Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, and the British Raj: Some Untold Stories

Copyright © 2016 by A. B. M. Shamsud Doulah.

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4828-6405-2

                Softcover       978-1-4828-6404-5

                eBook            978-1-4828-6403-8

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Some Introductory Notes

Chapter 2 British occupation of India and patronage to non- Muslims

Chapter 3 Rabindranath Tagore followed the foot-steps of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and such others

Chapter 4 The influence of Prince Dwarakanath Tagore

Chapter 5 The influence of Kalidas, Lalon Fakir and D. L. Roy etc.

Chapter 6 ‘Terrorist movement’ in Bengal

Chapter 7 British colonial rulers’ continued patronage of the elite non-Muslims

Chapter 8 Shifting of capital from Calcutta to New Delhi

Chapter 9 Brahmo Samaj & Tagore

Chapter 10 Rabindranath Tagore’s Western and Jewish contacts

Chapter 11 The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913

Chapter 12 Rabindranath Tagore was awarded Nobel Prize as an ‘Anglo-Indian’ poet

Chapter 13 Why Rabindranath Tagore was not present for receiving the Nobel Prize?

Chapter 14 Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st century

Chapter 15 Epilogue

A Select Bibliography on Rabindranath Tagore

Appendix

To:

The loving memory of my esteemed father

Late M. A. Rahman of Village: Jashilda, Vikrampur, District: Dhaka; Formerly: Assistant Editor of The Hindustan Times, New Delhi; Editor, The Renaissance of Islam, Calcutta; & The Nation, Calcutta, later on which was transferred to his friend Sarat Chandra Bose, Member of Central Committee of All-India National Congress and the elder brother of India’s greatest Freedom Fighter

against the British Raj in India Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

Rabindranath Tagore in 1913

Preface

1. The roots of British colonial rule in the Indian sub-continent were planted deep by London against the will of the people of the region.

2. In 1947 the British Governor-General Lord Mountbatten perpetuated a ‘divide and rule policy’ through partition of the then India. He partitioned the united India, under a London plan, creating New Delhi administered India of today having majority Hindu population; and Karachi administered Pakistan having majority Muslim population in two distant locations, as such came to be known as East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Subsequently, West Pakistan became today’s Islamabad administered Pakistan and in 1971, being alienated by a Liberation War against the colonial rule of Islamabad, East Pakistan became Dhaka administered independent Bangladesh.

3. Delhi administered India decided to adopt Hindi as the state language of India. It is notable that Rabindranath Tagore always supported the adoption of Hindi as an All-India language.

4. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were two great Bengalee political leaders. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was always opposed to the colonial rule of the Britishers in India and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was opposed to the colonial rule of the then (West) Pakistan, which imposed Urdu as the only state language for both East and West Pakistan, and enforced a ruthless undemocratic rule in fully Bengali-speaking East Pakistan, leading to the emergence of independent Bangladesh.

5. Considering the background of undemocratic colonial rule of the Britishers, this book is presented, with various relevant references, for the convenience of the readers.

6. The British rulers in India always had a distaste and inner hatred towards the Bengalees in general. The following words of Thomas Babington Macaulay in his famous essay on Lord Robert Clive reflect it:

Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke [yoke meaning ‘rule’ here– Ed.].

(From Critical and Historical Essays. Vol. I by Thomas Babington Macaulay, London).

[NOTE: Thomas Babington Macaulay the compiler of the above referred essay on Lord Clive is as important to the Indians as is his infamous Indian Penal Code (unchanged) which still rules India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It was written in 1833 and implemented in 1861 by the British Raj. This is noted from the notes of the editor of the above work entitled: Critical and Historical Essays. Vol. I by Thomas Babington Macaulay, London].

See: http://mrtpix.tripod.com/clive.pdf

This is to request the readers to understand the people by ‘Bengalee’ and the language by ‘Bengali’, noting the spellings. Currently the words are used wrongly by many.

7. The capital of the British Raj was subsequently shifted from Calcutta to New Delhi in 1911. Most of the notable administrative buildings of today’s Indian capital New Delhi were built during the British Raj before the Second World War.

8. During the last few years I wrote from time to time several short articles in several newspapers and in various Internet blogs about the decline in Rabindranath Tagore’s popularity, in spite of massive official publicity and patronage, especially in India and Bangladesh. Many readers criticized my observations and many agreed with my views.

9. While responding, either favourably or unfavourably, everybody wanted to see the supporting documentations or references, which could not be possible to be furnished for many reasons, including the possibility copyright infringements. As a matter of fact the subject of declining popularity of Rabindranath Tagore, even in India and Bangladesh, is very important in the face of too much propaganda as to his works, thoughts and opinions.

10. In consideration of such a situation, I felt the necessity of publishing this book with various supporting documentations, including one response from Carola Hermelin, Assistant to the Secretary of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy of Stockholm, who awards the Nobel Prize for Literature.

11. The religion Hinduism of today is a cumulated way of living with polytheistic worshipping of various idols, ghosts, animals and trees etc. within the traditional taboos prescribed by the ancient immigrants, known as ‘Aryans’, to the northern India and Pakistan of today. Nearly all ‘Aryans’ entered into India through Afghanistan and many of them were from the Middle-Eastern and Central Asian countries.

12. Subsequently they became widespread throughout South Asia. Today they are known as Brahmin (Brahman) Hindus and their religious scriptures are based on the scholarly oral books known as Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads, etc. supplemented much later by the famous epic poems called Ramayana and Mahabharata. Earlier these scriptures were in Sanskrit. Until the Middle Ages these were in oral forms. Written translations of these books, even in the Indian languages, came up during the British Raj in India.

13. Later on the above two epic poems were given the written forms by different writers in the names of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Both the epic poems are having some similarities with Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

14. True, many of the ‘Aryans’ entered the Ancient India from the western and central Asian countries mostly through Afghanistan and became settled in today’s Northern India and upper Pakistan.

15. We are still not sure if the religious sacred books of the Hindus, including the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were written / composed under the influence and impact of the ancient Greek legends and also Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. But there are many resemblances between the ancient Greek gods and goddesses and the same of the Hindus.

16. The impact and influence of the above Hindu religious scriptures greatly influenced Kalidas and Rabindranath Tagore and many other Bengali Hindu writers like Michael Madhusudan Datta (who was converted into Christianity), Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee etc.

17. Rabindranath Tagore was a Hindu mystic poet, deeply influenced by the pantheistic spiritual values of the great fictional epics Ramayana and Mahabharata and some of the other ancient Hindu religious books, especially Upanishads. He grew under the impact and influence of the Christian and Islamic literatures and cultures.

18. None can deny that Rabindranath Tagore also borrowed from English and Persian literatures. Considering all these facts, I tried to furnish the respective references for the convenience of the readers, towards a better and quick understanding.

19. When, as a student, I attended my classes in the Department of English of the Calcutta University in the years 1962 to 1965, including the Presidency College, I came in contact with the famous Bengalee writers and Rabindranath Tagore specialists like Professor Bishnu Dey, Professor Buddhadev Bose, Professor Khudiram Das, Professor Haraprasad Mitra, Professor Dr. Amalendu Bose, Professor T. N. Sen, and, above all, Professor Dr. Nihar Ranjan Roy and that helped me to be better acquainted with the works of Rabindranath Tagore and his beautiful songs (widely known in Bengali as Rabindra Sangeet). But today I find a growing decline in the popularity of Tagore literature. One example, though surprising, I learnt from several final year students, studying in the Master’s degree classes of the Bengali language and literature of Calcutta and Dhaka Universities that they never read Gitanjali (Song Offerings), which is considered to be one of the greatest shining star books of the Bengali literature. In the middle of the 20th Century the situation was not like this.

20. This book is meant for the readers who are interested to know about the cunning passages and mysterious avenues of the Nobel Prize (with reference to its award to Rabindranath Tagore in 1913) which was founded and patronized by Jewish scientist Alfred Nobel.

21. There are some unanswered questions about Rabindranath Tagore’s connections with the influential Jews of England and other European countries and also of the United States. We know very little about the poet’s contacts with the Swedish Academy. I have tried to give some information, as far as I could hurriedly obtain.

22. Today, Internet is the greatest source of information in the 21st Century and, as such, I have also depended on the Internet references.

23. On random calculations, at present, there are about 350 million Bengalees living in the world, being distributed in Bangladesh; West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura and Assam states etc. of India; and in the other parts of the world. About 60% of them are in Bangladesh; 30% are in West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Jharkhand and Bihar provinces of India; and about 10% are scattered in various parts of Indian states, Pakistan, United States, United Kingdom, Middle-East and other countries of the world. Perhaps my random figures are not exactly correct. But this is provided just to give an approximate idea.

24. But as the Bengalees are not having high rate of reading habit, the Bengali books and periodicals are not circulated high in number. Though there are more Bengali speaking readers in Calcutta, yet we find comparatively smaller number of readers. Moreover, due to socio-cultural gaps Calcutta has turned into an ‘island city’ in the sense that very few Bengalee residents keep contacts with the countryside Bengalees in India. On the other hand the Bengali language readers are fast growing in Dhaka. This may be due to population change in these two cities.

25. The above figures are based on my random survey on the basis of scattered reports and statistics. During the last fifty years or more there has not been any official survey of the world Bengali language readership. We hope that there will be some such survey in future.

26. This is a compact book on the subject. If it is written with comprehensive details then this could be done