November 22, 2010 • 28 mins
In addition to being the first Asian Nobel laureate, the multitalented Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore was known for his political influence. In this episode, Sarah and Deblina trace the life of Tagore through his childhood to knighthood and beyond.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm very happy to be joined
by my new co host today. Yep, I'm Deblina chokoate
(00:21):
boardy I will be joining Sarah and talking about history
stuff with you. Yeah. Deblina 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
clicked on lots of things quick, lots of length. That's
what we all want you to do. But um, Debilina,
(00:44):
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 India, they're Bengali, and
our topic today is Rabindranath Tagore, who is a well
(01:06):
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 kol
Kappa Film Festival, has showed movies that are based on
his works. Um. People are performing his plays, school children
(01:29):
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
car features kind of a different aspect, and it's featuring
(01:50):
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 appreci she how
just how much of an accomplished artist this guy was.
How much of an accomplished poet he was? He was
a singer, a philosopher, he was interested in politics, he
(02:10):
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 feel like got up to that, what have
I done? Right? So his work in the political arena
(02:34):
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 arts
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 as far as politics well, and he's not
that well known in the West at all. So I mean,
(02:55):
we have a lot to explore, even the things he's
famous for in India definitely. And 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 try to talk
about a little later we will, um, But really what
we're gonna look at is just was he a nationalist
(03:16):
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 into a well to do, well educated, very artistic,
(03:38):
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 real melting
pot in his home of learning and um, just a
lot of intelligent discussion, I imagine, definitely. I think it
(03:59):
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,
(04:19):
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,
(04:41):
but hey, it's a part of culture, right that the
arts with a little wrestling boards of aspect of culture
like sports. So in addition to being involved in this
yearly cultural event to Gore's father, Deb's enough to Gore,
he was very involved in something called the Brahma Somage.
The Aramis Homage was basically a movement within Hinduism, which
(05:03):
is 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 never really became that
(05:25):
widely popular. Um. Yeah, I mean, 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 Brahmismdge movement. It did
(05:47):
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 that's the beginnings of that,
I guess. Yeah. But I mean, if we're talking about
his childhood intellectual life aside um, he was kind of lonely.
(06:08):
He wasn't that close to his parents. This is according
to his own memoirs. M 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 us accounts of traveling with
(06:29):
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 he did. Yeah, So he
(06:51):
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 this can make you feel a little inadequate.
(07:13):
He lived a very long time, but he was writing
for his entire life pretty much NonStop, definitely. In eighteen
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
(07:33):
style of 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,
(07:54):
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
(08:14):
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 toward 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
(08:37):
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
(08:58):
the eighteen nineties to manage his is 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
(09:21):
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
(09:41):
of preserving culture. But 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, uh, And I mean it wasn't just limited
(10:02):
to his own 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
(10:25):
South Africa in 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
War really it got him more interested in it. It
(10:46):
it made him look more into world politics, world events. Yeah,
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 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
(11:10):
kind of had some truth to it, maybe, but wasn't
exactly true. To Gore was against colonialism, to 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
(11:33):
actually his friend. UM So they differed in this way.
He was one who did use these tactics and and
they disagreed 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 he certainly wasn't
(11:56):
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 affect true change.
(12:18):
And 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, there can
(12:39):
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.
(13:01):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:44):
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 encore break both types of thought into this school
that he had. So what he did is he got
(14:05):
both Indiana and Western scholars to teach there. And um,
it was a different kind of environment than 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
(14:28):
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
(14:50):
inspired several poems song poems as they're sometimes called, which
he translated into English and published as a collect and
called Keith and Joy in nine twelve. And some have
said that the fact that he did translate themselves is
not necessarily a good thing. Yeah. I mean they still
(15:10):
sold well apparently between March and November nineteen thirteen, 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 W. B. Yates.
(15:31):
And they were friends, if you could call it that,
for about thirty seven years. They 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,
(15:54):
they actually met through William Rothenstein. He was an artist
who hosted to Gore and One in in around nineteen
twelve nineteen 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
(16:14):
sent them to Yates and some other some other people
about town. Yates apparently loved them. He was really really
into them. He apparently said, quote, I have 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
(16:35):
some strangers see how much it moved me. Um, But
I don't know. Maybe we should talk about yates His
later 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
(16:56):
English translation and through people kind of spreading the word
abou out him, and it led and will not people
spreadying the word, but just his talent, I guess, led
to him winning the Noble Prize for Literature in thirteen.
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
(17:20):
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 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.
(17:42):
But then, unfortunately, 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,
(18:03):
but many of the 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
(18:24):
seventy nine, but some people say 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 disturbing. 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
(18:48):
that went down. Yeah, it 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
to Gore caught wind of this, and he was pretty
(19:10):
disgusted by the entire situation and 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.
(19:33):
He's clearly very 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
(19:56):
to the 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
(20:16):
liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings. Yeah.
So this was the end of this quote, total cooperation
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,
(20:37):
with Yates, because people have suggested that this is part
of the reason why Yates's opinion of Tore soured. According
to Anna Jaelna car Too, Core'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
(20:58):
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 the 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 as translations. As we
mentioned earlier, Um, he was probably bound to be disappointed
(21:21):
in this creation 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 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
(21:42):
known that there 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
had he had publicly promoted him though yep, I guess,
so that's true. But I guess was bound to happen,
since to Gore wrote other things anyway, so there was
(22:03):
bound to 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 each other. He still thought that. He
(22:25):
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 he I think he was very
conflicted about the situation that happened, especially because he had
English friends and so it made the situation kind of
difficult for them, and he tried to express these feelings
(22:48):
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 country ease on five
continents of lecturing and having these extended conversations with people
like Einstein on truth and beauty. They have this amazing
(23:10):
debate and music. I mean stuff that you wouldn't even
you know, think of Einstein talking about. Yeah, anyway, but
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 on
(23:30):
in Italy from some exiles and denounces MUSSLINI But yeah,
even then, 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
(23:51):
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 this
(24:14):
school in Shathan Ni Kitan it becomes a university called
Visba Barathi university in nineteen one, um, and so he
has some success with that, but it's sort of peters
out as he Um. Yeah, you were talking about it
to support it. What it's like today kind of more
of a place where you can learn about him than
(24:36):
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 at UNESCO
World Heritage Site. So you've been there. I've been there.
I went there when I was fourteen, um, although I
can't remember too much unfortunately, but I do remember it
(24:58):
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 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
all of this traveling around the world and promoting his
(25:20):
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 kept
his distance. Um, he was still part of it through
his writings and through his talks that he gave UM
(25:41):
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 nine But on the bright side, maybe
(26:02):
Um India's national anthem john a Ghanamana is based on
one of his song poems, and another of his songs,
am Our Shawnar 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
(26:22):
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 the painting at age seventy.
Yet somehow he managed to create about two thousand paintings
(26:45):
and drawings before he died and around age eighty he
was busy. So that's incredible. It's kind of insane. It
sounds like a recipe for corporal tunnel to me. But
he did well and he was considered, you know, among
some of India's best content briardist still So if you
would like to see some of his paintings, and you
are around India and can check out this awesome train
(27:08):
that we mentioned before, catch the train. Um, there's a
whole car that's dedicated to his paintings and his drawings,
So check it out. Well, I think that about wraps
it up. Do you have anything else you want to
say about Decore before we leave off? I don't think
I do at the moment, but if anyone else does.
If you have a favorite song or a favorite poem, um,
(27:30):
maybe a novel or play, he had a couple. He
wrote a couple of novels too, also in the early
nineteen hundreds. And if you have anything that you want
to mention or please write to us. Yeah, we're at
history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also
on Twitter at Miston History and on Facebook, so you
can post away your favorite poems and stories there um
(27:53):
and if you want to learn a little bit more
about his contemporary Gandhi, you can check out an article
by our own Jane McGrath. It's called why did Gandhi
March two hundred and forty miles for Salt? And you
can find it by searching for Gandhi on the homepage.
It's www dot how stuff works dot com For more
(28:15):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm very happy to be joined
by my new co host today. Yep, I'm Deblina chokoate
(00:21):
boardy I will be joining Sarah and talking about history
stuff with you. Yeah. Deblina 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
clicked on lots of things quick, lots of length. That's
what we all want you to do. But um, Debilina,
(00:44):
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 India, they're Bengali, and
our topic today is Rabindranath Tagore, who is a well
(01:06):
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 kol
Kappa Film Festival, has showed movies that are based on
his works. Um. People are performing his plays, school children
(01:29):
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
car features kind of a different aspect, and it's featuring
(01:50):
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 appreci she how
just how much of an accomplished artist this guy was.
How much of an accomplished poet he was? He was
a singer, a philosopher, he was interested in politics, he
(02:10):
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 feel like got up to that, what have
I done? Right? So his work in the political arena
(02:34):
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 arts
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 as far as politics well, and he's not
that well known in the West at all. So I mean,
(02:55):
we have a lot to explore, even the things he's
famous for in India definitely. And 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 try to talk
about a little later we will, um, But really what
we're gonna look at is just was he a nationalist
(03:16):
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 into a well to do, well educated, very artistic,
(03:38):
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 real melting
pot in his home of learning and um, just a
lot of intelligent discussion, I imagine, definitely. I think it
(03:59):
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,
(04:19):
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,
(04:41):
but hey, it's a part of culture, right that the
arts with a little wrestling boards of aspect of culture
like sports. So in addition to being involved in this
yearly cultural event to Gore's father, Deb's enough to Gore,
he was very involved in something called the Brahma Somage.
The Aramis Homage was basically a movement within Hinduism, which
(05:03):
is 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 never really became that
(05:25):
widely popular. Um. Yeah, I mean, 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 Brahmismdge movement. It did
(05:47):
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 that's the beginnings of that,
I guess. Yeah. But I mean, if we're talking about
his childhood intellectual life aside um, he was kind of lonely.
(06:08):
He wasn't that close to his parents. This is according
to his own memoirs. M 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 us accounts of traveling with
(06:29):
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 he did. Yeah, So he
(06:51):
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 this can make you feel a little inadequate.
(07:13):
He lived a very long time, but he was writing
for his entire life pretty much NonStop, definitely. In eighteen
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
(07:33):
style of 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,
(07:54):
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
(08:14):
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 toward 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
(08:37):
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
(08:58):
the eighteen nineties to manage his is 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
(09:21):
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
(09:41):
of preserving culture. But 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, uh, And I mean it wasn't just limited
(10:02):
to his own 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
(10:25):
South Africa in 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
War really it got him more interested in it. It
(10:46):
it made him look more into world politics, world events. Yeah,
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 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
(11:10):
kind of had some truth to it, maybe, but wasn't
exactly true. To Gore was against colonialism, to 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
(11:33):
actually his friend. UM So they differed in this way.
He was one who did use these tactics and and
they disagreed 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 he certainly wasn't
(11:56):
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 affect true change.
(12:18):
And 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, there can
(12:39):
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.
(13:01):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:44):
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 encore break both types of thought into this school
that he had. So what he did is he got
(14:05):
both Indiana and Western scholars to teach there. And um,
it was a different kind of environment than 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
(14:28):
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
(14:50):
inspired several poems song poems as they're sometimes called, which
he translated into English and published as a collect and
called Keith and Joy in nine twelve. And some have
said that the fact that he did translate themselves is
not necessarily a good thing. Yeah. I mean they still
(15:10):
sold well apparently between March and November nineteen thirteen, 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 W. B. Yates.
(15:31):
And they were friends, if you could call it that,
for about thirty seven years. They 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,
(15:54):
they actually met through William Rothenstein. He was an artist
who hosted to Gore and One in in around nineteen
twelve nineteen 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
(16:14):
sent them to Yates and some other some other people
about town. Yates apparently loved them. He was really really
into them. He apparently said, quote, I have 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
(16:35):
some strangers see how much it moved me. Um, But
I don't know. Maybe we should talk about yates His
later 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
(16:56):
English translation and through people kind of spreading the word
abou out him, and it led and will not people
spreadying the word, but just his talent, I guess, led
to him winning the Noble Prize for Literature in thirteen.
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
(17:20):
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 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.
(17:42):
But then, unfortunately, 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,
(18:03):
but many of the 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
(18:24):
seventy nine, but some people say 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 disturbing. 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
(18:48):
that went down. Yeah, it 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
to Gore caught wind of this, and he was pretty
(19:10):
disgusted by the entire situation and 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.
(19:33):
He's clearly very 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
(19:56):
to the 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
(20:16):
liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings. Yeah.
So this was the end of this quote, total cooperation
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,
(20:37):
with Yates, because people have suggested that this is part
of the reason why Yates's opinion of Tore soured. According
to Anna Jaelna car Too, Core'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
(20:58):
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 the 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 as translations. As we
mentioned earlier, Um, he was probably bound to be disappointed
(21:21):
in this creation 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 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
(21:42):
known that there 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
had he had publicly promoted him though yep, I guess,
so that's true. But I guess was bound to happen,
since to Gore wrote other things anyway, so there was
(22:03):
bound to 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 each other. He still thought that. He
(22:25):
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 he I think he was very
conflicted about the situation that happened, especially because he had
English friends and so it made the situation kind of
difficult for them, and he tried to express these feelings
(22:48):
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 country ease on five
continents of lecturing and having these extended conversations with people
like Einstein on truth and beauty. They have this amazing
(23:10):
debate and music. I mean stuff that you wouldn't even
you know, think of Einstein talking about. Yeah, anyway, but
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 on
(23:30):
in Italy from some exiles and denounces MUSSLINI But yeah,
even then, 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
(23:51):
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 this
(24:14):
school in Shathan Ni Kitan it becomes a university called
Visba Barathi university in nineteen one, um, and so he
has some success with that, but it's sort of peters
out as he Um. Yeah, you were talking about it
to support it. What it's like today kind of more
of a place where you can learn about him than
(24:36):
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 at UNESCO
World Heritage Site. So you've been there. I've been there.
I went there when I was fourteen, um, although I
can't remember too much unfortunately, but I do remember it
(24:58):
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 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
all of this traveling around the world and promoting his
(25:20):
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 kept
his distance. Um, he was still part of it through
his writings and through his talks that he gave UM
(25:41):
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 nine But on the bright side, maybe
(26:02):
Um India's national anthem john a Ghanamana is based on
one of his song poems, and another of his songs,
am Our Shawnar 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
(26:22):
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 the painting at age seventy.
Yet somehow he managed to create about two thousand paintings
(26:45):
and drawings before he died and around age eighty he
was busy. So that's incredible. It's kind of insane. It
sounds like a recipe for corporal tunnel to me. But
he did well and he was considered, you know, among
some of India's best content briardist still So if you
would like to see some of his paintings, and you
are around India and can check out this awesome train
(27:08):
that we mentioned before, catch the train. Um, there's a
whole car that's dedicated to his paintings and his drawings,
So check it out. Well, I think that about wraps
it up. Do you have anything else you want to
say about Decore before we leave off? I don't think
I do at the moment, but if anyone else does.
If you have a favorite song or a favorite poem, um,
(27:30):
maybe a novel or play, he had a couple. He
wrote a couple of novels too, also in the early
nineteen hundreds. And if you have anything that you want
to mention or please write to us. Yeah, we're at
history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also
on Twitter at Miston History and on Facebook, so you
can post away your favorite poems and stories there um
(27:53):
and if you want to learn a little bit more
about his contemporary Gandhi, you can check out an article
by our own Jane McGrath. It's called why did Gandhi
March two hundred and forty miles for Salt? And you
can find it by searching for Gandhi on the homepage.
It's www dot how stuff works dot com For more
(28:15):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
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