I CONGRATULATE the Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute for bringing out a TAGORE CENTENARY VOLUME in honour of one of the greatest sons of India. The volume is divided into two sections, of which the first deals with the many aspects of Tagore's manifold genius and includes some selections from his writings. The second section appropriately enough deals with aspects of Indian culture, for perhaps no one else has so fully represented Indian culture in all its richness and diversity and few have worked so devotedly for integrating its values with the demands of the modern world of science and technology.
TAGORE was fortunate in both the time and the place of his birth. The advent of the West had disturbed the placid waters of Indian life and a new awakening was seeping throughout the land. Its initial impact had dazzled the Indian mind and so impressed some of the early reformers that they at times seemed to be blind imitators of the West. By the time Tagore was born, the first uncritical admiration for the West had worn off and there was a more balanced appraisal of the values of the West. Simultaneously, there was increased knowledge of and regard for the values of the East. The place of his birth was equally opportune. Bengal had felt the impact of the West earlier and more vividly than perhaps any other part of India, and in Bengal the stirrings of new life were most marked in Calcutta. The meeting of East and West on India's shores was thus for Tagore both a fact and an ideal.
The circumstances of his family also helped in the fiowering of Tagore's genius. Originally from East Bengal, the family became rich and prosperous during the later Mughal days. The prosperity became even greater after the advent of the British. Co-operation with the ruling powers brought it status, wealth and culture but also attracted the disapproval of the orthodox. Interdining with Tagore family invited social disapproval, inter-marriage ostracism, Conscious of its wealth and talents, it had already produced three gene. rations of exceptionally able men when Tagore was born, the family reacted by a proud unconcern with many of the social taboos of the day. The family had however for generations been moved by the deeper values of Indian life, Tagore's grandfather was one of the pioneers of Western education and a friend of Raja Rammohan Roy. His father, a deep student of Indian philosophy and Islamic mysticism, began his day with recitations from the Upanisads and Hafiz. Tagore was thus born in a family which was steeped in the traditions of ancient and medieval India and yet responsive to the currents of the modern West. A deeply religious atmosphere free from adherence to forms and rituals created an ideal background for the flowering of his universal mind.
We can only hint at his many splendoured genius in this brief account. The world rightly honours Rabindranath Tagore as one of the greatest literary figures in history. His writings include more than one thousand poems and two thousand songs in addition to a large number of short stories, novels, dramatic works and essays on diverse topics. As a writer of lyrics and songs, he has rarely been equalled and perhaps never surpassed. As a short story writer, his rank is among the first three or four masters of the craft. As a novelist and playwright, he has achieved for himself an honoured place in the world of letters. As a literary critic, he has given evidence of rare insight and deep sympathy with the work of men who differed from him widely in tradition and temperament. It is thus not surprising that his works should be translated into all the major languages of the world and bring joy, solace and strength to countless millions.
The diversity of his literary work is amazing but literature in its widest sense could not exhaust his energies. He was a musician of the highest order and not only composed songs but set them to music. He started as a traditionalist but very soon the range of his musical composition expanded till it incorporated elements from western music and fused them with his eastern background, With more than two thousand songs that express every nuance of human feeling and every mood of nature in her infinite variety, he is undoubtedly one of the greatest song-writers and musicians that the world has known.
Tagore took to painting when he was almost 70 and yet produced within ten years almost 3000 pictures. They broke sharply from prevailing Indian styles and explored the unconscious and subconscious levels of the people's mind. Some regard his work as a complete breach with the Indian tradition and yet many competent critics have described him as one of the most significant and creative painters of modern India, His affiliation with primitive art on the one hand and with some of the avant garde on the other is only one indi-cation of the sweep and range of his genius.
Tagore was an artist par excellence and in addition, he made notable contributions to religious and educational thought, to politics and social reforms, to moral regeneration and economic reconstruction of India and the world. He not only thought deeply and creatively on all these topics but he also set his hand to realise in practice what he preached. The educational ideas which inspired his school at Santiniketan have deeply influenced all modern educational thought in India. His programmes of economic, social and political reconstruction of the village through the cooperation and self help of villagers have set the pattern for programmes of reconstruction of national life in contemporary India. He travelled far and wide to restore India's contacts with the outside world and laid the foundation on which free India has based her policy of friendly relations with all peoples of the world.
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