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The death of Tagore in 1941 was not entirely
unexpected. Nevertheless it led to
unprecedented scenes of mourning in
His poetry, plays and other literature had been
loved by the world and he was deeply revered by the people of
For Bengal It was the End of an Era. For more than
half a century he had been dominant in so many aspects and with him the Bengal
Renaissance, which had been such a large part of
The very soul of the city would never be the same
without him, and it has never quite stopped mourning as it did in August 1941.
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A letter to Jawaharlal Nehru
regarding his visit to
Santiniketan, [West
17 August 1939
My dear Jawaharlal,
Amiya has just been telling
me about his talks with you and giving me some detail regarding your impending
visit to
My warmest good wishes
are with you in your mission of good neighbourliness to
I would request you to
include
eastern peoples. India herself is passing through an eclipse when her own reality is lost to her in a haze of parochial politics, sectarianism, and domestic contention: contact with a greater world of eastern culture will, I fervently hope, help in removing her obsessions and enliven her national existence with a new humanity.
With affectionate regards,
Yours
Rabindranath Tagore
(source: pp. 512-13 of Rabindranath Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
In August 1939 the Congress working committee had banned Subhas Chandra Bose from any congress office for three years. As before Tagore again tired to mend the rift between Bose and Congress, this time in a telegram to Mahatma Gandhi:
Santiniketan,
[West
20
December 1939
Owing
gravely critical situation all over
Rabindranath
Gandhi sent a reply telegram saying that the working committee could not lift the ban, saying 'My personal opinion is you should advise Subhas Babu [to] submit [to] discipline if ban is to be removed'
(source:p. 513 of Rabindranath
Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
Letter the Ajit Singh Khatau husband of Tagore’s grandaughter Nandini (the adopted daughter of Rathindranath and Pratima)
Santiniketan, [West
10 March 1940
Dear Ajit
I am extremely busy with our own affairs and with other peoples' innumerable claims. On the top of it I am eighty and the burden of age has bent my back. But I am not allowed rest, for the work I had begun has its impetus which is ceaselessly driving me on - I do not know to what end. I have had enough empty applause from my countrymen and I am afraid I shall have to thank them for it when I take my departure. The other day Mahatmaji came to our ashram and his generous sympathy and assurance of help has given a new strength to my tired endeavour. He is great and he has unerring appreciation for whatever has genuine merit and I have felt sure he would never allow me to drag my load of heavy responsibility unaided till I drop down on the road away from the final realisation. However I do not complain and I feel happy that I have my own source of strength within myself.
I find it very difficult to carry on correspondence but I constantly [get] your news from Bouma [Rabindranath daughter-in-law Pratima Tagore (Rathindranath Tagore’s wife)] and am glad to know that both of you are living a life of happiness which I hope with God's blessings may continue to the end.
With love and blessings to you both
Grandfather
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
In a ceremomy in Santiniketan on
7 August 1940, Sir Maurice Gwyer (chief justice of
Santiniketan, [West
11 April 1940
My dear Thompson,
Many thanks for your
letter. It is indeed kind of you to congratulate me on adding to the number of
my honorary degrees but I must confess that I value the latest honour much,
coming as it does from such a centre of learning and culture as
You must have got the shocking news of the death of Charlie Andrews. It has been a great personal loss to me - for, as you know, he was one of my closest of friends and associates. Sorrows like these are the penalty of a long life and I believe I cannot complain.
It is indeed good news
that you will come out once again to
Yours sincerely
Rabindranath Tagore
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
Gouripur Lodge,
Kalimpong, [West
3 June 1940
Dear Leonard,
It needs a few more remarks to follow up the letter that I wrote to you yesterday. Your people belong to a tremendously vital race. The self-deluding optimism and the nervous watchfulness over the stupendous hoard of belongings of an unbroken period of prosperity which prompted your ruling power to an easy surrender of self-respect belie your heroic tradition and the pure strain of true aristocracy that possibly still has survived the cult of commercialism in your blood. And now when there is no [chance] of a diplomatic escape into a safe corner, the true fighter in you will come out in full force and will guide a war in which defeat and victory have the same value of glory. In your history you have never once lost your ground when attacked and the same history will this time repeat itself, bringing you out of the congregated disaster that is raging round you today.
It will lead you into greater wisdom and a saner estimation of your power and its generous disposal which only can ensure its perpetuity.
[…]
Ever yours
Rabindranath Tagore
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
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After Gandhi’s last 2 day visit
to Santiniketan, Tagore passed this letter to him as he was about to depart for
Santiniketan, [West
19 February 1940
Dear Mahatmaji
You have just had a
bird's-eye view this morning of our Visva-Bharati centre of activities. I do not
know what estimate you have formed of its merit. You know that though this
institution is national in its immediate aspect it is international in its
spirit, offering according to the best of its means
At one of its critical moments you saved it from an utter breakdown and helped it to its legs. We are ever thankful to you for this act of friendliness.
And, now, before you take your leave from Santiniketan I make my fervent appeal to you. Accept this institution under your protection giving it an assurance of permanence if you consider it to be a national asset. Visva-Bharati is like a vessel which is carrying the cargo of my life's best treasure and I hope it may claim special care from my countrymen for its preservation.
With love,
Rabindranath Tagore
On the train to
During the next few years, he did his best to raisemoney for the institution and on 27th Dec. 1947, a month before his assassination, in a letter to Rathindranath, son of Rabindranath Tagore, he said, 'Of course, wherever I am, Santiniketan is always in my heart'
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
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This is the last verse of the sparrow poem which Tagore wrote while convalescing at Jorosanko.
Whenever I pass the night sleepless and sore,
I await your first beak-tap at rny door.
How fearless, how nimble you are.
The simple message of your life.
I need it —
The light that bathes all creatures
Is calling me,
O my day-break sparrow.
The poem was published in the collection Rogashajyay (The Sick-bed).
(source: p. 361 of
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
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Tagore
wrote this poem after he had returned to Shantinikctan
for
what would be the last time:
Awakening this morning
In my vase I saw a rose:
The question came to my mind —
Through the cycling of time over aeons
This power that made you a thing of beauty
Shunning all distortion into uncouth imperfection.
Is it blind, is it abstracted?
— Like an ascetic who renounces the world,
the beautiful and the unbeautiful without distinction.
Is it just logical, just physical?
Does not consciousness play its part?
There are those who argue and maintain
That in the court of Creation
Form and formlessness have equal rank,
No guards restrain them.
I am a poet, I do not debate,
I look at the world in its wholeness.
At the millions of planets and stars in the sky
Revolving in grandeur and harmony
Never losing the heat of their music
Never slipping into derangement,
When 1 look at the sky I sec spreading retpeated layers,
A vast and resplendent rose.
The poem was published in the collection Rogashajyay (The Sick-bed).
(source: p. 362 of
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
While staying at Kalimpong in
June 1940, in the shadow of the
'We
could listen clearly to its recital on the radio and marvel at this heroic
display of the spiritual resistance to despondency by Parisians at the most
fateful moment of their destiny.’
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
Kalimpong, [West
15 June 1940
Today we stand in awe before
the fearfully destructive force that has so suddenly swept the world. Every
moment I deplore the smallness of our means and feebleness of our voice in
[Rabindranath Tagore]
The letter was published in the New York Times on 16 June 1940.
(source: p. 522 of Rabindranath Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
This is the last letter from Rabindranath to Leonard Elmhirst.
Santiniketan, [West
9 March 1941
Dear Leonard,
Letters from across the sea have become painfully scarce. Now, when [we crave] mutual touch with distant friends with such hunger, your letter this morning gave me a complete surprise of delight. As for the condition of my body it is very similar to that of world politics today. It has stood eighty years of buffeting and yet is not unseaworthy. My organs are in perfect harmony with each other, only some intolerable hooligans come to deliver sudden blows from unexpected directions. But still I have not lost my courage and am pretty nearly in the same mental condition as your Great Churchill. I have decided to win at last. But when I speak like this I must take into account the paucity of the numbers of years still left to me, however friendly their attitude may be.
Our breakfast table remains still unaffected by war unlike yours. The meagreness of its fare is not owing to any miserliness of human agency but owing to scarcity of rain [which is] holding off its ministrations [with] unseasonable persistence. But you know we are used all through our days to half-rations and are reconciled to such further curtailments of our needs. Our Visva-Bharati just now has [had] the good luck [to receive] a pecuniary grant from our central Government for a year which will help us to tide over to some extent our difficulties for the present season. I believe you have heard about the visit of the Chinese ambassador of goodwill mission to our ashram and we have been greatly impressed by the old-world graciousness beaming out of his countenance. His presence has been a real source of inspiration to our people.
Please give my love to Dorothy and share it yourself with her. My pen is helplessly lame and therefore I have to borrow help from others when I write letters which have become necessarily scarce.
Ever yours
Rabindranath Tagore
(source:pp.523-24 of Rabindranath Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
Tagore’s sense of humour remained with him to the last. He could not get over his amusement at being fed on Glaxo, referring to himself as a 'Glaxo baby'.
Having once been told that he was receiving the dose prescribed for a two-month-old baby, he liked to enquire from his nurses:
'How
many months old am I today?'
(source:pp.366-67 of
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
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WE have pleasure in publishing the following poem written specially by Dr Rabindranath Tagore for The "Statesman" Christmas Supplement, after his recent serious illness.
IN the languid hour of the midday in my half wakeful
sleep, I dreamt that while crossing some dark river,
unnamed am! uncharted, the outer cover of my being
slipped off and fell into the rushing stream.
/ saw it floating away in the
rapid current towards the
unknown. It took away with my name all the signs of
my identity, the records of my glory, fond
memory of my
shames signatured by sweet flitting moments
and I
wondered which of the treasures of my lost self I should
regret most.
IT came to me that it was not my past that has
stored my achievements but a future in whose underground
soil waited through silent nights an unrealized
immensity.
SANTINIKETAN RABINDRANATH TAGORE
December 6, 1940.
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
This untitles poem was part of the collection Arogya (Recovery):
Brutal
night comes silently.
Breaks
down the loosened bolts of my spent body,
Enters
my insides,
Starts
stealing images of life's dignitvy.
My
heart succumbs to the assault of darkness.
The
shame of defeat,
the
insult of this fatigue,
Grow
intense.
Suddenly
on the horizon,
Dawn's
banner laced with rays of gold;
From
a distant centre of the sky a shout:
'It's a lie, a lie''
Against
the tranquil light of morning
I
can sec myself as a conqueror of sorrows
Standing
on top of my fortress, my ruin, my body.
(source: pp. 362-63 of
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
The sun of the first day
Put the question
To the new manifestation of life -
Who are you?
There was no answer.
Years passed by.
The last sun of the last day
Uttered the question on the shore of the western sea,
In the hush of evening -
Who are you!
No answer came.
(source: p.367 of
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
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This was read out in Bengali at Santiniketan Bengali NewYear 1348 (14April 1941).
Tagore was present but too weak to read it himself.
It was Tagore’s last public utterance.
The
wheels of Fate will some day compel the English to give up their Indian Empire.
But what kind, of
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
As I
look around I see the crumbling ruins of a proud civilization strewn like a
vast heap of futility. And yet I shall not commit the grievous sin of losing
faith in
Today we witness the perils which attend on the insolence of might; one day shall be borne out the full truth of what the sages have proclaimed:
‘By unrighteousness man prospers, gains all that appears desirable,
conquers enemies, but perishes at the root.’
April 1941
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
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For Tagore’s eightieth birthday, Mahatma Gandhi had sent a telegram to Tagore saying:
'Four score not enough. May you finish five.'
In what was to be his last direct message to Gandhi,
Tagore wearied by age and illness replied:
Santiniketan, [West
13 April 1941
Thanks message. But four score is impertinence. Five score intolerable.
Rabindranath
(source:pp.523-24 of Rabindranath Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
In June 1941 Eleanor Rathbone, an Independent MP sent an open letter to the Indians , pleading for more cooperation from Indians in the fight against Fascism.
On 4 June 1941, after reading this open letter, Tagore issues a states ment from his sickbed, saying amongst other things:
It is not so much because the British are foreigners that they are unwelcome to us and have found no place in our hearts, as because, while pretending to be trustees of our welfare, they have betrayed the great trust and have sacrificed the happiness of millions in India to bloat the pockets of a few capitalists at home.
(source: p. 525 of Rabindranath Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
A few days later, he received a
letter from Foss Westcott (the bishop of
In this reply to him, Tagore gave what might have been his final opinions of British rule.
Santiniketan, [West
16 June 1941
My dear Lord Bishop
I thank you for the trouble you have taken to acquaint me with your reaction to my recent reply to Miss Rathbone's open letter. I respect your sentiments and share your conviction that never was mutual understanding more necessary between your people and ours than today. I have, as you are no doubt aware, worked all my life for the promotion of racial, communal and religious harmony among the different peoples of the world. I have also, at considerable personal cost and often at the risk of being misunderstood by my own people, set my face against all claims of narrow and aggressive nationalism, believing in the common destiny and oneness of all mankind.
I hold many of your people in the highest regard and count among them some of my best friends. Both my faith and my practice during the last so many decades should be ample guarantee that I was not carried away by any racial, religious or merely national prejudice in my recent statement.
I have neither the right
nor the desire to judge the British people as such; but I cannot help being
concerned at the conduct of the British Government in
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely
Rabindranath Tagore
(source: p. 525 of Rabindranath Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
In this, one of the last of his many letters, Tagore sympathises with the grief of a mother Kamla Chowdhury (little else is known of her).
Santiniketan, [West
10 July 1941
Dear Child
I am deeply grieved to learn of the tragedy that has overtaken your life. I will not insult your sorrow by any cheap consolation. We are all tragically helpless before Fate, since we cannot protect the happiness of those we care for. We can only sympathise. You have to bear the weight of your sorrow till your own strength and the mercy of time help you to rise over it.
Yours sincerely
Rabindranath Tagore
(source: p. 526 of Rabindranath Tagore,
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Rabindranath Tagore)
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On the morning
of 25 July, Tagore left Shantiniketan for the last time. The whole Ashram had
gathered at his house from early on and quietly waited for him to be taken down
from his room upstairs on a specially constructed stretcher to the ashram's
bus. (During the previous day, the pot-holes in the short stretch of road from
Shantinikmn to Bolpur station had been filled up to give him a bearable ride.)
Rabindranath was too exhausted even to address a few words to his workers and
students and they did not take the dust of his feel, lest they disturb him. His
secretary described the moment of farewell:
"In deep silence and with mute salutations they hade him goodbye but as the bus began to move they could not contain themselves any longer. Spontaneously from a thousand throats broke out the ashram song "Amader Shantiniketan". It reached Gurudev's cars and there were tears in his eyes.”
(source: p.367 of
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
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This poem was written on 31 July, just before the operation. Tagore was unable to correct it.
Sorceress! You have strewn the path of creation with ,
your varied wiles. . .
With a cunning hand laid the snares of false trust for
a simple soul. ..
But his glory is that, however devious outside, he is
still straight at heart. . . .
He who had yielded so easily to manifold deceptions
has received from you
The inviolate right to peace.
(source: p.367-68 of
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
AN English translation of Rabindranath's last poem on "Death" composed in the evening of his operation on 30th July, 1941, is published below. This English translation prepared by Dr Amiya Chakravarty, has been authorized by Visva-Bharati.
Sorrow's dark night, again and again,
Has come to my door.
Its only weapon I saw,
Was pain's twisted brow, fear's hideous
gestures
Preluding its deception in darkness.
Whenever I have believed in its mask of
dread
Fruitless defeat has followed.
This game of defeat and victory is life's delusion :
From childhood, at each step, clings this spectre.
Filled with
sorrow's mockery.
A moving screen of varied fears—
Death's skilful handiwork wrought in scattered gloom.
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
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TODAY
It does not befall all writers to win fame in their lifetime. Tagore won it early and in many fields. His selection for the Nobel Prize was only a recognition by men far away of what Bengal had known for some time, that there was a new voice, worth the world's while to listen carefully to, whose tones were not to be heard elsewhere.
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
In his
jail diary for 7 August Nehru wrote:
So Gurudev is dead - An
age seems to be over. Perhaps it is as well that he died now and did nor see
the many horrors that are likely to descend in increasing measure on the world
and on
Gandhi and Tagore. Two
types entirely different from each other, and yet both of them typical of
(source: page 368-69
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced
under 'fair dealing' terms as
part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright
remains with
Died. Rabindranath
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
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It was a mercy Tagore could not see
his own funeral. While he might have been moved by the
As the funeral cortege moved haltingly along, hairs were plucked from the famous head; and at the cremation ghat itself, beside the Ganges, before the body was completely burnt, the crowd invaded and began searching for bones and other relics of the Poet's mortal being. (The fire had to be lit by a great-nephew of Rabindranath, not by his son, as is customary (Rathindranitth could not get near the ghat.) There was much shouting and cursing, for little was left among the ashes.
'It was a disconcerting, indeed a mind-boggling spectacle'
(source: p. 368 of
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In
This song was originally composed by Tagore in December 1939 to be sung as part of the play ”The Post Office”. According with Tagores wishes it was first sung at his shraddha at Santiniketan 17th August 1941.
The ocean of peace lies ahead of me.
Sail the boat, O pilot,
You
are my constant companion now.
Take
me in your lap,
Along
our journey to the infinite
The
pole stir alone will shine.
Giver
of Freedom
Set
me free.
May
your forgiveness and compassion
Be
my Mental resources for the journey.
May
the mortal ties fall away,
May
the vayl universe
hold
me in embrace,
And
with an undaunted heart
May I come to know the Great Unknown.
(source: pp 369-70 of
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'fair dealing' terms as part of
a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with
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Home ● Sitemap ● Reference ● Last updated: 11-March-2009
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If there
are any technical problems, factual inaccuracies or things you have to add,
then please contact the group
under info@calcutta1940s.org