It’s easy to run out of words to describe Rabindranath Tagore. The first non-European to win the Nobel prize in literature, Tagore was a Bengali poet, musician, novelist, philosopher, songwriter, painter, humanist and educator. Born in 1861, Tagore left an indelible mark on the subcontinent’s literature, music, education and art.
Among his enduring legacies are the national anthems of India and Bangladesh. As Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen once wrote, Tagore was “a towering figure in the millennium-old literature of Bengal”, whose songs resonate across eastern India and Bangladesh, while his ideas on education, nationalism and freedom of the mind remain relevant today. Yet his work also made a deep impression on the literary world far beyond the shores of India.
WB Yeats is said to have described Tagore as “greater than any of us”. Gitanjali, the collection of poems that won Tagore the Nobel prize that same year, was praised by the committee for its “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse”. Tagore’s English translation was published in London that March and reprinted 10 times by the time the prize was announced in November.
Tagore’s life and works have, of course, been well documented, but a collection of material preserved in a private family archive is now being brought into public view for the first time at an exhibition by Christie’s, opening in Mumbai this month. The archive draws from Tagore’s visits to the family home of his protege, Maitreyi Devi, in the bucolic village of Mungpoo in Darjeeling between 1938 and 1940. The collection on display – artworks, manuscripts, letters, photographs and personal effects – offers an intimate glimpse into Tagore’s creative process and personal world in his final years.
I spoke to the exhibition curator, Nishad Avari, head of south Asian modern and contemporary art at Christie’s, about the stories behind the archive. One instructive document Avari points to is a manuscript from 1940. It appears to be a draft of Tagore’s memoir Chelebela or My Boyhood Days, in which he reflects on his life – from growing up in a large family in Calcutta (modern-day Kolkata) to the rapidly changing world ushered in by electricity and the motorcar.
For Avari, what stood out was how the ideas in the document echoed the educational philosophy Tagore put into practice in Santiniketan (or Abode of Peace), the experimental school he set up about 100 miles from the state capital. Education didn’t feel like a restriction, prison or imposition,” he added. Avari points to another detail that makes this particular document valuable.
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