The otherwise cacophonous and rambunctious Houses of Parliament were witness to some unusual melodious strains on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. With Parliament paying a tribute to the great poet, philosopher and patriot, the Members of Parliament (MPs) cutting across party lines recited his poetry and spoke of his all-embracing philosophy. The MPs from West Bengal spoke about Tagore, as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley put it in “sweet” Bengali. Trinamool Congress
MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy even went on to sing Rabindra Sangeet to much applause. Roy also gifted Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari a reprint of the first Gitanjali, a collection of Tagore’s poems that got him the Nobel Prize in 1913.
