Rabindranath Tagore is the only Indian writer who has won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature. He was given the prize for his Gitanjali, a collection of prose poems or songs that was published in 1912.
In fact Tagore had published, ‘Gitanjali’ a collection of his poems in Bengali language in 1910 though the exact date is not known. Tagore had translated some of the poems into English and took them with him when he visited England in 1912. It contained only fifty songs from the original work. In England the famous painter saw the translation and urged his friend W. B. Yeats to read it. Enchanted by the poems Yeats recommended it to many. In September 1912, the India Society in London published Gitanjali in English. Tagore had changed not only the structure of the poems but the content as well.W. B. Yeats wrote written an introduction to it. He said, “I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me.”
In the introduction Yeats wrote, “We write long books where no page perhaps has any quality to make writing a pleasure, being confident in some general design, just as we fight and make money and fill our heads with politics---all dull things in the doing---while Mr. Tagore, like the Indian civilization itself, has been content to discover the soul and surrender himself to its spontaneity”
In 1913, less than a year later, it won the Nobel Prize.
Tagore was the first no westerner to win the prize. The British king George V knighted him in 1915. But Tagore renounced the title when the British troops killed about 400 people in Amritsar.
‘Gitanjali’ contains Tagore’s philosophy of life.
“Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure, knowing that thy living touch is upon all my limbs.
I shall ever try to keep all untruths out from my thoughts, knowing that thou art that truth which has kindled the light of reason in my mind.
I shall ever try to drive all evils away from my heart and keep my love in flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat in the inmost shrine of my heart.
And it shall be my endeavour to reveal thee in my actions, knowing it is thy power gives me strength to act”.
At another place the bard says,
“As my days pass in the crowded market of this world and my hands grow full with the daily profits, let me ever feel that I have gained nothing---let me not forget for a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours.
When I sit by the roadside, tired and panting, when I spread my bed low in the dust, let me ever feel that the long journey is still before me---let me not forget a moment, let me carry the pangs of this sorrow in my dreams and in my wakeful hours”.
He is very well aware of the hardships in life. He does not believe that God lives in some place of worship oblivious of the people’s sorrows. God is not to be sought in temples. He lives among the poor, ordinary people. So the poet urges us to get rid of the illusion and leave the four walls of the temple and seek God among the poor people. He says,
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Tagore does not believe that one has to renounce the world and one’s life in it to realize oneself. He urges us to come to our sense and understand that there is no point in chanting hymns and burning incenses.
“Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow”.
Even today Gitanjali inspires not only his admires but ordinary readers as well.
