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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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