| The man is Rabindranath Tagore, the man who | | | | remains relevant, he remains multi-faceted, he |
| linked West and East. But like so many that went | | | | appeals to Hindu and Muslim alike, both India and |
| before him, and indeed many that came after | | | | Bangladesh using his poetry for their national |
| him, he may very well have being completely | | | | anthems. Tagore is so complete, so ancient, |
| overlooked by the Western world. He was born in | | | | perhaps too much so for the popular, throwaway, |
| Calcutta in 1861 into a very wealthy and | | | | all the rage fads which the West so loves to |
| prominent family, his grandfather had built a huge | | | | gorge itself on. Tagore is etched from the |
| financial empire, controlling much of what went on | | | | centuries, drawn from the winds of time, he was |
| in Calcutta. His father was a religious scholar and | | | | well versed in ancient Sanskrit and Hindi texts, |
| reformer, his progressive ideas were endemic of | | | | possessed a solid understanding of Islamic |
| the Tagore family, all were forward thinking, all | | | | traditions and was comfortable with early Persian |
| attempted to combine their traditional Indian | | | | literature. I think Tagore did not hold the West's |
| culture with Western ideas. | | | | attention, because he was unquantifiable, he was |
| Tagore, writing in the language of the common | | | | difficult to box, indeed, the West's analysis of him |
| people of Bengal was to link the two worlds, it | | | | is simply as an Eastern mystic, which in my |
| was to come late in his life when a book of his | | | | opinion is a lazy and boring analysis. |
| poetry landed in the lap of a certain WB Yeats | | | | Tragically, even his early patron and one of the |
| who thought the words incredible. Such a | | | | West's greatest wordsmiths to have ever dipped |
| vindication, can move mountains, Yeats made him | | | | the quill, turned upon Tagore to some extent, |
| the next best thing, writing the introduction to | | | | Yeats castigating a perceived narrowness and |
| Gitanjali (1912), Tagore was handed the Nobel | | | | repetition. Perhaps, it was the very fact that |
| Prize the following year, the first non-Westerner | | | | Tagore was simply Tagore and nothing else that |
| to be honoured. Don't get me wrong, he earned | | | | got on the wick of the illustrious scholars of the |
| it, he deserved it but he would have being simply | | | | West. When they first discovered him, they |
| by-passed by the West if had not being for | | | | admired his naturalism, his ability to write without |
| Yeats' realisation of his greatness. Yet almost as | | | | igniting or scorning, there was no invention, he |
| quickly as the West picked him up, they dropped | | | | was in sync with the world. This is not the normal |
| him, he is no longer much read in the West and | | | | way of a writer, indeed it goes completely against |
| has being out of fashion since the 1930s. But not | | | | the grain, did they hate him for what they |
| in Bengal, not in India, not in Bangladesh, where | | | | perceived as his lack of effort or for the fact |
| they have not forgotten his genius. | | | | that it was not what a writer should be or indeed |
| It's the mistake of the West, not Tagore's, he | | | | is? |