TOPIC- RAVINDRANATH TAGORE

TITLE - THEMES OF PRAYER IN THE SONG OF GEETANJALI POEM 3,

35, 13
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
(1861–1941)
Narmadeshwar Jha

Family background and early influences

Rabindranath Tagore was born on 7 May 1861. At some time towards the end of the
seventeenth century, his forefathers had migrated from their native lands to
Govindpur, one of the three villages which later came to constitute Calcutta. In the
course of time, the family came to acquire property and considerable business
interests through the pursuit of commercial and banking activities. They had
particularly benefited from the growing power of the British East India Company.
Rabindranath’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore, lived lavishly and broke the Hindu
religious ban of those times by travelling to Europe, just like his contemporary,
Rammohan Roy, the nineteenth century social and religious reformer.
Roy started a religious reform movement in 1828 that came to be known as the
Brahma Samaj Movement. Rabindranath’s grandfather supported Roy in his attempts
at reforming Hindu society. Dwarkanath’s son, Devendranath Tagore, also became a
staunch supporter of the Brahma Samaj Movement. In order to encourage its spread,
in 1863 he established a meditation centre and guest house on some land about 100
miles from Calcutta at a place called ‘Santiniketan’, the Abode of Peace.
Although deeply steeped in Hindu and Islamic traditions, Tagore’s family contributed
large sums of money for the introduction of Western education, including colleges
for the study of science and medicine. This peculiar situation explains the
combination of tradition and experiment that came to characterize Rabindranath
Tagore’s attitude to life.
Rabindranath’s father was one of the leading figures of the newly awakened phase of
Bengali society. He had been educated at one stage in Rammohan Roy’s Anglo-
Hindu school and had been greatly influenced by Roy’s character, ideals and
religious devotion. Devendranath Tagore was well versed in European philosophy
and, though deeply religious, did not accept all aspects of Hinduism. He was to have
a profound influence on his son’s mental and practical attitudes.
Rabindranath was the fourteenth child of his parents. His brothers and sisters were
poets, musicians, playwrights and novelists and the Tagore home was thus filled with
musical, literary and dramatic pursuits. The family was also involved with diverse
activities at the national level.
Important changes were taking place in Bengal at the time Rabindranath was born.
Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar had been attempting to reform the position of women in
society. Schools using English as the language of teaching were being established,
alongside the traditional Sanskrit schools. Vidyasagar had established Bengali-
medium schools at different places in Bengal with little or limited government
support. He had also established a centre to train teachers for these schools.
Rabindranath attended this school and, as he says himself, owed his love of Bengali
language and literature to it. He was also sent to a number of English-speaking
schools, but he did not like their

Teaching style and had no wish to be taught in a foreign language.

He gradually withdrew from formal schooling when he was around 14 years old. The
remainder of his education was carried out at home through his own personal efforts
and with the help of tutors in various subjects. He also had lessons from professionals
in wrestling, music and drawing. The manner of his early schooling was to leave a
deep impression on him.2
When Rabindranath was 12, his father took him to Santiniketan, the meditation
centre established in 1863. During their brief stay there, Devendranath gave his son
lessons in Sanskrit, astronomy and the scriptures that formed the basis of his
reformed religion. After these lessons were over, Rabindranath was free to roam
among the fields and forests. This routine continued when father and son journeyed
on and stayed at Dalhousie in the Himalayan foothills. After lessons in Sanskrit,
English literature and religion, the would-be poet explored the mountains and forests.
Life in close proximity to nature was unknown to him in the urban surroundings of
Calcutta.
The close and affectionate contact between teacher and pupil that he felt when his
father taught him was also completely absent in Calcutta. It was this childhood
experience of the willing pupil enthusiastically following lessons given by his father
in the manner of a noble teacher among agreeable surroundings that guided
Rabindranath in establishing a school at Santiniketan in 1901.
In 1878, when he was 17, he was sent to London by his father to qualify for the
Indian Civil Service or as a lawyer. He took his matriculation examination and then
joined University College, London. He came to like his lessons in English literature,
and became exposed to British social life and Western music, both of which he
enjoyed. But he returned home suddenly after some eighteen months without
completing his education. However, he did gain the impression that human nature
was perhaps the same everywhere.
Back in India he continued with his personal education and his creative writing and
music. His Sandhya Sangeet [Evening songs], a volume of Bengali verse, came out in
1882. It was at about this time that he had a kind of mystical experience that led him
to appreciate the unity of all that exists and himself as an integral part of it. In the
same year, he wrote his famous poem Nirjharer Swapna Bhanga [The awakening of
the fountain]. He became aware of his unusual talent as a poet. Between 1884 and
1890 various volumes of his poems appeared, together with a profuse output of prose
articles, criticism, plays and novels.
Tagore married when he was 23. At this stage, beyond his literary pursuits, he had
begun sharing his father’s religious responsibilities. In 1890 he made a second trip to
the United Kingdom, but came back after a month to look after the family estates.
This responsibility opened up new vistas of inspiration for him. Whereas his previous
literary work had been primarily based on imagination, he now came to acquire a
direct and intimate experience of the wretched life led by the poor Bengali peasants.
This new experience led to the composition of Galpaguccha [A bunch of stories]
(1900), and the many letters he wrote to his niece, subsequently published as
Chhinnapatra [Torn letters] and Chhinnapatravali [A collection of torn letters],
considered to be landmarks in the writing of Bengali prose and in describing the
countryside of Bengal.
Tagore was overwhelmed by the economic, social and political misery in which the
peasants lived. He gave a description of them at a later date:

Our so-called responsible classes live in comfort because the common man has not
yet understood his situation. That is why the landlord beats him. The money-lender
holds him in his clutches; the foreman abuses him; the policeman fleeces him; the
priest exploits him; and the magistrate picks his pocket.3

These conditions, he thought, cannot be changed by appealing to the religious

sentiments of the landlord, policeman or money-lender. In human society, necessity
is a greater force than charity. The first requirement therefore is that people should
discover the bond that holds them together as

a society. If there is one path likely to achieve this, it is education. Tagore realized
from his own experience of the farmers’ attitudes and their social behaviour that
strength can be generated only in a self-reliant village society developing its own
locus of power and its own momentum of growth. He turned again and again in
various contexts to this theme of local self-reliance, local initiatives, local leadership
and local self-government centring on co-operative ways of life. This could be the
basis for reorganizing India’s fragmented rural society, and could serve as an
instrument of welfare. Tagore realized that education and village councils or
panchayats were the only available instruments of economic and social change, and
that the villagers should obtain various forms of expert help from outside to
accomplish this change. As he says: ‘Poverty springs from disunity and wealth from
co-operation. From all points of view this is the fundamental truth of human
civilization.’4
As a young landlord managing his family’s rural estates, Tagore came to realize the
possibilities of introducing education and co-operation to transform rural life. Thus
he began to turn his thoughts towards the problems of education. He spoke publicly
on ‘The Vicissitudes of Education’5 in which he made a strong plea for the use of the
mother-tongue. His first experiments in teaching also date from this period. He
started his own school in Seliadah, the headquarters of his estate, to which he sent his
own children to be taught by teachers in various subjects, including an Englishman to
teach them the English language. He also started organizing co-operatives, schools
and hospitals in the villages of his estates and tried to introduce improved farming
methods. All these efforts for rural reconstruction went on while he pursued his
creative writing. Tagore called this the period of his Sadhana—preparation,
reflection, austerity and self-education for an active social life. He lived either at
Seliadah or on his houseboat on the river Padma, visiting villages, talking to people
and listening to their problems. Tagore’s later educational experiments arose from
this experience.
In 1901 he left Seliadah where he had undertaken these experiments and moved to
Santiniketan where, with his father’s consent, he started a boarding school. The
Brahamacharyashram (or Ashram) School was inaugurated on 22 December 1901
with only a few pupils, his son being one of them, and with an equal number of
teachers. It was to be run on the pattern of teachers and pupils living together amidst
natural surroundings and willingly accepting an austere standard of living, often
working with their own hands. Of the five teachers, three were Christians—two of
whom were Catholics and the third was his son’s English teacher from Seliadah. The
orthodox Hindus were offended by this situation and he did not get any assistance
from them. No fees were accepted from students, all expenses being borne by Tagore
himself. In the course of time, this Ashram School expanded as the poet’s reputation
grew.
Life at Santiniketan left its impression on the poet’s literary work. He wrote about
India’s past and present, and stories of noble self-sacrifice. He published more
realistic novels such as Choker Bali [Eyesore] (1901), Naukadubi [The wreck] (1903)
and Gora (1910). He was trying to discover the eternal India that succeeds in
achieving unity amidst a bewildering diversity of races, cultures and religions.
In 1912 Tagore left for the United Kingdom once again. Some of his poems and
writings had already been translated into English and had attracted the attention of
the well-known English painter Sir William Rothenstein and the poet W. B. Yeats.
He made such an impression on the British writers and intellectuals that he was at
once accepted as a great poet and intellectual. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in November 1913 and came back to India after visiting the United States
of America, delivering there his ‘Sadhana’ lectures (The Realization of Life, 1913).
In 1916 Tagore went abroad again to Japan and then to the United States of America
delivering lectures, published later in two volumes as Nationalism (1917b) and
Personality (1917c).
This international experience gave him a new idea, that he must bring his country
into

contact with the world at large. He felt that overemphasis on narrow nationalism led
men and countries into paths of conflict. There should be an institution that
emphasized the unity of the world’s cultures and streams of knowledge. He
considered Santiniketan to be that institution. He was thus already contemplating the
foundation of Visva Bharati, an international centre of culture and humanistic studies.
The foundation stone of Visva Bharati was laid on 24 December 1918. A separate
institution called Sri Niketan was established in 1921.6

Education in India: historical background

By 1857, four years before Rabindranath was born, British power in India had been
consolidated and the general foundation of a colonial system of education had been
laid. The stated aim of British policy was the promotion of English studies with
English language as the medium of instruction and the creation of a class of Indians
who had been brought up in an English way. As a result, the traditional system of
village, Sanskrit and Islamic schools languished.7
National universities had been established at Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, but
secondary
schools and universities were still the reserve of a small elite. The gulf between the
fortunate upper classes and the vast masses of rural poor continued to widen. On the
other hand, great socio- economic changes were taking place in the country, and
especially in Calcutta and in other towns as they grew in size. Railways were built;
factories sprang up; municipal water supplies arrived. A new class of people came to
adopt European dress, manners, attitudes and life styles. Old values and traditions
came to be questioned. It was a period of social upheaval and reforms in India.
Towards the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries the middle
class, which had come into being following the establishment of universities in 1857,
began to protest against the imposed system of education and its parallel language
policy. It is true that in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the British system
was being introduced, a powerful group of urban classes expressed their preference
for such studies. But, seeing the consequences and with a growing awareness of the
Indian cultural heritage and history, the middle classes had come to resent the
education which was being offered. While Tagore preferred the traditional system to
the new one, he did not want to bring it back without considerable changes.
This period also saw a rise in Indian nationalism. There was resentment against an
imitation of British lifestyles and against British rule, coupled with increased
awareness and appreciation of India’s cultural traditions. Tagore’s educational and
other writings of the period reflect this nationalist trend. His concern with educational
reform grew in intensity after 1901, and more so after 1905. Dissatisfaction with the
existing system of education led to a general concern with reform.
A tragic series of family bereavements probably caused Tagore’s withdrawal from
the growing national struggle for independence in the country. He retired to his
Ashram School to concentrate on its development and on the task of village
reconstruction that he had initiated at Seliadah.

Tagore on education

The difficulty in writing about Tagore’s educational ideas lies in the fact that he did
not set them down in a connected account. His views are found scattered in a large
number of independent essays and journal articles, in speeches to various audiences
and in letters to individuals over a number of years.8 Addresses to foreign audiences
about his school at Santiniketan and on Visva

Bharati are, of course, in English. Only recently have attempts been made to collect
and publish these pieces in their original Bengali. There has been a tendency to group
these diffuse writings into three broad divisions.

THE FIRST PHASE: 1892–1901

Tagore considered lack of education to be the main obstacle in the way of India’s
progress and at the root of all its problems. The prevailing, colonial education system
he found unsatisfactory since the only objective it appeared to serve was to produce
clerks to man government offices and British businesses in India. The basic
objectives of any worthwhile national education system, such as promoting
creativity, freedom, joy and an awareness of a country’s cultural heritage, were
completely ignored.
The education offered was not even modern, since it was unrelated to any
developments going on the field of education outside India. Irrespective of the
content, the medium of education was English—a foreign language—so that learning
this language was an additional burden for young Indian students. Particularly, the
educational process failed to develop scientific attitudes and the spirit of inquiry. On
the other hand, it divided the Indian people into two classes: those who received this
education and those who did not. The second group, comprising nearly everyone
living in the countryside, remained almost completely cut off from the affluent,
educated, English- speaking class living in cities and towns.
In the pre-colonial system, a common language promoted an unobstructed flow of
culture, even if formal education was not available to all. However, there was no
place even in informal educational activities for modern subjects, like history, science
and geography, and it did not promote objectivity in thinking, nor facilitate desirable
social change.

THE SECOND PHASE, 1901–18

Tagore’s preoccupation during this second phase was with developing an appropriate
system of national education for India. Each nation was different and this fact should
be reflected, he thought, in its system of education. The Ashram School at
Santiniketan was founded in 1901 on the basis of the ancient Indian forest schools.
In Tapovan [The Forest Schools of India] (1909) Tagore asserted that the forest
school was typical of the Indian system of education with its emphasis on three basic
elements of Indian culture, namely Advaita (non-duality) in the field of knowledge,
friendship for all in the field of feeling, and fulfilment of one’s duties without
concern for the outcomes in the field of action. In his view, the forest school
integrated education with Sadhana (disciplining one’s senses and one’s own life). But
Tagore updated this form of school to include science and similar modern subjects.
The second significant essay of this period was Shikshar Vahana [The Vehicle of
Education] (1915) emphasizing the importance of the mother-tongue as the medium
of education. The use of English in education hindered assimilation of what was
taught, and kept education confined to urban centres and the upper classes. Thus, if
the vast rural masses were to benefit, it was absolutely essential to switch over to the
use of Bengali in the context of Bengal at all levels of education, including higher
education. The ideal school, according to Tagore, should be established away from
the turmoil of human habitation under an open sky and surrounded by vistas of fields,
trees and plants. Living in a forest was also associated with austere pursuits and
renunciation. The vast background of nature represented a grand perspective against
which all objects, all feelings assumed their due proportions. He also referred to the
significance of educating feelings as distinct from educating the senses and the
intellect. The word ‘forest’ used in this context, he explained, was not dense jungle,
but Tapovana, the forest clearing.9

A national system of education in India should try to discover the characteristic truths
of its civilization. Those truths are not commercialism, imperialism or nationalism,
but rather universalism. The aim was all-round development of the individual
personality through harmonious interaction and union of the spirit with the
environment.
About the place of religion in education, Rabindranath said: ‘Nature and human
spirit, wedded together, would constitute our temple and selfless good deeds our
worship’ (Dharma Sikhsha, 1912).
Tagore himself was a teacher at the Ashram School and also gave thought to
educational methods. He taught English language, and in the evenings related stories
from Indian history to the children. He wrote plays for the students to perform and
entertaining verse for children, as well as simple textbooks in various subjects.10
Tagore was against any conspicuous emphasis on materials, buildings, furniture or
books that imitated Western educational institutions in India. He thought that this
would make education too expensive for the common people. He was against bookish
learning:

Books have come between our mind and life. They deprive us of our natural faculty
of getting knowledge directly from nature and life and have generated within us the
habit of knowing everything through books. We touch the world not with our mind,
but with our books. They dehumanize and make us unsocial…. Let the students
gather knowledge and materials from different regions of the country, from direct
sources and from their own independent efforts.11

THE THIRD PHASE (1918–41)

Visva Bharati, Tagore’s conception of a world university, was founded at the end of
the First World War with a determination to go beyond aggressive nationalism and to
build friendship with all nations.
After 1913, his travels abroad made him increasingly aware of what was going on in
other countries. He came also to know a large number of intellectuals in the countries
he visited. This in turn led him to emphasize co-operation between East and West,
North and South (in today’s jargon), in the field of humanistic studies and culture.
From children’s education and rural development, he increasingly shifted his
attention to university education and developing the surrounding villages as one of
the university’s functions during this third phase. He wanted to devise an alternative
form of education.

In every nation, education is intimately associated with the life of the people. For us,
modern education is relevant only to turning out clerks, lawyers, doctors, magistrates
and policemen…. This education has not reached the farmer, the oil grinder, nor the
potter. No other educated society has been struck with such disaster…. If ever a truly
Indian university is established it must from the very beginning implement India’s
own knowledge of economics, agriculture, health, medicine and of all other everyday
science from the surrounding villages. Then alone can the school or university
become the centre of the country’s way of living. This school must practise
agriculture, dairying and weaving using the best modern methods…. I have proposed
to call this school Visva Bharati.12

Tagore was convinced that no form of education offered in India, be it at school or at

university level, would be complete without knowledge of patterns of rural living and
without an effort by the universities to rejuvenate rural life. He considered this to be
an important aspect of Visva Bharati’s total activity.13
Writing about them in 1919 in his paper Ashantosher Karon [Cause of
Dissatisfaction], he expressed his deep anguish at the contemporary attempts in India
to establish new universities in exactly the same mould as existing ones due to a lack
of will or a lack of courage to attempt new forms. This had become imperative in
view of the fact that the civil service was saturated and, as the student members grew,
the majority of graduates failed to get clerical or any other type of white-collar jobs
and were good for nothing else. The time had thus come, Tagore urged, to

ATTEMPT A CHANGE IN THE AIMS OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.

How to make education real and our life force? In the addresses he gave and the
essays he wrote from 1919 to 1936 he tried to answer this question. In his own
words: We must try to understand how Indian genius expressed itself [...] Unless we
try to put these together and discover the integrating factors behind these diverse
streams of thought and make them a subject of study at our universities, we would
only be borrowing knowledge from abroad. The natural habitat for knowledge is
where it is produced. The main task of universities is to produce knowledge, its
dissemination is its secondary function. We must invite those intellectuals and
scholars to our universities who are engaged in research, invention or creative
activity.14

While nations sought primarily to give their citizens a means of livelihood through
education, Tagore believed that there was a more important aim—that of personal
fulfilment and self- improvement. It was important to borrow knowledge and
experience from abroad, but not to use them as the foundation for Indian education.
Even so, if there was one European quality which Indian university students must
acquire it was ‘the desire to know, to find out about the laws of nature and to use
them for the betterment of the conditions of human beings’.15 Science and its
applications in the form of technology have led to the power and prosperity of
Western countries. Unless India acquired knowledge of science and technology
through its universities and schools, poverty and powerlessness would continue. To
transform life and make it richer, healthier and more educated, it was imperative to
resort to technology and science. But Tagore wanted science to be taught along with
India’s own philosophical and spiritual knowledge at Indian universities.16
However, science without the constraint of self-knowledge, without appreciating that
the quest for knowledge is the most important aim of human existence, leads to an
endless desire for material goods and well-being, and the meaningless pursuit of the
instruments of war and power, which are often the origin of conflict between nations
and end, ultimately, in the suppression of the weaker by the stronger. That is why
both spiritual and scientific knowledge are considered by Tagore as equally
important.
In an address on the functions of the university,17 Tagore argued that a university is
an attempt by a nation to aggregate knowledge at one place, to develop it and to
disseminate it to the younger generation.
Long before universities in the West had been established, there existed in India
universities, such as Nalanda and Vikramshila, where various branches of knowledge
had been pursued by scholars for centuries during the Buddhist period of India’s
history. Students came to these universities from far and near in Asia to learn about
the subjects taught, and to live with the teachers who were respected for their
exemplary way of life. When universities came to be founded in Europe, the hold of
religion was loosened. New methods of acquiring knowledge led to rapid growth in
the fields of social, physical and life sciences. Modern universities collect existing
knowledge in various fields from within a country or abroad, preserve and develop it
and make it available to the younger generations. But contemporary Indian
universities had not been concerned about collecting and preserving the national
heritage, and enriching it by fusing it with knowledge coming from abroad. Neither
had they been concerned about improving life in the villages. ‘Universities here are
like a lighted railway compartment in a train passing through the countryside which
is enveloped in darkness.’
Furthermore the use of the English language at universities presents a language
barrier confining the flow of knowledge and information. Unless a beginning was
made in using the mother-tongue as a medium of instruction in regional universities
the flow of knowledge to the countryside would not be restored. Of course, English
was needed to build bridges so as to benefit from the growing corpus of knowledge
existing abroad in the fields of science, technology and
other subjects, but its central importance in India’s education process would cease.
In his Shikhar Suwangeekaran [Make education your own] (1936), he returned to his
recurrent theme of the unnaturalness of the system of education in India, its lack of
links with the nation and its management which was in the hands of a foreign
government. The working of the government, its courts of law and its education
system were conducted in a language completely unintelligible to the majority of
Indians. He contrasted the situation in India with what he had seen in the USSR and
in Japan, where the governments had been able to educate their people within a very
short time. Educating India’s entire population and restoring the flow of culture from
the educated classes to the rural population would not come about unless the mother-
tongue was adopted as the medium of teaching.

The second experiment: Sri Niketan

Santiniketan developed continuously from 1901 to 1921. The school, called Patha
Bhawan, eventually became affiliated to Calcutta University and students could thus
take the matriculation examination. For a long time, the funding of the school was
entirely assumed by Tagore. This was possible because teachers’ salaries were very
low. Most of Tagore’s personal income, proceeds from the sale of his property, most
of the Nobel Prize money and royalties from his books were the sources of school
finance. Only after receiving the Nobel Prize and after being knighted by the British
did the Indian Government begin to take an interest in him.
Tagore was convinced that some new form of schooling could be worked out for the
village children in India based on life in the countryside. He had purchased an old
building and some land at a village called Surul, not far from Santiniketan.
Fortunately for Santiniketan, Tagore met Leonard Elmhirst in the United States in
1921. Elmhirst was at that time reading agricultural science at Cornell University and
was keen on spending some time in India doing rural reconstruction work. Tagore
requested Elmhirst to join him. He told Elmhirst that Santiniketan was surrounded by
a number of villages which, ‘for some reason, appeared to be in a state of steady
decline’.18 There was no sign of effort on the part of the villagers: there was no joy,
no food, no health, no idea of the importance of their own initiative and no co-
operation among them. Tagore wanted Elmhirst first to find out why and then suggest
remedial action. The objective was to raise the villagers’ income, but the higher aim
according to Tagore was to make them happy.19
Tagore was somewhat disappointed that Santiniketan had failed to achieve the ideal
of bringing scientific knowledge to bear on life in the countryside. In order to
improve the human condition in the villages of Eastern India, the population had to
throw off their belief in fate and realize the importance of depending upon their own
efforts. This is what Tagore had in mind when he launched the rural reconstruction
work at Sri Niketan in a school called Shikshasastra. The objective of the new school
was to provide an all-round education for village children, enabling them to earn a
decent livelihood but also equipping them to improve rural life in all its aspects.20
From the very beginning, the major thrust of the programme at Sri Niketan under
Elmhirst came to be increasing the productivity of the land. But Tagore also wanted a
total improvement covering agriculture, education, health and social life in the
villages. Agricultural research and experiments would be undertaken at Sri Niketan
and the fruits of this research were to be carried to the villages. At the same time,
medical care and the eradication of malaria were considered equally important. At the
centre, specialists in various fields worked together to overcome the difficulties of
rural life. In addition, a scout movement was organized to mobilize the children as a
starting point for drawing their parents into the village development programme.
A fundamental area of instruction at Sri Niketan was handicrafts; it was compulsory
for all students to learn a trade. Another major activity was the launching of some
200 co-operative societies for agricultural credit, irrigation, granaries, etc.
Experiments were made on new crops and
on new varieties of existing crops that appeared to be suitable for local conditions. A
dairy farm gave practical demonstrations of animal husbandry on scientific lines. The
villagers were expected to adopt rural industries to supplement their income. The
village welfare department initiated public works (repairing and excavating
reservoirs), looked after village schools, maintained a mobile library for villages,
organized social and cultural activities and ran the scout movement. There was a
health section with a central dispensary; and a maternity and child-welfare section
was added in 1940.
Sri Niketan aimed at combining work with joy. Picnics, excursions, games, music,
theatrical performances and celebrating socio-religious festivals constituted regular
features of the calendar. New Year’s Day, the Rainy Season festival, the New Rice
festival, the Spring festival were—and still are—all regular features. Tagore added
Halkarshan (ploughing the land festival) and Van Mahotosava (tree planting). Apart
from adding joy to dreary village life, some of these festivals brought students and
villagers to work together.
For years Tagore tried to convince his countrymen through his speeches, stories,
novels, poems and songs to work for rural revival. The call went unheeded until
Gandhi came on the Indian political scene. Single handed, the poet had started his
work: ‘They call you mad. Wait for tomorrow and keep silent’ (Poems, 1942).

Of course, turning out songs is my proper vocation. But those who are unfortunate
cannot afford to limit their choice to the works they do. They must also bear the
burden of tasks they cannot do. The scale of our enterprise can never be a matter of
pride to us, but let us hope that its truth will be. Ideas, if they have the vitality of truth
in them, grow and spread in the course of time.21

How correct Tagore was in this respect. The entire programme followed at Sri
Niketan for rural development was adopted by India’s five-year plans as the correct
approach to rural community development.

Developments in criminal policy have a long history of entanglement with the

particular politics of the day with influences including vote-chasing populism,
political ideology and moral politics. These influences can become a blur, but
often it is simple vote chasing with politicians trying to second guess the voters’
wishes by promoting ever tougher sanctions - trying to outdo each other in
being more and more punitive, and in so doing becoming ever more populist
(e.g. Bottoms, 1995; Garland, 2001; Roberts, et al., 2002). Throughout the
1990s crime in Britain became increasingly politicised with a fight between
New Labour and the Conservatives for an assumed popular vote, with greater
emphasis on tougher sanctions (Millie, 2008). For New Labour one way this
populism was translated into policy was a focus on anti-social behaviour (ASB)
(Jamieson, 2005; Millie, 2009a). Yet, despite a tendency towards populism,

politicians1 were still also influenced by ideology and moral politics - albeit to
varying degrees of conviction. For instance, Tony Blair was famously
influenced by Christian Socialism in combination with elements of Etzioni’s
communitarianism (1993), Giddens’ ‘third way’ (1998) and Sennett’s (2003)
mutual respect. Furthermore, both

Labour and the Conservatives have been influenced by American New Right
writing on underclass (Murrey, 1990) and ‘broken windows’ (Wilson and
Kelling, 1982). Both of these perspectives assume there has been a moral
decline in society, with underclass theory focused on the type of people caught
up in moral decline, and ‘broken windows’ describing the mechanism through
which decline is thought to take place. This short article focuses on this
assumed moral decline and the moral politics associated with ASB. For the
British ASB agenda an assumed moral decline translated into a moral politics
focused on the behaviour of youth, along with a concern for parenting and
‘family values’. The tendency was for punitive responses to both with an
assumption that good behaviour (and good parenting) can be enforced. At the
time of writing in early 2010 there was a looming general election in Britain
and it was not at all certain who would win. However, it is worth noting that at
the last general election in 2005 all three main political parties - Labour,
Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - had embraced the need to tough action
on ASB (Millie, 2008).

The ASB agenda was one of the things that defined Labour’s approach to

crime and disorder in the first decade of the 21st Century (Squires, 2008;
Burney, 2009; Millie, 2009a) and it was an agenda closely allied to Tony Blair.
It followed pressure from local politics and from social landlord providers
(Burney, 2009), although the national response was distinctly populist
characterised by ‘tough talking’ rhetoric and an emphasis on enforcement. The
political landscape seemed to change following Gordon Brown’s success at
becoming Prime Minister in 2007; and the Blairite ‘tough talking’ populism
appeared to be replaced by a softer approach when Brownite minister Ed Balls
was reported as stating, “It’s a failure every time a young person gets an ASBO.
It’s necessary - but it’s not right” (reported by Blackman in the Daily Mirror,
2007). Furthermore, a new Youth Taskforce Action Plan (Youth Taskforce,
2008) offered greater emphasis on prevention and support, although a focus on
“tough enforcement” remained and support was to be “non-negotiable” (p.5).
And while some ministers were using softer language, others persisted with talk
of being tough on ASB; as Jacqui Smith (2008) stated as Home Secretary,
“ASB has no place in our daily lives. No-one should have to put up with it. And

no-one should think they can get away with it either”2. This toughness was
continued by Alan Johnson when he became Home Secretary in June 2009.
Later that month in an interview in The Times (Ford, 2009) Johnson
commented, “we have kind of coasted a bit. The coasting has allowed some of
our critics to suggest that antisocial behaviour [policy] has not achieved very
much. Well it has.” However, due to there being bigger news stories - notably
the economy and the major scandal over MPs’ expenses - this statement did not
receive a great deal of attention in the wider media. And by the autumn of 2009
the Conservatives had been gaining attention for their ‘broken society’ agenda.

In September 2009 the inquest of Fiona Pilkington was reported, a woman

who killed herself and her disabled daughter after repeated harassment from
local youths. It was generally reported as ASB (e.g. Daily Mirror, 2009),
although I suggest it was something far more serious amounting to a campaign
of harassment or ‘hate crime’ (e.g. Iganski, 2008) (a few journalists have
described the case as ‘disability hate crime’
- e.g. Williams, 2009). The day after the inquest was reported, Gordon Brown
delivered his speech to the Labour Party Conference as Prime Minister
reasserting the need for tough action on ASB, that “whenever and wherever
there is antisocial behaviour, we will be there to fight it”. It was classic populist
rhetoric, something picked up by the BBC’s Home Editor, Mark Easton, writing
in his online blog the same day:

It seems there is a big red button marked “ASB” at Labour HQ. The sign next
to it reads: “In case of electoral emergency, press here”. No surprise that
Gordon Brown is today thumping the anti-social behaviour (ASB) button with a
mallet. It is a tactic which [has] been instrumental in Labour’s success for
more than a decade. Even though many Brownites had previously sniffed at a
policy they regarded as punitive and populist, needs must. A Blairite invention
has been wheeled to the frontline for the fightback (Easton, 2009).

On 13 October 2009, when launching a ‘new’ push on ASB (under the

banner “Tackling Not Tolerating”), Home Secretary Alan Johnson used the
Pilkington case to demonstrate why the government had to return to the issue of
ASB (Travis, 2009a). As part of Johnson’s new ‘get tough’ agenda he promised
to prosecute all ASBO breaches and to make Parenting Orders mandatory
accompaniments for all juveniles on ASBOs. As Easton (2009) had pointed out,
the pre-election ASB button had been well and truly pressed. Easton went
further in his assessment, suggesting that, “It appears that we have decisively
moved into an era when enforcing ‘proper behaviour’ is the business of the
state.” Easton had identified a noticeable shift in politics; but where I believe he
was wrong is that the moral politics of enforcing ‘proper behaviour’ had been in
place for some time and had been embraced by all the main parties.

Geetanjali: Rabindra Nath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore’s most well-known work, Gtjali, is a collection of poems that

came out in India in 1910. Tagore then turned it into English prose poems called
Gitanjali: Song Offerings. It was published in 1912 with an introduction by William
Butler Yeats.

Tagore based the poems in Gitanjali on devotional songs from India in the Middle
Ages. He also wrote music to go with these words. Love is the main theme, but some
poems also talk about the struggle between spiritual longings and earthly desires. A
lot of the images he uses come from nature, and the mood is mostly low-key and
quiet. Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 in part because of this
collection, but not everyone agrees that it is his best work.

Theme of Geetanjali
The main idea in Gitanjali is mysticism, which also brings up a number of other
ideas. According to Indian philosophy, mysticism is the highest stage where the
human soul is in direct contact with God. A mystic thinks that the world we see with
our eyes and ears is not real and that there is a more real world behind it that can only
be understood spiritually, not through the senses. The mystic tries to get in touch with
the inner, ultimate reality in a way that is direct and intuitive. In some ways, realism
and common sense are at odds with mysticism. Mysticism is not something that can
be explained logically. All mystics try to separate themselves from the outside world
and connect with the world inside. This type of mysticism is based on the ideas of
renunciation, detachment from the world, and asceticism. Tagore was influenced by a
lot of mystic writers, such as Walt Whitman, Kahlil Gibran, and, to some extent, Sri
Aurobindo. Still, Tagore’s version of mysticism is a little bit different from the first.
He doesn’t completely doubt what he thinks and what he feels. He doesn’t try to get
away from real life, but he does enjoy the joy of living. He doesn’t deny sense
experience, but instead turns it into a way to have a spiritual experience. Nor does he
have the slightest desire to be a monk. His strong

Story of Gitanjali

Gitanjali is divided into two parts. To begin, the majority of these songs are
composed as dialogues between the poet and God. Even if God’s messages were not
always spoken, the poet expresses his prayers and sentiments. Aside from certain
personal prayers, some songs are also directed to the Bharatvidhata—the God of
India. In two songs, He mor chitto punyatirthe jagore dhire (song number 106) and
He mor durbhaga desh (song no 108), the poet urged his countrymen to band together
against both internal and external calamities. It is important to understand that
Gitanjali was composed in British India. When the protests against the British
government became violent and nonviolent, the poet appealed to Bharatvidhata to
awaken his compatriots into the paradise of wisdom and labour. He also asked for the
abolition of caste prejudice.

The poet’s prayers are not for mortal or material things. They aspire to live a better
life. According to Yeats, these songs arose from immense sadness and intense
emotion. A single line of his poetry may make anyone forget about the world’s
problems. Gitanjali’s songs can help us purify our bodies and minds in order to grow
closer to God. Although the God of Rabindranath is the God of beauty, intelligence,
and perfection, he is neither a religious or traditional god. This God has no unique
picture, nor has the poet ever represented his God by symbols. He resembles the
notion of a supernatural force, the God of the Upanishads. The opening song in the
collection, Amar matha nata kore dao he tomar charandhular pore, appears to be a
prayer from the poet to his God to forcefully lower the poet’s head before the
Almighty. The fundamental message of the hymn, however, is that the devotee must
give up his pride in order to get ultimate peace and contentment from his God. In
Bipode more raksa kato, he prayed to his God for strength and courage to tackle his
issues.

Rabindranath depicted death as the only way to reach his God. Death seems to him as
a calm ocean where he may relax when his earthly life has ended. Gitanjali’s songs
have a strong link to nature. These songs are generally written during the monsoon
season, autumn, or spring. When nature bestows her gifts on us by adorning our
surroundings with fresh pictures, lights, fruits, and flowers, we become new and pure
in our devotion to God. Song nos. 11 and 13—amra bedhechi kasher guchha and
Amar nayana vulano ele—describe autumn festivals, whereas song no. 12 Amala
dhabala pale legeche mandomadhur hawa is composed in the rain. Songs 16 through
20 highlight various aspects of the rainy season.

Theme of Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore.

1) Theme of God :- Gitanjali is God’s prayer. It is a collection of songs about God
and praise for him. Which are deeply rooted in the ancient tradition of Indian
Vaishnava poetry and have mystical, eternal, and sublime qualities. They have a wide
range of moods and ways of doing things. The theme of God runs through the whole
Gitanjali.

2) Theme of Nature: Gitanjali also has a theme about nature. It looks at the
connection between God and nature. His lyrics stand out because of how beautiful
and full of images they are. These images come from nature and Indian mythology.

3) Theme of Humanity: Gitanjali doesn’t just talk about the relationship between a
man’s soul and God. It also talks about the relationship between a man’s soul and
other men. It stands up for the rights of the poor and humble, who are often denied
the most important rights of man.

4) Theme of Death: At the end of Gitanjali, Tagore also writes about death, and he
does so in many different and artistic ways. He doesn’t fear death. Instead, he looks
forward to it with joy because it’s the only way to be with God. “Death looks scary,
but it brings the soul of a person to a meeting with the eternal,” he said.

5) Theme of Love: There are many kinds of love in Gitanjali, including love for
women, love for other people, love for humanity, love for God, love for nature, love
for his country, love for beauty, and love for the truth. Tagore is a poet who loves
God and religion, and his poetry shows the truth, happiness, and beauty of the world.

Moral decline and moral politics

For Labour and the Conservatives the assumption was that Britain had
witnessed sustained moral decline as exemplified by problems of ASB, and the
situation would only change through state-enforced moral improvement. For
instance, former Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw (1996) claimed that there
was a “rising tide of disorder [that] is blighting our streets, parks and town
centres”. For David Blunkett (2004) ASB was “bedevilling our communities”,
and for Tony Blair (2004) a “scourge of anti-social behaviour affects us all”.
Fellow Labour MP Frank Field (2003: 126) went further, claiming there was a
“plague of disorder which now marks the lives of so many the likes of which
Britain has not seen for well over a century”. According to Pearson (2009: 41) it
was a view that, “young people no longer respect the law, no longer respect
their parents and neighbours, they no longer show any obedience to authority in
all its forms, there is now a carnival of disorder in the streets of the ‘broken’
society” (emphasis in original).

But, as Pearson (1983; 2009) and others (e.g. Cohen, 1972) have clearly
demonstrated, children and young people have been seen to be pushing
boundaries for a very long time. Furthermore, according to British Crime
Survey measures of perception (Millie, et al., 2005), ASB is not a major
concern for the majority - so talk of plagues, rising tides and ‘bedevilling’ may
have been overselling it. Such talk also ran the risk of fuelling public concern.
But the view from Labour was that something had gone fundamentally wrong
with British society resulting in a moral (and behavioural) decline - especially
among our youth. The government’s response centred on legislation and was to
enforce standards of behaviour. For Blair (2003) the solution was also the moral
imperative to instil respect (see Millie, 2009b); as Sennett (2005) has observed,
“throughout his career Tony Blair has worried about how government might
enforce morality”. The notion that morality can be enforced and that people can
be made more respectful is a strange one. But not to be outdone, the
Conservatives with their ‘broken society’ agenda have come to a similar
conclusion (Conservatives, 2010a; 2010b). The ‘broken society’ agenda is
intrinsically one of a moral decline, and is clearly influenced by the ‘broken
windows’ perspective, as demonstrated by the following statement from Chris
Grayling (2009a), speaking as Shadow Home Secretary, that, “Changing what
we have called the broken society will be a long and difficult process. But one
step we can take quickly is to go to war on antisocial behaviour. Because the
minor criminality committed by younger teenagers so often leads to worse if it
goes unchecked.”

Much of the Tory policy development started life in Conservative MP Iain Duncan
Smith’s Centre for Social Justice. In a joint publication with the left-of-centre think
tank the Smith Institute, Duncan Smith (2008: 9) has also shown the influence of
underclass thinking, where there is a, “creeping expansion of this underclass: the
way ‘decent’ people are sucked into and governed by the ‘code of the street’”.
Furthermore, according to Duncan Smith (2008: 9) - drawing on the work of
Anderson (1999) - “the most powerful counteracting force to the negative influences
of the inner city [is] a strong, loving, ‘decent’ family, committed to mainstream,
pro-social values”. The Conservatives have been using language and rhetoric similar
to Labour, and for Cameron (2008) the moral decline is fact: “When in one
generation we seem to have abandoned the habits of all human history that in a
civilised society, adults have a proper role - a responsibility - to uphold rules and
order in the public realm”.

Against this backdrop it seems that, if elected, the Conservatives will be just as
punitive and populist as Labour has been, that - to use Grayling’s words - they will
“go to war” on anti-social young people (and their parents). This is despite
Cameron’s (2006) famous defence of hoodie wearing young people - in what the
media labelled his ‘hug a hoodie’ speech - that “adult society’s response to the
hoodie shows how far we are from finding the long-term answers to put things
right”. Punitive populism is demonstrated by the promotion of a new ‘Grounding
Order’ in the Conservatives’ Manifesto (2010b: 56), an ‘instant sanction’ curfew
issued by the police to anti-social young people. This appears to be a mix between
existing Dispersal Order, Fixed Penalty Notice, and Local Child Curfew Scheme

powers3 - regardless of the fact that child curfews have not been popular with Local
Authorities, with none set up since being introduced with the 1998 Crime and
Disorder Act (according to the YJB website, accessed March 2010). But despite
promoting such punitive measures there are glimpses of hope. Grayling has also
stated that:

The vast majority of the teenagers who hang around in our communities are decent
law abiding young people who are doing nothing wrong. Many acts which annoy
are not acts of anti-social behaviour. There’s a real danger that we perceive a risk
from groups of perfectly decent young people who are doing nothing more than
hanging around and chatting. Then there is the low level anti- social behaviour
which can be found in most areas. Where the perpetrators are a headache - but
aren’t criminals in the making. (2009b).

This was encouraging; and elsewhere Grayling has stated that, “What we don’t want
to do is criminalise those young people very early on in their lives” (2009c).
However, as Travis has stated, writing for The Guardian (2009b), “As the general
election approaches you can expect to hear rather less about “hug a hoodie” and
rather more about “mug a hoodie” when it comes to the Conservatives’ approach to
law and order”. The proposed Grounding Order is a case in point.

The moral politics adopted by both Labour and the Conservatives - as exemplified
by the respect and broken society agendas - is a tricky game to play and perhaps
ought to be avoided by politicians. Government-led civilising agendas are only
meaningful if the government of the day can lead by example. As the expenses
scandal of 2009 showed, politicians are not coming to this from a position of
strength. Furthermore, both Labour and the Conservatives have utilised a discourse
that divides a (supposed) law abiding or ‘decent’ us against a disrespectful or anti-
social underclass. I suggest that such an approach is dishonest and can result in the
labelling of minority populations as stigmatised ‘others’ with their ‘unwanted’
behaviour leading to censure. In policy and political rhetoric on ASB the main
targets have been young people and their parents - or more precisely following
underclass theory, the young working class and single mothers.
Discussion and conclusions

An alternative response - and a challenge to whoever wins the election - is to

acknowledge that not all youthful (mis)behaviour given the ASB badge is
necessarily problematic. For example, not all politicians were involved in the 2009
expenses scandal, yet the stereotype of a British politician has become someone who
is money grabbing and with questionable morals. Politicians and policy makers
would do well to recognise that the assumption that all young people hanging
around are anti-social is similarly an inaccurate stereotype (see Mackenzie, et al.,
2010). On this front the above quote from Grayling is encouraging as young people
need to be able to explore boundaries without necessarily being criminalised. There
still needs to be intervention for serious and persistent ASB that has a detrimental
impact on others; however there is a great deal below this - including young people
‘hanging around’ - that should not lead to censure and could be tolerated.

While forms of ASB can be regarded as problematic in themselves, according to

Mackenzie et al., (2010) some behaviours - such as young people congregating, or
parents raising ‘problem’ children - also act as metaphors for wider social concerns
or social breakdown. But such views may be ill-informed or based on existing
prejudices or stereotypes, and in such circumstance responding to the majority view
will not produce just outcomes; as Loader (2006: 207) has observed concerning
public demands for policing, these are “not infrequently motivated by parochial
desires for injustice, xenophobic antipathy toward others, or unattainable fantasies
of absolute security.” Such views will need to be challenged. For Mackenzie et al.,
(2010) solutions lie in promoting social connectedness - that, the more people
(including politicians) who can understand other perspectives, the more behaviours
are seen as simply different rather than anti-social.

The result will be an increase in inter-group understanding and tolerance, and the
sort of mutual respect promoted by Sennett (2003) - and perhaps ought to have been
central to New Labour’s respect agenda (Respect Task Force, 2006; Millie, 2009b) -
rather than a focus on moral decline and enforcing standards of behaviour. Writings
on cosmopolitan urbanism may offer some help here (e.g. Sandercock, 2003; Binnie
et al., 2006; Millie, 2009c). According to Sandercock (2003: 2), her cosmopolitan
utopia
- what she called ‘Cosmopolis’ - is a place that promotes “genuine acceptance of,
connection with, and respect and space for the cultural other, and the possibility of
working together on matters of common destiny, the possibility of a togetherness in
difference”. This is certainly a more optimistic position to take than a politics of
moral decline. The notion of “togetherness in difference” is a challenge to the
populist punitiveness often associated with political electioneering and to a moral
politics centred on enforcing ‘proper behaviour’.

Notes

1 For this article the focus is on Westminster politics as this is most relevant to the
2010 General Election. However it is acknowledged that since devolution other
approached to ASB have emerged – for instance, Wales appears to be following a
less punitive path and the Scottish Government (2009) is following its “Promoting
Positive Outcomes” agenda.
2 Tough political rhetoric was not always matched by local practice. By this time
many local ASB practitioners had accumulated a decade’s worth of experience and
in some instances less punitive, inclusionary and preventative approaches were
being developed at the local level.
3 Under Local Child Curfew Scheme conditions, all young people are banned from
being in a designated public place between specified hours (e.g. from 9pm to 6am)
unless accompanied by an adult. As noted, these powers have not proved popular.
Dispersal Orders are similar area-based restrictions that can be imposed in areas
where ASB is deemed to be particularly problematic. They are frequently applied to
city centre or housing estate locations where police officers/PCSOs are given extra
powers to disperse. The Orders also have a curfew-type element, although following
legal clarification this was deemed to be non-arbitrary and therefore not a curfew,
with powers restricted to only those young people thought a risk (or at risk) of ASB.
The proposed ‘Grounding Orders’ appear to have a lot in common with such
restrictions. Being a form of ‘instance sanction’ they are also similar to Fixed
Penalty Notices (FPNs) which are summary on-the-spot fines, usually issued for
issues of environmental ASB (for more detail see Millie, 2009a).

* Correspondence Address: Andrew Millie, Department of Urban Studies,

University of Glasgow, 25 Bute Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RS. Email:
Gitanjali – A Poet’s Prayer

[I had originally written this essay in 2005 for a class on ‘Indian Writing in English’
as an undergraduate student of English Literature at Madras Christian College. The
essay is an attempt at an original interpretation of Tagore’s collection of poems
‘Gitanjali’, which fetched him the Nobel Prize in Literature. I am republishing this
from my old blog here as a tribute to Tagore on his 159th birth anniversary.]
There is a distinctly spiritual flavour to the verses of Gitanjali. Going through them,
anyone is capable of getting transported into -what in poetic idiom is often referred to
as- ‘poetic heaven’. As Yeats too had expressed, in his introduction to the Gitanjali,
the verses depict a poetic world that can only be dreamt of by most of us. There is an
other-worldly feel to it. These words can only be uttered by a person who has
transcended the physical world to explore what lies beyond it. But isn’t that what
every poet wishes to achieve? Gitanjali is labeled as ‘religious’ poetry by critics, but
to Tagore, these verses were just poetry and it is these classic poetic qualities of
Gitanjali that are dealt with presently.
Even a lay reader with no feel for poetry will be able to recognise, how these verses,
though framed in the simplest of vocabulary, manage to articulate thoughts and
feelings of the highest order. To comprehend them may not be possible for all. Such is
the talent of Tagore and such is his inspiration. In Gitanjali, I see a poet’s gratitude
finding expression. Every single utterance of the poet is soaked in this gratitude felt
towards that Supreme Being without whose will, a poet would never have been born.
The very fact that God has appointed him to accomplish a poet’s task is elevating.
And when the recesses of a poet’s mind, impregnated with divine feelings, reach the
state of maturity, it is but a moment’s labour for a poem to be born through the
channel of language.
To a true poet, every poem comes as a blessing granted after numerous prayers have
been offered at the altar of the Supreme Being. Gitanjali is an embodiment of these
several prayers that the poet has offered at the feet of the divine giver of inspiration.
While praying, we do not always plead for something, sometimes we praise our God
and sometimes we just share our sorrows and joys as if talking to a friend. At other
times, we simply meditate in order to compose our minds. Prayers are a means to
achieve inner harmony. The quality of poetry depends upon the intensity of this
prayer. Tagore’s Gitanjali is evidently a prayer, a poet’s prayer, and manifests in itself
that harmony which the poet has experienced.

A proper prayer is that which involves direct communion with the Supreme Being. It
is an extremely personal experience. Therefore, the poetic inspiration experienced by
a poet is also a thoroughly personal experience, which one can consider as the benefit
of prayer. In Ramayana, we do see how Ravana through the constant utterance of
prayers wins the favour of Lord Shiva. We can consider a poet too to be like that, who
constantly prays for inspiration, and when the Muses are convinced of his sincerity,
the wish is granted. Since we are considering Gitanjali to be the poet’s prayer, we
must understand that it is something that the poet has undergone singularly. The
tapasya (spiritual endeavour) of the poet cannot, therefore, be understood by all. One
must have experienced the same to be able to interpret exactly as to what the poet is
saying. Yet an attempt is being made here to interpret the Gitanjali from the point of
view of the poet’s various poetic experiences and the poetic qualities that the song
exhibits.

The very opening line of Gitanjali reflects the inner harmony that the poet has
experienced. The words are an outburst endeavouring to articulate the intense pleasure
that the poetic experience has conferred upon him:
“Thou hast made me endless such is thy pleasure”
‘Thy’ here becomes poetic inspiration itself and ‘thou’, the one who inspires. Anyone
is bound to be ecstatic if his prayers are answered. We see the poet here starting at the
peak of inspiration. In the life of every genuine poet, such a moment does occur when
he experiences endlessness.
One may wonder how endlessness can be experienced in a brief moment as it is
seemingly contradictory. This can be explained by drawing a parallel. Coleridge in his
Kubla Khan talks of ‘A sunny pleasure domes with caves of ice’. Here the opposites
merge and all seemingly contradictory elements are resolved. When a poet touches
this point he experiences eternity for in a state of eternity only a single entity exists. It
is only when the poet attempts to articulate this oneness that he has experienced by
means of language that the problem arises. Because language and words belong to the
mortal world; their realm is the world of corporeal experience. There is no specialized
vocabulary that can articulate abstract, extra-sensory experiences such as what a poet
experiences when he is inspired. At the level of experience, everything is in a state of
unity. But the moment a poet descends to the ordinary mode of existence and tries to
express in a finite language his infinite experiences, the contradictions emerge.
In prayer, it is essential to keep in mind that we are insignificant against the Supreme
Being. It is important, therefore, to develop a humble attitude. A humble being who is
completely aware of the all-encompassing spirit of the divine being would always
express a state of wonder, awe, and admiration at this. There can be no room for the
poet’s vanity to exist when he is subject to the ‘grandeur of divine inspiration’. A true
poet who experiences intense divine inspiration would sublimate to an egoless state
and he will humbly follow the instructions of his Muses:
“My poet’s vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at
thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to
fill with music.”
The poet here confesses how his own vanity or pride dies in shame when he realises
that there is a poet more powerful than himself now before his sight. There is no way
in which he can surpass the ‘master’ poet, and it is only within his capacity to
surrender at his feet and endeavour to emulate him. The expression ‘master poet’ also
needs some explanation here. The Supreme Being who bestows poetic inspiration
upon man is a poet himself, his creation being the universe. We have earlier reflected
upon eternity and oneness of experience. The same idea continues here. The master
poet, who is the creator of the universe, is one single entity. The music that emerges
from the master poet is responsible for the creation of this universe. The poet is only
an instrument, like a flute, and it is the divine giver of inspiration who fills it with
music. The poet knows that it is only as an instrument that he must ideally come
before his master’s presence:
“I know that thou takest pleasure in my singing. I know that only as a singer I come
before thy presence.”
Also, note these lines:
“I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement.
The light of thy music illumines the world. The life-breath of thy music runs from sky
to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on.

My heart longs to join in thy song but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but
speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made me captive in
the endless meshes of thy music.”
The poet’s constant reference to music and singing must be commented upon. What
possible connection could there be between poetry and music? Apart from both being
forms of art, the aspect of metre, rhyme, and coherence of thought in poetry relates it
to the rhythm found in music. Metre, rhyme, and coherence of thought in poetry bring
in order and discipline, and to achieve this is no mean task; the poet will have to
struggle. A poet will have to constantly endeavour for this and the task in hand cannot
be finished so easily. Music suggests euphony as against cacophony which can be
related to the assonance in poetry as against the dissonance of the world.
Musicalisation of the poet’s thoughts would result in harmony in his poetry, which is
an essential attribute. Tagore’s reference to the master poet’s music and his own music
also relates to ‘musica mundana’, the harmony of the elements of the spheres and of
the seasons, and ‘musica humana’, the harmony between body and soul in singing,
respectively. As mentioned earlier the divine giver of inspiration is a creative being as
well responsible for the creation of the universe and the harmony found in it. The
poet, on the other hand, is also creative and creates art and gains inspiration from the
master forever emulating him. A poet experiences meditative immersion in music
always in the consciousness due to the fateful participation of the celestial sphere; his
sensitivity is integral. In the universe, a mortal being always sees contradictory
elements. The life-giving breath of the master poet is boundless and capable of
inspiring all but only the ones gifted with the faculty for it can benefit from the
inspiration. When the poet reflects upon how the master poet went about creating the
universe from all the dissonant elements that were present he is awe-inspired, his own
task of composing poetry from life seems insignificant and all that he can do is but to
listen in silent amazement. And when a poet transcends his mortal being and merges
with the divine, even if it is only for a brief moment, the apparent discordance
dissolves, there is clarity of vision and he is able to see the ‘uni’verse as opposed to
the ‘multi’verse.
Philip Sidney in his ‘Apology for Poetry’ echoes something similar when he says,
“The world of nature is brazen but the poet always delivers the golden.” Due to the
profound inspirational heights, a poet is able to universalize and make one what is
otherwise harsh and separate.
“All that is harsh and dissonant in my life melts into one sweet harmony- and my
adoration spreads wings like a glad bird on its flight across.”
As mentioned earlier, at the peak of inspiration, every poet experiences oneness. The
poet when inspired is able to compose harmony out of dissonance and make soft what
to a layman appears harsh. Only an artist is gifted with the faculty by which he can
make dead stones come alive, and convert them into an idol for worship. We all do see
stones lying on paths trodden upon day after day, but how many of us do recognize
that these stones can become objects of worship when carved? That is exactly what a
poet does. Even Shakespeare echoes this idea when he says “through indirections find
directions out.” The raw material for poetry is the world and its life which is physical
and short-lived but the poet composes life into poetry, casting it in the mould of
inspirational experience and takes it to metaphysical heights and makes it everlasting.
That is why when the poet is inspired all the harsh and dissonant elements in life melt
into one sweet harmony and flow out as poetry. This also explains why all great poets
harp on the significance of coherence, the wholeness of meaning, and the
comprehensiveness of imagination in poetry.
In the line quoted above, the imagery of a bird in its flight suggests the idea of ‘poetic
flight’. At the level of inspirational experience, a poet is glad and filled with adoration
or respect for his Muses. His faculty of imagination is like the wings of a bird that
helps him to soar above the ordinary plane of existence and see those aspects of life
which others cannot. Keats expresses something similar in his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’
when he says that he would fly on the “viewless wings of poesy”. The authenticity of
the poetic experience is established here as other poets have also felt the same way.
But the lack of inspiration or inability to write poetry, also referred to as poetic lull
can be an extremely painful experience for the poet, which Tagore expresses in his
prayer:
“Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest or respite, and my work
becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.”
The poet’s poetic endeavour constantly needs the inspiration of the master poet and
away from him, the poet would never be able to accomplish his task. The poet’s work
is no mean task, as already mentioned. Therefore, in a situation where there is nothing
to inspire a poet has to struggle. In one of the lines previously quoted the poet
expresses how when his speech breaks not into song, he cries out baffled. The poet
has to communicate his feelings to the rest of the world in a meaningful fashion and
this becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil if no inspiration enlightens him.
But the poet is ready to wait sincerely for the moment of inspiration to arrive:
“In the night of weariness let me give myself up to sleep without struggle, resting my
trust upon thee. Let me not force my flagging spirit into a poor preparation for thy
worship.

It is thou who drawest the veil of night upon the tired eyes of the day to renew its sight
in a fresher gladness of awakening.”
A sudden understanding seems to dawn upon the poet that his master only wants him
to rest for some time and get back to his task at a later time. The night of weariness
can refer to the moments of poetic lull, in which case the poet must sleep or rest,
reposing faith in his master that he would awaken the next day with fresh inspiration
that would provide him gladness. A poet can never force poetry out of him. In fact, it
is believed that it is not the poet who writes poetry but poetry that writes the poet.
Tagore here echoes something of the same when he says that his own flagging or
waning spirit should not make vain attempts. The poet’s poetry is the prayer that he
offers for worship to his master and a devoted poet can never afford to compromise in
his quality of offering. There are other verses in Gitanjali too which echo this idea. In
fact, if we read the different lines of Gitanjali closely it is possible to relate to similar
ideas; only the metaphor varies but the poet’s various experiences that find expression
would be more or less similar. Take a note of this:
“On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time. But it is never lost, my lord. Thou
hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands.

Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into
blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness.

I was tired and in my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased. In the morning I
woke up and found my garden full with wonders of flowers.”
We can connect these lines to the ones quoted earlier. When the poet experiences a
lull and is unable to carry forward his task any further; he faces a block. The poet
knows that he is a mortal being and his life on earth is brief and the task in hand
enormous. He values time and cannot afford to let even a single moment go waste. A
poet experiences boundless joy in accomplishing his task but being idle is
disheartening and he grieves over time lost when he was making futile attempts to
compose poetry. But the poet realises that the moments were not really lost and his
master had taken it up from him in order to let him prepare himself. This idea holds
relevance because every time a poet experiences spells of lull it only means that his
thoughts are undergoing a transformation or renewal of some sort and once they are
fully prepared the poet regains his capacity to express them. It is the master that
nourishes ‘seeds’ of thought in the poet’s mind and when the poet is able to fructify
them into lovely poems he offers them to his master in all obeisance. The poet’s
poetry is nothing but prayers dedicated to the master poet:
“From the words of the poet men take what meaning pleases them; yet their last
meanings point to thee.”
Tagore had always maintained that his religion was a poet’s religion. Most critics
interpret Gitanjali from a solely religious point of view. This may be because he
belonged to an Indian Hindu community generally considered to be pious and
devotional. Tagore’s poetry cannot be confined to a particular creed or faith; it
belongs to the universe. A poet’s religion knows no boundaries, it is all-inclusive. The
religiousness of a poet arises not from the religion he belongs to but out of a respect
for life which in him is an instinct. Can anyone ever point out exactly where from
faith emerges? It is as impossible as to predict when exactly the heart began to beat or
the universe was set in motion. When Wordsworth referred to poetry as the
“spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility” he
foregrounded the word ‘spontaneous’ only in order to stress the instinctive nature of
poetry writing. The urge to write poetry is a call of the conscience, an intuitive pursuit
which not everyone is capable of committing oneself to.
In the essay called ‘The Poet’s Religion,’ Tagore says: (excerpts from pg. 3-26)
“Through creation, man expresses his truth; through that expression, he gains back
his truth in its fullness. But the poet in man knows that reality is a creation, and
human reality has to be called forth from its obscure depth by man’s faith which is
creative. The great world … has its call for us. The call has ever roused the creator in
man, and urged him to reveal the truth, to reveal the Infinite in himself.”
There is a mystery in it, like the mystery about life and its depths can never be
fathomed using language as a measure:
“At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives
birth to an utterance ineffable.”
Here the giving birth to an ‘utterance ineffable’ by the poet is akin to Wordsworth’s
‘spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions’. When poetic inspiration touches the
poet, his sensibility is stirred; the humble poet is elevated to unprecedented heights of
imagination in his moments of tranquility and the poetry which overflows or is born
out of him then is filled with emotions or joy; guided by his inspiration, he utters what
would otherwise be ineffable or inexpressible.
This takes us to another level of understanding of the poet’s creed which requires him
to utter what under ordinary circumstances is inexpressible. Every religion has its
prescribed rites and rituals. A poet’s religion also requires him to follow certain
methods. “When thou commandest me to sing…” says Tagore which we can relate to
the commandments in the Bible that every believer will have to abide by. A poet- if he
is a strong believer in his poetic creed- will have to obey the commandments of his
Muse, the supreme being that inspires. It is a poet’s duty to articulate the truth without
being misled into fallacies. That is why poets are believed to be the conduits through
which God reaches the common man. In his essay, ‘Silent poet, untaught poet’,
Tagore makes an important statement with regard to the poet’s rites that must be
performed faultlessly:
“A powerful imagination does not by itself make a poet. It must be a trained and
refined imagination of a high order. There should be the intellect and the taste to
employ the imagination to good purpose.” He even goes on to say later, “The
imagination too, like everything else, requires training. An imagination without proper
training revels in the extravagant, the impossible, the preternatural.” He goes on to
compare such imagination with a mirror of a curved surface that shows its image
disproportionately and then accuses people with ill-trained imagination, “People of
such imagination cobble together ill-sorted objects and produce a monster. They are
incapable of seeing incorporeal dimensions in a corporeal object…”
Therefore, a poet has to develop a religious discipline in order to reach that state of
perfection. Praying for inspiration, offering one’s songs to the ‘divine giver of
inspiration’, and constantly training oneself for the complex art of poetry writing are
the rites that a poet must faultlessly perform. It is not an easy path to pursue:
“It is the most distant course that comes closest to thyself, and that training is most
intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.”

CONCLUSION:
There is only a very thin line that separates poetry from spirituality or religion. In fact,
the poetic experience is akin to spiritual/religious experience when the poet is genuine
in his pursuit. In spirituality, great thoughts realised by enlightened beings gradually
transformed themselves into religious doctrines, and the spiritualist came to be
regarded as God incarnate. A true spiritualist never abandons the world but moves
along with the world understanding the problems of humanity, redressing them. The
poet who experiences true inspiration is also an enlightened soul. He does not shut his
doors to the outside world but refines the world through his imaginative capacity and
offers the world an antidote for its maladies through his works. A spiritualist conveys
himself to the rest of the world by means of sermons and teachings whereas a poet
leaves his thought behind in the form of his art. The poet’s soul is connected to the
divine force, whereas his physical self is linked with the people in the rest of the world
and for him, complete bondage/surrender to the Divine force means complete freedom
where he becomes a tool in the hands of the divine forces. For both the spiritualist and
the poet Deliverance lies not in the renunciation of the world but in such bondage:
“I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.”
The medium of language has its own impact. In poetry, the spiritual aspects are subtly
woven; the poet never preaches overtly. These lines of Tagore directly appeal to his
master conveying what a struggle it is for a poet to be able to express satisfactorily in
language what he has experienced at the spiritual level. A poet can never completely
transfer his experiences into words and the relationship that he shares with the divine
forces remains a mystery forever:
“I put my tales of you into lasting songs. The secret gushes out of my heart. They
come and ask me, ‘Tell me their meanings.’ I know not how to answer them. I say,
‘Ah, who knows what they mean!’ They smile and go away in utter scorn and you sit
there smiling.”
In fact, when spiritual truths are written down they become literature automatically.
Take the Bible for instance; today its popularity in the world is more as a literary
account of the Christian civilization and its beliefs than as a holy or religious text.
Literature, especially poetry, is, therefore, a viable medium for communicating truths
that people realise through heavenly inspiration at various points of time in their life.
A poet too is a spiritualist who undergoes a grand transformation in his lifetime due to
the various inspirational experiences and becomes sublime. A poet is like the
legendary white swan which is believed to take only the milky portion from the milk
leaving behind the water in it; he offers to the world pure truth which is soiled by the
world otherwise.
Through Tagore’s Gitanjali we can get a glimpse of the poet’s true nature and his
spiritual feelings. Embodied in this work is his very soul; it will continue to give out
sparks of truth to the world. This pious poet’s prayer will continue to kindle in
generations of poets the desire to lead a life of humility and self-oblivion and
accomplish their task of telling this world what it would not realise otherwise with
utmost sincerity. Tagore’s own reflection upon his poetry, I suppose, would be the
best way to conclude this essay that is all about the poet’s prayers leading to divine
inspiration and complete surrender to the ‘master’ poet:
“When I look back and consider the long, uninterrupted period of my work as a poet,
one thing appears clear to me that it was a matter over which I had hardly any
authority. Whenever I wrote a poem, I thought it was I who was responsible for it, but
I know well today that this was far from the truth. For in none of those small
individual poems was the real purport of my whole poetical work wholly significant.
What the real purport is I had no knowledge of previously.
 “What is this game ever-new
You play with me in your jesting mood?
Whatever I may want to say
You do not allow me to express.

Residing in the innermost me

You snatch words from my lips
With my words, you utter your own speech,
Mixing your own melody.

What I wish to say I seem to forget;

I only say what you want me to say.

In the stream of songs

I lose sight of the shores.”

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