Original subtitles

On the 2nd of August, 1941..

In the city of Calcutta..

A man died.

His mortal remains.. Perished.

But he left behind him a heritage..

..which no fire could consume.

It is a heritage of verse and music and poetry..

..of ideas and ideals.

And it has the power to move us.. to inspire us.

Today and then the days to come.

We, who owe him so much..

..salute his memory.

Founded in the year 1690..

..by an English man by named Job Charnock..

Calcutta, 100 years ago was an thriving metropolis.

Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877.

As the capital of India..

Calcutta was the seat of the Queen's Government.

In the northern part of the sprawling city..

..in the area known as Jorasanko, in Chitpur..

..was the family residence of the Tagores

The Tagores had an impressive lineage.

It dated back to the first group of learned Brahmins..

..that came from Kannauj..

..and settled in Bengal in the 8th century.

One thousand years later.. Panchanan, a descendent..

..came to the new city of Calcutta..

And found a lucrative position with the British shipping company.

His grandson Nilmony added to the family fortune..

..and built the house at Jorasanko.

The peak was reached with Lilmony's grandson.

One of the most brilliant and colourful figures..

..of the 19th Century.

Dwarkanth Tagore combined cultured sophistication..

..with a largeness of heart and a rare degree of business acumen.

Gold, Sugar, Indigo, Exports, Banking, Newspaper..

There was no end to his enterprises.

And he succeeded in all.

If his earnings were fabulous.. So were his spending.

Although a Hindu and a Vaishnav..

Dwraknath defied the bane of Brahmin orthodoxy..

..and twice went to England.

There, he had an audience with Queen Victoria..

..discussions with Gladstone..

..and dinner with men like Dickens, Maclay and Max Muller.

Shortly before his death in England..

Dwarkanath has written to his eldest son in Calcutta..

..reproving him from neglecting the family's business affairs.

For some years past..

..young Gajendranath had been developing tendencies..

..which might, well, had distressed his father.

It began in a burning Ghat.

The last rights were being administered..

..to Rabindranth's grandmother

Not far away, on the river bank, sat Rabindranath.

Like many a rich man's son he had been leading a wavered life.

But tonight.. he was overcome by strange feeling.

Worldly possessions seem to lose their meaning for him.

This lead to a period of profound disquiet.

Followed by ceaseless quest for the meaning of existence..

..in the great source books of the East and West.

He read the materialist philosophers of modern Europe..

Lock, Hume, Benson and others..

..whose ideas were so much in vogue among the students of the time.

Then learnt Sanskrit and read the Mahabharat.

But peace of mind would not come, until one day..

He chanced upon a torn page of a Sanskrit book.

There was a Shloka in it, which said..

"God is supreme and all pervading."

"Enjoy by renunciation, covet not on other's wealth."

This was the page of Eshopanishad..

..edited by Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

Ram Mohan had been a close friend of Dwarkanath.

As a boy, Rabindranath had a deep admiration for the man.

But the greatness of the Raja's vision..

..and the magnitude and the nobility of the tasks..

He had set before himself, were beyond the boy's comprehension.

Ram Mohan lived in times..

..when India's spiritual heritage..

..was being submerged in ritual and superstition.

While in the West.. a hole new concept of humanity was emerging.

Ram Mohan advocated Western education for Indians.

Because he wanted the new ideas of the West to spread in the country.

He also wanted that we should respect what is old and true..

..in our own heritage.

In the Upanishads, for instance..

..which revealed to him the monophystic basis of Hinduism.

Ram Mohan's work was left unfinished by his death in England.

But Debendranath, inspired by the two lines of the Sanskrit text..

..went on to prove himself to be Raja's true spiritual son and heir.

Debendranath suffered social ostracism..

..for preaching the monophystic faith..

..that he called, Brahmoism.

But to his followers, and there were many..

He was Maharshi.. 'The Great Sage.'

When Rabindranath was born, the Maharshi was 45 years old.

His wife Sharadamoni was 33.

Rabindranath was the 14th child.

The eldest was Bijendranath..

Poet, Philosopher, Mathematician.

Second son Satyendranath..

..translated the Geeta and Meghdoot, in Bengal verse.

And became the first Indian member of the Indian Civil Service.

The 5th son Jyotindranath was a born musician..

..translated Molière and Sanskrit dramas in to Bengali..

..and wrote and staged..

..some of the most popular Bengali plays of his time.

Amongst the daughters was Shornokumari.

The first novelist and the first woman to edit a journal in India.

Indeed, it was an household which hummed with artistic activity.

For Rabi.. The time hadn't yet come..

..to participate in the activities of the elders.

Going out in the street was forbidden too.

And this was indeed a pity.

For nothing seemed more fascinating to the boy..

..than the world outside.

At the age of seven, Rabi was sent to the school.

Rabi went to four schools and hated them all.

But to say that he lacked education would be wrong.

For his 3rd brother Himendrnath saw to his studies at home.

And it was all done by the clock.

When Rabi was 12..

Debendrnath went on a trip to North India and took boy with him.

The last stop on a long tour was the rest house on Bakrutha.

The highest hill and the hill station of Dalhousie in the Punjab.

Rabi was told by his father to roam about on his own.

He was also taught to rise before the sun.

And to handle money and keep accounts.

The days often ended..

..with the boy singing devotional songs to his father.

Rabi was 13 when his first book of verse Kobikahini came out.

When Rabi was 16..

Bijendranath brought our literary magazine called Bharati.

And Rabi found an admirable platform..

..for his literary activities.

The essays included pieces on the European poets..

..like Dante and Petrarch..

..whose acquaintance Rabi has made in Ahmadabad..

..in the library of his elder brother Satyendranath.

Satyendranath's wife Gyanada Nandini..

..who was staying in England with her two children..

..who was a remarkable woman..

..who had been persuaded by her husband..

..to come out of orthodox seclusion.

Rabi set out for England in the summer of 1878.

And joined Gyanada Nandini in Brighton.

If the plan was to provide the boy with the proper education..

It came to naught.

For Rabi returned..

..without completing his course of studies at the London University.

While in England..

Rabindranath had become acquainted with Western Music.

Some of the tunes he had learnt..

..found their way into his enchanting play, 'Balmikipratibha.'

There were other tunes, however..

..which came from classical Indian ragas..

..used for the first time in an operatic context.

Balmikipratibha was staged in the Tagore's residence..

..with the Rabindranath in the role of the bandit turned poet.

The rest of the cast too was composed of..

..the member's of the Tagore's family.

All gifted with the varying degrees of talent for acting and music.

Among those who saw and praised this performance..

..was the greatest literary figure of the time..

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.

A year later, when Rabindranath's Shundar Sangeet was published..

Bankim Chandra personally congratulated the poet..

..and acknowledged his preeminence..

..among the rising writers of the day.

Of all the members of Rabi's family..

Two closest to his mind and heart.

They were Jyotindranath and his wife.

Kadambari Devi was two years older than Rabi.

She was his best friend and severest critic.

Rabi lived with these two for a time..

..in a house in Sudder Street in South Calcutta.

One morning, a strange experience befell the poet.

One day my life stood watching at early dawn.

The sun sending out it's rays from behind the trees.

I suddenly felt..

..as if some ancient mist had in a moment, lifted from my sight.

And the morning light on the face of the world..

..revealed an inner radiance of joy.

The poem I wrote on the first day of my surprise..

..was named, 'The awakening of the waterfall.'

At the age of 22, Rabindranath married Bhabatarini Devi.

The old fashioned was later changed to Miralini.

Two months before the wedding..

..Rabindranth has received a letter from his father..

..in which he was asked to prepare himself..

..to look after the familial estates.

After a period of initial training in the estate's offices in Calcutta..

Rabindranah found himself in the very heart of rural Bengal.

In the region around the river Padma.

With the worldly wisdom unusual in a poet..

..but the characteristic of the Tagores

Rabindranath, in later life set about in a practical way..

..to improve the lot of the poor peasants of his estate.

And his varied work in the field, is on record.

But his own gain from this intimate contact..

..with the fundamental aspects of lie in nature..

..and the influence of this contact on his life and work..

..are beyond measure.

Living mostly in his boat and watching life through the window..

..a whole new world of sights and sound and feelings..

..opened up before him.

It was the world in which moods of people..

..and the moods of nature..

..were inextricably interwoven.

The people found room in a succession great short stories.

And nature..?

In an outpouring of exquisite songs and poems.

Dominant was the mood of the rain.

Exhalant and terrible.

His already enormous output of poems and plays..

..have been gathered in one big volume.

It comprised 21 books.

And included Sonar Tari, his first masterpiece.

The same year 1901, marked a event of a somewhat different nature.

In Bolpur, in the district of Birbhum in West Bengal..

..Debendranath has acquired some property in 1862.

One year after the Rabindranath was born.

The property was made over to a board of trustees.

And the deed specified..

..that the place was to be used for meditation..

..on the supreme formless being.

According to the Mahrashi's wishes..

..a seat of prayer and a temple of worship had been built.

And close to the temple, a residential house..

..which is called Shanti Niketan, 'The abode of peace."

Rabindranth had been worrying about the education of his children.

And he decided to start an experimental educational..

..institution, in Shanti Niketan.

It was to be a school.

But not like the schools..

..that had been the nightmare of his own childhood.

It was to be like the forest hermitages of classical India.

But to bring it into being was not a easy task.

For one thing, it cost money.

Rabindranath was obliged to sell..

..amongst other things, the copyrights of his books.

His wife added her bit by selling her wedding ornaments.

Two months after the school was opened, she was taken ill.

Three months later, at the age of 29, she died.

For Rabindranath..

It was a beginning of series of personal tragedies.

9 months after his wife death..

..his second daughter Renuka, passed away.

The hardest blow of all came 4 years later.

Youngest son Samindro, took after his father in many ways.

He was only 13 when he fell victim to cholera.

It was in the midst of these bereavements..

..that Rabindranath participated in one of the greatest..

..political upheavals in the history of India.

In December, 1903, was published..

..the decision of India's Governor General, Lord Karjon..

..to split up Bengal into two provinces.

The idea was to create a separate province with a Muslim majority.

Which would induce a rift between the two main religious groups..

..and avert the possible growth of a united front against the Govt.

But in proposing the partition..

..Karjon merely fanned the flame of patriotism..

..that had been smoldering in the minds of certain visionaries..

..all through the period of the renaissance in Bengal.

These men now came to the fore..

..and led the millions to rise in protest.

The series of steering patriotic songs..

..which Rabindranath composed to the occasion..

..were sung into session in the streets of Calcutta.

With the poet himself in the lead.

On October, 16, 1905..

The partition became an accomplished fact.

In a form a protest that only a poet could conceive..

Rabindranath turned the black day..

..into a mass festival of Rakhi Bandhan.

The tying of the band of friendship.

But the Swadeshi movement..

..was fated to grow and assume a character..

..which was not possible to foresee in it's early stages.

While admitting the bravery and patriotism of those..

..who killed or were killed in reckless bid for freedom..

Rabindranath could not condone terrorism.

He stated his credo in clear terms.

The path of violence was not for India.

Good could come only out of constructive work..

..carried out in a spirit of tolerance.

He had himself followed up his retirement from the political scene.

By devoting himself to the work of frugal welfare in his estate.

And there were other activities too.

He was teaching at school.

Editing journals and engaging himself..

..in any conceivable form of literary activity.

That his own countrymen now regarded him..

..as their leading man of letters..

..was proved by his 50th birthday celebrations in Calcutta.

Sponsored by the Bengal Academy of Letters..

..and attended by thousands..

..it was unique occasion and the first time..

..that such an ovation had been given a literary man in India.

But, to the outside world..

Rabindranath was still an unknown name.

The objects of Rabindranath's visit to England in 1912..

..was to study the educational methods of the West.

And also to acquaint the West with his own work at Shanti Niketan.

He happened to carry with him on this occasion..

..a notebook containing his own English translations..

..of some of his songs.

Mainly from Gitanjali.

He showed these translations..

..to the English painter William Rothenstein..

..who had met him on an earlier visit to India.

Rothenstein was so impressed..

..that he sent a copy of the translation..

..to the well know Irish poet, Yeats.

In introducing the poems to a gathering of..

..English writers and Intellectuals..

Yeats said..

"I know of no man in my time..

..who has done anything in English language..

..to equal these lyrics."

"Even as I read them in this literal prose translations..

..they are exquisite in style and thought."

Gitanjali was published in England in the same year.

There has rarely been another instance of a poet..

..gaining world fame in like manner.

The Nobel Prize came in 1913.

And the Knighthood, in 1915.

World war was raging in Europe.

Touring the United States and Japan in 1916..

Rabindranath made eloquent appeals for peace.

He felt that world peace could only be achieve..

..through intellectual co-operation between nations.

He said..

"The call has come to every individual in the present age..

..to prepare himself and his surroundings..

..for the dawn of a new era."

"The man shall discover his soul..

..in the spiritual unity of all human being."

Pursuing this noble idea of international co-operation..

Rabindranath gave the school at Shanti Niketan..

..a new status and a new name.

'Yatra Vishvam Bhavti Ek Nidam.'

Where the world becomes a single nest.

This is the motto of the Vishwa Bharati.

It was inaugurated on the 24th of December, 1918.

With the aged philosopher, Brijendra Nath Sheel, presiding.

Rabindranath made over the entire Nobel Prize money..

..towards the building of this University.

While peace had been restored in Europe..

In India, there was unrest.

The Rowlett Bill..

..designed to suppress all political movements..

..dashed India's hopes of gaining the self-government..

..that the British rulers had kept promising through the war years.

Dominating the Indian political scene at this time..

Was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Who as barrister in South Africa..

..had fought for the rights of the Indians living in that country.

As a protest again the Rowlatt Act..

Gandhi launched a movement of Passive Resistance.

But the masses misinterpreted the movement..

..and following the rumour of Gandhi's arrest..

..violence broke out in many parts of the country.

As a result of this..

..the Government started taking repressive measures..

..out of all proportion to the magnitude of the violence.

In the Punjab, Martial Law was declared.

In charge of the troops at Amritsar..

..was Brigadier General, Dyer.

On the first day of the month of Vaishakh..

..the crowd gathered in Jalianwala Baug..

..as it had done very other year.

It was a peaceful crowd.

But Dyer was taking no chances.

New of the Amritsar incidence was suppressed by the Government.

But details filtered through to other parts of the country.

An event to be abode of peace.

Rabindranath rushed to Calcutta.

But the Defense of India Act was still in force.

And no leader would support him in a plea for a meeting of protest.

At 4 o'clock in the morning of May, the 30th..

Rabindranath finished writing a letter.

It was addressed to the Viceroy.

Condemning the Govt. for the killing in Punjab.

Rabindranath ended by saying..

"An I for my part..

..wish to stand shorn of all special distinctions..

..by the side of my countrymen."

"Who, for the so called insignificance..

..are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings."

"And these are the reasons which have painfully compelled me..

..to ask your Excellency to relieve me of title of Knighthood.

The next 10 years of Rabindranath's life..

..were filled with ceaseless activities.

The urge to travel and the necessity to collect funds..

..for his University, took him to all parts of the world.

And the West as much as the East welcomed him with opened arms.

Wherever he went, he spread the message of peace.

And stressed the importance of International co-operation..

..between nations.

He said..

"We aught to know that isolation of life and culture..

..is not a thing of which any nation can be proud."

"In human world, giving is exchanging."

"It is not one sided."

He also said..

"I do not put my faith in any new institutions."

"But in the individuals all over the world..

..who think clearly, feel nobly and act rightly."

"They are the channels of modern truth."

His great humanist ideas found an echo in the best minds of Europe.

And some of them became his close friends.

In the meanwhile..

The institution of Shanti Niketan..

..had come a long way from it's modest beginning.

It's scope for studies had greatly increased.

There was Kala Bhavan for the study of painting..

..under Masters like Nandulal Bose.

Who was himself a pupil of Avabindranath, the poet's nephew.

The Sangeet Bhavan..

..which neglected no branch of Indian Music..

..had also grown under Dinendranath..

..another nephew of the poet.

Special provisions were made to conducting oriental studies.

And scholars came from all over the world..

Stayed to lecture, a research to exchange ideas.

Such men were, Levvy, Winternitz Lezny, Stachanov.

And there were some Europeans who did even more than that.

Charles Freer Andrews..

..a missionary who was present at Yeat's reading of Gitanjali.

And William Winston Lee Pearson, who also met poet in England..

..came to the Ashram in it's early days..

..and stayed on until the death.

Working with the selfless devotion to the poet and his cause..

..that few Indians could equal.

Linnet Elmhurst was another Englishman..

..whom Tagore had met in America.

He was drawn by the poet's personality.

Came over to Shanti Niketan..

..and took charge of the School of Rural Handicraft.

Another of Rabindranath's experiments..

..at Shurul, 2 miles from Shanti Niketan.

His last European tour began with the visit to Oxford.

Where delivered the series of lectures..

..which later published as 'The Religion of Man.'

It was also on this last trip that Rabindranath went to..

..Soviet Russia, for the first time.

On the eve of his departure from Moscow, he told his hosts..

"You have recognized the truth..

..that in extirpating all social evils one has to go the root."

"And the only way to it is through education."

In Russian as well as in other countries..

..that he visited on this tour..

Rabindranath, held exhibitions of his paintings.

At the age of 70, Rabindranath had found a new outlet..

..for his creative urge.

It was astonishing, the way he started.

In 1931

..the leading citizens of Calcutta united in an appeal..

..to observe the poet's 70th birthday.

It was celebrated in a manner..

..that was truly worthy of the occasion.

The golden book of Tagore..

..was a testimony to the love and reverence..

..that the intellectuals of the world bore for the Rabindranath.

It's sponsors consisted of 3 Europeans and 2 Indians.

There was Romain Rolland from France..

Albert Einstein from Germany..

The poet Coste Palams .from Greece

The Indians consisted of the scientists, Jagdish Chandra Bose..

..who had been the poet's closest friend, 40 years.

The other Indian was Mahatma Gandhi.

In physical appearance, in personal habits..

..and in general outlook..

..the two differed considerably.

At several moments of crisis in India's political history..

..the two had disagreed over the course of action.

But these were on the surface.

The deeper affinity, transcended all occasional barriers.

The last years of the poet's life..

..was spent largely on his beloved Shanti Niketan.

He had a choice of a small houses built for him.

For he never liked to stay in the same house..

..or even in the same room for long

It was, in a way, symbolic the refusal to get into a rut..

..which marked his whole life.

In his writings..

He was now producing some of his most striking..

..original and mature works.

And these included..

..text books and nonsense rhymes for children.

Not an unusual occupation for someone..

..who had loved and understood children so well..

..and done so much to mold them for a better future.

His health was failing.

But calls of duty, which he was ever ready to answer..

..gave him little rest.

On 7th of May, 1941, Rabindranath was 80 years old.

Three months later..

He was to leave Shanti Niketan, never to return.

He would be taken to his ancestral house in Calcutta.

Fatally ill.

In this house, once upon a time..

A boy roamed the corridors.

What is the fun of all these writing in writings?

When I take a father's pen or pencil..

I'll write upon his books just as he does.

A B C D E F G H I..

Why do you get cross with me than mother?

You never see word his father liked.

When my father waste such heaps of papers..

..Mother, you don't seem to mind at all.

But if I take only one sheet to make a boat with..

You say, "Child how troublesome you are!"

What do you think of father spoiling..

..sheets and sheets of paper with black marks on both sides?

Rabindranath attended the 80th birthday celebrations..

..in Shanti Niketan. In spite of his failing health.

That day for the occasion, he had compose a message.

His last message to the world.

It was called the 'Crisis In Civilization.'

It concerned itself..

..with the state of the so called modern civilization.

A civilization that was being shaken to its very root..

..by barbaric wars of aggression.

In the course of this message, Rabindranath said..

"I had one time believed..

..that the springs of civilization would issue..

..out of the heart of Europe."

"But today.."

"When I am about to leave the world..

..that faith, has deserted me."

"I look around and see the crumbling ruins..

..of a proud civilization..

..strewn like a vast heap of futility."

"And yet, I shall not commit to the graver sin..

..of losing faith in man."

"I shall look forward to a new dawn."

"To a new chapter in history, when the holocaust will end..

..and the air will be rendered clean..

..with the spirit of service and sacrifice."

"Perhaps, the dawn will come from this horizon..

..from the East, where the sun rises."

"On that day.."

..will unvanquished man retrace his path of conquest..

..surmounting all barriers..

..to win back his lost human heritage."