The other side of Rabindranath Tagore

A remarkable aspect of Rabindranath Tagore’s life is the way his persona had changed radically from the restricted identity of an oriental romantic-mystic to the wide-ranging identity of a concerned citizen of the world. A poet, who had earlier attempted to blend spiritual and romantic notions in his quest of grasping the mystery surrounding individual human soul and the divine, increasingly began to give voice to the minds of the colonized and oppressed people and expressed his passionate desire to be identified as one of them. This absolutely stunning transformation is manifested in the non-conformist and modernist approach of his later works. Quite obviously, this aspect of his life was somewhat overlooked by his ostensible admirers who has imposed upon him the title “Gurudev” and converted him into a sacred idol. W. B. Yeats, who was primarily responsible for forming the synthetic image of Tagore as a mystic poet in the West found problems with his later works. Amartya Sen in his brilliant essay Tagore and his India, has rightly pointed out that the “neglect and even shrill criticism” that Tagore’s later writings received from these early admirers arose from the “inability of Tagore's many-sided writings to fit into the narrow box” in which they wanted to place and keep him. “To those who do not read Bengali, Tagore is exclusively a literary person or a mystic of sorts,” regrets historian Tapan Roychoudhury. He further clarifies, “The fact that some two-thirds of his writings are serious essays, mostly on political and socio-eco­nomic problems of India and the crisis of civilization has been more or less ignored in Tagore scholarship.” (Source)

The politics of ‘Ruddhasangeet’

Bratyajoner Ruddhasangeet (Stifled Song of an Outcast) is the autobiography of Debabrata (George) Biswas, a legend in the world of Rabindranath Tagore’s Bengali songs, a form commonly known as Rabindra Sangeet. The musical career of Biswas started way back in the early forties. During the sixties he had already grown into a phenomenon, gripping the ardent Rabindra Sangeet followers with his deep, non-crooning and passionate voice. Biswas had a unique style of singing. Gleamed with enunciated pronunciation and sensitive modulation his performances could bring in life and vivacity into the songs. To many of his fans the sound of his voice resembled the voice of black American singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. However, from 1964 onwards, the ostensive purists of the Vishwabharati Sangeet Board had started raising objections about his presentation style on the ground that Biswas was altering the conventional tune-notations with melodic excesses and wrong tempo. He was also accused for overusing western instruments in the prelude and interlude section of the songs. As the copyright owners of Tagore’s works, the Vishwabharati Sangeet Board was authoritatively controlling all Rabindra Sangeet recordings at that time. It was compulsory for every artist to get their sanction before commercially producing any Rabindra Sangeet record. Deeply hurt by the dictates, an uncompromising Biswas was reluctant to bow down before the so-called exponents and experts of this puritan establishment. Initially he had braced himself to fight with the Board but later decided on his own to stop recording any more songs. The detailed story of this famous conflict was unfolded in his fascinating autobiography published in 1979. The following year on August 18, Debabrata Biswas was dead.