobindo received from the peak of his spiritual experiences and revealed through the pages of his monthly review the Arya which started within a month of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and continued for seven years. Of this later on.
1914 was a year of far-reaching importance in the history of India and the world. It was in this year that Jagadishchandra Basu's lecture-demonstrations in London and Vienna on plants, recording 'the marvellous resemblance between their life-movements and animals' brought home to the scientific world the truth and originality of his discoveries and put India on the scientific map of the world. It was the year when the paintings of Abanindranath Tagore, the founder of the Neo-Indian School of Painting, were for the first time exhibited in Paris, London and Java, and in the following year in Chicago and in different cities in India. They received rapturous appreciation from art-connoisseurs everywhere many of whom, struck by the 'characteristic Indianness' of the pictures read into them the renaissance of India as a fact of profound significance for herself and for the future of human civilisation. There was then another event of the same year of a yet vaster significance—the meeting of the Mother with Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry, the starting-point of their collaboration in the pioneer work of liberating man into an integral spiritual perfection envisaged by Sri Aurobindo in the pages of his monthly philosophical review Arya, started in August 1914, and by the Mother in her Prayers and Meditations written mostly in 1914. The forces at work in 1914 burst into some of Rabindranath's magnificent poetic creations, published in the Bengali monthly Sabuj Patra, 'The Green Leaf, an organ of progressive literary idealism, also started the same year.
This was about the period which seemed to be the seed-time of the ideas and forces that were to revolutionise the consciousness of the human race for its rebirth into a higher and diviner one—the aim of Nature in the spiritual evolution of man. Not that she always uses peaceful means for her purpose. If and when necessary she causes a blood-bath in which the human material is forcibly kneaded, new-shaped, and freshened up for a higher order of life. Sri Aurobindo says that the First World War was one such cataclysm—intended by Nature to break the Old in order that the New might be born. The Old was broken and the New was in the process of creation. In fact, Sri Aurobindo's revelations point to its birth which had already taken place in the inner world of basic forces where events are bom long before they materialise as external phenomena. Rabindranath saw in the War a yuga-sandhi, the dying of the old age to the dawning of a New with its blood-red sunrise emerging through the travail of death, sorrow and pain1.
Sri Aurobindo pointed to the light of a New Dawn through his revelatory sequences in the Arya in which he envisaged the progressive march of man towards a divine life on earth, towards his ultimate unity and a perfect social order. These spiritual truths seen by the Master-Seer of the age had never before been revealed by anybody, remarked Dwijendranath, Rabindranath's elder brother. Along with these there was also appearing in the Arya another series on 'The Future Poetry' in which Sri Aurobindo traced the development of poetry towards its future form which would voice the dawn of the New Age of the Spirit. All these truths, as Sri Aurobindo once said, came direct to his pen from higher regions of consciousness far above the human mind. From 1910, more particularly, from 1914, Sri Aurobindo added, a vast power came pressing down upon him and into his being there rushed a ceaseless stream of universal consciousness, tremendous force and light from the supramental planes. That this should take place in that way and in those pregnant years indicated the urgency of the work which evolutionary Nature was then pursuing through the master-minds of the time, and this because the hour had now come for man to grow in readiness for his divine destiny. The centre of this movement was India, as foreseen by Vivekananda. These are Sri Aurobindo's words about what was happening at that time : 'A great new life is visibly preparing in her, a mighty transformation and farther dynamic evolution and potent march forward into the inexhaustible
1 Prabhatkumar Mukhopadhyaya : Rabindra-Jivani (in Bengali) Vol. II. P. 354. infinities of spiritual experience.'1
Such then was the period in which were most active some of the greatest of the world's spiritual figures who were the true builders of that Greater Tomorrow towards which man is being secretly led by evolutionary Nature through 'the continuous succession of the dawns of Light on his consciousness'. And it was in this momentous period that Rabindranath Tagore rose to the height of his fame and achievement by winning the Nobel Prize that drew to him the attention of the world. Most of his finest literary creations had been written by this time, often inspired, especially in the case of poetry, by visions and experiences of higher truths. It was these, as the Poet himself said, that were behind much of his later poetical creation. And his poetry, as is well known, was no mere departure from the old but of a new and fresh pattern, both in form and content, rich in promise for the future, 'representing the highest possibility of a greater coming poetry' of a next greater age.
Balaka, 'The Flight of Swans', is the tide of a book containing a series of the greatest poems of this period, the genesis of which was Chanchala, 'The Unresting River', or more fittingly, 'The Stream of Life'. But before any reference is made to these poems, it may be said that it is difficult to draw much upon the rich store of Rabindranath's poetry though the present theme has a great bearing on it, simply because the sweetness, music and force of his diction defy all translation however perfect. The main ideas of some of the poems and English versions are given here in a few lines. The Poet addresses the river:
'You rush and rush and rush on unbound: You know no sorrow, no fear; in the delight of your onward flow you waste the wherewithal of your journey; the moment you are full you are empty; that's why you are ever pure,.. Your touch makes the dead spring back to life.'
To himself the Poet says :
'Let your savings on the bank remain on the bank. Do not look behind. Let the voice in front call you out of the din and clamour on to the great stream, to the abyss of darkness, to the shoreless light.'
Here is the Poet's account of the origin of this poem : 'It was a dark evening, and suddenly there came on me the feeling, there is flowing, rushing all around me—that invisible rush of creation—the star-flecks of
1 Sri Aurobindo : The Foundations of Indian Culture, p. 151. foam. I could feel the glow of that dark evening, with all the stars shining; and that current of eternity touched me very deeply. I felt in the heart of it. So I began to write.
The poem Sabujer Abhijan, or 'Adventure of the Green' is an apotheosis of youth; the Poet calls to the green, wild, impetuous, ever-young, ever-free youth, soaring above reason and sense, to break down old forms, hit the inert, half-dead spirits back to life and send them off towards the unknown. In Sankha, or 'The Conch', the Poet seems to hear the trumpetcall of the Infinite, and blushing for his desire for peace, he asks for the battle-dress and warrior-strength in the flaming joy of life. In Shah-Jehan, the Poet depicts life as an ever-living Force whose march, nothing, no empire, however mighty, not even the sweetest love of the most beloved, can ever stay; life which hears the call from every star, receives its invitation from every world to rise and rise again, each time with a newer orientation, and a newer light of dawn. The key poem Balaka or 'A Flight of Swans', is one of the finest creations of the Poet. It begins with his musing on the vanishing glitter of the Jhelum at sunset when he feels 'as if Creation in its dream longed to speak'. Then he hears a lightning sweep of a flight of swans in the sky, its force shaking everything towards an upward drive. The Poet himself feels a mighty urge to rush away to the far Beyond. The flight of birds uncovers for him the face of stillness and he hears restless movements everywhere, of mountain ranges, forests and stars winging from unknown to yet unknown regions. He hears messages flying along unseen lines from the dim past to voiceless ages afar, the whole air vibrating with the cry, 'Not here, not here, somewhere else' where the Poet's soul looks for its fulfilment. Is it 'the Beyond', 'the Far Distant', for which the Poet is aspiring ? 'I am restless, I am athirst for the far beyond', in his original Bengali, 'Ami chanchala hey, ami sudurer piyasi.
The Balaka poems may be said to voice through the Poet the aspiration of the earth towards a higher force, a higher life, a higher light, and embracing all these, a higher consciousness that will bring to birth a New World big with yet higher possibilities.
Other poems, songs and essays of this period also indicate the Poet's perception of a force, a light whose victory over darkness he declares :
'The wall breaks asunder, light, like divine laughter, bursts in, Victory, O Light ! The heart of the night is pierced !'
It may be noted that most of the Poet's literary creations of this period he published in the famous Bengali monthly Sabuj Patra or 'The Green Leaf', which began its fruitful career in that significant year 1914. Rabin-
1 Edward Thompson : Rabindranath Tagore, p. 238. dranath had a hand in the starting of this paper which was edited by the eminent litterateur Pramatha Choudhury who in his first leading article said : 'If the morning birds of Bengali literature would perch on its new boughs smiling with fresh green leaves they would be removing to a degree the greatest drawback in Bengali literature. The Bengali must not fall asleep. It is up to all to give a jerk to them.' Sabuj Patra did give this jerk when it published, among others, the writings of the Poet one of which was that powerful poem Sabujer Abhijan or 'Adventure of the Green', mentioned before.
It was no mere coincidence that two great souls, one a Master-Singer, the other a Master-Yogi, both visioned a luminous future, of course each in his own way, but at about the same time. It seemed as if evolutionary Nature was inclined to speed up certain changes both in the inner and the outer life of man as a preparation for vaster changes to come heralding the Dawn of a New Age. In fact, Sri Aurobindo once said : 'Tagore has been wayfarer towards the same goal as ours, though in his own way.' No wonder that the Poet should perceive flowing across him the stream of universal life giving him a glimpse of where the stream was leading to —the ocean of infinite beauty and love and bliss. And he sang of them in the rhythm of his inspired words that stirred the imagination of man everywhere.
And this vision was seen not only by Rabindranath but by other poets of the age when the mind of the race was striving to expand and possess higher powers for a deeper knowledge of things. Says Sri Aurobindo : 'The human intelligence seems on the verge of an attempt to rise through the intellectual into an intuitive mentality; it is no longer content to regard the intellect and the world of positive fact as all or the intellectual reason as a sufficient mediator between life and the spirit, but is beginning to perceive that there is a spiritual mind which can admit us to a greater and more comprehensive vision... A first opening out to this new way of seeing is the sense of the work of Whitman and Carpenter and some of the recent French poets, of Tagore and Yeats and A.E., of Meredith and some others of the English poets'1, and all these were regarded by Sri Aurobindo as 'the poets of the dawn' in whose utterances he saw broad hints of the coming age of the Spirit. Says he again: 'A greater era of man's living seems to be in promise, whatever nearer and earthier powers may be striving to lead him on a side path away to a less exalted ideal, and with that advent there must come a new great age of his creation different from the past epochs which he counts as his glories and superior to them in its vision and motive. But first there must intervene a poetry which will lead him towards it from the present faint beginnings... .A glint of this change is already visible. And in poetry there is already the commencement of such a greater leading; the conscious effort of Whitman, the tone of Carpenter,
1 Sri Aurobindo : The Future Poetry, pp. 275-6. the significance of the poetry of A.E., the rapid immediate fame of Tagore are its first signs. The idea of the poet who is also the Rishi has made again its appearance'.1
Rabindranath could thus trace his lineage to the Rishis of the Upanishads whose influence on him was as deep as that of the Vaishnava mystics of Bengal; both have a profound regard for life, the former seeing it as an expression of Brahman, the latter as the līlā of the Divine. By singing to the world his inspired song of joy, of harmony between life and God, Matter and Spirit, Rabindranath stood out as one of the most authentic voices of the Dawn, whose poetry mirrors the quest of the age as also its discovery—the discovery of that deeper truth of life in which lies the seed of a greater life. When, therefore, the Poet said that 'the Infinite must be attained within the finite' he echoed an inner experience of both the Upanishadic and Vaishnavic mystics. He felt: 'Man marches onward not for the sake of food and clothing, but for installing with the whole force of his being a superhumanity in the human world, for delivering his inmost truth from out of the knotted bonds of his own self.'
It has been shown in a previous chapter that Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath, was one of the first not only to think in terms of national reconstruction but to give some concrete shape to this thinking. He was one of those leaders of the modern Indian renaissance who can be credited with most of the valuable work of its first phase. In fact, it was mainly under his inspiration and encouragement that his own sons, daughters and nephews made immense original and invaluable contributions to the development of art, literature and music, which were among the early expressions in modern times of the creative soul of the country.
It may be noted that the Tagores of Joransanko, Calcutta, were to the Indian renaissance what the Medicis were to the Italian Renaissance with this difference, that the Medicis provided mainly the favourable material conditions for the rise and growth of the movement in Florence, whereas the Tagores, besides doing that, were themselves actively participating in the movement in Bengal with the result that almost every aspect of the cultural life of the country bore the stamp of their initiative and achievement.
Such was the atmosphere of the house in which Rabindranath was born and passed his boyhood; an atmosphere which had without doubt a most formative influence on his early life. He has admitted this in his autobiography already referred to.
There is also no doubt that he inherited his love for his mother-tongue from his great father who, from early life, had been an ardent champion of Bengali. To its cultivation he gave top priority in his plan of national welfare, did whatever he could to promote it among his people, among his
1 Ibid., p. 285. own children in particular, in order to give Bengali the honour' and dignity of a national language at a time when educated Indians, carried away by denationalising forces, regarded English as the only language worthy of study. This by itself may not seem to be a big affair but from the standpoint of India's resurgence it had its importance in that in it was implicit a splendid efflorescence of the national mind. Thanks to the early bent given by his father, Rabindranath in his own life-time could mould the language into a powerful instrument of expression in his multi-faceted pursuit, political and philosophical, scientific and literary, social and educational, and, above all, in his highest flights of poetry.
As seen before, all the leaders of the renaissance from its forerunner Rammohun, concentrated most of their energies on developing the Bengali language as they felt the imperative need of an effective medium of communicating new ideas to the people, and nothing but the mother-tongue could answer the purpose. If Rammohun's was the first attempt in this direction, Rabindranath's was the last that made Bengali one of the most progressive languages of the world and gave it the international status it enjoys today.
Significantly enough, the period between 1856 and 1872—the period marked by the first memorable year of the Indian Revolt against alien rule (1857), the period which gave the go-by to the old decadent order and called in the New—witnessed the birth in India of three of her earliest and greatest Universities in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, and of hundreds of English-teaching schools in those and other regions to serve as instruments of the new awakening; the birth as well of some of India's greatest sons whose lives and works were the peak-points of pioneering activities in various spheres of national life, which made India conscious of her own self and contributed richly to her resurgence. To mention only a few of these celebrities in order of the years of their birth :
1856 : BAL GANGADGAR TILAK, 'a nation builder', 'one of the mighty prophets of Indian Nationalism' who created in their countrymen the will to freedom and greatness, an original Vedic scholar of international fame;
ASWINIKUMAR DATTA, a spiritual seeker, a wise and far-sighted educator, one of the greatest leaders of revolutionary Nationalism of Bengal, whose life was an example and inspiration to all, young and old;
1858 : JAGADISHCHANDRA BASU Basu, the first internationally famous Indian genius of superb originality and unique achievement in science; DHONDE KESHAV KARVE, a distinguished educationist and social reformer, founder and builder of the first Women's University of India in Poona, and of a number of educational and other institutions for training helpless women, particularly widows; education of women, amelioration of their conditions, and remarriage of widows were the mission of his life; 1820 : JOGENDRACHANDRA GHOSE, 'a legal luminary of India', 'a founder and pioneer of the Historical School of Hindu Law and jurisprudence', his monumental authroritavie work Principles of Hindu Law, based on original pioneering researches, is regarded by the famous French Indologist Sylvain Levi as 'a unique production', 'a full revolution in our studies'; the book, for the first time, showed that 'the history of the Hindu Law is practically the history of India, and the most wonderful chapter in the history of the world and of the human institutions';
1861 : RABINDRANATH TAGORE, a many-sided literary genius of worldwide fame and achievement, a Master-Poet, ca forerunner of the new spirit'; BRAHMABANDHAB UPADHYAYA, a high-souled Vedantic 'universalist', a heroic champion of India's freedom whose vision he saw, and proclaimed with all the depth and forcefulness of his soul; he knew the truth that India is and as a naming evangel of revolutionary nationalism strove for its realisation in the national life through India's freedom and greatness; PRAFULCHANDRA ROY, an eminent scientist with original contributions to Chemistry, a scholar, an educator and moulder of young souls, he dedicated his life to the cause of his country's all-round uplift; his History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India is a singular work of original research, the first authoritative study of the subject;
MOTILAL NEHRU, a wise and far-seeing statesman and an intrepid fighter for India's freedom, his brilliant legal sagacity combined with a rare gift for constitution-making ranked him as a foremost figure in national life; MADANMOHAN MALAVIYA , the illustrious founder of Benaras Hindu University, who played a leading role in India's national awakening, a devout upholder of the intrinsic values of Indian culture;
S. VISVESWARAYYA, an outstanding constructive genius in engineering and technology, whose gigantic plans for what proved to be engineering feat s are the admiration of the scientific world;
AKSHAYAKUMAR MAITRA , an eminent antiquarian, litterateur, scholar, pioneer in historical research, a founder of the Varendra Research Society, he exploded the story of the so-called 'Blackhole tragedy', and in his famous book Siraj-ud-dowla—honoured by the then Government ban—vindicated the character of that much-maligned Nawab of Bengal; author of valuable works on the early phase of the British occupation of India; compiler and editor of the Corpus of Inscriptions on the Bengal under the Pala kings, whose glorious history he reconstructed with a rare historical acumen; NILRATAN SARKAR, famed all over India as the most outstanding physician of his time, recognised as such by his co-professionals in Europe and America, a founder of the first non-official medical college (now R.G.Kar Medical College, Calcutta) in India, if not in Asia; closely associated with National Council of Education (now Jadavpur University), Calcutta University, University College of Science and Technology, and almost all medical and scientific institutions of Calcutta as one of their leading promoters; built a number of industries following the Swadeshi movement; a liberal politician intimately connected with the Indian National Congress till 1918, had a rare gift of vision and practicality, did all he could to further the cause of his country's advancement in various spheres of its life;
1863 : SWAMI VIVEKANANDA, the heaven-born awakener of souls and a mighty maker of resurgent India;
SWAMI BRAHMANANDA, and SWAMI VIVEKANANDA , born like twin souls in the same month and in the same year; BRAHMANANDA, direct disciple and 'spiritual son' of Sri Ramakrishna, first President of Ramakrishna Math and Mission, embodied the teachings of his Master, and for twenty years after Vivekananda's passing, was a light and guide to the Mission and to seekers from various parts of the world; his Words of the Master, interspersed with parables, is the simplest and finest presentation of the Master's teachings within a brief compass;
DWIJENDRALAL ROY , a famous poet and playwright, famous for the sweetness and devotional depth of his national songs, the high patriotic fervour of his historical plays, all of which were a sustaining force for national regeneration that began with the Swadeshi movement; UPENDRAKISHORE ROY CHOUDHURY : a man of wide-ranging genius which expressed itself in music and painting, Eastern, Western and original; in science and technology in which, as a master-technician, he was a pioneer in inventing devices, methods and equipment for the photoengraving process with line and half-tone; these together with his valuable contributions to Western journals and annuals on optical science were welcomed and adopted by the leading technologists of Europe and America; in literature, he was a pioneer-writer on scientific topics, on imaginary tales, and, in particular, on the Epics, in a style simple, agreeable and charming for children. Asked why, among his writings for children, Rabindranath had not produced a simpler form of the Ramayana, he said that nobody could excel, far less equal, Upendrakishore's narrative style; 1864: ASUTOSE MUKHOPADHYAYA, known as 'the Bengal Tiger' for intrepedity of views and actions, a versatile intellect and a constructive genius, a jurist of international reputation, a remaker of the University of Calcutta as the first teaching university in India, with a strong national bias;
RAMENDRASUNDRA TRIVEDI, an original scientific and philosophical thinker, a master writer, whose knowledge and exposition of scientific ideas and ancient Indian lore ranked him as one of the very few foremost savants of the time, a highly respected educationist who lived his thoughts; a founder of Bangiya Sahitya Parishad;
Ramananda Chattopadhyaya, a publicist of international fame, the founder-editor of the widely circulated monthlies, Prabashi in Bengali and The Modern Review in English, noted for fairness, accuracy, fearless- ness and unchallengeable criticism, and for the dissemination of noble and uplifting ideas for the regeneration of India's social, cultural and national life;
1865 : Lajpat Rai, 'the lion of Panjab', a mighty prophet of Indian Nationalism, an ardent believer in the universal Aryan ideals, an indefatigable fighter for India's freedom at home and abroad;
BRAJENDRANATH SEAL a scholar of encyclopedic knowledge and a philosophical thinker with a synthetic outlook; his Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus is the first book on, and Seal, a scholar a masterly treatment of the subject;
1866 : Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a devoted and self-sacrificing 'servant of India', a consummate parliamentarian, a ruthless, eagle-eyed critic of British administration in India, an early stalwart of the Indian National Congress, a founder of The Servants of India Society renowned for its splendid record of service to the country;
1867 : Sister Nivedita, Irish by birth, Indian by choice, who inspired by her Master Swami Vivekananda, dedicated herself to the cause of India's uplift and independence, an authentic exponent of India's art, culture and national idealism, a devoted lover of everything Indian;
1869 : MOHANLAL KARAMCHAND GANDHI, a magnetic personality of immense moral force, wielding tremendous influence over the masses, who reinforced the Indian National Congress by placing it upon the organised support of the people, and fought for India's freedom and Hindu-Muslim unity;
SRINIVAS SASTRI Sastri, scholar and educationist, 'a silver-tongued orator', a clear-thinking leader of sober views commanding respectful attention from all quarters;
1870 : CHITTARANJAN DAS, poet and litterateur, 'the one man after Tilak who could have led India to Swaraj', known alike for his legal brilliance and for his dashing political leadership, his life was all sacrifice to the country;
JADUNATH SARKAR, the doyen of India's historians, author of a number of celebrated works on India's cultural, political and military history, based on extensive pioneering research work on original sources; his comprehensive treatment of the lives and times of Auranzeb and Sivaji, whose history he reconstructed and on which he is an acknowledged authority, is among his greatest contributions; a teacher of great eminence whose students have become reputed teachers and historians;
1871 : ABANINDRANATH TAGORE, a master-artist of international fame, the founder of the neo-Indian School of Painting, a litterateur of original talents and a gifted mystic, made original contributions to aesthetics;
1872 : SRI AUROBINDO : 'Voice incarnate of India's soul', acting as a missioned instrument of the Divine Will, initiated India's freedom movement and a new Age of the Spirit for man to grow into his destined divine perfection, the supreme goal of Nature's evolutionary ascent in man; Sri Aurobindo has not only given this assurance but has been working for its realisation in the earth-consciousness.
Why evolutionary Nature chose this period for the advent of these master-builders of New India must be significant. Evidently, India could no longer remain a blind imitator of the West. The hour had struck for her to become herself again and do her God-given work for her own and for the world's well-being. Seen in the retrospect, the appearance of all these luminaries in the sky of India at about the same time was certainly meant for a promising start of a many-sided constructive work in different directions of her resurgent life.
And there could be no better aid to this work than a powerful language and literature and an elevating poetry inspired by a large vision of life, God, man and universe. By fulfilling many of the possibilities opened by the first finished literary form that Bankim gave to Bengali prose, Rabindranath made the language simpler, more plastic, graceful and virile and set it on its course of unending progress. The unparalleled excellence of his poetry was a most potent factor in this development. This is the main reason why Bengali has become one of the advanced languages of the world today commanding universal appreciation. The vast and variegated range of Rabindranath's creation is another marvel in the literary history of mankind. Indeed he created and created and created and there was no sphere of literary creation that had not his characteristic master-touch. And he created not only the finest forms of prose and poetry but cultural and nation-building schools and institutions—his material contributions to modern India's resurgence.
One of the most prolific writers in the world, Rabindranath began writing poetry when he was barely eight. And during his more than seventy years of non-stop literary activity he wrote not only more than a thousand poems and two thousand songs, but novels, short stories, social and allegorical plays in prose and verse, essays on social, political, philosophical and religious subjects, thought-provoking letters, illuminating literary criticisms, books for children, autobiographical memoirs etc., all comprising twenty-six massive volumes of about 16,000 royal octavo pages. A study of all these is beyond the scope of the present work; nor is a comprehensive treatment of his life possible within the space available. Only his contributions to resurgent India will be touched upon with particular reference to his poetry in which he sang of the New Dawn whose 'first rays' were caught by his seer-vision.
Rabindranath Tagore was bom in Calcutta on 7 May 1861. The famous house of the Tagores had everything that Indians of the time would need for happiness and refinement. Progressive in every direction, the house did not however seem to attach sufficient importance to the proper training of the young ones who were neglected as everywhere in the country. The children of the Tagores were left to the care of the servants some of whom were of course much above the common run. It was from them that the boy who was to be the greatest poet had his first acquaintance with the epics, which along with the fairy tales and stories of adventure they would regularly tell the children. For young Rabindranath they were enough material for his own world of imagination and adventure. His imaginative faculty, quickened by common things, built him worlds of fancy which were more real to him than the actual. A toy lion, for instance, would suggest to him that a lion sacrifice would be superior to the horse sacrifice in the epic stories. An old, worn-out palanquin, left in a corner of the house, would conjure up for him a long joy ride as a prince out on a wonderful journey through forest and desert, or sailing as if in a peacock boat on a magic river. Some of these adventures are the themes of his popular poems on childhood giving intimations of the world of which the child poet was then a happy denizen.
Rabindranath's education began with Vidyasagar's first Bengali primer and the couplet in it jal pade, pata nade, 'the rain patters, the leaf quivers', was for him 'the first poem of the Arch Poet'. This simple fact of nature aroused in him a sense of wonder at the mystery of creation. Holes dug in the courtyard for the erection of a festival structure would carry his mind deep into wonderful secrets. It was a delightful lesson for him to learn in one of Vidyasagar's Bengali primers that the blue sky was no barrier in space. His rhyme sense beginning with the couplet in the first primer grew still more when he heard from one of his estate officials a continuous flow of doggerel ballads of his own composition.
But like other children of the house he was not allowed to come out of its confines. He could only move into the garden within its precincts, which, to quote his own words, 'was a fairyland to me, where miracles of beauty were everyday's occurrence. Almost every morning in the early hour of the dusk, I would run out from my bed in a great hurry to greet the first pink flush of the dawn through the shivering branches of the palm trees which stood in a fine along the garden boundary, while the grass glistened as the dew-drops caught the earliest tremor of the morning breeze. The sky seemed to bring to me the call of a personal companionship, and all my heart—my whole body in fact—used to drink in at a draught the overflowing light and peace of those silent hours.'1 A sense of freshness and beauty of nature was imbibed straight from Nature herself by the unsophisticated child-mind. But the lure of the Outside was always there. When his elders started going to school he insisted on his accompanying them, little knowing that when he in his time would go there he would find it a prison, the 'Andamans', he named it later, and the master 'a cane incarnate'. Naturally he would play truant. Even with the house-
1 Rabindranath Tagore : The Religion of Man, pp. 98-99. tutors he fared no better. He would plead all sorts of excuses to escape the tutor when he called. Routine or set methods of training were not for a born genius.
Nevertheless he had his training which began, not through the medium of English, the medium in the existing schools of the city, but through Bengali. He started English later along with Sanskrit, and was able within a few years to render into Bengali some of the classics in both the languages —not so important an event in itself but notable as an indication of the budding genius.
Devendranath was very particular about following certain rites of the ancient Brahmanical religion though not in the strict orthodox manner. One such was the investiture of the sacred thread for brahmanas. When he was nearly twelve Rabindranath went through this ceremony under the personal supervision of his father. The Gayatri mantra, as he first uttered it on his initiation, says he, 'produced a sense of serene exaltation in me'. It is a Vedic hymn contemplating the adorable splendour of the Supreme as the Sun, the Creator of the universe. Both Rammohan and Devendranath, as seen before, derived from it much illumination in their inner life. Not to sleep in the day-time is one of the vows that every brahmana boy has to take during the investiture ceremony. Rabindranath was true to his vow all his life.
After the ceremony his father took him on a visit to Bolpur and the Himalayas. Mention has been made before of how his father purchased some land near Bolpur and built on it a house where he could have a quiet time for meditation and prayer. This he called Santiniketan, literally an Abode of Peace, which later, Rabindranath made his home and the centre of his educational activity on his own lines, the nucleus of the present Visva-Bharati, an international seat of learning. The young soul found here the freedom he was yearning for. The open fields stretching far into the horizon and the natural surroundings were for him a long-looked for opportunity to give free play to his desire for wanderings and explorations. Did he know then that that place would claim more than half his life and work and almost all his resources ?
From Santiniketan he went with his father to the Himalayas where he had his first experience of the mountains of India. Here also he had the same freedom to roam about as much as he wished. Devendranath, now alive to his son's training, gave him regular lessons in English and Sanskrit. He read with him Kalidasa whose influence on Rabindranath was as deep as it was abiding. But the father took care also to instruct his son in elementary astronomy and acquainted him with the planets and constellations. This was the starting-point of the Poet's fascination for the heavenly bodies. As he gave his son freedom of movement in these natural surroundings, he gave him also the freedom of thought and encouraged him to argue his points without minding in the least when the son differed with his father.
On his return to Calcutta Rabindranath found himself in the midst of the elders of the house whose life and interests began now to influence him more and more, and helped his steady but quick growth. The national feeling that pervaded the house took hold of his sensitive heart. When fourteen and fifteen he recited his own poems on India at the sessions of the National Gathering of Navagopal Mitra. He was also a member of the secret society, started by his elder brother Jyotirindranath under Rajnarayan's inspiration, working for the recovery of India's freedom and greatness. If Rabindranath's initiation into the secret society was in effect his initiation into the cult of his country's freedom, he was all his life true to it.
His early patriotic poems were certainly not stray poetical effusions. His still earlier productions are lost but among those that followed were a series in which he used the style of the Maithili Vaishnava poets of the Middle Ages, and published them over his signature as 'Bhanu Singha' taken by the readers of the time as a genuine Maithili poet, so original did the imitations look. Even an Indian scholar received a doctorate from a German University for a thesis on these poems innocently taken as deriving from the pen of a medieval poet of that name. Most of his poems and stories of this period appeared in the Bengali monthly Bharati, started by his elder brothers including Jyotirindra. Rabindranath was now sixteen when he took part in the dramas written by Jyotirindra and staged in the courtyard of the house. He was a fine actor. And all through his life he loved to act and often took important parts in his own plays.
When he was nearly eighteen Rabindranath sailed for England with his elder brother Satyendranath of the Indian Civil Service. During his stay there for a year and a half he attended, first, an English school, then literature classes in the London University where, from Prof. Henry Morley he had his introduction to English literature. Rabindranath used to say that he had his acquaintance with English life and culture not so much from his studies there as from his personal contact with cultured men and women of England. The writings of Herbert Spencer, however, had some influence on him, particularly his idea that speech takes on tuneful inflexions whenever emotion comes into play, and that through emotional modulations of voice man discovered music. This led Rabindranath to introduce the recitative element into his dramas along with certain adaptations of English tunes to Indian ones. This was one of the reasons behind the success of the plays written by him on his return from England. These plays when published and staged in his house were highly appreciated by the elite of the city. At that time, he wrote, 'in our house a cascade of musical emotion was gushing forth day after day, hour after hour, its scattered sprays reflecting into our being a whole gamut of rainbow colours....We wrote, we sang, we acted, we poured ourselves out on In this enthusiastic mood Rabindranath wrote a number of poems and published them as Sandhya Sangit, or 'Evening Songs', for which he received high praise from Bankimchandra, the supreme literary artist of the time. The lilt and tune of music of which he was full at the time welled up from his artistic nature and found expression not only in his entrancing songs but also in his charming prose and passed into the Bengali language heightening its musical quality. That Bengali has a universal appeal today is mainly due to the infusion into it of the refined universal self of Rabindranath. While at Santiniketan in the thirties the writer had the pleasure of meeting many foreign visitors who expressed themselves as being struck by the music of the Bengali language.
At twentyone Rabindranath had what Sri Aurobindo called a spiritual vision1 which turned his outlook towards a deeper meaning of things. This is how he describes it : 'One day when I stood watching at early dawn the sun sending out its rays from behind the trees, I suddenly felt as if some ancient mist had in a moment lifted from my sight and the morning light on the face of the world revealed an inner radiance of joy.'2 The Poet saw and felt, as he did in another place, 'waves of beauty and joy swelling on every side.' It was, in Shelley's words,
'That light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move.'
Rabindranath's aesthetic soul peered into the essence of ordinary things. Two boy friends going arm in arm down the street and laughing were to him part of Infinite Joy. A cow with its calf, a mother carrying her baby were expressions of Infinite Love. Nothing was commonplace in his wonderful vision. 'The poem I wrote that very day', the Poet says, 'was named "The Awakening of the Waterfall". The waterfall, whose spirit lay dormant in its ice-bound isolation, was touched by the sun and, bursting in a cataract of freedom, it found its finality in an unending sacrifice, in a continual union with the sea.'3
The fullness of the experience was not for long to stay; but its central truth remained with him as an abiding source of inspiration and became the basic sense of his poetic utterance. This vision of light pervading the earth revealed to the Poet the face of the Infinite in all 'finite categories of life'.
It is this vision that shines through a number of his later poems and songs in which the poet-seer, like his Vedic ancestor, invokes the Dawn to
1 "Talks with Sri Aurobindo" recorded by Nirodbaran, a Bengali version of which, published in book form, contains this talk dated 12.12.38.
2 Rabindranath Tagore : The Religion of Man, pp. 93-94. 3 Rabindranath Tagore : The Religion of Man, p. 44. cast its rays on man that he may wake up from his sleep in ignorance to the truth and light of the Day when the Infinite will fulfil itself in the finite. Here is one such poem :
'Bathe me today in this cascade of Light. Wash my being which hides in a cover of dust. The one who lies within me entangled in sleep Let the aureate wand of this gold light Gently touch his brow this morn. The light-drunk dawn-breeze that sweeps from the world-heart Let my heart bow down under that breeze. Bathe me in this stream of world-bliss. Cleanse all the pettiness and impurity of the mind's recess. The nectar song that is asleep in my heart's lyre Has no word, no rhythm, no cadence. Touch it with the awakening song of thy bliss, The wild breath of the songs of life sweeps from the world-heart, Make my own heart bow down by that breath.'1
Each dawn is a fresh call to man's upward climb in consciousness. As in the Vedic image, 'a continuous succession of dawns' adds to his consciousness illumination after illumination till he is fit to live, move and have his being in the Truth and Light of the Eternal Day. Rabindranath's poetry gives glimpses of this golden future of man.
In a dramatic poem called Prakitir Parisodh or 'Nature's Revenge', written not long after the above vision the Poet shows how an ascetic who had renounced the world and tried to attain the knowledge of the Infinite by curbing his natural desires and affections was brought back into the world by a little girl and made to see that 'the great is to be found in the small, the Infinite within the bounds of form, and the eternal freedom of soul in love.' This is possible for man to realise, says the Poet, when he becomes conscious of the secret meaning of things and sees the all-pervading light.
But what is possible to a poet in flashes of vision is not possible for ordinary men dominated by lower nature. To have this vision of the truth and live it, one has to renounce one's ego and lower desires and rise into a higher consciousness. It is this inner renunciation that counts and not the outer renunciation of the world and its concerns. Thus do the Poet and the Yogi, each in his own way, help man realise their common ideal—a perfect living on earth.
The vision of Rabindranath, however, is a remarkable near-approach to Sri Aurobindo's, and perhaps this is why Sri Aurobindo has called him 'a fellow-wayfarer to the same goal.' 'Nature's Revenge', says the
1 Rendered into English by Nirodbaran. Poet, 'may be looked upon as an introduction to the whole 01 my future literary work; or rather, this has been the subject on which all my writings have dwelt—the joy of attaining the Infinite within the finite.' Generally the characters of his short stories—exquisite pieces in themselves—have a touch of this vision when they vindicate the glory of common things and common lives.
Rabindranath's public life began two years after his marriage in 1883 when he became the secretary of the Adi Brahmo Samaj of which, as seen before, his father was the leader. The devotional fervour of the songs he wrote at this time and his inspiring addresses to the Samaj were eloquent proofs of his dedication to its ideal, and his hymns, regularly sung, served to affirm it, freshen it.
This was one of the most prolific periods of his literary life. Poems, plays, essays, stories and songs flowed from his pen in profusion, reflecting a deep understanding of the real nature of men and things. Most of the writings of this period were first published in the Bengali monthlies Balaka, Sadhana and Bharati. He wrote in this period a series of letters to a niece, in which he gave vivid 'glimpses of Bengal' as he saw her during his stay in north Bengal where he was asked by his father to go and look after the management of his estates. Rabindranath made the best use of this opportunity by studying at close quarters the Bengali life, especially as it is lived in the village; and he looked into its problems very carefully with a view to finding out solutions. He felt that village life in India could be revived effectively on the basis of cooperation and self-help. It was this experience that led him to start near Santiniketan his Institute of Rural Reconstruction, called Sriniketan. Anyone who heard the Poet speak on Indian village life must have been struck by his deep concern for the villagers who were to him, as to all right-thinking Indians, 'the real backbone of India's life and culture'.
The Poet used often to characterise the 'caged life' of children in the school room as an imprisonment, and 'the mechanical system of training' in vogue as 'parrot's training'. His personal experience of his own early days was a direct proof. He developed his own ideas of what education should be, if it was to help young children realise progressively all the possibilities of their personality.
To these ideas he gave a shape when in 1901 he started at Santiniketan a school, which he called 'a home for young boys'. Santiniketan, as said before, had already an atmosphere of calm and serenity born of the thoughts and experiences of seeking souls like the Poet's father Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, and of those who, on his invitation, would come there and pass their time in prayer and meditation. It was, for its atmosphere, known as an 'asram'. Rabindranath's aim in founding the school there was to train young boys after the ancient Indian ideals upheld by the masters in their forest retreats—tapovana—where young boys lived a simple life of freedom in close contact with nature, receiving from their teachers the help and guidance necessary for their all-round development. In keeping with the spirit of the ideal set before the school, the Poet originally named it Brahmacharyasram. Life there would be a life of simplicity and hardihood according to the ancient connotation of the term—the first of the four stages of life in which young souls were expected to develop their capacities under the guidance of competent teachers.
It is not so well known that besides teaching and directing the organisation the Poet himself used often to live with the boys sharing their austere life. T tried my best', wrote the Poet, 'to develop in the children of my school the freshness for their feeling for Nature, a sensitiveness of soul in their relationship with their human surroundings, with the help of literature, festive ceremonials and also the religious teachings which enjoins us to come to the nearer presence of the world through the soul.... I prepared for my children a real home-coming into this world. Among other subjects learnt in the open air under the shade of trees, they had their music and picture-making; they had their dramatic performances, activities that were the expressions of life.'1 'The idea was to provide them with an education which was not divorced from nature, so that pupils could feel that they were members of a larger community, and thus grow up in an atmosphere of freedom, mutual trust and joy.'
Rabindranath gave to the children what they needed most—freedom for the proper growth of their personality. He once said : T never said to them, 'Don't do this', 'Don't do that'. I never prevented them from climbing trees or going where they liked... .1 wanted to make these children happy in an atmosphere of freedom.' That was why he gave so much importance to the celebration of season festivals. Said he : 'When nature herself sends her message, we ought to acknowledge its compelling force. When the kiss of rain thrilled the hearts of surrounding trees, if we had still behaved with propriety and paid all our attention to mathematics it would have been positively wrong, impious.' Rabindranath thought that a child given freedom and responsibility at the same time would, by that very fact, be an insurance against his misuse of freedom. Accordingly, he would entrust them with the charge of maintaining discipline among themselves—children's autonomy. Again, he held that not having developed their mind children think with their heart and are moved by their vital. So the educator's delicate and difficult task would be to see that the child had a free and unfettered growth of his mind through creative activities in an atmosphere of freedom and joy. These ideas governed Rabindranath's approach to educational reconstruction at the very outset of the present century. They are being acknowledged today as fundamental educational principles.
The Poet held, moreover, that children's power of comprehension is
1 Rabindranath Tagore : A Poet's School, p. 12. much more than is ordinarily assumed, that they can enjoy "great poetry when properly presented. This was his experience when he read the English Romantics with children around twelve. In initiating young ones into the elements of arithmetic he would avoid abstract numbers and in their place use tamarind seeds. Experience confirmed his view that the teaching of history and geography to children could be more effective if the two subjects were coordinated and taught together. The writer has a pleasant recollection of the vivid word-picture the Poet gave him, in the early thirties, of the historical and geographical oneness of India, an objective and, at the same time, a romantic, delineation of multiform scenes of human activity, variegated in colour and contour, 'a marvel of human drama enacted on a stage set by nature'. The Poet asked, 'Can you imagine the performance of a play without a stage ? How can history exist without geography ?' These ideas of Rabindranath, formulated in his teaching at Santiniketan in the early years of the century, were later found echoed and expounded by Lucien Febvre in his famous book Geographical Introduction to History, published in 1925, which sought to give geography its proper place in the Humanities as an invariable concomitant of history.
The growth of this novel institution is part of the story of India's resurgence in modem times. Right from its beginning the problem of education was recognised by the leaders as one of vital importance. Rammohun, Devendranath, Keshubchandra, Ranade, Tilak and Sri Aurobindo had made, each his contribution, to this subject. Rabindranath's however had the distinction that the shape he gave to his own idea remained to stay as a unique landmark in education, a model, so to say, for many an institution founded after the Santiniketan ideal. As another proof of how this ideal caught the imagination of the people is the fact that despite Bengali being the medium of instruction there, non-Bengali children from various parts of India come there to study.
One of the most important aspects of the varied contributions of the Tagores of Jorasanko to modern Indian renaissance is that they were among the first to promote the growth of national feeling among their countrymen. No wonder that the sensitive soul of their poet-scion should show this feeling when he was barely fifteen through his association with the National Gathering and the secret society. Later he wrote a number of essays condemning the evils of the alien rule which afflicted his countrymen. In 1892 he made a vigorous plea for the adoption of the mother-tongue as the medium of instruction in the schools. In 1894 ne advocated communal unity as a basic principle of national progress. Three years later he tried to have the proceedings of the Bengal Provincial Conference conducted in Bengali. And in 1898 he protested against the new Sedition Act and the reactionary policy of the Government, particularly in arresting Bal Gangadhar Tilak. When in 1905 Government decision its decision to divide Bengal, Rabindranath came out openly into the field of politics and took a prominent part in the 'One Bengal' movement against the Partition, and immensely strengthened it by a stream of inspired and inspiring songs which like La Marseillaise and Le Chant de Depart, played their role in making history. These songs were on the lips of everybody, young and old, and when sung in chorus they sent waves of love and enthusiasm for the country all around. Sri Aurobindo said that through the national songs of Rabindranath and of others the dormant fire in the soul of Bengal burst into an upsurge of psychological revolution out of which was born the new Bengal who led India by declaring complete freedom as her only and immediate goal.
The Bengali's love of country begins with the immediate land of his birth. Here is Rabindranath's vision of Bengal:
'Risen from the heart of Bengal thou appearest in thy marvellous form, O Mother ! I look at thee, I keep on looking and the eye is loth to turn. The door has opened today into thy golden temple.'
In another song :
'My Sonar Bangla, I love thee, Ever thine skies, thine breeze play the flute of my heart.'
His vision of India :
'Heart-charmer of the universe ! O thou earth, bright with peace beams of the sun ! Our ancestors' Mother and Nurse !
'The first dawn broke out in thy sky of love, The first hymn rang out in thy mystic grove, Thy sylvan arbours first proclaimed to man The lore of light and parables of stars.'
Here is his challenge to Curzon, the author of the Partition :
'You'd cut the bond of Providence ! So powerful you are !'
His love of his motherland :
'Blessed am I that I am born in this land, blessed my birth that I love thee, Mother.' 'Your dying river is now in flood; Shout victory to the Mother and launch the boat.'
His prayer to God :
'Grant, O God, that the vows and aspirations, the words and deeds of my country be true.
Grant that the sons and daughters of my country feel themselves one in life, one in heart, O God.'
And again:
'Shatter this age-long shame of ours, And raise our head into the boundless sky, into the generous light, into the air of freedom.'
The flaming utterances of the Poet's soul clothed in the power of his native speech went home to the hearts of the people and awakened them to their birthright to freedom and greatness. Rabindranath was easily a great builder of the New Bengal that emerged from her partitioned self. In the poetic words of Ezra Pound, 'Tagore has sung his land into a nation.'
Another notable act of the Poet at the time was a scheme of work drawn up by him for the newly-founded National Council of Education under whose auspices he delivered a series of lectures on Literature.
Among other eminent poets of the time Dwijendralal Roy ranks high for his most popular and moving national songs. To give only a few extracts: : 'O my goddess, my life's pursuit, my heaven, O my motherland !'
From another song rendered by Sri Aurobindo :
'India, my India, where first human eyes awoke to heavenly light, All Asia's holy place of pilgrimage, great Motherland of might ! World-mother, first giver to humankind of philosophy and sacred lore,
Knowledge thou gav'st to man, God-love, works, art, religion's open door.... Before us still there floats the ideal of those splendid days of gold : A new world in our vision wakes, Love's India we shall rise to mould.'
What was the source of Dwijendralal's inspiration ? His seer's conviction expresses itself in his own words : T know, I believe, I seem to see clear enough that whatever may others say of us, however much they may ignore us as of no worth, we shall awake and arise and be men again.'
When the Swadeshi movement took an extreme form, the Nationalist Party adopting its policy of boycott, Rabindranath withdrew from active politics and devoted himself to literary pursuits. It turned out to be 'his entering on one of the richest and most significant phases of his creative activity.' But the woeful condition of his country continued to prey on his mind. He wrote essays on the immediate problems of India, advocating 'a radical social programme as essential to the attainment of a real and lasting political independence.' The Nationalists however held different views. To them political freedom was the paramount need, without which no reform or progress in any sphere of national life was possible.
The fact stands that Rabindranath was next to none in his desire to see his country free from foreign domination; he criticised unsparingly its insidious results on many an occasion. Neither could he ever think in terms of cooperation with the rulers who were not only foreign but 'most unsympathetic to the people they ruled'. And this was his feeling till the last day of his life. In 1941 he reiterated this 'callous neglect' of the British Government in India and 'the utter helplessness of the Indian people'. But he did not, at any time, favour negative action. He was in favour of the people working for their own well-being through 'self-reliance and cooperation', building up their society by their collective will and share a common corporate life whose all-round progress would be the concern of each. Such free development of smaller collective units is sure to prove, as it did in ancient India, a strong foundation of freedom and progress. These were accepted as the basic principles of the constructive programme of the later political movement, but its political programme the Poet could not support as he differed with its leader on certain fundamentals.
Yet Rabindranath and Mahatma Gandhi were good friends and remained so all their fife, each appreciating the worth of the other. To Rabindranath, Gandhiji was the 'Great Leader' of India who stirred the stagnant waters of Indian life into fresh channels of activity. And to Gandhiji the Poet was 'the Great Sentinel' guarding the light of India's soul and watching over her march to her goal, his Visva-Bharati representing her culture in newer forms that are part of her resurgence. Rabindranath publicly expressed his admiration for the greatness, sacrifice, love of country and courage of conviction of those leaders of the Swadeshi movement with whom he differed. One of them was Sri Aurobindo, the high-priest of revolutionary nationalism, whom Rabindranath called 'the voice incarnate, free, of India's soul' in his famous poem, Aurobindo, Rabindrer laha namaskar, or 'Rabindra, O Aurobindo, bows to thee', written on Sri Aurobindo's arrest in 1907.
Within five years from 1902 Rabindranath lost his wife, father, a daughter and a son. These bereavements do not seem to have interfered with his political and literary activities during this period. His exemplary fortitude bore him through. When his daughter was seriously ill he was almost always by her side nursing her with every care and attention. When she passed away and her body was taken out of the house, he was found attending to his daily round of work as if nothing had happened to him. People about him were amazed and to one of them he said : 'When she was sick I did for her what I could as a dutiful and affectionate father. But there is nothing to be done now. Let her go her way in peace.' Not so generally known is this aspect of Rabindranath's power of detachment. Another instance, mentioned in one of his letters, was of a physical character. One night, stung by a centipede, he began feeling the pain. Then he detached himself from the body, went to bed and passed a peaceful night.
Reference has already been made to the Poet's splendid response to the call of the evolutionary Force during the period round the outbreak of the First World War when from the fount of his inner self flowed a profusion of powerful poetry as if sweeping away in its onrush everything of the old and effete to make room for the New, forcing the outlook of the Present towards the Unknown and the Far Beyond, towards 'the Eternal Ultimate', to a golden Dawn beyond the horizon.
The poems of Gitanjali or 'Song Offerings' belong to this period. His renderings of these songs into English were done on his voyage to England in 1912 more as a pastime than as a serious literary effort. There he casually showed them to William Rofhenstein, the famous British artist and art-critic, who was so deeply impressed that he had them read to a distinguished gathering of literary men of England. A limited edition of the book was soon published with an appreciative introduction by W.B. Yeats, the great Irish poet, and it was 'immediately hailed by the literary world as one of the master-pieces of the world's literature.' Gitanjali brought the Poet the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, and along with it his world-fame.
From England the Poet sailed for the United States where at Chicago and Harvard Universities he delivered a series of lectures on the cultural and spiritual ideals of ancient India and in one of these, referring to the inborn spirituality of his people he said : 'The infinite is not a mere matter of philosophical speculation in India. It is as real to her as the sunlight. She must see it, feel it and make use of it in her daily life.' In some of his lectures on his second visit to the States in 1916 he condemned aggressive nationalism 'exposing the spirit of violence and imperialistic greed inherent in the Nation-State.' For this he was severely criticised by a section of the pro-British press in America. The Poet had already dwelt on this theme in his lectures in Japan from where he had gone to the States.
The Poet's interest in Indian politics became evident again in 1917 when he publicly and vehemently protested against the Government action in interning Annie Besant for her Home Rule League activities. He also supported her candidature for the Presidentship of the Indian National Congress where he recited his famous poem 'India's Prayer' beginning with the line : 'Let us know that Thy light grows dim in the heart that bears its insult of bondage.' The depth and poignancy of this feeling expressed itself when in 1919 he renounced his Knighthood as a protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and the Martial Law atrocities in the Panjab. In his letter to the Viceroy he said : 'The very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when bondages of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.' That this angered some of his English friends and admirers was evident in their 'studied aloofness' when the Poet visited England in 1920.
When the First World War was raging in Europe the Poet was thinking how real unity could be promoted among the nations to forestall such devastating hostilities. The thought became more insistent when he was on his continental tour in 1920-21 and saw with his own eyes the disastrous effects of the War on the life and mind and property of the people. In his talks to the savants of the West whom he met, and to large gatherings he expressed what was then uppermost in his mind. Here is an extract from one such talk : 'Now the problem before us is of our single country, which is this earth, where the races as individuals must find both their freedom of self-expression and their bond of federation. Mankind must realise a unity, wider in range, deeper in sentiment, stronger in power than ever before. Now that the problem is large, we have to solve it on a bigger scale, to realise God in man by a larger faith and to build the temple of our faith on a sure and world-wide basis.
'The first step towards realisation is to create opportunities for revealing the different peoples to one another. This can never be done in those fields where the exploiting utilitarian spirit is supreme. We must find some meeting-ground, where there can be no question of conflicting interests. One of such places is the University, where we can work together in a common pursuit of truth, share together our common heritage, and realise that artists in all parts of the world have created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of the universe, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints made the truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives, not merely for some particular race to which they belonged but for all mankind.'1
In December 1921 took place the formal inauguration of Visva-Bharati-a noble expression of the Poet's noble vision—to which he made over all his properties at Santiniketan and the entire Nobel Prize amount. This is an important event in the history of modern India's resurgence in that she in a practical form reaffirmed her living faith in the vision of human unity that had come to her seers in the great days of her glorious past. The declared aim of Visva-Bharati was 'to study the mind of man in its realisation of different aspects of truth from diverse points of view' and for this, 'to provide at Santiniketan a Centre of Culture where research into and study of the religion, literature, history, science and art of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Islamic, Sikh, Christian, and other civilisations may be pursued along with the culture of the West, with that simplicity in externals which is necessary for true spiritual realisation, in amity, good fellowship and cooperation between the thinkers and scholars of both Eastern and Western countries, free from all antagonisms of race, nationality, creed or caste.'
Explaining the name the Poet wrote in Sanskrit: yatra viśvaṁ bhava-tyekanīḍam, 'where the whole world nestles in one home.' 'Visva-Bharati', in the words of the Poet again, 'represents India where she has her wealth of mind which is for all. Visva-Bharati acknowledges India's obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India's right to accept from others their best.'
The call was indeed the call of India and the response of such eminent savants of international fame as Sylvain Levi of France, Mark Winternitz of Czechoslovakia, Sten Konow of Norway, Carlo Formichi of Italy, Julius Germanus of Hungary, James Pratt of America, showed that the advanced mind of humanity was ready to collaborate in the noble work of building up a cultural fellowship as a basis of unity among the nations envisaged by the Poet. This noble gesture of Europe took place in the twenties. But earlier had already come the two 'great-hearted' and selfless Englishmen, C. F. Andrews and W. W. Pearson, both of whom made Santiniketan their home. Among the Indians who were the Poet's greatest helpers in his educational effort were Vidhusekhar Sastri, Nandalal Basu, Haricharan Bandyopadhyaya, and Kshitimohon Sen. Vidhusekhar's association with the Department of Research, and Andale's with the Department of Art, both as Directors, are notable facts in the cultural history of modem India in that the former's researches unravelled many a new link in India's cultural intercourse with China, and Tibet; the latter, a master-artist of the neo-Bengal School of Painting, trained a number of
1 Rabindranath Tagore : Creative Unity, pp. 171-72. artists who are now in charge of art-schools in India. In fulfilment of the Poet's wish Haricharan produced a monumental Bengali lexicon, unique of its kind. Kshitimohon's original work of great importance was on the mystics of medieval India. Except Nandalal who came in 1914 all of them joined Santiniketan within a few years of its foundation. In the same year came Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya, later famous for his flaming patriotism, Satischandra Roy, a poet of great promise, and Jagadananda Roy, the reputed author of many books on science for children.
The Poet's visit to China in 1929 revived India's cultural friendship with her oldest neighbour, a relationship that began over two thousand years ago. Many Chinese savants reciprocated the Poet's visit by themselves coming to Visva-Bharati to help in developing its Chinese Department for which the one who did most was Tan Yun-Shan, thanks mainly to whose efforts Visva-Bharati has today its splendid Cheena Bhavana with a Library, the largest Chinese Library outside China.
Apart from its higher studies in the cultural and religious lores of Asia and Europe, literature as such, specially of the Poet himself in his own language has been an attraction for students from various parts of India and countries abroad. There are then the fine arts including painting, music and dancing, each having assimilated elements of other art forms, has evolved a particular form of its own, the result being a happy cultural synthesis that marks out the achievements of Visva-Bharati.
The Poet's deep interest in the revival of villages as living centres of India's national life, aroused long ago while looking after his father's estates in a rural district, now channelled itself in the reclamation of the villages surrounding Visva-Bharati. His idea was : If I can free only one or two villages from the bonds of ignorance and weakness, there will be built, on a tiny scale, an ideal for the whole of India.' With this aim the Poet started Sriniketan in 1921 with a substantial financial help from L. K. Elmherst, another notable English admirer of the Poet, whose love for India and her hapless children in the villages commands our grateful remembrance.
When clashes of national egoisms threatened to destroy human civilisation the Poet of India held up before mankind his vision of One World inviting to his Visva-Bharati the whole human race to come and join hearts and minds in building up a world civilisation. Critical moments of high tension in human history quicken into shape saving Ideals of high promise.
The worth of an institution like Visva-Bharati has to be judged not only by its present achievements but also by the measure of acceptance of its ideals by the higher mind of the race. That the human mind today is thinking in terms of an international life and a world community is not a little due to what the Poet did to further the cause of peace and fellowship among the nations. That the Poet of dependent India should see the truth of this ideal in the depths of his soul and invite the so-called free but war-weary nations to its acceptance is in itself a notable fact of history the full significance of which time only will reveal.
Visva-Bharati stands for the India of the Poet's vision, for India as Bharat Tīrtha, a land of pilgrimage for humanity where he stands, arms outstretched to receive Man, head inclined in salutation to the Divine in Man. It stands for India as a spiritual home of various races, cultures and traditions whom she would knit into a happy synthesis of one great human civilisation based on Peace, Harmony and Unity.
In the Poet's hands Visva-Bharati was growing into a Nalanda of modern India. Now that it is a University under the Central Government of India, it would be best if all concerned concentrated on developing it on the wide and progressive lines of its founder, so that it can play its part in an exemplary way in resurgent India and in resurgent humanity.
But Visva-Bharati is only one aspect of Rabindranath's work in the outer field of life. His poetry, songs, essays and addresses were also master-creations of his many-sided genius. A striking feature about him was his majestic personality. Whenever he would meet and address large gatherings in cities and universities—and they covered almost the whole civilised world—men and women in their thousands would collect just to have the privilege to see and marvel at his personality.
Indeed his travels were as extensive as they were frequent. He used to say that just as the sun shone on the east as well as the west and belonged to the whole world, he also wished to belong to every country. He had developed this world outlook early in life. Even as a youth of about thirty he declared in an article that his home was in all lands, his country in all countries, he had close kindred in all homes, and that he has resolved to win that country, that home and those kindred. In fact, many in other lands found in him one who was very much their own. And naturally Rabindranath was a great reconciler and unifier to be remembered in all history. To him India owes not a little of her unique position of cultural leadership in the modern world.
While his poetry speaks of a world splendoured by beauty, love and light, his dramas articulate his reactions to the moods of Nature, particularly the seasons, and to the various problems that beset man today. His word-picture of autumn in Bengal, for example, is a wonder in itself. The dialogues and songs never fail to recreate for the reader or spectator, when staged, an atmosphere in which he feels suffused by the soft and sweet veil of autumn days with their exhilarating charm, their call to play in a reckless abandon of joy. An actual experience came the way of the writer when with a few other professors he had the pleasure of enjoying an autumn evening at Santiniketan with the Poet. To them he revealed in his inimitable language the spirit of autumn as it touches the being of man; just so, it touched his immediate hearers. In his problem plays the Poet exposed the social, political and cultural aberrations in the modern world. One such was Muktadhara or 'The Waterfall', generally regarded as 'the greatest of his symbolical plays'. It presents 'a synthesis of the Poet's different convictions and messages. His deep distrust of all government by machinery and of all prostitution of science to serve violence and oppression, his hatred of all slavish system of education, his scorn of race-hatred and of all politics which seek to make one tribe dependent on another instead of risking the gift of the fullest freedom, his certitude that it is in freedom that God is found—all these are so prominent that each may with justice be claimed as the play's message.'1
No poet has ever had in his life-time such universal homage as Rabindranath. The Golden Book of Tagore, presented to him on his seventieth birthday is a living proof. It contains, among other things, tributes of respect and admiration from the elite of humanity everywhere gratefully acknowledging his contribution to the culture and civilisation of mankind. 'Tagore is the most Universal, the most encompassing, the most complete human being I have known', says Hermann Keyserling of Germany. 'In a world at odds Tagore's is a healing touch.... He is the living symbol of the spirit of Light and of Harmony, a singer of the Song of Eternity',—Romain Rolland of France. 'He is one of those few who are gifted with the highest inspiration of God, of Truth',—J. Jankowski of Poland. 'In the constellation of the great teachers of humanity Tagore burns with such a fascinating bright light',—P.S. Kogan of Russia. 'He is India bringing to Europe a new divine symbol, not the Cross, but the lotus',—Johan Bojer of Norway. 'A poet made of light and music, singing luminous and melodious song',—Carlo Formichi of Italy. 'A true citizen of the world, teaching not an Indian or Eastern doctrine but the one human truth of which mankind everywhere stands in urgent need today',—J. A. Spender of England. 'Not only a seer but the herald of the New Dawn that we hope means the New Day for our two allied regions and our two troubled civilisations',—Ernest Rhys of England. 'A great soul of an incomparably great nation',—Sinclere Lewis of America. 'Something of the ancient idealism of the East has been poured into our blood by the wine and music of your verse, by the example and majesty of your life',—Will Durant, the eminent American philosopher and historian. 'A glitter of light, the purple gleaming at the apex of the Himalayas',—M. Anesaki of Japan. 'The East has its rebirth through the Poet-seer',—Lin Yen Han of China. 'The resplendent sun of the Orient, sent by India as her divine Poet-herald to the world',— R. Safari of Persia. To many he was 'the initiator of a universal culture.' Such are the utterances about Rabindranath by many of his admirers in the world.
From his own countrymen Rabindranath received their heart's love
1 Edward Thompson : Rabindranath Tagore, p. 271.
and reverence, not only as 'the King of Poets' but as one whose 'life and work has been a potent force in modern India's resurgence'. There is no literary or cultural institution in India which has not paid its homage to him by preserving his memory in some way or other. And neither is there a literary man of note who is not in some way or other indebted to him. The study of his works in the original or in translation forms part of the cultural attainment of an Indian. His songs are most popular all over India and are sung in original Bengali in many places outside Bengal. His centenary celebrations in 1961 were a renewal on an even wider scale of this recognition.
It was the voice of Bengal that spoke through one of her sons : 'Our hearts go out in salutation to him—thinker, creator of Sonar Bangla. Tagore—A Praise without end.' From among others in India was C. R. Reddy's : 'To have been the glory of India is indeed a great triumph; but he is more, he is one of the lights of the world.' Wrote Jawaharlal Nehru : 'Rabindranath Tagore has given to our nationalism the outlook of internationalism and has enriched it with art and music and the magic of his words, so that it has become the full-blooded emblem of India's awakened spirit.' This is the cultural world significance of Indian nationalism, the spiritual being affirmed by Vivekananda, and reaffirmed by the prophets of Indian nationalism who led the Swadeshi movement. Sri Aurobindo, the foremost of them, said : 'India is rising today not for herself but for the world. And it is for humanity and not for herself that she must be great and free.'
The spontaneous celebrations of Rabindranath's centennial, on a magnificent scale, in India's capital and in every one of her states, and everywhere else in the rest of the civilised world were an eloquent demonstration of his status as a world-poet.
This universal recognition of Rabindranath's greatness is certainly a sign that the mind of man has begun widening to the proportions of a world outlook. There is also in it a promise of fulfilling the Poet's wish : 'I earnestly hope that I shall find my home anywhere in the world, before I leave it.'
These tributes did not exhaust the world's appreciation of the Poet. In the thirties, following his seventieth birthday, there came to Santiniketan scholars, thinkers, artists, poets, public men, and thousands of his admirers from India and abroad personally to pay their respects to him, many of them calling their visit a pilgrimage. The writer had the honour of meeting many of them and of hearing words of their heart's adoration of their 'Gurudeva'. Karl Hujer, a world-famous astronomer, then Head of the Department of Astronomy, Prague University, told the writer that when he made his obeisance to the Poet he did so to the light that India was. M. Crezensky, Head of the Department of Sanskrit, Cracow University, Poland, said in fluent Sanskrit that there was some-
thing in the teachings and the personality of the Poet that was not of this earth. Many other visitors from the West, including a few Englishmen, echoed the American philosopher-historian Will Durant's view that Rabindranath was sufficient reason why India should be 'soon welcomed into the fellowship of self-governing nations'. Rabindranath's rise to world fame, after Vivekananda's, strengthened India's position as the spiritual leader of humanity. As an Indian the writer felt happy that these friends of India from the West were able to perceive something of the truth of the phenomenon that Rabindranath was—a Vibhuti of God, belonging, as mystic experience says, to the line of the Mahalakshmi-Force in human evolution. Mahalakshmi is one of the four principal aspects of the Supreme Sakti, the Divine Mother, who, 'as the soul of Beauty and Harmony in creation', 'throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine.' The poetry of Rabindranath is a foreshadowing of the world of this Beauty, this Harmony, of the joy of life as a reflection of the joy of the Spirit, and that was the essence of what evolutionary Nature intended in his advent.
In his last years the Poet of 'sweetness and love', of 'Beauty and Harmony', felt distressed 'at the spectacle of the devastating barbarism of the war then raging, and fearful of the crisis in civilisation brought about by greed and selfishness and the insolence of might in the West.' In his last message to the world given in 1941 on his eightieth birthday he condemned the besetting evils of foreign rule in India, and saw in the world, to quote his own words, 'the crumbling ruins of a proud civilisation strewn like a vast heap of futility'. 'Yet', he continues, T shall not commit the grievous sin of losing faith in Man. I would rather look forward to the opening of a new chapter in his history after the cataclysm is over.... Perhaps that dawn will come from this horizon, from the East where the sun rises'.1 'Today I live in the hope that the Saviour is coming—that he will be born in our midst in this poverty-shamed hovel which is India. I shall wait to hear the divine message of civilisation which he will bring with him, the supreme word of promise that he will speak unto man from this very eastern horizon to give faith and strength to all who hear.'2
On 7 August 1941 Rabindranath left his body, when his grateful admirers the world over remembered his own words : 'At this time of parting wish me good luck, my friends. The sky is flushed with the dawn and my path lies beautiful.' 'In front lies the ocean of peace.'
Rabindranath began life with a vision of heaven's light awakening him to its truth in man. The truth became part of his consciousness inspiring his poetic creations time and again. Indeed, it became the central fact of his creative self. It was this light again that visited his closing eyes, and beckoned him to the Great Beyond. Was it a modem instance of 'a continuous succession of dawns' on his receptive consciousness to prepare
1 & 2 Rabindranath Tagore : Crisis in Civilisation, pp. 17-18. him, as it prepares man, for the Illumination of the Future which his poetry points to ? And was this the secret meaning of the phenomenon that was Rabindranath ? His seer-self visioned the glory of mankind's Tomorrow.
What then is that element in his poetry which points to the poetry of the future as a creative factor of the New Age of the Spirit the signs of whose coming are already visible on the horizon ? A glance at his racial lineage may be taken to see how much his genius owes to it and how, largely because of this inheritance, it could itself become the genius of the greatest poet of modem India.
Born and brought up in Bengal, Rabindranath visioned her as Mother and worshipped her as the goddess of his devotions. And the Mother, as she is in her physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self, cast her worthy son in her own mould. It may be no exaggeration to say that as Bengal made Rabindranath, Rabindranath made Bengal. Naturally, the poet of Bengal blossomed into the poet of India and of the world. Through the synthetic mind and intuitive heart of a Bengali he knew of a life and light that were universal, born of the seeds sown in the race consciousness of Bengal by her ancient mystics. All this, expressed in the magic of his words, made his personal experiences the experiences of the whole of humanity; rather, what was his own became everybody's.
What then is the soul of Bengal that evolved out of all that she has ever been both in her inner and outer being ? It seems that right at the outset of her history Bengal chose poetry—mystic poetry at that—as the congenial literary form for the expression of her creative soul and through cultivation it became the very breath of her life. This was evident in the early years of the present century when, says Sri Aurobindo, 'the need of self-expression for the national spirit in politics suddenly brought back Bengali literature to its essential and eternal self and it was in our recent national songs that self-realisation came.'1 And Rabindranath's national songs, as seen before, are among the sublimest soul-utterances of Bengal. Says Sri Aurobindo: 'The lyric and the lyrical spirit, the spirit of simple, direct and poignant expression, of deep, passionate, straightforward emotion, of a frank and exalted enthusiasm, the dominant note of love and Bhakti of a mingled sweetness and strength, the potent intellect dominated by the self-illuminated heart, a mystical exaltation of feeling and spiritual insight expressing itself with a plain concreteness and practicality— this is the soul of Bengal'.2 Most obviously, Rabindranath's poetic self might well have been a projection of the soul of Bengal and his poetry perfectly squared with it.
'The enlightening power of the poet's creation', says Sri Aurobindo, 'is vision of truth, its moving power is a passion of beauty and delight, but its sustaining power and that which makes it great and vital is the
1 & 2 Sri Aurobindo : The Ideal of the Karmayogin, pp. 45-46. breath of life',1 and this life, again says Sri Aurobindo, Is the infinite life of the spirit thrown out in its many creations.'2 Rabindranath's vision of the truth of creation, of its beauty and joy came to him early in his life when he saw in everything 'an inner radiance of joy', 'the glory of the Infinite in the finite'. This revelation, vouchsafed to him in the morning of his life, illumined his consciousness and awakened it to the play of joy in creation. This is how the Poet explains it: 'The day breaks in the east, like a bud bursting its sheath to come out in flower. But if this fact belonged only to the outside world of events, how could we ever find our entrance into it ? It is a sunrise in the sky of our consciousness, it is a new creation, fresh in bloom, in our life.'
'Open your eyes and see. Feel this world as a living flute might feel the breath of music passing through it, feel the meeting of creative joy in the depth of your consciousness....'
'. ..Our God is Light, and in that light we find our truth, which is our perfect relationship with all,' because 'the Light is all-embracing in its radiance.'
Here is the Poet's vision of Light as one with creation and he was one with it : 'Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light ! 'Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth. '.... The heaven's river has drowned its banks, the flood of joy is abroad.'
'Let all the strains of joy mingle in my last song' and 'A tide has come today from the sea of bliss' suggest the self-same experience.
The light of heaven brings to the Poet its message of joy which is the inner meaning of the joy of life, and in that joy the Poet sees the beauty of the world's face that wins his love :
'I've loved this world's face splendour-girt, With all my heart, And I have wound In fold on fold, My life around it and around; The gloom of dusk, the gold Of countess dawns across my soul have rolled, And sped and passed;
1 & 2 Sri Aurobindo : The Future Poetry, pp. 314-15. At last My life today is one With earth and sea and sky, the moon and sun. Thus life hath won my heart, For I have loved this world splendour-girt.'
Through his love for and oneness with this world and its life the Poet feels in him the surge and breath of the whole world—a sign of great poetry, according to Sri Aurobindo :
'I feel that all the stars shine in me. 'The world breaks into my life like a flood. 'The flowers blossom in my body.
'All the youthfulness of land and water smokes like an incense in my heart; and the breath of all things plays on my thoughts as on a flute.'
Here is the Poet's vision of the oneness of his life with the all-pervading, cosmic and eternal life :
'The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
'It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
T feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood in this moment.'
To Rabindranath life is a cosmic drama of loving finite spirits, all reciprocating in their mutual relation the infinite love of the Divine. This is the eternal play, līlā, in which the Infinite needs the finite, even as the finite needs the Infinite, each holding the other in sweet eternal communion. The idea is beautifully expressed in a haul (mystic) song translated by the Poet himself: 'It goes on blossoming for ages, the soul lotus, in which I am bound, as well as thou, without escape. There is no end to the opening of its petals, and the honey in it has such sweetness that thou like an enchanted bee canst never desert it, and therefore thou art bound, and I am, and Mukti (liberation) is nowhere.' Petals open to dawn; dawn comes everyday and petals open; the play goes on. 'Deliverance ?' asks the Poet, 'Where is this deliverance to be found ? Our Master himself hath joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation. He is bound in our midst forever.' Yet was the Poet a bom lover of freedom; but he would 'feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.' 'Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.'
This is the truth of love that binds man and God to itself so that harmony may grow and creation find its fulfilment. Says the Poet: 'We have a central ideal of love with which to harmonise our existence, we have to manifest a truth in our life, which is the perfect relationship with Eternal Person.' It is towards this Eternal Person that the life of man is a pilgrimage with the light of dawn as a beacon and guide. When, therefore, dawn fires gleam on the horizon the Poet calls to man : 'Let us announce to the world that the morning has come.' 'Wake up from sleep, from langour of despair.' 'Receive the light of the new dawn with song.' 'A Great Day will come.' 'A New World will arise.'
This glorious advent becomes more defined in one of Rabindranath's last poems in which he foresees the coming of the Saviour who will usher in 'the Great Day' and create 'the New World' and reveal to man 'the Humanity of his God' and 'the divinity of Man the Eternal' both embraced by 'the Whole'. Man is destined to grow into this 'wholeness of divine perfection'. This bears a marked affinity with Vijayakrishna's neo-Vaish-navic ideal of 'Concrete Universalism', with the focal trend of the esoteric cults of medieval Bengal. It is almost a near-approach to Sri Aurobindo's vision of man's divine destiny. Rabindranath goes on :
'The Great One comes, sending shivers across the dust of the earth. In the heavens sounds the trumpet, in the world of man the drums of victory are beaten, the hour has arrived for the great Birth.
Today the gates of night's fortress crumble into dust— On the crest of awakening dawn assurance of new life proclaims "Fear Not".
The great sky resounds with paeans of victory to the coming of Man.'
- And Sri Aurobindo:
'Slowly the Light grows greater in the East, Slowly the world progresses on God's road.'
What then is the character of Rabindranath's poetry in so far as it points to the coming of a new age ? And what place does he occupy among 'the poets of the Dawn', 'the forerunners of the new spirit' ? In Sri Aurobindo's light the answer would be clear : '... now the mind of man is opening more largely to the deepest truth of the Divine, the Self, the Spirit, the eternal Presence not separate and distant, but near us, around us and in us, the Spirit in the world, the greater Self in man a"hd his kind, the Spirit in all that is and lives, the Godhead, the Existence, the Power, the Beauty, the eternal Delight that broods over all, supports all and manifests itself in every turn of creation. A poetry which lives in this vision must give us quite a new presentation and interpretation of life; for of itself and at the first touch this seeing reconstructs and re-images the world for us and gives us a greater sense and a vaster, subtler and profounder form of our existence. The real faces of the gods are growing more apparent to the eye of the mind, though not yet again intimate with our life, and the forms of legend and symbol and myth must open to other and deeper meanings, as already they have begun to do, and come in changed and vital again into poetry to interpret the realities behind the veil. Nature wears already to our eye a greater and more transparent robe of her divine and her animal and her terrestrial and cosmic life and a deeper poetry of Nature than has yet been written is one of the certain potentialities of the future.'1
'The all-informing spirit, when found in all its fullness, heals the scission between thought and life, the need of a just balance between them disappears, instead there begins a new and luminous and joyful fusion and oneness. The spirit gives us not only a greater light of truth and vision, but the breath of a greater living; for the spirit is not only the self of our consciousness and knowledge, but the great self of life. To find our self and the self of things is not to go through a rarefied ether of thought into Nirvana, but to discover the whole greatest integral power of our complete existence.
'This need is the sufficient reason for attaching the greatest importance to those poets in whom there is the double seeking of this twofold power, the truth and reality of the eternal self and spirit in man and things and the insistence on life. All the most significant and vital work in recent poetry has borne this stamp;' the rest is of the hour, but this is of the future. It is the highest note of Whitman, widening, as in one who seeks and sees much but has not fully found, a great pioneer poetry, an opening of a new view rather than a living in its accomplished fullness; it is constantly repeated from the earth side in Meredith, comes down from the spiritual side in all A.E.'s work, moves between earth and the life of the worlds behind in Yeats' subtle rhythmic voices of vision and beauty, echoes with a large fullness in Carpenter. The poetry of Tagore owes its sudden and universal success to this advantage that he gives us more of this discovery and fusion for which the mind of our age is in quest than any other creative writer of the time. His work is a constant music of the overpassing of the borders, a chant-filled realm in which the subtle sounds and lights of the truth of the spirit give new meanings to the finer subtleties of life. The objection has been made that this poetry is too subtle and remote and
1Sri Aurobindo : The Future Poetry, p. 326. goes away from the broad, near, present and vital actualities of existence. Yeats is considered by some a poet of Celtic romance and nothing more, Tagore accused in his own country of an unsubstantial poetic philosophising, a lack of actuality, reality of touch and force of vital insistence. But this is to mistake the work of this poetry and to mistake too in a great measure the sense of life as it must reveal itself to the greatening mind of humanity now that it is growing in world-knowledge and towards self-knowledge. These poets have not indeed done all that has to be done or given the complete poetic synthesis and fusion. Their work has been to create a new and deeper manner of seeing life, to build bridges of visioned light and rhythm between the infinite and eternal and the mind and soul and life of man. The future poetry has not to stay in their achievement, but to step from these first fields into new and yet greater ranges, to fathom all the depths yet unplumbed, to complete what has been left half done or not yet done, to bring all it can of the power of man's greater self and the universal spirit into the broadest all of life. That cannot and will not be achieved in its fullness all at once, but to make a foundation of this new infinite range of poetic vision and creation is work enough to give greatness to a whole age.'1'.. .And at the subtest elevation of all that has yet been reached stands or rather wings and floats in a high intermediate region the poetry of Tagore, not in the complete spiritual light, but amid an air shot with its seekings and glimpses, a sight and cadence found in a psycho-spiritual heaven of subdue and delicate soul experience transmuting the earth tones by the touch of its radiance. The wide success and appeal of his poetry is indeed one of the most significant signs of the tendency of the mind of the age.'2
If this great beginning is to develop and bear fruit it must be followed by a newer poetry of the Spirit. 'To bring God into life, the sense of the self in us into all our personality and becoming, the powers and vistas of the Infinite into our mental and material existence, the oneness of the self in all.. .that is around us is to help to divinise our actual being and life, to force down its fences of division and blindness and unveil the human godhead that individual man and his race can become if they will and lead us to our most vital perfection. This is what a future poetry may do for us in the way and measure in which poetry can do these things, by vision, by the power of the word, by the attraction of the beauty and delight of what it shows us.3
Here in Rabindranath is 'a golden glint' of that glorious future :
'The eternal Dream is borne on the wings of ageless Light
1 Sri Aurobindo : The Future Poetry, pp. 321-23. 2 Sri Aurobindo : The Future Poetry, p. 400. 3 Ibid., pp. 328-29. that rends the veil of the vague and goes across Time weaving ceaseless patterns of Being.
'The mystery remains dumb, the meaning of this pilgrimage, the endless adventure of existence— whose rush along the sky flames up into innumerable rings of paths, till at last knowledge gleams out from the dusk in the infinity of human spirit, and in that dim-lighted dawn she speechlessly gazes through the break in the mist at the vision of Life and Love emerging from the tumult of profound pain and joy.'
Another prophetic utterance of the Poet wells up from his visions
'In the boundless heavens the Great Ascetic, Vast Time keeps vigil. He keeps vigil For a manifestation till now unconceived, unimagined, That none has yet known, That has revealed itself nowhere.' |