That fateful day: Rabindranath Tagore with a group of Bengalis in Santiniketan, November, 1913, after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. "But he returned and two months later, on 13 November 1913, got the news of the award of the Nobel Prize to him. There was tremendous excitement among Bengalis, and there was the standard reaction to any kind of success in the West for an Indian. ............................ There was a rush to grovel at his feet and take a share of his glory, and a crowd of about five hundred Bengalis of all classes descended on Santiniketan to offer him felicitations. Among them was also my teacher, the future poet Mohit Lal Majumdar. Tagore felt that there was a stupendous and appalling unreality about this homage, and that he was being honoured for having been honoured by the Swedish Academy, and not on his own account. So in receiving the homage he committed a terrible mistake. Instead of keeping his opinion to himself and dismissing his Bengali felicitators with conventional thanks, he had a go at them in order to settle his old scores. My teacher, Mohit Babu, told me the story in the class next day with eyes flashing in anger. Yet he was a sincere worshipper of Tagore and had taught me how to recite his poems properly. He described how contemptuously Tagore had treated those who had gone to Santiniketan and likened them to village boys who tied a tin to a dog's tail and chased it with shouts through the streets. He also said when the visitors were walking back to the railway station Tagore drove past in his dogcart with his scientist friend Jagadis Bose by his side, scattering dust on them. I can still recall the appearance of my teacher and his angry words. ............................................................................. I give some examples of his scorn expressed in his most highflown manner: 'It is not in my power,' he began by saying, 'to accept without diffidence, and in its entirety, the honour you have come here to bestow upon me in the name of the country as a whole.' 'The calumnies and insults from the hands of countrymen which have fallen to my lot have not been trifling. Till now I have borne all that in silence. In such circumstances, I am unable myself to understand fully as yet how I have come to obtain this honour from abroad.' .............................................................................. Then he pleaded his inability to accept the congratulations of his countrymen: 'Therefore how can I shamelessly appropriate to myself the honour of which you are making a present to me as representative of the general public of the whole country? This day of mine will not last for ever. The ebbtide will set in again. Then all the squalor of the muddy bottom will be exposed in bank after bank.' He concluded by saying that he could not gulp down the heady draught of their homage to him and wanted to keep his mind free from the intoxication it was likely to bring about. All this was true, and he also had the right to be angry. But he should have risen above his own grievances, not to speak of the low and scurrilous abuse by people who were the most worthless set of Bengalis morally. Apart from his self-respect as a writer even his social position should have enabled him to do so. It should be pointed out that Tagore was a wealthy landowner, and there was no social compulsion on him to come to terms with others in order to maintain his worldly position. He could ignore his detractors. But the injured child with memories of unfair treatment that he remained all his life, got the better of him. This speech was the beginning of a new and deeper alienation between him and his people." Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch! Previous  Next  List  Home