February 23, 2001

Gurudev of home and the world

Tagore’s cosmopolitanism made him India’s most universally admired poet

The other day, India’s ambassador to the Czech Republic presented a bust of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore to the Mayor of Prague. The minister who was to have made the presentation was held back in New Delhi to cope with other contingencies.

Pardon my ignorance but I was quite surprised to find in Prague’s sixth district not far from the Indian embassy, a street named after Tagore. The city administration is contemplating the installation of this piece of sculpture somewhere in the vicinity of the street.

But why this fascination for Tagore in this most exquisite of European cities?
Prof. Jaroslav Vacek, Director of Institute of Indian Studies at Charles University (one of the oldest universities in Europe founded in 1342), strokes his white beard. “To the Czech intelligentsia at the turn of the 20th century, Tagore represented Indian civilisation”, he says.

Fascination for India in these parts reached its peak in the 19th century. This was the phase in which the Czech nation was searching for its roots. The nation’s self esteem got a shot in the arm when it was established that the Czech language derived a great deal from Sanskrit. Little wonder the department of Sanskrit studies at the university was started in 1850.

In 1921, Tagore visited Prague. His lecture interspersed with his own poetry had such an impact on one of the great composers of the day, Leos Janacek that “Janacek composed music, which is the great composer’s interpretation of Tagore”. A recording of this music is one of the possessions Prof. Vacek is proud of.

Even earlier, in the 19th century, Czech writers like Julius Zeyer, had written volumes of poetry inspired by the Indian tradition.
In neighbouring Budapest, the esteem for Sanskrit and the great Indian epics is quite as great. While the Czechs found their roots, the Hungarians are still in pursuit. Here too Tagore comes across as one of the greatest cultural ambassadors the country has ever known. His stay for recuperation at the sanatorium on Lake Balatone has been converted into a memorial. The room he occupied has been decorated with his photographs taken during the visit. Deftly located, in the shadow of a tree but commanding a view of the lake, is a bust of Tagore.

After the Nobel Prize for Literature, Tagore became the epitome of Indian literary heritage in western eyes.
But how does one explain Tagore’s photograph at the tomb of Persia’s greatest poet, Hafiz? In the small library attached to the tomb hangs a photograph of the poet on a visit to Hafiz’s tomb in Shiraz in 1932. Tagore is shown opening a page of Hafiz’s works.

The tradition in those days was to open a page of the works of any great poet and read the first line or couplet. The meaning of the couplet would give you a clue whether your principal wish was likely to be fulfilled or not. Great poetry, it was believed, was a function of divine inspiration.

What comes across as a total surprise to an Indian is the deference by the nation’s literary icon of the day to a Persian poet. This surprise, frankly, is primarily a function of selective amnesia. There is an absence of recollection that in the 19th century the Indian elite was totally at home with Persian. Ghalib’s finest letters in Persian are to his Hindu friends. His long poem on Varanasi, describing it as the Kaaba of Hindustan, is also in Persian. The paper Raja Ram Mohan Roy edited was in Persian. Tagore’s father knew the language quite as well.

So many streams had nurtured Tagore that his “Bengaliness” is never parochial. It was his cosmopolitanism, rooted in Bengali pride, that made him India’s most universally admired poet, the poet with street names and busts in the most unlikely of world’s capital cities.

If you ever happen to meet Bulent Ecevit, Turkey’s Prime Minister, just bring up Tagore as a subject. He will walk up to his book shelf, pull out a volume of Gitanjali, and tell you the story of his romance with Tagore’s poetry. As a boy when he returned from school, he found his parents absorbed in a book. It was Tagore’s Gitanjali. This was the beginning of Ecevit’s literary journey as well. At a function in Ankara two years ago, Ecevit presented his translation of Gitanjali to the Indian ambassador in Ankara.

Heaven knows how many other Indian ambassadors are busy receiving translations of Tagore (and his Bust) in various world capitals. I know that in Bangladesh there are at least a hundred schools and other institutionalized groups teaching and singing Rabindra sangeet. Some means must be devised to give greater publicity to these events. Trade, commerce, geopolitics are the staple of diplomacy, but it is these untold cultural links that turn the focus on India’s civilisational reach, which the people would find heart-warming.

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