I’m grateful to Third World Solidarity for giving me the opportunity to say a few words at this timely meeting to honour the life and work of Rabindranath Tagore.
Timely not least, of course, since today is exactly 84 years since he passed away.
The first non-European ever to win a Nobel Prize in any category, Tagore’s name is synonymous with the Bengal Renaissance. And, as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social activist and painter, he surely belongs among that select view to whom the accolade of polymath truly applies.
However, this evening I want to touch primarily on Tagore’s contribution to anti-imperialist internationalism, with specific reference to the Soviet Union, China and Korea.
But it should also be noted that his contribution to the freedom struggle in South Asia was such that the national anthems of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are all inspired by his work.
In 1912, during his stay in London, among those whose acquaintance he made was William Butler Yeats, whose status in the Irish Literary Revival might be compared to Tagore’s in the Bengal Renaissance. It was Yeats who gave us this timeless evocation of Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising:
All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born
Yeats also wrote the preface to the English translation of Gitanjali, his 1913 collection of 107 poems, for which he received his Nobel Prize.
Tagore also accepted a knighthood in 1915 from George V. But he renounced it in 1919, following the Jallianwalla Bagh, or Amritsar, Massacre.
Tagore visited the Soviet Union in September 1930. He had been popular in Russia even before the October Revolution and the Soviet government decided to publish his collected works in 1926. As a result, his poems, and reviews of his work, began appearing in many Soviet magazines.
In his article ‘The Indian Tolstoy’, Anatoly Lunacharsky, the Soviet People’s Commissar of Education, wrote: “Tagore’s works are so full of colour, subtle spiritual experiences and truly noble ideas that they now constitute a treasure of human culture.”
While travelling in Europe in September 1926, Tagore met with Alexander Arosyev, the Soviet Union’s Ambassador in Stockholm.
“You can’t imagine how long I have wanted to come to your country, which I love for its literature. And now that your people have become completely new and different compared to how they used to be, as my friends tell me, I am even more eager to come there. I want to get to know your music, your theatre, your dances and become acquainted with your literature,” Tagore said during their meeting.
Due to the obstructions placed by the British colonial authorities on people-to-people contact between India and the Soviet Union, it took another four years before the visit could be realised.
Although he was privately not uncritical, it was clear that his visit to the first socialist country left a profound impression on Tagore, not least in how the doors of learning and culture had been flung wide open to the hitherto downtrodden and oppressed majority.
In one of his letters, he wrote:
“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I could have never believed that in just ten years they have not only led hundreds of thousands of people out of the darkness of ignorance and degradation and taught them to read and write but also fostered in them a sense of human dignity. We need to come here specifically to study the organisation of education.”
Reflecting on his theatre visits, he observed: “In earlier times, the theatres were only open to the royal family and the nobility. Today they are packed full with people who till recently went around in filthy rags, barefoot, dying of starvation, living in constant fear before God, seeking any favour they could with priests, worried about the salvation of their souls and having been infinitely humbled, lying in the dirt at the feet of their masters.”
Six years previously, in April-May 2024, Tagore had visited China.
On setting foot in the country on April 12, he said: “I do not know why coming to China seems to me like returning to my native soil. I always feel that India has been one of China’s extremely close relatives, and China and India have been enjoying time-honoured and affectionate brotherhood.”
He also said: “I shall consider myself fortunate if, through this visit, China comes nearer to India and India to China – for no political or commercial purpose, but for disinterested human love and for nothing else.”
Visiting the West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, considered one of the most beautiful spots in all of China, and encountering there the statue of an Indian Buddhist monk, he wrote:
“No matter how the situation changes, as guests, friends and brothers, we will always stand by you. The mountains of China and India speak the same language, the lakes have the same charming smile on their faces, and the trees in the two countries are also similar. Therefore, they feel very friendly and not at all strange.”
Some six months before his death, he wrote in a poem:
Once I went to China
Those whom I had not met
Put the mark of friendship on my head
Calling me their own
Writing in China Focus, on the centenary of Tagore’s visit, Rabi Sankar Bosu, an Indian analyst and commentator who focuses on China’s development, China-India relations and the Belt and Road Initiative, outlined:
“In China, Tagore made several public lectures and profoundly influenced the Chinese cultural and intellectual circles. In his works, you can always see his advocacy of humanity and peace, as well as his critical interpretation of modern Western civilisation. Such philosophies had a far-reaching influence on Chinese writers such as Guo Moruo, Xu Zhimo and Bing Xin, and are still of practical significance today.
“Rabindranath Tagore is revered throughout China. In modern times, the Chinese leadership gives much importance to the path of Tagore’s humanism and ideals. When paying a visit to India in June 1954, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai said, ‘We will never forget Tagore’s love towards China and also cannot forget Tagore’s support towards China’s national liberation movement’.
“During his visit to India in September 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that he had read several poetry collections of the late Nobel Prize winner in literature and quoted Rabindranath Tagore…
“Rabindranath Tagore was a close friend of the Chinese people. He went to China with a message of love and brotherhood that he felt symbolised the essence of the ties between India and China. A century ago, China and India were in the violent struggle against foreign invasion and colonialism. In July 1937, the Japanese imperialists launched an all-out war of aggression against China. Observing the darkening despair and destruction of war he was greatly shuddered at Japan’s ruthless aggression in China. He stood on the side of China and condemned Japanese imperialism through his poems and writings; he was quite hopeful of China’s victory against Japanese imperialism. He said, ‘China is unconquerable, her civilisation has endless potential, and her people, with their unconditional loyalty to the country and unprecedented unity, are creating a new century for that country.’”
Tagore never visited Korea, but he was greatly impacted by Korean students he met during his visits to Japan, at that time the colonial power occupying the Korean peninsula.
Inspired by them, he wrote, ‘The Lamp of the East’, which was published in the Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo in 1929:
In the Golden Age of Asia
Korea was one of the lamb-bearers
That lamp waits to be lighted once again
For the illumination of the East
Gandhi’s secretary records a January 1930 conversation Tagore had with Mahatma Gandhi. He said that Tagore had a vivid memory of a Korean who had visited him the previous year. The man was dreaming dreams of a free Korea. He said the world may be divided into two classes, the exploiters and the exploited, and it is only by means of the combination of the exploited that we can fight Japan. That combination is coming and one day we will find all the exploited people together and we will find even the Japanese exploited fighting alongside us… Prosperous people can never combine. It is only the oppressed and downtrodden who can combine.
On the world political stage, that vision finds expression today in bodies such as BRICS and in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, in which China, India and Pakistan all participate.
Third World Solidarity plays its part here, bringing people together in dialogue, friendship and mutual respect.
Thank you for your attention.
