Kolkata: Exactly one hundred years ago, Rabindranath Tagore brought Indian literature to the global stage by becoming the first non-westerner to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
The feat not only brought him to global attention, but also helped the country, which was still fighting for freedom from British rule. However, the year was the eve of First World War and Tagore, who advocated Indian independence throughout his life, was worried about its repercussion on British India.
On a relatively cold morning of November 13, Tagore was informed of the decision of the Nobel Committee for his book Gitanjali. In the citation, the Nobel Committee wrote, The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West”.
However, the poet was unable to travel to Stockholm due to the impending war and the distance.
On behalf of the poet, then British Chargé d’Affaires in Stockholm, Ambassador Clive, received the Gold Medal and the Diploma.
Tagore’s official response to his win was a single sentence telegram read out by Clive, at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hôtel, Stockholm, December 10, 1913, simply read: “I beg to convey to the Swedish Academy my grateful appreciation of the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother.”
This statement summarises how Tagore viewed the award and his expectations from it.
Every laureate is supposed to deliver a lecture but, in Tagore’s case, it was delivered eight years later.
During the poet’s America tour in 1920, when the Secretary of the Swedish Academy Dr Erik Axel Karfeldt came to know about the possibility of the poet’s visit, he sent a telegram saying, “If you intend going Sweden, [the] Swedish Academy bids you welcome to Nobel Feast December 10.”
However, the poet could not reach Sweden in time. When he did, it was May 24, 1921. He was warmly received at the Stockholm railway station.
On May 26 Tagore delivered his Nobel lecture. The sixteen-page lecture commenced thus: “I am glad that I have been able to come at last to your country and that I may use this opportunity for expressing my gratitude to you for the honour you have done to me by acknowledging my work and rewarding me by giving me the Nobel Prize.”
Among the eighteen members of the Nobel Literature Committee, only the Orientalist Esaias Henrik Vilhelm Tegner (1843-1928) knew Bengali. Gitanjali could make no impression on the other members. But one person who was most impressed was Verner von Heidenstam, a poet senior to Tagore, renowned in Sweden and later awarded the Nobel in 1916. Heidenstam was also nominated in the year 1913, along with Tagore.
However, Tagore, who single-handedly transformed Bengali literature by freeing it from rigid Sanskrit-based formality and by writing on subjects that would appeal to the common man, was quite hurt at the response of his countrymen on his winning the Nobel Prize.
Many people suggested that it was W.B Yeats who polished the Gitanjali text and as a result the work was able to draw the attention of the Nobel Committee.
His discontent stemmed from the fact that his critics believed he must have indulged in some self-promotion to win the Nobel and the English translations of the poems were written by Yeats.
On October 29, 1931, he wrote to one such correspondent:
“There is a question in your letter whether I have engaged paid agents to spread my fame. This sort of suspicion is possible only in Bengal. It is here that people whisper that I won the Nobel Prize by a trick, and the English of the poems which brought me fame was written by a certain Englishman.”
Then again in September 14, 1933, he writes:
“What is the matter for real regret is that the business of running me down is profitable. That makes me realise how widespread in my country is the keen hatred for me and how little my countrymen are hurt by the attacks on me and the insults heaped on me.”
“[Tagore] faced all that a winner faces today. The adulation, the god-man persona that is attributed to Tagore today was not at all prevalent during that time of his life,” Supriya Mukhopadhay, son of Tagore’s biographer Prabhat Mukhopadhay, said.
Sociologist Pritam Roychowdhury: “It is in the very society of Indians that we vilify anyone who brings fame for the country and then finally after death he or she becomes demigod. Even Tagore faced it.”
Tagore was born on May 7, 1861, the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore and Sarada Devi. Debendranath Tagore was himself an influential Bengali and member of the Brahmo Samaj a group that sought to reform and modernise Hinduism — a movement that deeply influenced his son.
In 1878 he travelled to England in the hope of becoming a barrister. However in 1880 he left University College London and returned to India because his father had arranged his marriage to Mrinalini Devi.
Thus Tagore returned home to get married and look after his family’s estates. This enabled a productive period of writing poetry, plays and short stories. In 1901 Tagore moved to Santiniketan where he found an ashram, dedicated to returning educational traditions of ancient India. Later this school was to be expanded and given the name of Shriniketan “Abode of Peace” This project was dear to Tagore’s heart throughout his life.
Tagore not only wrote thousands of poems, but is still revered for his notable contributions in the fields of music, literature, plays, art and education reform.
He also composed hundreds of songs, including two works Jana Gana Mana and Amar Shonar Bangla, which became the national anthems of India and Bangladesh respectively.
A century after Tagore received the Nobel Prize for literature, he remains the only Indian person so honoured.
Tagore died in August 7, 1941 at his ancestral home in Calcutta — seven years before India gained independence.
