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Celebrating Tagore’s 150th Birth Anniversary www.bhavanaustralia.org VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM ‘The whole world is but one family’ May 2010 Vol. 7 No. 11 Presidents Page Rabindranath Tagore: Ambassador of Knowledge and Social Justice – Yester years and today As author of Gitanjali and its “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse”, in 1913 being the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Tagore was perhaps the most important literary figure of Bengali literature. He was a mesmerising representative of the Indian culture whose influence and popularity internationally perhaps could only be compared to that of Gandhi, whom Tagore named ‘Mahatma’ out of his deep admiration for him. Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to political and personal topics. Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Gora (Fair-Faced), and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and contemplation. Tagore was perhaps the only litterateur who penned anthems of two countries: Bangladesh and India: Amar Shonar Bangla and Jana Gana Mana. Tagore denounced the British Raj and supported independence. His efforts endure in his vast canon and in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University. In 1901, Tagore left Shilaidaha and moved to Santiniketan to found an ashram which grew to include a marble- floored prayer hall (“The Mandir”), an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, and a library. By now, his work was gaining him a large following among Bengali and foreign readers alike, and he published such works as Naivedya (1901) and Kheya (1906) while translating his poems into free verse. On 14 November 1913, Tagore learned that he had won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first Asian Nobel laureate. The Swedish Academy appreciated the idealistic and—for Western readers—accessible nature of a small body of his translated material, including the 1912 Gitanjali: Song Offerings. In 1915, Tagore was knighted by the British Crown. He later returned his knighthood in protest of the massacre of unarmed Indians in 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh. In 1921, Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the Institute for Rural Reconstruction, later renamed Shriniketan—”Abode of Peace”—in Surul, a village near the ashram at Santiniketan. Through it, Tagore bypassed Gandhi’s symbolic Swaraj protests, which he despised. He sought aid from donors, officials, and scholars worldwide to “free village[s] from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance” by “vital[izing] knowledge”. In the early 1930s, he targeted India’s “abnormal caste consciousness” and untouchability. Lecturing against these, he penned untouchable heroes for his poems and dramas and campaigned—successfully—to open Guruvayoor Temple to Dalits. Tagore’s political thought was complex. He opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists. His views have their first poetic release in Manast, mostly composed in his twenties. Evidence produced during the Hindu- German Conspiracy trial and later accounts affirm his awareness of the Ghadarite conspiracy, and stated that he sought the support of Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake and former Premier Ōkuma Shigenobu. Yet he lampooned the Swadeshi movement, denouncing it in “The Cult of the Charka”, an acrid 1925 essay. He emphasized self-help and intellectual uplift of the masses as an alternative, stating that British imperialism was a “political symptom of our social disease”, urging Indians to accept that “there can be no question of blind revolution, but of steady and purposeful education”. Such views enraged many. He narrowly escaped assassination by Indian expatriates during his stay in a San Francisco hotel in late 1916. The plot failed only because the would-be assassins fell into argument. Two of Tagore’s more politically charged compositions, “Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo” (“Where the Mind is Without Fear”) and “Ekla Chalo Re” (“If They Answer Not to Thy Call, Walk Alone”), gained mass appeal, with the latter favoured by Gandhi. Despite his tumultuous relations with Gandhi, Tagore was key in resolving a Gandhi-Ambedkar dispute involving separate electorates for untouchables, ending Gandhi’s fast “unto death” Tagore’s relevance today can be gauged by festivals honouring him: Kabipranam, Tagore’s birth anniversary; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois, in the United States; Rabindra Path Parikrama walking pilgrimages from Kolkata to Shantiniketan; ceremonial recitals of Tagore’s poetry held on important anniversaries; and others. This legacy is most palpable in Bengali culture, ranging from language and arts to history and politics. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen saw Tagore as a “towering figure”, being a “deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker”. Tagore’s Bengali-language writings—the 1939 Rabīndra Rachanāvalī—is also canonised as one of Bengal’s greatest cultural treasures. Tagore himself was proclaimed “the greatest poet India has produced”. Gambhir Watts President, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia Rabindranath Tagore’s Geetanjali Mind Without Fear Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Little Flute Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life. This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new. At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable. Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill. Purity Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs. I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind. I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart. And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act. May 2010 Vol. 7 No. 11 Editorial Page Publisher & General Editor: Board of Directors of Gambhir Watts [email protected] Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia Editorial Committee: J Rao Palagummi Office Bearers: Parveen Dahiya President Gambhir Watts [email protected] Surendralal Mehta Chairman Emeritus Designing Team: President, Bhavan Worldwide Utkarsh Doshi J Rao Palagummi Company Secretary Sridhar Kumar Kondepudi Advertising: [email protected] Other Directors: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia Abbas Raza Alvi, Suite 100 / 515 Kent Street, Catherine Knox, Sydney NSW 2000 Sridhar Kumar Kondepudi, * The views of contributors to Bhavan Moksha Watts, Australia are not necessarily the views of Bhavan Australia or the Editor. Homi Navroji Dastur, Executive Secretary and Director General *Bhavan Australia reserves the right to edit any contributed articles and Jagannathan Veeraraghavan, Executive Director, Delhi letters submitted for publication. Mathoor Krishnamurti, Executive Director, Bangaluru Copyright: all advertisements and Palladam Narayana Sathanagopal, Joint Director, Mumbai original editorial material appearing remain the property of Bhavan Australia and may not be reproduced Patron: Her Excellency Mrs Sujatha Singh except with the written consent of High Commissioner of India in Australia the owner of the copyright. Bhavan Australia: - ISSN 1449 – 3551 Honorary Life Patron: His Excellency M Ganapathi, Currently High Commissioner of India in Mauritius (Founder Member/Director of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia) Cover: Articles & Focus Themes Mahatma and the Gurudev 6 Educational Reforms 33 Charkha and Swaraj 8 Raja Ram Mohan Roy 38 The Poet and Charkha 12 Imagination in Vedanta 39 World Red Cross Red Crescent day 15 Music for the Brain: The Mozart Effect 41 Message for farmers all over the world 22 Old Age - Not a Curse 43 Buddha Poornima 23 Breaking Burma's Isolation 47 Gopal Krishna Gokhale 25 Beyond curry and cricket accord 50 He lives in our Mind 29 How to get rid of Stress 52 Mother's Day 31 Sachin the Supremo 53 World Peace Too many prizes, not enough Indians John Huxley* Unremarked and virtually unnoticed, Vandana Shiva, an acclaimed Indian physicist, philosopher, eco-feminist and environmental activist, was this week named winner of the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize. She is a remarkable woman, a worthy winner. Mary Kostakidis, chairwoman of the organising Sydney Peace Foundation, said Shiva’s work highlights a fundamental connection between human rights and the protection of the environment. ‘’She offers solutions to some of the most critical problems posed by the effects of globalisation and climate change on the poorest and most populous nations. Her voice is an essential one as we consider pressing decisions facing the global community.’’ Essential and, for once, probably unexceptionable. For since its inception in 1998, when it was won by Muhammad Yunus, creator of the ‘’poor people’s’’ Grameen Bank of Bangladesh , the peace prize has regularly provoked a war of words. There have been ‘’non-controversial’’ selections. Surely no one - apart, perhaps, from makers of weapons of mass destruction and Sydney shock jocks - could object to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, disarmament campaigner Hans Blix and Olara Otunnu, the United Nations official responsible for keeping children and armed conflict apart.