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Tagore and Gandhi
“Tagore and Gandhi have undoubtedly been the two outstanding and dominating figures of India in this first half of the twentieth century. It is instructive to compare and contrast them.
No two persons could be so different from one another in their make up or temperaments. Tagore, the aristocractic artist turned democrat with proletarian sympathies, represented essentially the cultural tradition of India, the tradition of accepting life in the fullness thereof and going through it with song and dance.
Gandhi, more a man of the people, almost the embodiment of the Indian peasant, represented the other ancient tradition of India, that of renunciation and asceticism.
And yet Tagore was primarily the man of thought, Gandhi of concentrated and ceaseless activity. Both, in their different ways had a world outlook, and both were at the same time wholly Indian. They seemed to present different but harmonious aspects of India and to complement one another.”
– Jawaharlal Nehru,
The Discovery of India.
” On one occasion when Mahatma Gandhi visited Tagore’s school at Shantiniketan, a young woman got him to sign her autograph book. Gandhi wrote: ‘ Never make a promise in haste . Having once made it fulfill it at the cost of your life’.
When he saw this entry, Tagore became agitated. He wrote in the same book a short poem in Bengali to the effect that no one can be made ‘ a prisoner forever with the chain of clay ‘. He went on to conclude in English, possibly so that Gandhi could read it too, ‘Fling away your promise if it is found to be wrong’ “.
– The Argumentative Indian,
Amartya Sen.
7 August is the death anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).
– Joy Kallivayalil.
