The government goes overboard with Rabindranath Tagore, but his works lie forgotten and neglected.
When West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee declared a state holiday on Rabindranath Tagore’s 70th death anniversary, it was only the latest in a series of state-sponsored tributes. A sports complex has been named after Tagore’s Nobel-winning book Gitanjali and Rabindra sangeet has been playing on the public address system at traffic signals. But Bengal’s intelligentsia has one question: what about Tagore’s true legacy?
Banerjee, after assuming charge, announced several projects dedicated to Tagore. A Rabindranath Tagore international complex would be set up and a sports stadium would be named after Gitanjali. She also declared that a Nepali Academy would be set up at Mungpoo which Tagore visited on several occasions. Notably, Banerjee is only renaming the projects which were initiated and completed under the previous Left Front government. And while she had directed the administrative officials and institutions in Bengal to celebrate Tagore’s death anniversary, the cost is being borne by the debt-trapped state, that too at a time when it is facing a flood-like situation.
“It’s a trivialisation of Tagore’s creation and a forceful imposition of cultural symbolism in his name,” says writer Sunil Gangopadhyay. He says celebrating Tagore by naming a sport complex is no way to pay respect to the poet who was not even remotely associated with sports. “If anyone decides to name a sport complex or a shoe shop after Tagore, would it be a relevant way to pay homage?” he asks. “Instead of spending money on ceremonial spectacles, the government must incorporate Tagore’s message in its policies and activities,” adds Manab Mukherjee, former minister of tourism and culture.
Tapati Guha Thakurta, professor of history at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, says, “The huge ceremonial tribute on his death anniversary is like selling Tagore at the lowest possible level to prove how ‘Bengali’ this regime is compared to the previous one.” A death anniversary, she adds, can never be a celebration. “And the very tendency of the government to project Tagore as a Bengali nationalist is flawed as Tagore himself was a critique of nationalism and a propagator of universalism,” says Guha Thakurta adding, “The right way to pay tribute would have been by publishing works of Tagore and initiating projects and research works on the bard.”
But there are those who stand by Banerjee. “For years, Tagore’s legacy had been neglected under the communist regime which would denounce him as a ‘bourgeois poet’. Our new chief minister, being extremely culturally-inclined, wants to restore the lost glory of the Bengalis and what better way to do that than by disseminating Tagore’s message of Bengali pride,” says Subhaprasanna Bhattacharjee, painter and member of Banerjee’s cultural committee.
In a sad paradox though, while the government is spending millions on these celebration, Tagore’s own creations lie derelict, under lock and key in the museum at Jorasanko, his ancestral residence. Rabindra Bharati University grants Rs 1.5 lakh per year to the museum, not enough to restore even two of his original artworks. Instead, foreign consulates of Bangladesh, China and the US have come up with funds to help restore Tagore’s legacy. Clearly the light of “Poriborton” is yet to reach these neglected treasures.
