Polymaths

"One of the century’s most esteemed scientists."

"If any one person in the previous century personified the word polymath, it was von Neumann."

"His contributions to physics, mathematics, computer science, and economics rank him as one of the all-time intellectual giants of each field."

"As early as 1902 (Bengali Samvat 1309) Rabindranath Tagore wrote that there was no Indian in the history of India written by foreigners: “as if Indians do not exist; only those who have fought and killed among themselves are real ... we are not parasites of India; through hundreds of centuries we have put down tens of thousands of roots in the heart of this land, but unfortunately we have to read a type of history which makes our children forget exactly this. It appears that in (the history of) India we are nobodies; only those who have come from outside matter in (the history of this) land."

"Rabindranath Tagore, like Chaucer's forerunners, writes music for his words, and one understands at every moment that he is so abundant, so spontaneous, so daring in his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defence."

"In “The Religion of the Forest,” Tagore wrote about the influence that the forest dwellers of ancient India had on classical Indian literature. The forests are sources of water and the storehouses of a biodiversity that can teach us the lessons of democracy—of leaving space for others while drawing sustenance from the common web of life. Tagore saw unity with nature as the highest stage of human evolution."

"In Bangladesh, textbooks created after 1971 narrated events through a lens of Bengali cultural nationalism. Bengali cultural nationalism includes Hindus, such at Rabindranath Tagore and Ram Mohan Roy, who contributed to Bengali literature and society prior to the partition of the subcontinent. Rabindranath Tagore is particularly dear to Bangladeshis. His poetry and songs, "Rabindra Sangit", are sung by Bengali speaking school children, additionally he authored the words and music of the national anthem. Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal). Song is an integral part of Bengali life, and in particular, songs by Rabindranath Tagore are well known. The Muktijuddho soldiers are remembered for their songs of inspiration, many of them authored by Tagore, sung as they trudged along rice paddies. Another reason Tagore is popular is because he was banned in Bangladesh in the late 1960s, when West Pakistan was attempting to put down Bengali cultural nationalism that was gaining ground."

"Many of us were educated on the literature of India when we fell in love we read Rabindranath Tagore and when we matured we tried to understand Gandhi."

"Gandhi and Tagore. Two types entirely different from each other, and yet both of them typical of India, both in the long line of India's great men ... It is not so much because of any single virtue but because of the tout ensemble, that I felt that among the world's great men today Gandhi and Tagore were supreme as human beings. What good fortune for me to have come into close contact with them."

"Therefore he has sung lyrics to the end, and all the world except the critics has heard him gladly. India was a little surprised when her poet received the Nobel prize (1913); the Bengal reviewers had seen only his faults, and the Calcutta professors had used his poems as examples of bad Bengali.30 The young Nationalists disliked him because his condemnation of the abuses in India’s moral life was stronger than his cry for political freedom; and when he was knighted it seemed to them a betrayal of India. He did not hold the honor long; for when, by a tragic misunderstanding, British soldiers fired into a religious gathering at Amritsar (1919), Tagore returned his decorations to the Viceroy with a stinging letter of renunciation. Today he is a solitary figure, perhaps the most impressive of all men now on the earth: a reformer who has had the courage to denounce the most basic of India’s institutions—the caste system—and the dearest of her beliefs—transmigration; a Nationalist who longs for India’s liberty, but has dared to protest against the chauvinism and self-seeking that play a part in the Nationalist movement; an educator who has tired of oratory and politics, and has retreated to his ashram and hermitage at Shantiniketan, to teach some of the new generation his gospel of moral self-liberation; a poet broken-hearted by the premature death of his wife, and by the humiliation of his country; a philosopher steeped in the Vedanta, a mystic hesitating, like Chandi Das, between woman and God, and yet shorn of the ancestral faith by the extent of his learning; a lover of Nature facing her messengers of death with no other consolation than his unaging gift of song."

"There are many virtues in these poems—an intense and yet sober patriotism; a femininely subtle understanding of love and woman, nature and man; a passionate penetration into the insight of India’s philosophers; and a Tennysonian delicacy of sentiment and phrase. If there is any fault in them it is that they are too consistently beautiful, too monotonously idealistic and tender. Every woman in them is lovely, and every man in them is infatuated with woman, or death, or God; nature, though sometimes terrible, is always sublime, never bleak, or barren, or hideous. Perhaps the story of Chitra is Tagore’s story: her lover Arjuna tires of her in a year because she is completely and uninterruptedly beautiful; only when she loses her beauty and, becoming strong, takes up the natural labors of life, does the god love her again—a profound symbol of the contented marriage."

"Rabindranath was brought up in an atmosphere of comfort and refinement, in which music, poetry and high discourse were the very air that he breathed. He was a gentle spirit from birth, a Shelley who refused to die young or to grow old; so affectionate that squirrels climbed upon his knees, and birds perched upon his hands. He was observant and receptive, and felt the eddying overtones of experience with a mystic sensitivity. Sometimes he would stand for hours on a balcony, noting with literary instinct the figure and features, the mannerisms and gait of each passer-by in the street; sometimes, on a sofa in an inner room, he would spend half a day silent with his memories and his dreams. He began to compose verses on a slate, happy in the thought that errors could be so easily wiped away. Soon he was writing songs full of tenderness for India—for the beauty of her scenery, the loveliness of her women, and the sufferings of her people; and he composed the music for these songs himself. All India sang them, and the young poet thrilled to hear them on the lips of rough peasants as he traveled, unknown, through distant villages.25 Here is one of them, translated from the Bengali by the author himself; who else has ever expressed with such sympathetic scepticism the divine nonsense of romantic love?"

"In the nineteenth century Bengali replaced Sanskrit as the literary language of Bengal; the novelist Chatterjee was its Boccaccio, the poet Tagore was its Petrarch."

"Rabindranath is the greatest man I have had the privilege to know. There has been no one like him anywhere on our globe for many centuries."

"After these conversations with Tagore some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me."

"The British now began to regard him as a subversive nationalist, though in fact his national- ism was purely cultural. He played no part in the Indian National Congress with its demands for an increased share in the legislatures and the higher civil service. To Rabindra all that was as alien and meaningless as the British administration, His idea of politics was effort directed to the reconstruction of Bengali village life. Characteristically, when he later visited Cornell University in New York State as a celebrity, and had to sign the distinguished visitor's book, in the space for the visitor's nationality he inscribed not 'Indian' but 'Bengali'."

"One aspect of this behaviour pattern had been noticed by the great poet, Rabindranath, who was reported as follows in an interview to The Times of India published on April 18, 1924: "Another very important fact which according to the poet was making it almost impossible for Hindu-Mohammedan unity to become an accomplished fact was that the Mohammedans could not confine their patriotism to any one country. The poet said that he had very frankly asked many Mohammedans whether, in the event of any Mohammedan power invading India, they would stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common land. He could not be satisfied with the reply he got from them. He said that he could definitely state that even men like Mr. Mohammed Ali had declared that under no circumstances was it permissible for any Mohammedan, whatever his country might be, to stand against any other Mohammedan.""

"He is a great poet, I can see that now. It's not only a matter of individual lines which have real genius, or individual poems . . . but that mighty flow of poetry which takes its strength from Hinduism as from the Ganges, and is called Rabindranath Tagore."

"Jana Gana Mana’s “dispenser of India’s destiny”, while not its past or present ruler, unambiguously signifies the divine Guide, the eternal Guru, Krishna... [Tagore] leaves no one in doubt that he means the Eternal Charioteer leading the pilgrims on their journey through countless ages of the timeless history of mankind. This clearly refers to the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, who is there as Arjuna’s charioteer. He is worshipped as an incarnation of Vishnu, who takes birth from age to age, whenever Dharma has weakened and needs to be strengthened... The iconography of Vishnu and Krishna (chariot, conch, the expression yuge yuge, “age after age”) is exuberantly sung there, and the singers describe themselves as yatri, “pilgrims”. King George, Prime Minister Nehru or any otherworldly ruler is absent, the entire focus is on Krishna, the guide and charioteer. He is said to “deliver from sorrow and pain”, which would be too much honour for a mere state leader; and to be “the people’s guide on the path”.... According to Rabindranath Tagore, and according to all Indian citizens who intone or honour his anthem, India is not complete without a heaven-oriented, sacred dimension."

"A certain high official in His Majesty’s service, who was also my friend, had requested that I write a song of felicitation towards the Emperor. The request simply amazed me. It caused a great stir in my heart. In response to that great mental turmoil, I pronounced the victory in Jana Gana Mana of that Bhagya Bidhata [Bengali pronunciation; “dispenser of destiny”] of India who has from age after age held steadfast the reins of India’s chariot through rise and fall, through the straight path and the curved. That Lord of Destiny, that Reader of the Collective Mind of India, that Perennial Guide, could never be George V, George VI, or any other George. Even my official friend understood this about the song. After all, even if his admiration for the crown was excessive, he was not lacking in simple common sense."

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service is joy."

"Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value."

"In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is given to interpret."

"Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization? … It is the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new and living."

"Life's errors cry for the merciful beauty that can modulate their isolation into a harmony with the whole."

"The one without second is emptiness, the other one makes it true."

"Light finds her treasure of colours through the antagonism of clouds."

"I touch God in my song as the hill touched the far-away sea with its waterfall."

"While God waits for his temple to be built of love, men bring stones."

"Jewel-Like the immortal does not boast of its length of years but of the scintillating point of the moment."

"The child ever dwells in the mystery of ageless time, unobscured by the dust of history."

"God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience."

"Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand With a grip that kills it.Wishing to hearten a timid lamp great night lights all her stars."

"Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years."

"In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight."

"O Woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men; these are ever endowing you with beauty from their own hearts … You are one-half woman and one-half dream."

"The wise man warns me that life is but a dewdrop on the lotus leaf."

"To the guests that must go, bid God's speed and brush away all traces of their steps."

"Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf."

"My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes."

"Please is frail like a dewdrop, while it laughs it dies. But sorrow is strong and abiding. Let sorrowful love wake in your eyes."

"We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent; We do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope."

"I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore."

"Ah me, why did they build my house by the road to the market town?"

"It is widely known in India that there are individuals who have the power to attain temporarily the state of Samadhi, the complete merging of the self in the infinite, a state which is indescribable. While accepting their testimony as true, let us at the same time have faith in the testimony of others who have felt a profound love, which is the intense feeling of union, for a Being who comprehends in himself all things that are human in knowledge, will and action."

"The tendency of the Indian mind has ever been towards that transcendentalism which does not hold religion to be ultimate but rather to be a means to a further end. This end consists in the perfect liberation of the individual in the universal spirit across the furthest limits of humanity itself."

"There is no external means of taking freedom by the throat. It is the inward process of losing ourselves that leads to it. Bondage in all its forms has its stronghold in the inner self and not in the outside world; it is in the dimming of our consciousness, in the narrowing of our perspective, in the wrong valuation of things."

"I was born in what was once the metropolis of British India. My own ancestors came floating to Calcutta upon the earliest tide of the fluctuating fortune of the East India Company. The unconventional code of life for our family has been a confluence of three cultures, the Hindu, Mohammedan and British."

"Our village poet sings: “Man will brightly flash into your sight, my heart, if you shut the door of desires.” We have seen how primitive man was occupied with his physical needs, and thus restricted himself to the present which is the time boundary of the animal; and he missed the urge of his consciousness to seek its emancipation in a world of ultimate human value."

"It is for dignity of being that we aspire through the expansion of our consciousness in a great reality of Man to which we belong. We realize it through admiration and love, through hope that soars beyond the actual, beyond our own span of life into an endless time wherein we live the life of all men."