Tagore, the poet karmayogi

Every time the national anthem is played in India, a brave nation stands upright to glorify the abstract figurehead that rules over the waves and crests of this vast country. Every time the national anthem is played in Bangladesh, a riverine nation celebrates its love of a golden landscape. Two countries, two anthems - one martial, the other emotional - both composed by Rabindranath Tagore, a man whose life and work embodied the spirit of nationality in universality.

The only poet from India to have ever won the Nobel Prize, Tagore's influence on the culture of his land is pervasive and deep-rooted. Children are put to sleep by his lilting melodies, youngsters quote his verses during fierce political debates in their universities, random houses and apartment blocks are named after his poem collections, and his songs glorifying the abstract and infinite God are sung at funerals and memorials. The paintings, etchings, sculptures, and clay models created by him and his disciples at his Vishwabharati remain a benchmark for artistes. For generations of people, culture begins and ends with Tagore.

Who was Tagore? Born in 1861, a few years after the Mutiny, Tagore was the youngest child of a wealthy and landed family of 19th century Bengal. His education was irregular. He was home schooled in his childhood and his family's attempts to get him a conventional education - first at St. Xavier's College in Calcutta and later at the University College in London - failed. His experience with the extant educational system was what probably guided Tagore to found, in 1921, the Vishwabharati - a school and university that followed the ancient gurukula system (in that, students and teachers live together) with a syllabus and teaching method that was modern by the standards of the times - not only were there no 'examinations', students were encouraged to follow non-academic pursuits such as carpentry, weaving, painting, and clay-modelling.

Tagore's era was the time when the movement for independence of India from Britain was at its peak. When Bengal was partitioned in 1905, Tagore led a seething, teeming mass of protesting people to the banks of the Ganga where he oversaw a Rakhi-Bandhan ceremony - Hindus and Muslims tying a brotherhood band on each other's wrists to the accompaniment of Tagore's songs - incomparable in simplicity and inimitable in the melody of their tunes.

What God has bound together, you'll slash
You have such power?

Our splintering-shaping, you'll craft Such conceit!

বিধির বাঁধন কাটবে তুমি এমন শক্তিমান, তুমি কি  এমন শক্তিমান
আমাদের ভাঙাগড়া তোমার হাতে এমন অভিমান, তোমাদের এমনি অভিমান 

The government had to rescind the Partition. Several years later, when Jallianwala Bagh happened, Tagore protested by renouncing his knighthood. Tagore, though deeply committed to the cause of an independent homeland, rejected the theory that everything British was bad. His novel Gora is about an Irish child orphaned during the Mutiny and brought up as the son of a chaste Hindu couple. In Ghare Baire and Char Adhyay, he criticized the violent terrorist movement in Bengal and the Swadeshi movement that saw the burning of British cloth - he disliked this waste in a country where people went naked. Tagore's vision of freedom was different:

Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!

Tagore had a poet's heart.

As the night hides its plea for light,
So in the depths of my delusion do I want you

রাত্রি যেমন লুকিয়ে রাখে আলোর প্রার্থনাই; তেমনি গভীর মোহের মাঝে তোমায় আমি চাই

His Gitanjali, which won him the Nobel prize, has poems with dual meanings.

Unless I sight 'pon your face my heart isn't at rest
And I wander through my work 

As in a shoreless sea

না চাহিলে তোমার মুখপানে হৃদয় আমার বিরাম নাহি জানে,
কাজের মাঝে ঘুরে বেড়াই যত 
ফিরি কূলহারা সাগরে 

The day he passed on to his maker, Tagore composed the last of his poems:

You've entrapped your creation, O enchantress,
Deftly snared the simple life with a web of false beliefs
….
The path that your bright star shows,
Is the path to Infinity
Ever clear
…
He who weathers your deceptions with nary a sigh
Wins from you the right to unbroken peace

তোমার সৃষ্টির পথ রেখেছ আকীর্ণ করি বিচিত্র ছলনাজালে, হে ছলনাময়ী
মিথ্যা বিশ্বাসের ফাঁদ পেতেছ নিপুণ হাতে সরল জীবনে
...
তোমার জ্যোতিষ্ক তা'রে যে-পথ দেখায়
সে যে তার অন্তরের পথ,
সে যে চিরস্বচ্ছ,
...
অনায়াসে যে পেরেছে ছলনা সহিতে
সে পায় তোমার হাতে শান্তির অক্ষয় অধিকার

Tagore died on August 7, 1941. In his own words:

The day when death knocks at your door
What riches will you offer?
Oh, me? I will bring forth the full vessel of my life
I'll never let him go with empty hands.

মরণ যেদিন দিনের শেষে আসবে তোমার দুয়ারে
সেদিন তুমি কী ধন দিবে উহারে
ভরা আমার পরানখানি সম্মুখে তার দিব আনি,
শূন্য বিদায় করব না তো উহারে