March 21, 2020 • 29 mins
In this 2010 episode, previous hosts Sarah and Deblina trace the life of Tagore through his childhood to knighthood and beyond.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. Before we get to today's classic. This week,
we put out a playlist of some of our otter
and mostly more upbeat episodes out of the archive. We
called that playlist Offbeat History. With this ongoing coronavirus pandemic,
we thought it might give folks who are practicing some
social distancing or sheltering in place, or otherwise having some
(00:23):
more time in relative isolation a little something extra to
help pass the time. UH and several of our colleagues
other shows in our I Heart Podcast family have done
the same thing, and so we've launched a new feed
for all of those. So it's all of those pandemic collections.
It's called the best of Stuff, and you should be
(00:43):
able to find it wherever you get your podcasts. And
now we'll move on to today's Saturday Classic. It is
World Poetry Day, so today we're sharing an episode from
the archive that's on a poet, rebind Er, not Tagore,
who was a Bengali poet and was the first Asian
Nobel laureate. This episode originally came out on November and
(01:03):
it is from previous hosts Sarah and Deablina, So enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of My Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm very happy to be joined
(01:26):
by my new co host today. Yep, I'm Deblina Chokate
boardy I will be joining Sarah and talking about history
stuff with you. Yeah. Debilina is the homepage editor here
at How Stuff Works. Um, so she basically programs the
whole homepage every day. So if you've ever visited the site,
you have seen Debilina's handiwork. Yes, and I hope you've
(01:47):
clicked on lots of things, clicked lots of links. That's
what we all want you to do. But um, Debilina,
why don't you give us a little background on this
topic and explain why you picked it today? Sure? Well,
today's topic is a little bit maybe appropriately maybe inappropriately
personal to myself. My parents are from India, there Bengali,
(02:11):
and our topic today is Rabat Nath Tagore, who is
a well known Bengali figure, probably best known for being
the first Asian Nobel laureate. And it's the hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of his birth. So it's been in the
news a lot lately. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff
going on to celebrate his birth this year, UM, including
the Kolkata Film Festival, has showed movies that are based
(02:33):
on his works. Um. People are performing his plays, school
children are performing his songs and his dance dramas, and
so it's a big to do. There's even a traveling train,
which seems like probably the best part of the celebration
in my opinion. The traveling train is indeed awesome. It
is visiting cities throughout India until next May, and each
(02:55):
car features kind of a different aspect and it's featuring
mostly arts type of stuff. Like the other celebrations are
like a museum on the move essentially exactly great. Um,
but a lot of people don't really appreciate how just
how much of an accomplished artist this guy was. How
much of an accomplished poet he was. He was a singer,
(03:16):
a philosopher, he was interested in politics, he was an educator,
a reformer. Um, he wasn't a politician exactly, but I
mean his influence there is pretty great too. He he
just touched on so many different things. It's kind of,
I don't know, it's kind of inspiring. When you start
looking at his life and also sort of makes you
(03:36):
feel like not up to that, what have I done? Right?
So his work in the political arena and his reformation
efforts that you mentioned last, those are probably the things
that are lesser known about him. Most people know about
his arts, his involvement in the art scene in India,
all his contributions, there's far songs, plays, dramas, everything goes.
But I think that people don't know what he contributed
(03:59):
as far as politics well, and he's not that well
known in the West at all. So I mean, we
have a lot to explore, even the things he's famous
for in India. Definitely one of the things that he
is famous for that will take a look at today
he was knighted by the British government and some accused
him of being a pro British elitist, and there's some
controversy around that nighting to tring to talk about a
(04:20):
little later we will, um. But really what we're gonna
look at is just was he a nationalist or not? Um?
Was this just a different approach to nationalism for him?
His involvement in politics and um look at his renunciation
of the of the knighthood and what surrounded that. So
before we get into that, let's look at his beginnings.
He was born May six, eighteen sixty one, in Calcutta
(04:43):
into a well to do, well educated, very artistic, progressive family. Yeah,
he was really exposed to a lot as a kid too.
I mean his family would have been reading Sanskrit and
ancient Hindu text and Persian literature and known Islamic tradition.
So imagine it this really melting pot in his home
of learning and um, just a lot of intelligent discussion,
(05:05):
I imagine, definitely. I think it was unique to any
culture at the time. And let's talk about that time
a little bit. It was during British rule in India
when he was born, and his family, the two Gores,
they were very active in the Bengal Renaissance, which was
basically a movement that began in the mid eighteen sixties
to protect national culture. It was really to preserve, um,
(05:28):
the local culture, the arts, all the things that his
family wanted to celebrate, the traditional heritage, and it was
a response to Anglicization. So they would throw festivals every
year that featured Angian songs and poems and dances, and
you mentioned wrestling matches when we were talking about this earlier.
I thought that was kind of a surprise thrown in there,
(05:50):
but hey, it's a part of culture, right, balanced the
arts with a little wrestling boards and aspect of culture.
I like sports. So in addition to being an involved
in this yearly cultural event to Gore's father, Deba's or
not to Gore, he was very involved in something called
the Brahmo somag. The Brahma Somaj was basically a movement
(06:10):
within Hinduism which was established around or so, and it
was an attempt to reform Hinduism. What I mean by
that is that it incorporated some aspects of Christianity. It
denounced things like polytheism and idol worship, and it also
denounced the cast system. So through this they were trying
to um enact some sort of social reform. But it
(06:33):
never really became that widely popular. Um, yeah, I mean it,
even though I guess it's still technically around today, it
didn't really grow much past the twentieth century or the
early twentieth century. Yeah, it's definitely recognized as a movement
within Hinduism, um, but I don't think it reached maybe
the heights that to Gore's father wanted it to the
(06:54):
Brahmi Smudge movement. It did loose steam the twentieth century.
But the important thing about that is that we can
see into Gore's life is that it was combining these
Eastern and Western ideals that will see kind of throughout
his development and in his work and his philosophy. So
it's the beginnings of that, I guess. Yeah. But I mean,
if we're talking about his childhood intellectual life aside um,
(07:16):
he was kind of lonely. He wasn't that close to
his parents. This is according to his own memoirs. His
dad was gone a lot, traveling on business and um.
Some people have suggested that he just didn't really get
much attention and love growing up and sort of felt
neglected in that respect. Yeah, he did. He does give
(07:36):
us accounts of traveling with his father and his adolescence,
but from what we can tell, he wasn't really that
close to anyone. Roby as he was sometimes called, wasn't
really close to his folks. But that might have been
a good thing because he was given a lot of freedom.
Because of that, he was given a lot of space
to develop creatively. And to write, and that's exactly what
(07:58):
he did. Yeah, So he started writing at a very
young age and kept on doing it over six decades.
He ended up writing about two thousand, five hundred songs
and twenty eight volumes of poetry, drama, opera, short stories, novels,
essays and diaries, plus a bunch of letters. So this
is what we meant at the beginning when we're saying
(08:19):
this can make you feel a little inadequate. He lived
a very long time, but he was writing for his
entire life pretty much NonStop, definitely. In eight seventy seven
he actually went to England to study for about a
year at the University College of London, and while he
was there he wrote some more too. He wrote some
plays and he was introduced to the western style of
(08:42):
music there, but it didn't really last. He ended up
coming back after a year, and Um, the only thing
that I could find on that is that he thought
it was too cold. Legitimate complaints. It's legit. I mean,
I've lived in cold places. It's tough. But that was
definitely an influence in his life though, I think. Yeah, Um,
(09:03):
so you know, he came back to India after just
about a year of studies, but he kept on writing
and he published his first book of poetry when he
was only about seventeen, and then throughout the eighteen eighties
he kept on putting out books, all leading up to Manasci,
which was published in eighteen nine. And that's sort of
(09:23):
one of his first works that is fairly well known,
right yep. A lot of his well known poems and
some of his well known political satire and commentary is
in that book. Uh. And that satire did take kind
of a critical tone towards towards his fellow Bengalis, and
so we see kind of his starting of his evolution
of his political views social views there. Yeah, because that
(09:45):
tone starts to change too in the eighteen nineties because
of his traveling and a few events that happened. Yep,
as we mentioned earlier to Gore's family was pretty wealthy,
so they had both a home in the city and
they had some estates in East Bengal, which we know
today is Bangladesh. So he went for a while in
(10:15):
the eighteen nineties to manage his father's estates there and
he stayed there for about a decade. But this area
was pretty rural, pretty poverty stricken, and he was in
close contact with the villagers while he was there, so
it really gave him a new outlook, so to speak.
He gained a lot of sympathy for the plight of
the locals there, I think, and this began to inform
(10:38):
his writing a lot, Yeah, and change his style a
little too, even. Yeah, well, he started writing in a
little bit of a new style at that time. He
started experimenting a little bit more with free verse as
opposed to earlier when he was I think when he
was younger, he was mostly writing in traditional classical Indian forms. Um. Again,
part of this whole Bengal Renaissance thing, the idea of
(10:59):
preserving culture. It as he got more into the eighteen nineties,
started being a little more flexible with his form. So
that was one thing. But then also his subject matter
I think started to explore more of what he had seen, um,
some of more of the issues that he had seen
in rural Bengal. And so this informed his work. Yeah,
And I mean it wasn't just limited to his own
(11:20):
experiences too. He started to be influenced by some world
events that were going on, namely the Boer War in
eighteen ninety nine and just a little I've tried to
do a real podcast on the Bower War before and
it didn't really work out. But to give you a
basic rundown of it, it was a conflict between the
two independent Dutch speaking Bauer republics of South Africa and
(11:44):
the British Empire, and it was very bloody. At the end,
the Boer Republics agreed to come under the sovereignty of
the British Crown. So to Gore was already starting to
get kind of interested in politics and political writing when
this was going on, but the Boer Are really it
got him more interested in it. It it made him
(12:04):
look more into world politics, world events. Yep. So let's
talk about two Gore's politics a little bit, just to
give people an idea of what was going on in
his mind and what point of view he was coming from.
A lot of people, as we said before, especially anti
colonial nationalists, they accused to Gore of being pro British
and against the nationalist movement, and this wasn't kind of
(12:27):
had some truth to it maybe, but wasn't exactly true.
To Gore was against colonialism. Just put that out there.
He wanted India to be an independent nation. But he
didn't think that the confrontation and non cooperation UM tactics
that were used by some of his contemporaries Gandhi obviously
a very famous one, Mahandas Gandhi, who was actually his
(12:51):
friend UM. So they differed in this way. He was
one who who did use these tactics and and they
disagree ead on on this, but they were still very
good friends. He was actually the first to call Gandhi
Mahatma which means great soul, which I just learned that
in this podcast. So it wasn't it fun fact. But
(13:12):
he certainly wasn't pro British. He wanted India to be
its own country exactly. He just didn't think that a change,
a straight change in political regime is all that they needed.
His answer to the problem of India was education. He
proposed that only through education could the their nation really
(13:33):
affect true change. UM. Actually, as an example of this,
UM I found a statement that he made in nineteen
o nine which was actually a letter to an American
lawyer who had written him talking about the problem of
India and what was going on with colonialism. And it
was from a lawyer named Myron H. Phelps and to
Gore put it this way to him, he said, for us,
(13:56):
there can be no question of blind revolution, but of
steady and purposeful education. He said, that's basically what it
would take to snap his people out of the quote
trance that cold blooded repression had put them under. Yeah, so,
I mean some people see this as just a different
approach to nationalism. It's it's not revolution, it's revolution through education. Yeah.
(14:19):
He wanted his country not just to be independent, but
to be independent and truly truly be independent in every
aspect um, you know, not just be free from an
oppressive government, but to be able to stand alone as
a nation. And he thought education was the only way
that they would be able to do that. So, yeah,
you're right, some people do just think that this is
(14:39):
a different approach to nationalism um that he was taking.
So a good thing to do, though, if you're interested
in education is to start your own school, why not,
which is exactly what he did. And he did just that.
He founded an experimental school at Shanta Nikitan. It's a
small town in West Bengal which means a bode of peace.
And this wasn't his first experience with this town. His
(15:02):
dad I had founded a oshroom there, so he founded
a school there too. And his whole idea behind the
school was pretty much goes along with his philosophy that
he's had all along. You know. He felt that the
East and West needed each other, and so he wanted
to incorporate both types of thought into this school that
he had. So what he did is he got both
(15:22):
Indiana and Western scholars to teach there. And um, it
was a different kind of environment than had outdoor classes.
They had outdoor classes. That's pretty neat like the sound
of that. Um, But just because he's running this school
sounds like that would kind of keep you preoccupied. I
don't think he's not writing. He's still writing prolifically. Um
and unfortunately going through a few personal tragedies in the
(15:45):
early nineteen hundreds. His wife died in nineteen o two. Incidentally,
they had gotten married when she was only ten years
old and he was twenty two. Um. And then after
his wife died, he also lost his father and two
of his children, all in this really short period of time. Yes,
And it was the sadness resulting from these events that
(16:08):
inspired several poems. Song poems as They're sometimes called, which
he translated into English and published as a collection called
Joy in nineteen twelve. And some have said that the
fact that he did translate themselves is not necessarily a
good thing. Yeah, I mean they still sold well. Apparently
(16:30):
between March and November nineteen thirteen there were ten reprints. Um.
But yeah, his his translations came under a lot of
scrutiny later. If if you've ever come across him in
a literature class or something and you're outside of India,
it might be some sort of comparison to WB. Yates.
And they were friends, if you could call it that,
(16:51):
for about thirty seven years. That had a really long
relationship with each other. And Yates is largely credited to
exposing him to the West, you know, introducing him to
the West and helping make him famous there. But they
had kind of a tumultuous friendship to say the least. Yep,
they actually met through William Rothenstein. He was an artist
(17:15):
who hosted to Gore in London in around thirteen so
around the time that he was publishing this translation and
When to Go arrived. He gave Rothenstein an English translation
of these poems and Rothenstein then sent them to Yates
and some other some other people about town. Yates apparently
(17:37):
loved them. He was really really into them. He apparently said, quote,
I've carried the translations of these manuscripts about with me
for days, reading it in railway trains or on top
of omnibuses or in restaurants, and I've often had to
close it less some strangers see how much it moved me. Um,
but I don't know. Maybe we should talk about Yates later.
(18:00):
Her opinion in a minute, Because this is the this
is to Gore's rising star at this point. This is
his fame starting to spread throughout the West as well
as the East. So people finally got to know him
through this. They finally got to know him through this
English translation and through people kind of spreading the word
about him, and it led I will not people spreading
(18:21):
the word, but just his talent, I guess led to
him winning the Noble Price for literature. As we mentioned,
he was the first Asian to receive such an honor,
and after that his fame kind of grew exponentially, fame
outside of India, that is, he was knighted by King George,
the fifth of Britain in nineteen fifteen, and he started
traveling abroad a lot more. He wasn't in India as
(18:43):
much as he used to be. He was doing lectures
and readings. He went to Europe, North America, South America, Asia,
East Asia, um, all over the place. So yeah, he
was one of the most famous Indians in the world
at this point, perhaps the most famous. But then, unfortunately,
(19:09):
something really bad happened. On April thirteenth, nineteen nineteen, in
a Star, which is located in the state of Punjab
in India. British soldiers fired on an unarmed gathering of men,
women and children who had come into the city to
partake in a traditional Sikh festival. There was a peaceful
nationalist demonstration going on that day, but many of the
(19:29):
people who who were around, who were involved in the shooting,
they weren't even really a part of the demonstration exactly.
They were completely kind of innocent of whatever was going on.
So a lot of lives were lost, and we don't
know exactly how many. A lot of sources you look
at and I think the official number reported by the
British Raj was three seventy nine, but some people say
(19:52):
that it could have been as many as a thousand
or more well. And then the accounts of it in
the British press were especially disturbed, and you know, they
were treating it as though it had been a riot
and the people who were killed had gotten themselves into
trouble essentially, and people just had a very unfortunate reaction
to to the whole thing that went down. Yeah, it
(20:15):
was weird. It was a big cover up um for
obvious reasons. They didn't want people to know that this
had gone down the way it had, because there was
basically no reason for these people being killed, so they
had to spin it. They had to spin it and uh.
But then there were murmurings, of course, of what had
really happened throughout India and too Core caught wind of this,
and he was pretty disgusted by the entire situation and
(20:37):
it kind of changed his outlook and it definitely changed
the way he felt about being a British night. So
he wrote a letter to Lord Chelmsford, who was the
Viceroy of India at the time, and renounced his knighthood.
And if you read his letter, it's interesting because it
is so formal, so polite. It's very written in very
precise English, but I don't know. He's clearly very very
(21:00):
deeply disturbed by what's happened and can't reconcile being a
night with supporting this definitely. Um, we have a little
excerpt from the letter just to give you an idea
of how incensed he was via the situation. He says,
the very least I can do for my country to
take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the
(21:21):
protest of millions of my countrymen surprised into dumb anguish
of terror. The time has come when badges of honor
make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation.
And I, for my part, wish to stand shorn of
all special distinctions by the side of those of my
countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to
(21:41):
suffer a degradation not fit for human beings. Yeah. So
this was the end of this quote, total cooboration with
the British, and it changed people's opinions of him too. Um,
he wasn't the same guy anymore. And I mean we
can talk about that maybe first in a literary sense
(22:02):
with Yates, because people have suggested that this is part
of the reason why Yates's opinion of Tore soured. According
to Anna Jelna car To, Gore's resigning his knighthood just
didn't match up correctly with the idea Yates had of
him as this serene mystic from the east who certainly
(22:24):
wouldn't get involved in politics, certainly wouldn't do anything as
bold as renounced his knighthood. Um, it just didn't match
up with Yates is to Gore. And of course, I
mean we can assume there's some other reasons in here.
Yates really didn't like to Gore's translations. As we mentioned earlier, Um,
he was probably bound to be disappointed in this creation
(22:47):
he had imagined for himself, because to Gore did write
so much more than just romantic poetry. He wrote essays
and plays and prose. But I mean we have to
assume it did play a role. Yeah, I mean I
think it did. But I think at the same time
there had to be more to it. I mean, they
knew each other, so he must have known that there
(23:08):
was more to Gore than just this romantic literature and
poetry that he wrote. Um, he did a lot of
political writing, a lot of speaking, he was kind of
a voice for for the way he movement. He had
publicly promoted him though yep, I guess so that's true.
But I guess it was bound to happen, since to
Gore wrote other things anyway, so there was bound to
(23:29):
be some kind of falling out between them at some point.
But it changed. It changed what Yates thought of to Gore,
at least in the you know, outwardly, and it changed
I think what to Gore thought of his own views
a little bit too. Definitely, he didn't really he didn't
really change his views about the East and West needing
(23:49):
each other. He still thought that. He still thought, you know,
he wanted to see um kind of a universal land
where people all cultures would come together and there weren't
all these barriers between them. But at the same time,
I think he was very conflicted about the situation that happened,
especially because he had English friends and so it made
(24:09):
the situation kind of difficult for them, And he tried
to express these feelings through his work after the fact. Yeah,
and after this he kept on traveling, so he was
still out and about in the world very much. So
Um he said to have visited more than thirty countries
on five continents of lecturing and having these extended conversations
(24:31):
with people like Einstein on truth and beauty. They have
this amazing debate and music. I mean stuff that you
wouldn't even you know, think of Einstein talking about. Yeah,
but um, I mean to Gore's is all over the world.
He meets Mussolini and it takes them a little while
before he starts hearing reports about the fascism that's going
(24:55):
on in Italy from some exiles and denounces Mussolini. But yeah,
even and you know his his denunciations are still very
polite and proper interesting to read them. Yep. He never
loses his smooth talking never. Um. But so he this
(25:16):
going around the world is partially to speak because he's
asked and to to speak on behalf of the independence
movement UM. But it's also to earn money for his school.
He's still stumping for his cause, which is education, and
he's still out there trying to keep the school, the
six centric school that he started going UM and later
(25:39):
this school in Shanthan ni Kitan it becomes a university
called Visba Barathi University in nine UM and so he
has some success with that, but it's sort of peters
out as he. Um. Yeah, you were talking about able
to support it. What it's like today kind of more
of a place where you can learn about him than
(26:01):
a university. I think it's more to study his philosophies
and so forth than necessarily. But it does still exist. Yes,
you can still visit it today. Actually, I think that
India's recently nominated to be a World here UNESCO World
Heritage Site. You've been there. I've been there. I went
there when I was fourteen, Um, although I can't remember
(26:21):
too much unfortunately, but I do remember it being very
serene and um and uh liking it a lot. That's
the rule of the podcast. You always have to mention
the places have been too. It makes everybody think we're
going all over the world seeing all this stuff. Oh dear,
not really, guys, Um, But I don't know. Even with
(26:42):
all of this traveling around the world and promoting his
school and promoting his writings, he kind of kept his
distance from the more confrontational side of the nationalist movement.
He didn't get super involved in that. Even after this,
renouncing his knighthood and all that, No, he still to
his distance. Um. He was still part of it through
(27:03):
his writings and through his talks that he gave Um
and he was still friends with Gandhi of course, even
though he didn't necessarily support a reaction that he did
but Um, but he didn't get to to involved, and
unfortunately he passed away about seven years before India actually
achieved independence in ninety seven. But on the bright side,
(27:26):
maybe Um India's national anthem John a Ghanamana is based
on one of his song poems, and another of his songs,
am are Shownar bang La is Bangladesh's national anthem. Yeah,
so that's pretty impressive, I think. So he still gets
to be a part of it. It's not easy to
forget him at all. He's still a big part of
(27:48):
the national culture. Every time they sing the national anthem
or hear it, they'll think of him and Um and
music art. Actually, an interesting fact about his art he
didn't take up painting until he was about seventy years old,
which I think is amazing. So he takes a painting
at age seventy. Yet somehow he managed to create about
(28:09):
two thousand paintings and drawings before he died around age eight.
He was busy so that's incredible. Thank you so much
for joining us today for this Saturday classic. If you
have heard any kind of email address or maybe a
Facebook you are l during the course of the episode,
(28:29):
that might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because
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and we're all over social media at missed in History
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
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(28:54):
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H
Happy Saturday, everybody. Before we get to today's classic. This week,
we put out a playlist of some of our otter
and mostly more upbeat episodes out of the archive. We
called that playlist Offbeat History. With this ongoing coronavirus pandemic,
we thought it might give folks who are practicing some
social distancing or sheltering in place, or otherwise having some
(00:23):
more time in relative isolation a little something extra to
help pass the time. UH and several of our colleagues
other shows in our I Heart Podcast family have done
the same thing, and so we've launched a new feed
for all of those. So it's all of those pandemic collections.
It's called the best of Stuff, and you should be
(00:43):
able to find it wherever you get your podcasts. And
now we'll move on to today's Saturday Classic. It is
World Poetry Day, so today we're sharing an episode from
the archive that's on a poet, rebind Er, not Tagore,
who was a Bengali poet and was the first Asian
Nobel laureate. This episode originally came out on November and
(01:03):
it is from previous hosts Sarah and Deablina, So enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of My Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm very happy to be joined
(01:26):
by my new co host today. Yep, I'm Deblina Chokate
boardy I will be joining Sarah and talking about history
stuff with you. Yeah. Debilina is the homepage editor here
at How Stuff Works. Um, so she basically programs the
whole homepage every day. So if you've ever visited the site,
you have seen Debilina's handiwork. Yes, and I hope you've
(01:47):
clicked on lots of things, clicked lots of links. That's
what we all want you to do. But um, Debilina,
why don't you give us a little background on this
topic and explain why you picked it today? Sure? Well,
today's topic is a little bit maybe appropriately maybe inappropriately
personal to myself. My parents are from India, there Bengali,
(02:11):
and our topic today is Rabat Nath Tagore, who is
a well known Bengali figure, probably best known for being
the first Asian Nobel laureate. And it's the hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of his birth. So it's been in the
news a lot lately. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff
going on to celebrate his birth this year, UM, including
the Kolkata Film Festival, has showed movies that are based
(02:33):
on his works. Um. People are performing his plays, school
children are performing his songs and his dance dramas, and
so it's a big to do. There's even a traveling train,
which seems like probably the best part of the celebration
in my opinion. The traveling train is indeed awesome. It
is visiting cities throughout India until next May, and each
(02:55):
car features kind of a different aspect and it's featuring
mostly arts type of stuff. Like the other celebrations are
like a museum on the move essentially exactly great. Um,
but a lot of people don't really appreciate how just
how much of an accomplished artist this guy was. How
much of an accomplished poet he was. He was a singer,
(03:16):
a philosopher, he was interested in politics, he was an educator,
a reformer. Um, he wasn't a politician exactly, but I
mean his influence there is pretty great too. He he
just touched on so many different things. It's kind of,
I don't know, it's kind of inspiring. When you start
looking at his life and also sort of makes you
(03:36):
feel like not up to that, what have I done? Right?
So his work in the political arena and his reformation
efforts that you mentioned last, those are probably the things
that are lesser known about him. Most people know about
his arts, his involvement in the art scene in India,
all his contributions, there's far songs, plays, dramas, everything goes.
But I think that people don't know what he contributed
(03:59):
as far as politics well, and he's not that well
known in the West at all. So I mean, we
have a lot to explore, even the things he's famous
for in India. Definitely one of the things that he
is famous for that will take a look at today
he was knighted by the British government and some accused
him of being a pro British elitist, and there's some
controversy around that nighting to tring to talk about a
(04:20):
little later we will, um. But really what we're gonna
look at is just was he a nationalist or not? Um?
Was this just a different approach to nationalism for him?
His involvement in politics and um look at his renunciation
of the of the knighthood and what surrounded that. So
before we get into that, let's look at his beginnings.
He was born May six, eighteen sixty one, in Calcutta
(04:43):
into a well to do, well educated, very artistic, progressive family. Yeah,
he was really exposed to a lot as a kid too.
I mean his family would have been reading Sanskrit and
ancient Hindu text and Persian literature and known Islamic tradition.
So imagine it this really melting pot in his home
of learning and um, just a lot of intelligent discussion,
(05:05):
I imagine, definitely. I think it was unique to any
culture at the time. And let's talk about that time
a little bit. It was during British rule in India
when he was born, and his family, the two Gores,
they were very active in the Bengal Renaissance, which was
basically a movement that began in the mid eighteen sixties
to protect national culture. It was really to preserve, um,
(05:28):
the local culture, the arts, all the things that his
family wanted to celebrate, the traditional heritage, and it was
a response to Anglicization. So they would throw festivals every
year that featured Angian songs and poems and dances, and
you mentioned wrestling matches when we were talking about this earlier.
I thought that was kind of a surprise thrown in there,
(05:50):
but hey, it's a part of culture, right, balanced the
arts with a little wrestling boards and aspect of culture.
I like sports. So in addition to being an involved
in this yearly cultural event to Gore's father, Deba's or
not to Gore, he was very involved in something called
the Brahmo somag. The Brahma Somaj was basically a movement
(06:10):
within Hinduism which was established around or so, and it
was an attempt to reform Hinduism. What I mean by
that is that it incorporated some aspects of Christianity. It
denounced things like polytheism and idol worship, and it also
denounced the cast system. So through this they were trying
to um enact some sort of social reform. But it
(06:33):
never really became that widely popular. Um, yeah, I mean it,
even though I guess it's still technically around today, it
didn't really grow much past the twentieth century or the
early twentieth century. Yeah, it's definitely recognized as a movement
within Hinduism, um, but I don't think it reached maybe
the heights that to Gore's father wanted it to the
(06:54):
Brahmi Smudge movement. It did loose steam the twentieth century.
But the important thing about that is that we can
see into Gore's life is that it was combining these
Eastern and Western ideals that will see kind of throughout
his development and in his work and his philosophy. So
it's the beginnings of that, I guess. Yeah. But I mean,
if we're talking about his childhood intellectual life aside um,
(07:16):
he was kind of lonely. He wasn't that close to
his parents. This is according to his own memoirs. His
dad was gone a lot, traveling on business and um.
Some people have suggested that he just didn't really get
much attention and love growing up and sort of felt
neglected in that respect. Yeah, he did. He does give
(07:36):
us accounts of traveling with his father and his adolescence,
but from what we can tell, he wasn't really that
close to anyone. Roby as he was sometimes called, wasn't
really close to his folks. But that might have been
a good thing because he was given a lot of freedom.
Because of that, he was given a lot of space
to develop creatively. And to write, and that's exactly what
(07:58):
he did. Yeah, So he started writing at a very
young age and kept on doing it over six decades.
He ended up writing about two thousand, five hundred songs
and twenty eight volumes of poetry, drama, opera, short stories, novels,
essays and diaries, plus a bunch of letters. So this
is what we meant at the beginning when we're saying
(08:19):
this can make you feel a little inadequate. He lived
a very long time, but he was writing for his
entire life pretty much NonStop, definitely. In eight seventy seven
he actually went to England to study for about a
year at the University College of London, and while he
was there he wrote some more too. He wrote some
plays and he was introduced to the western style of
(08:42):
music there, but it didn't really last. He ended up
coming back after a year, and Um, the only thing
that I could find on that is that he thought
it was too cold. Legitimate complaints. It's legit. I mean,
I've lived in cold places. It's tough. But that was
definitely an influence in his life though, I think. Yeah, Um,
(09:03):
so you know, he came back to India after just
about a year of studies, but he kept on writing
and he published his first book of poetry when he
was only about seventeen, and then throughout the eighteen eighties
he kept on putting out books, all leading up to Manasci,
which was published in eighteen nine. And that's sort of
(09:23):
one of his first works that is fairly well known,
right yep. A lot of his well known poems and
some of his well known political satire and commentary is
in that book. Uh. And that satire did take kind
of a critical tone towards towards his fellow Bengalis, and
so we see kind of his starting of his evolution
of his political views social views there. Yeah, because that
(09:45):
tone starts to change too in the eighteen nineties because
of his traveling and a few events that happened. Yep,
as we mentioned earlier to Gore's family was pretty wealthy,
so they had both a home in the city and
they had some estates in East Bengal, which we know
today is Bangladesh. So he went for a while in
(10:15):
the eighteen nineties to manage his father's estates there and
he stayed there for about a decade. But this area
was pretty rural, pretty poverty stricken, and he was in
close contact with the villagers while he was there, so
it really gave him a new outlook, so to speak.
He gained a lot of sympathy for the plight of
the locals there, I think, and this began to inform
(10:38):
his writing a lot, Yeah, and change his style a
little too, even. Yeah, well, he started writing in a
little bit of a new style at that time. He
started experimenting a little bit more with free verse as
opposed to earlier when he was I think when he
was younger, he was mostly writing in traditional classical Indian forms. Um. Again,
part of this whole Bengal Renaissance thing, the idea of
(10:59):
preserving culture. It as he got more into the eighteen nineties,
started being a little more flexible with his form. So
that was one thing. But then also his subject matter
I think started to explore more of what he had seen, um,
some of more of the issues that he had seen
in rural Bengal. And so this informed his work. Yeah,
And I mean it wasn't just limited to his own
(11:20):
experiences too. He started to be influenced by some world
events that were going on, namely the Boer War in
eighteen ninety nine and just a little I've tried to
do a real podcast on the Bower War before and
it didn't really work out. But to give you a
basic rundown of it, it was a conflict between the
two independent Dutch speaking Bauer republics of South Africa and
(11:44):
the British Empire, and it was very bloody. At the end,
the Boer Republics agreed to come under the sovereignty of
the British Crown. So to Gore was already starting to
get kind of interested in politics and political writing when
this was going on, but the Boer Are really it
got him more interested in it. It it made him
(12:04):
look more into world politics, world events. Yep. So let's
talk about two Gore's politics a little bit, just to
give people an idea of what was going on in
his mind and what point of view he was coming from.
A lot of people, as we said before, especially anti
colonial nationalists, they accused to Gore of being pro British
and against the nationalist movement, and this wasn't kind of
(12:27):
had some truth to it maybe, but wasn't exactly true.
To Gore was against colonialism. Just put that out there.
He wanted India to be an independent nation. But he
didn't think that the confrontation and non cooperation UM tactics
that were used by some of his contemporaries Gandhi obviously
a very famous one, Mahandas Gandhi, who was actually his
(12:51):
friend UM. So they differed in this way. He was
one who who did use these tactics and and they
disagree ead on on this, but they were still very
good friends. He was actually the first to call Gandhi
Mahatma which means great soul, which I just learned that
in this podcast. So it wasn't it fun fact. But
(13:12):
he certainly wasn't pro British. He wanted India to be
its own country exactly. He just didn't think that a change,
a straight change in political regime is all that they needed.
His answer to the problem of India was education. He
proposed that only through education could the their nation really
(13:33):
affect true change. UM. Actually, as an example of this,
UM I found a statement that he made in nineteen
o nine which was actually a letter to an American
lawyer who had written him talking about the problem of
India and what was going on with colonialism. And it
was from a lawyer named Myron H. Phelps and to
Gore put it this way to him, he said, for us,
(13:56):
there can be no question of blind revolution, but of
steady and purposeful education. He said, that's basically what it
would take to snap his people out of the quote
trance that cold blooded repression had put them under. Yeah, so,
I mean some people see this as just a different
approach to nationalism. It's it's not revolution, it's revolution through education. Yeah.
(14:19):
He wanted his country not just to be independent, but
to be independent and truly truly be independent in every
aspect um, you know, not just be free from an
oppressive government, but to be able to stand alone as
a nation. And he thought education was the only way
that they would be able to do that. So, yeah,
you're right, some people do just think that this is
(14:39):
a different approach to nationalism um that he was taking.
So a good thing to do, though, if you're interested
in education is to start your own school, why not,
which is exactly what he did. And he did just that.
He founded an experimental school at Shanta Nikitan. It's a
small town in West Bengal which means a bode of peace.
And this wasn't his first experience with this town. His
(15:02):
dad I had founded a oshroom there, so he founded
a school there too. And his whole idea behind the
school was pretty much goes along with his philosophy that
he's had all along. You know. He felt that the
East and West needed each other, and so he wanted
to incorporate both types of thought into this school that
he had. So what he did is he got both
(15:22):
Indiana and Western scholars to teach there. And um, it
was a different kind of environment than had outdoor classes.
They had outdoor classes. That's pretty neat like the sound
of that. Um, But just because he's running this school
sounds like that would kind of keep you preoccupied. I
don't think he's not writing. He's still writing prolifically. Um
and unfortunately going through a few personal tragedies in the
(15:45):
early nineteen hundreds. His wife died in nineteen o two. Incidentally,
they had gotten married when she was only ten years
old and he was twenty two. Um. And then after
his wife died, he also lost his father and two
of his children, all in this really short period of time. Yes,
And it was the sadness resulting from these events that
(16:08):
inspired several poems. Song poems as They're sometimes called, which
he translated into English and published as a collection called
Joy in nineteen twelve. And some have said that the
fact that he did translate themselves is not necessarily a
good thing. Yeah, I mean they still sold well. Apparently
(16:30):
between March and November nineteen thirteen there were ten reprints. Um.
But yeah, his his translations came under a lot of
scrutiny later. If if you've ever come across him in
a literature class or something and you're outside of India,
it might be some sort of comparison to WB. Yates.
And they were friends, if you could call it that,
(16:51):
for about thirty seven years. That had a really long
relationship with each other. And Yates is largely credited to
exposing him to the West, you know, introducing him to
the West and helping make him famous there. But they
had kind of a tumultuous friendship to say the least. Yep,
they actually met through William Rothenstein. He was an artist
(17:15):
who hosted to Gore in London in around thirteen so
around the time that he was publishing this translation and
When to Go arrived. He gave Rothenstein an English translation
of these poems and Rothenstein then sent them to Yates
and some other some other people about town. Yates apparently
(17:37):
loved them. He was really really into them. He apparently said, quote,
I've carried the translations of these manuscripts about with me
for days, reading it in railway trains or on top
of omnibuses or in restaurants, and I've often had to
close it less some strangers see how much it moved me. Um,
but I don't know. Maybe we should talk about Yates later.
(18:00):
Her opinion in a minute, Because this is the this
is to Gore's rising star at this point. This is
his fame starting to spread throughout the West as well
as the East. So people finally got to know him
through this. They finally got to know him through this
English translation and through people kind of spreading the word
about him, and it led I will not people spreading
(18:21):
the word, but just his talent, I guess led to
him winning the Noble Price for literature. As we mentioned,
he was the first Asian to receive such an honor,
and after that his fame kind of grew exponentially, fame
outside of India, that is, he was knighted by King George,
the fifth of Britain in nineteen fifteen, and he started
traveling abroad a lot more. He wasn't in India as
(18:43):
much as he used to be. He was doing lectures
and readings. He went to Europe, North America, South America, Asia,
East Asia, um, all over the place. So yeah, he
was one of the most famous Indians in the world
at this point, perhaps the most famous. But then, unfortunately,
(19:09):
something really bad happened. On April thirteenth, nineteen nineteen, in
a Star, which is located in the state of Punjab
in India. British soldiers fired on an unarmed gathering of men,
women and children who had come into the city to
partake in a traditional Sikh festival. There was a peaceful
nationalist demonstration going on that day, but many of the
(19:29):
people who who were around, who were involved in the shooting,
they weren't even really a part of the demonstration exactly.
They were completely kind of innocent of whatever was going on.
So a lot of lives were lost, and we don't
know exactly how many. A lot of sources you look
at and I think the official number reported by the
British Raj was three seventy nine, but some people say
(19:52):
that it could have been as many as a thousand
or more well. And then the accounts of it in
the British press were especially disturbed, and you know, they
were treating it as though it had been a riot
and the people who were killed had gotten themselves into
trouble essentially, and people just had a very unfortunate reaction
to to the whole thing that went down. Yeah, it
(20:15):
was weird. It was a big cover up um for
obvious reasons. They didn't want people to know that this
had gone down the way it had, because there was
basically no reason for these people being killed, so they
had to spin it. They had to spin it and uh.
But then there were murmurings, of course, of what had
really happened throughout India and too Core caught wind of this,
and he was pretty disgusted by the entire situation and
(20:37):
it kind of changed his outlook and it definitely changed
the way he felt about being a British night. So
he wrote a letter to Lord Chelmsford, who was the
Viceroy of India at the time, and renounced his knighthood.
And if you read his letter, it's interesting because it
is so formal, so polite. It's very written in very
precise English, but I don't know. He's clearly very very
(21:00):
deeply disturbed by what's happened and can't reconcile being a
night with supporting this definitely. Um, we have a little
excerpt from the letter just to give you an idea
of how incensed he was via the situation. He says,
the very least I can do for my country to
take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the
(21:21):
protest of millions of my countrymen surprised into dumb anguish
of terror. The time has come when badges of honor
make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation.
And I, for my part, wish to stand shorn of
all special distinctions by the side of those of my
countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to
(21:41):
suffer a degradation not fit for human beings. Yeah. So
this was the end of this quote, total cooboration with
the British, and it changed people's opinions of him too. Um,
he wasn't the same guy anymore. And I mean we
can talk about that maybe first in a literary sense
(22:02):
with Yates, because people have suggested that this is part
of the reason why Yates's opinion of Tore soured. According
to Anna Jelna car To, Gore's resigning his knighthood just
didn't match up correctly with the idea Yates had of
him as this serene mystic from the east who certainly
(22:24):
wouldn't get involved in politics, certainly wouldn't do anything as
bold as renounced his knighthood. Um, it just didn't match
up with Yates is to Gore. And of course, I
mean we can assume there's some other reasons in here.
Yates really didn't like to Gore's translations. As we mentioned earlier, Um,
he was probably bound to be disappointed in this creation
(22:47):
he had imagined for himself, because to Gore did write
so much more than just romantic poetry. He wrote essays
and plays and prose. But I mean we have to
assume it did play a role. Yeah, I mean I
think it did. But I think at the same time
there had to be more to it. I mean, they
knew each other, so he must have known that there
(23:08):
was more to Gore than just this romantic literature and
poetry that he wrote. Um, he did a lot of
political writing, a lot of speaking, he was kind of
a voice for for the way he movement. He had
publicly promoted him though yep, I guess so that's true.
But I guess it was bound to happen, since to
Gore wrote other things anyway, so there was bound to
(23:29):
be some kind of falling out between them at some point.
But it changed. It changed what Yates thought of to Gore,
at least in the you know, outwardly, and it changed
I think what to Gore thought of his own views
a little bit too. Definitely, he didn't really he didn't
really change his views about the East and West needing
(23:49):
each other. He still thought that. He still thought, you know,
he wanted to see um kind of a universal land
where people all cultures would come together and there weren't
all these barriers between them. But at the same time,
I think he was very conflicted about the situation that happened,
especially because he had English friends and so it made
(24:09):
the situation kind of difficult for them, And he tried
to express these feelings through his work after the fact. Yeah,
and after this he kept on traveling, so he was
still out and about in the world very much. So
Um he said to have visited more than thirty countries
on five continents of lecturing and having these extended conversations
(24:31):
with people like Einstein on truth and beauty. They have
this amazing debate and music. I mean stuff that you
wouldn't even you know, think of Einstein talking about. Yeah,
but um, I mean to Gore's is all over the world.
He meets Mussolini and it takes them a little while
before he starts hearing reports about the fascism that's going
(24:55):
on in Italy from some exiles and denounces Mussolini. But yeah,
even and you know his his denunciations are still very
polite and proper interesting to read them. Yep. He never
loses his smooth talking never. Um. But so he this
(25:16):
going around the world is partially to speak because he's
asked and to to speak on behalf of the independence
movement UM. But it's also to earn money for his school.
He's still stumping for his cause, which is education, and
he's still out there trying to keep the school, the
six centric school that he started going UM and later
(25:39):
this school in Shanthan ni Kitan it becomes a university
called Visba Barathi University in nine UM and so he
has some success with that, but it's sort of peters
out as he. Um. Yeah, you were talking about able
to support it. What it's like today kind of more
of a place where you can learn about him than
(26:01):
a university. I think it's more to study his philosophies
and so forth than necessarily. But it does still exist. Yes,
you can still visit it today. Actually, I think that
India's recently nominated to be a World here UNESCO World
Heritage Site. You've been there. I've been there. I went
there when I was fourteen, Um, although I can't remember
(26:21):
too much unfortunately, but I do remember it being very
serene and um and uh liking it a lot. That's
the rule of the podcast. You always have to mention
the places have been too. It makes everybody think we're
going all over the world seeing all this stuff. Oh dear,
not really, guys, Um, But I don't know. Even with
(26:42):
all of this traveling around the world and promoting his
school and promoting his writings, he kind of kept his
distance from the more confrontational side of the nationalist movement.
He didn't get super involved in that. Even after this,
renouncing his knighthood and all that, No, he still to
his distance. Um. He was still part of it through
(27:03):
his writings and through his talks that he gave Um
and he was still friends with Gandhi of course, even
though he didn't necessarily support a reaction that he did
but Um, but he didn't get to to involved, and
unfortunately he passed away about seven years before India actually
achieved independence in ninety seven. But on the bright side,
(27:26):
maybe Um India's national anthem John a Ghanamana is based
on one of his song poems, and another of his songs,
am are Shownar bang La is Bangladesh's national anthem. Yeah,
so that's pretty impressive, I think. So he still gets
to be a part of it. It's not easy to
forget him at all. He's still a big part of
(27:48):
the national culture. Every time they sing the national anthem
or hear it, they'll think of him and Um and
music art. Actually, an interesting fact about his art he
didn't take up painting until he was about seventy years old,
which I think is amazing. So he takes a painting
at age seventy. Yet somehow he managed to create about
(28:09):
two thousand paintings and drawings before he died around age eight.
He was busy so that's incredible. Thank you so much
for joining us today for this Saturday classic. If you
have heard any kind of email address or maybe a
Facebook you are l during the course of the episode,
(28:29):
that might be obsolete. It might be doubly obsolete because
we have changed our email address again. You can now
reach us at History podcast at i heart radio dot com,
and we're all over social media at missed in History
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
Google podcasts, the I heart radio app, and wherever else
you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
(28:54):
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