DSE-A1 Project

Songborto Biswas, Semester 5

Scottish Church College
College Roll Number: ENGA20M351
CU Roll Number: 202223-21-0054
CU Registration Number: 223-1111-0194-20
The Bramho and the Poet: Exploring Tagore’s personal
theology through Gitanjali
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Prof. Shanta Pal for providing me with the opportunity to do this project
and giving me an insight into the subject.
Introduction
The word polymath was tailor-made for Rabindranath Tagore. From dance dramas to social
criticism articles, short stories to songs suitable for every juncture in life, Tagore’s pen has
traversed through every conceivable genre of literature and even beyond that, the man left his
mark in the fields of social and educational reform. His remarkably vast oeuvre has allowed
scholars to form various (often contradictory) accounts of his way of life, romance(s), and
personal philosophy. Yet, the world sees him primarily as a poet. It is through his poetry that
he has left his most intimate, most beautiful thoughts and ideas for us to explore and peruse.
Gitanjali, Tagore’s collection of devotional poems, was originally published in 1910 and in
1912, Tagore himself translated them into English in an anthology known as Song Offerings
(with additional translations from ten other poetic works of Tagore). It was Song Offerings
which brought Tagore public attention in the West and won him the 1913 Nobel Prize in
Literature. But for a work that resonated with audiences worldwide, this volume was
remarkably personal and simple. In parts, it read like Tagore’s personal conversation with his
God and it is these parts that we will concern ourselves with in this paper. In this paper, an
attempt will be made to explore Tagore’s personal theology through Gitanjali with particular
emphasis on ‘When my play was with thee’ (Gitanjali XCVII).
Bramhoism and Other Influences
Rabindranath Tagore was a member of one of the foremost aristocratic families of Bengal,
known for their contributions to Bengali culture and social reform and also (most of) their
adherence to Bramhoism. The Bramho movement was originally started by Rammohan Roy
as an attempt to reform Orthodox Hinduism but under the stewardship of Rabindranath’s
father, Devendranath Tagore, Brahmoism broke away completely from orthodox Hinduism
and emerged as a separate monotheistic religion. The key to Bramhoism was breaking away
from polytheism, idolatry and various customs of Orthodox Hinduism including
untouchability and the marginalization of widows, and focusing entirely on devotion towards
the All-mighty. These were principles that Tagore embraced wholeheartedly throughout his
life. But his religious ideas were not limited to this single source.

Maharshi Devandranath Tagore

Tagore was profoundly influenced by the core ideas of the Upanishads as seen in an early
hymn where he expressed his aspiration "to see the Lord of the World in this world, and the
Universal Soul in the individual soul”. He also expressed affinity with the other sources of
Indian culture- the Buddhist and the Jain. Islam he hailed for its “wonderful religious
democracy”. The Bhakti movement, the Sufi movement and Baul culture all left a profound
impact on his artistry. In essence, Tagore’s personal religion was syncretic and caused Banshi
Dhar to dub him “one of the greatest spokesmen of modern Indian humanism”.
Many Paths to the Divine
The image of the divine in Gitanjali is born out of the various influences described above but
He does not abide by their forms, ideas or customs. As mentioned above, this God is
intensely personal to Tagore and gives Himself to his song offerings. A few of the poems
describe his relation to God in different states of mind and body directly to readers. For
example, his Bramho distaste for idolatry can be seen clearly in poem XVII where he
exclaims:
LEAVE this chanting and singing and telling of beads!
And instead encourages his readers to look for God in “the tiller is tilling the hard ground”
and “the path-maker is breaking stones”. Here the path of the ascetic is replaced by the path
of the common man, engaged in the activities of samsara.
But in most of the poems, he addresses his God directly. It is the mode of address that varies.
In some occasions, he is quite simply the bard singing the glories of God and his creation:
IN one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world
at thy feet.
In others, he approaches the Divine as an infinite entity to whom he can surrender himself. In
these poems, one notes an ascetic side to him which stands in ambiguous contrast to the one
presented in poem XVII:
They come with their laws and their codes to bind me fast; but I evade them ever, for
I am only waiting for love to give myself up at last into his hands.
But this ambiguity can be explained away in the words of Tagore’s own character, Nikhilesh,
from Ghore Baire who remarks that asceticism is a part of the Indian way of life. Tagore’s
asceticism encourages his readers away from the slavery of the senses but it never dissuades
them from productive activity. Another remarkable facet of this approach of complete
surrender is how he exclaims that the rituals of idolatry and polytheism act as a direct
hindrance to his access to the Divine. His approach is much simpler. He engages the All-
mighty in conversation like one would approach a loved to share joys and sorrows or to ask
for support in times of crisis. But this approach does not entail equality as he himself points
out:
I KNOW thee as my God and stand apart—I do not know thee as my own and come
closer. I know thee as my father and bow before thy feet—I do not grasp thy hand as
my friend's.
The form of this loved one is not limited to that of the stern father. It also finds expression as
the caring mother in one poem:
MOTHER, I shall weave a chain of pearls for thy neck with my tears of sorrow.
It is even more extraordinary that the language of Tagore’s devotional love borders on that of
the romantic. The composite collection of Tagore’s songs (Rabindrasangeet), Geetobitan, is
neatly divided into sections on Romance (Prem Porjay), Devotion (Puja Porjay), Patriotic
(Swadesh Porjay), Nature (Prakriti Porjay), Festive (Anusthanik Porjay) and Miscellaneous
(Bichitro Porjay). But even the greatest aficionados of Rabindrasangeet have a hard time
telling some of the Romance songs apart from the Devotion ones, so similar is Tagore’s form
of address. This feature is noted in many poems of Gitanjali but nowhere more poignantly
than in these lines of poem LII:
I THOUGHT I should ask of thee—but I dared not—the rose wreath thou hadst on thy
neck. Thus I waited for the morning, when thou didst depart, to find a few fragments
on the bed. And like a beggar I searched in the dawn only for a stray petal or two.
From these many examples, it gradually begins to dawn upon us that there is little uniformity
in Tagore’s personal theology. This becomes even clearer when in the same collection we
find two poems which might seem, at first glance, to be almost contradictory. In ‘Light, oh
where is the light?’, the poet searches for the presence of the Almighty while in ‘Light, my
light, the world-filling light’ he has quite simply found it and finds his world illuminated by
His presence. And we realise once again that the lack of uniformity emerges from a man
recording his thoughts through poetry at different junctures of his life. And Tagore himself
philosophizes this out with great clarity in poem XCVII, When my play was with thee. In this
poem, Tagore traces the evolution of his faith through the years. The simplicity of his faith in
his youth allowed him to sing the ‘tunes’ in praise of the Almighty joyfully without
questioning their meaning but as he gains more insight into the world, he can appreciate the
complexity of his creation more fully. Tagore’s words resonate most clearly with the
ploughman poet, Robert Burns. In his famous contrary poems, ‘The Tyger’ and ‘The Lamb’,
Burns expressed this exact sentiment with beautiful imagery. Blake is an interesting figure to
discuss in relation to Tagore as he was often regarded as almost eccentric for his remarkable
Prophetic books which expressed the poetic Truth of Creation and Divinity as he saw it. In
both the poetry of Tagore and Blake, the Divine emerges as a force of positive energy and
solace standing as far away from away from Organized Religion as possible. Perhaps it is for
this reason that they continue to win hearts and minds across boundaries of nationality,
religion and time.
 Rabindranath Tagore
Conclusion
It would be most appropriate to end this project with one of Tagore’s own lines:
From the words of the poet men take what meanings please them; yet their last
meaning points to thee
In trying to demonstrate the many facets of Tagore’s God, the strongest feature of the man’s
philosophy shines through- his Universalism. Gitanjali essentially reveals Tagore’s own
brand of the Religion of Man. Like it gave solace to the war-ravaged West of 1913, it will
continue to inspire and comfort generations long after we are gone.
Bibliography
1. Tagore, Rabindranath, Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Macmillan and Co., Limited
2. Dhar, Banshi, The Humanism of Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Literature, Sahitya
Akademi (https://www.jstor.org/stable/24157437)
3. Iyer, Bharatwaj, Gitanjali’s Weak Theology: The Poetics of Tagore and Caputo,
Crosscurrents