In his book Sadhana, Rabindranath Tagore relates an experience of meeting two Hindu ascetics. He asks them why they do not go out into the world to preach the sacred word. One of the ascetics replies, “Whoever feels thirsty will of himself come to the river. They must come, one and all.” Certainly, through the years, thousands of such ready souls have flooded to the river of Tagore’s outpourings. Each could tell an entirely different story of his encounter with this man’s thought. One might be led to assume that anyone looking for anything could find something satisfying in the work of this divergent writer.
Tagore is indisputably acknowledged as the founder of modern literature in India, although he is perhaps most famous as the author of India’s national anthem. Yet, history waits to frame the greater legacy of this man, for the massive volume of his work continues to elude obvious categorisation and full appreciation.
Tagore was born in 1861, the thirteenth child in a wealthy, Bengali Brahmin family that was devoutly Hindu yet also strongly political. His father and grandfather were deeply involved with an emerging religious movement called the Brahmo Samaj. In this atmosphere, the precocious Rabindranath developed a fiercely individual perception of life from a young age.
As he begins to write, Tagore’s spiritual perspective is surprisingly difficult to pinpoint, for his thoughts on God, soul and divinity are more implied than explicit in the broader substance of his work, which is multi-faceted and sometimes abstract. In The Religion of Man, based on the Hibbert Lectures he delivered in 1930 at Harvard University, Tagore characterises his own religious beliefs as “ & a poet’s religion & neither that of an orthodox man of piety nor that of a theologian.” The more we learn of Tagore and his work, the more we come to realise that access to his inner nature is vexedly labyrinthine, despite the prolificacy and profundity of his writings.
He was referred to as “the Indian Goethe” by Albert Schweitzer, “the Great Sentinel” by Mahatma Gandhi, and “Gurudev” by his disciples. Writing was always a great source of inspiration for Tagore. His masterpiece, Rabisangeet, consisted of more than two thousand songs—all of which he wrote, recorded and sang. While he was revered as a guardian of tradition in Bengal—he recalls in The Religion of Man that, during his upanayana (coming-of-age, sacred thread ceremony) he experienced “a serene exaltation”—his religious beliefs were paradoxically unorthodox for his time. Some for his efforts to reform Hinduism via the Brahmo Samaj movement, and introduce it to the West criticised him. Tagore felt that, with its postulation of monotheism, the Brahmo Samaj theology would be more palatable to Christians who might willingly embrace a pantheistic Hinduism.
In his writings, Tagore scarcely mentions the Puranas or the Bhagavad Gita, two popular scriptural texts often referred to by Hindus of his time. Instead, he focused primarily on man’s oneness with God. He was obviously influenced by the monism of the Upanishads. Again and again, he repeated that humanity’s mission on this physical plane is to merge with God. In Sadhana he states, “Man becomes perfect man, he attains his fullest expression, when his soul realises itself in the Infinite being who is Avih, whose very essence is expression.” From Tagore’s perspective, man is constantly evolving, and divine union is his assured destination. “Religion only finds itself when it touches the Brahman in man,” Tagore observes in The Religion of Man, “otherwise it has no reason to exist.” In Sadhana, he writes, “This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him, which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life.” Bits and pieces of his writings taken together outline his overall concept of man’s spiritual path, which might be summarised as follows: Life is man’s journey toward the realisation of his fullest potential, which is union with God. That journey is best facilitated by the avoidance of worldly distraction.
Examples of the correlation between the Upanishads and Tagore’s writings are not hard to find. The Mundaka Upanishad states that, “Like two golden birds perched on the selfsame tree, intimate friends, the ego and the Self, dwell in the same body.” In Sadhana Tagore writes, “When man’s consciousness is restricted only to the immediate vicinity of his human self, the deeper roots of his nature do not find their permanent soil. His greatness is measured by its bulk and not by its vital link with the infinite.”
In differentiating between earthly knowledge and sacred wisdom, Tagore again takes his cue from principles often repeated in the Upanishads. “[Man] has to discover that accumulation is not realisation,” he writes in Sadhana. “It is the inner light that reveals him, not outer things.”
His primary literary theme was man’s achievement of moksha, which is, according to Webster: “liberation from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma.” Rather than labouring in philosophical analysis, Tagore’s writings amplified the devotional inspiration of surrendering to God and serving humanity with love. Even his political views were deeply influenced by this poetic and devotional view of life.
There is a notable thread of soul-bearing honesty running through his work. Although he affirms his belief in reincarnation as “a history of constant regeneration, a series of fresh beginnings, “ he also writes in The Religion of Man that, “All I feel from religion is from vision and not from knowledge. Frankly, I acknowledge that I cannot satisfactorily answer any question about what happens after death.”
Much of Tagore’s religious inspiration came from nature. It was nature that gave his poetry its ethereal beauty. Gitanjali, one of his best-known works, for which he won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, is a poem celebrating the nature worship of his “Vedic ancestors.” This work, so lofty in its abstract worship, also revels his deep patriotism to India. In one of Gitanjali’s most popular passages, verse 35, Tagore’s blends his deep love of country with his faith in God.
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