Celebrating 100 years since Tagore won Nobel Prize

"Rabindaranth Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize. The 100th anniversary of Tagore"

Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize. That was in 1913, but his work spans the generations.

Tagore’s masterwork Gitanjali, was the provocative poem series that won the Nobel jury over.

It’s hard for an Indian or Bangladeshi to imagine a world without Rabindranath Tagore. 

His verse was, and still is, a powerful tool of expression throughout a region that speaks the world’s fourth largest language…Bengali.

Tagore won the Nobel prize for litterature in 1913, and the world has been celebrating his work ever since. Simply, because his poetry is still relevant today. It was Tagore who coined the ”Mahatma”, or great soul epithet on Gandhi.

And so much more, says legendary Indian actress Sharmila Tagore, the great-great-grand niece of the Nobel Prize winner.

”Indian national anthem, Bangladesh national anthem, both written by him, yes.”

Sharmilla Tagore came to Sweden to partake in ”Gitanjali,” a special tribute to the Tagore poem series that won him the Nobel prize,  a century ago.

It's a lively  rendition of his poems, essays, and songs accompanied by several traditional dancers.

”I think his thoughts are very relevent, even now,” she says.

“If it’s raining and you’re in a romantic mood you quote Tagore. When you want to be patriotic, you quote Tagore. Or slightly naughty, or somthing about children.  Or spiritual. So there is not anything he’s not talked about. Its such a large compilation that it depicts every mood and situation.”

“In the joy of your heart, may you feel the living joy. That sang one spring morning sending its glad voice across one hundred years.”

Like no one else , Tagore helps us to associate, to piece together life’s different elements:

”How man and nature is interconnected. Humility, I mean every time you read it, more is revealed.”

The 100 year celebration drew a large crowd from the Indian diaspora in Sweden.

Shantanu Dasgupta  sees Tagore as a language teacher,  and an important link to his own north Indian culture.

”Especially for Bengali people, because we feel that anything we talk about, our expressions of emotions or intellectual thoughts are linguistically given by Tagore. Before Tagore there were not so many ways of expressing our feelings. So Tagore has a huge contribution in bengali language, almost like Shakespeare in English.”

Those emotions vividly brought out in song and dance, weave the inticate political, social, and spiritual texts into a sort of folk opera. And young people are discovering his genius.

The director of the company putting on the Tagore commemoration, Sangheeta Datta, says Tagore strove to underline the universality of Hindu, Muslim and Christian thought.

”Every civilization, every culture is different from each other. Communities can be different, people can be different but to recognize that difference and still be able to hold a dialogue, a sense of communication, that’s what I feel is the most valuable message we can take from Tagore and apply it to the state of things as they are in our world today.”

Toward the end of the evening, Sharmila  Tagore reads a final verse from Gitanjali... with a broad smile covers her face.  Why the grin? I ask afterward.

”There is that oneness that all of us yearn for. That connection. That bliss,” she says.

• Sweden
• Rabindranath Tagore
• Nobel Prize
• Ric Wasserman
• eng