fluence on Tagore’s spiritual ideals. Called by some the
“greatest of the Bau ̄ ls,” Tagore was a key figure in the popu-
larization of Bau ̄ l music and spirituality as an icon of Bengali
folk culture.
Tagore described his own spiritual vision as a “religion
of the artist.” Rejecting the rigidity and superficiality of insti-
tutional religions, including that of the Bra ̄hmo Sama ̄j, he
based his “poet’s religion” on a vision of the creative unity
among God, humanity, and nature. Just as the One Divine
Creator manifests himself in the infinite forms and beauty
of nature, so too the individual artist reflects that diversity
and returns it to divine unity through poetry, music, and art.
Tagore’s literary output is astonishing in its breadth and
diversity. In addition to poetry in various genres, he wrote
novels, short stories, essays, political articles, and songs while
also composing music and painting. He began translating his
works into English, and his first attempt, Gitanjali (Song of-
ferings; 1913), won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1913.
Praised by W. B. Yeats as lyrics “expressing in thought a
world I have dreamt of all my life,” these songs helped give
Tagore an international reputation and introduced Bengali
literature to the world (Yeats 1913: xiii).
Unfortunately Tagore has so often been subject to hagi-
ography and aesthetic idealization that it is often forgotten
that he was, in his early life, also deeply involved in national-
ist politics. As an active participant in the Swadeshi (Our
Country) movement, he played an important role in the
struggle for independence from British rule in the years up
to 1907. He, however, grew disillusioned with the elitism
and increasing violence of the movement and so gradually
retreated from the political sphere into the inner domain of
poetry, art, and spirituality.
This profound disillusionment with the violence of the
nationalist movement and the retreat into an inner realm of
spirituality is poignantly expressed in his novel The Home
and the World (Ghare-ba ̄ire; 1919). One of Tagore’s darkest
works, it centers on the terrorist violence of 1907 and the
ultimate failure of violent revolt as a means to independence.
At the same time it also expresses Tagore’s own ambivalent
status, torn between home and world, between the inner
realm of art and spirituality and the outward realm of public
action.
Even after his withdrawal from political action Tagore
continued to speak on social and political issues, if only in
a sort of “antipolitical” way. In 1917, shocked by the horrors
of World War I, Tagore also delivered a series of lectures in
Japan and the United States that leveled a scathing attack on
the “madness of nationalism” (Kopf 1979: 301). A mon-
strous and dehumanizing force spreading through the globe,
nationalism had in Tagore’s eyes only succeeded in stripping
human beings of their individuality and ended in violent self-
destruction.
In addition to his importance as a poet, artist, and polit-
ical figure, Tagore was also deeply concerned with education.
He founded Shantiniketan (the “abode of peace”), one of
India’s most original examples of alternative pedagogy. Dis-
mayed by the stifling structures of traditional education in
British India, Tagore turned instead to the model of the
tapovanas or forest hermitages. Classes at Shantiniketan were
held outdoors, in the shade of trees, emphasized the arts, and
fostered the ideal of creative unity central to Tagore’s own
philosophy.Tagore’s influence remains evident in contemporary
India not only in his homeland, where he is a cultural icon,
but throughout the country and beyond. The composer of
the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh, he is also
one of the most widely published authors of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. However, perhaps his most lasting
relevance lies in his encounters with religious violence and
terrorism in colonial India. His reflections on the “madness
of nationalism” are no less relevant for the twenty-first centu-
ry, as religious violence has by no means ended but arguably
only grown more intense and destructive. It is more than a
little ironic that the same country that sings his lyrics in its
national anthem should remain torn by the very religious na-
tionalism that Tagore so deplored.SEE ALSO Bengali Religions; Hinduism; Poetry, article on
Indian Religious Poetry.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tagore’s works exist in many editions and translations, among
them the Oxford Tagore translations (Oxford, U.K., 2002–
2004) and the Rabindranath Tagore Omnibus (New Delhi,
2003). A thorough biography of Tagore in English is Krishna
Dutta and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The
Myriad-Minded Man (New York, 1995). Older works in-
clude Edward John Thompson, Rabindranath Tagore: His
Life and Work (Calcutta, India, 1921); and Krishna Kripa-
lani, Rabindranath Tagore: A Biography (Calcutta, India,
1980). Useful discussions of Tagore’s role in modern Indian
religion and politics include David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj
and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton, N.J.,
1979); Stephen N. Hay, Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore
and His Critics in Japan, China, and India (Cambridge, U.K.,
1970); and Hugh B. Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and
Power in the Study of Religion (Berkeley, Calif., 2003),
chap. 3.HUGH B. URBAN (2005)T:A ̄HIRAH SEE QURRAT AL-EAYN T:A ̄HIRAH
TAI CHEN SEE DAI ZHEN
T’AI-CHI SEE TAIJI
8958 T:A ̄HIRAH