A MIND WITHOUT FEAR
RABINDRANATH TAGORE (1861—1941) Moulder of independent India’s intellectual inheritance
Poet, novelist, playwright, lyricist, composer, artist, institution-builder, much of what is known about Tagore is legend: he wrote some 200 books, 40 volumes of poetry, 2,500 songs; he gave India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka their national anthems; won the first Nobel Prize outside Europe; was the first Indian to receive (and reject) a British knighthood; and he had set up institutions—to recharge education and reform village life—such as Visva Bharati University.
What is not so well-known is what resonates with the rhythms of modern India and makes Tagore the thinker more relevant than ever: in a century marked by fragmentation and fear, when there is a worldwide assault on freedoms with many governments breaking international laws, when the Supreme Court of India is repeatedly turning away challenges to freedom of speech, expression, religion and media—Tagore stands as an icon of the limitless possibility of the human spirit and endeavour. “The material we work upon must be—man,” he had written in his 1909 essay on self-reliance. “Truth lies in man’s intelligence, his heart and his humanity.”
It’s that subliminal message of human possibility and promise that made the best minds of the 20th century—W.B. Yeats to Ezra Pound, Albert Einstein to Romain Rolland— champion him; why his vast body of works was translated by writers of equal glory, Nobel Prize winners such as André Gide in French and Juan Ramon Jimenez in Spanish; why he travelled as an Ambassador of Goodwill across the world—US to Japan, Egypt to China, Iraq to Bali. And why, for that matter, out of just 50 phenomenal people chosen from 5,000 years of India’s history for a BBC series by Sunil Khilnani (Incarnations: India in 50 Lives),
Tagore is more than ever a global icon.