Rabindranath Tagore was born in the Bengali section of north Calcutta (now
Kolkata) on May 7, 1861. He was a man of many talents: writer, poet, composer, painter, social reformer, essayist, and novelist. Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, after which he became a revered, worldwide literary phenomenon. With my roots in West Bengal, India, I grew up listening to Rabindranath Tagore’s songs. As I read Tagore’s work, I find his writing haunting, mesmerizing and soul-stirring. The vivid visual imagery, nuanced character development, varied pacing or rhythm and tone in his writing crystallize his stories in my mind. Tagore was a literary genius. He was also a wise and compassionate observer of the human condition. Tagore’s work demonstrated his depth in understanding the nimble and complex workings of the human mind. Tagore’s writings also contain spiritual themes, which are very relevant to our modern world.
In this post, I am very excited to present my interview with Dr. Fakrul Alam. Dr. Alam is a highly accomplished academic, scholar, and professor with many publications. He is also a leading translator of the Bengali language. I read The Essential Tagore, edited by Alam and Radha Chakravarty. I loved the book. I am very grateful to Dr. Alam for his generosity in sharing his wisdom and depth of knowledge about Tagore. He is very astute and brilliant in his observations about Tagore’s work, having extensively studied Tagore’s prolific work. Hope readers enjoy the interview.
INTERVIEW WITH DR. FAKRUL ALAM: RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Dr. Anindita Ganguly (A.G.): Namaste Dr. Alam. Welcome to the blog. An Honor to have you, Sir.
Dr. Fakrul Alam (F. A.): Thank you very much and namaste.
A.G.: Please tell me about yourself and what drew you to Tagore’s work.
F.A.: I grew up in Dhaka, Bangladesh. My father loved Tagore’s songs and three of my
sisters were schooled in Tagore’s music. However, as my formal education was in
English medium schools, I did not encounter Tagore’s work in Bengali till later in life. I
completed my master’s degree in English literature at Simon Fraser University and doctorate at the University of British Columbia. I taught many courses and led different
programs in the English Department at Dhaka University from 1975. I retired in 2017, but I still teach a course at Dhaka University. I am also the Adviser of the East
West University’ English department and teach 2 courses there.
I grew up, so to speak, listening to Tagore’s songs. I unconsciously absorbed Tagore’s work as it was part of my growing up in Dhaka. I should add that there was a Tagore revival in our part of Bengal at that time and that his centenary year was being widely celebrated when I was entering my teens. However, my work as a translator began
when I was attracted to the works of the legendary Bengali poet Jibanananda Das and
felt that I had to translate him. I discovered then that I could translate from Bengali to
English reasonably well. Then, I teamed up with Dr. Radha Chakravarthy in translating
Tagore’s work after getting an offer from Visva Bharati’a Granthana Vibhage to publish
an anthology of Tagore’s work for his sesquicentenary. Soon after we met Sharmila
Sen of Harvard University Press who wanted to co-publish the book for them. Thus it was that The Essential Tagore was born.
A.G. You have an incredible career and accomplishments. Please tell us who Rabindranath Tagore was.
F.A.: Tagore wrote extensively in different genres: poetry, prose, short fiction, novels,
essays, letters, plays, and songs. He was also a painter, a composer and an
educator—a polymath. As well, he was a world traveler who has left behind some vivid
accounts of his travels at home and abroad. In short, Tagore was an amazing person
with indefatigable energy and abundance of curiosity which took him everywhere and
anywhere in the spaces of the imagination. Indeed, he was given the title of “Viswa
Kobi” or “poet of the world” by his people. He won the Nobel Prize for his work,
Gitanjali, (Song Offerings) in 1913. Tagore’s song offerings were dedicated to God and
the people of the world. After the Nobel Prize, his works were translated into different
languages. Multitudes of people met him in print due to his books traveling across the world. Tagore also traveled worldwide. Tagore interacted well with all sorts of people he met in his travels. He was known and revered worldwide by the second decade of the 20 th century.
If readers are interested in learning more about influences which shaped Tagore’s work,
I highly recommend Satyajit Ray’s documentary on Tagore.
A.G.: Do you have any one favorite Tagore’s work you would recommend?
F.A.: Not a particular work, but I would urge people to read as well as listen to his
songs. I myself listen to Tagore’s songs daily but also read many of his other works
Tagore whenever I can. Tagore wrote over 2000 song-lyrics; I have translated about 400
of them in Gitabitan: Selected Song-lyrics of Rabindranath Tagore, a book which is available in Bangladesh but unfortunately has not been marketed internationally yet.
Tagore’s compilation of his song-lyrics is to be found in the Bengali anthology titled
Gitabitan. It contains songs of devotion, patriotic songs related to the Swadeshi
movement, songs of romantic love, and miscellaneous songs from his plays and for all
sorts of occasions such as marriage or death.
A.G.: What is the Swadeshi movement?
F.A.: Tagore was in a movement for a few years to prevent the British colonial
government from partitioning Bengal. You could translate the word “as for one’s
country”. He later became disillusioned with the movement but his love for Bengal only kept increasing afterwards.
A.G.: Tagore referred to God as “Lord of Life” in his writings. How did Tagore
conceptualize God?
F.A.: Tagore viewed God as infinite and limitless, the One we need to seek, meditate
on, and discover again and again
A.G.: Is that referred to as sadhana?
F.A.: Yes. You must strive to seek God. Work hard on it. Tagore’s work consisted of his
meditations on his encounters with nature too, such as sunrise and sunset and the six
seasons of Bangladesh: summer (grisma), monsoon (barsa), autumn (sharat), late
autumn (hemanta), winter (sheeth), and spring (basanta). He was also a seeker of
beauty.
A.G.: What are some of the different influences which shaped Tagore’s work?
F.A: There were many. His father influenced him spiritually. Tagore was influenced by Brahmoism, which goes back to the ancient roots of Hindu philosophy and is for spiritual upliftment. He came from a musical family. But it was also a family of zamindars or landlords. At the bidding of his father, he moved away from his elite and privileged Calcutta-based life to rural areas to manage his estates. In the process, he met ordinary men and women who also impacted on his works, such as, the man we meet in his short story, “Postmaster”. When he moved to Kushtia, a district in East Bengal, he was
heavily influenced by the mystical Baul singers. He wrote the song, “Sonar Bangla”
(“Golden Bengal”) out of patriotic instincts nurtured by his closeness to the land of
Bengal. His encounters with nature in Bengal as well as his world travels shaped his
writings in innumerable ways.
As a student of American literature, I can’t help telling you that I believe that he was
heavily influenced by the tenets of the American transcendentalist movement and Unitarianism.
In short, Tagore was never limited by anything. He was dynamic, enlightened and a life- long learner. He saw life as a long quest to traverse different realms to find God and the Beautiful. His position is best embodied in a line of his Bengali poem “Balaka” (or “A
Flock of Geese”) which I have translated thus: “not here, not there, somewhere else,
somewhere far away” in his poem.
A.G.: One of the themes that I notice in The Essential Tagore is the individual versus
society. I can see him as something of a feminist in his depiction of complex and
nuanced female characters and in his denouncement of caste and religious discrimination, anticolonialism and nationalism.
F.A.: This also reveals his open-mindedness, intellectual growth and lifelong devotion to
learning. Tagore valued freedom—both spiritual and intellectual freedom. Despite
growing up in an aristocratic family, he contributed creatively to the freedom movement against the British. For example, although the British monarch had conferred the knighthood to him in 1915, after hearing about the massacre in Jallianwala Bagh,
Tagore registered his protest by renouncing his knighthood and returned the title to the
British monarch. We must remember too that he had established Visva-Bharati
University in Shantiniketan, West Bengal earlier to nurture intellectual and spiritual
freedom and to promote international exchanges. He was very much a humanist. In his book, The Religion of Man, he reveals his deep love for humanity and reverence for a
religion that unites people. He was totally committed to international amity, good-will
and friendship among the peoples of the world.
A.G.: That is incredible. How is Tagore’s work relevant to the modern world?
F.A.: To take only one example by way of an answer, he was sensitive to the degradation of the environment. In his play, Roktokhorobi, he discussed how extracting minerals at any cost was impacting on indigenous on it as well as poor people. He was concerned about how the Industrial revolution separated people from nature. His thoughts on humanism, international amity and goodwill are invaluable. His philosophy of seeking intellectual and spiritual freedom is very important.
A.G.: Very true. We need to increase awareness and implementation of these principles now more than ever before. Is there anything else that we did not cover which is
important?
F.A.: The most important thing for people to do is read his works. The Essential Tagore is a convenient place to begin but there are many other anthologies and books in print
representing his life and ideas they can access and read.
A.G.: Thank you very much for your powerful and informative interview. Much
appreciation and gratitude to you. Let me conclude by saying I loved reading The Essential Tagore edited by you and Radha Chakravarty.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Rabindranath Tagore was a key figure in the Bengali Renaissance, impacting on
literature, spirituality, sociocultural and political movements. He produced a vast body of works. I just started my journey of reading Tagore’s works, and I am deeply moved. Tagore’s beliefs in international amity, goodwill, humanism and freedom (intellectual,
spiritual) are more relevant than ever.