open view news desk

KOLKATA, MAY 8: Right opposite the main gates of Tel Aviv University’s sprawling campus is Rehov Tagore. Probably not many of the Ramat Aviv residents who walk or drive along Rehov Tagore have even a passing knowledge of the gentleman after whom the street is named. The decision to name a street after Tagore was taken by the Tel Aviv Municipality in 1961 to commemorate the centenary of his birth. A committee of 16 people, eight of whom are on the city council and eight from outside but who are knowledgeable about the history of the city, decide on street names for Tel Aviv. Interestingly, the street intersects with the one named after Einstein.

          Similarly, Rabindranath Tagore Street in Berlin was also opened in 1961 to commemorate his birth centenary. Rabindranath visited Germany three times, in 1921,1926 and in 1930. In 1921, when Rabindranath Tagore visited Germany for the first time, the German people had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the First World War. Before entering Germany, Tagore expressed that he empathized with the German people in their hour of crisis and that he had come to strengthen her. So, there was a clear symbiotic relationship.

          Sheltered among the foliage of St Stephen’s Green public park stands a monument to a man often referred to as “the Bard of Bengal”. The monument has stood near the Leeson Street entrance to the park since 2011, just a few paces from the James Joyce memorial. Erected exactly 150 years after Tagore’s birth, and commissioned by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the bronze bust acknowledges the poet’s literary influence – which was notable not only in Bengal but also in Ireland. In 2011, 150 years after Tagore’s birth, the statue of the poet was unveild in St Stephen’s Green.

          In 1916 when Rabindranath Tagore visited Japan for the first time, he met many Korean students at the country’s universities and got introduced to the uniqueness of their culture. In the early years of the 20th century, Japan had occupied Korea and Koreans were facing cultural annihilation. Tagore used his visit as a platform to raise the issue among the public — in the cities he visited. Tagore never visited South Korea, but he mentioned Korea as the “lamp of the east”, and that made a huge impact in the minds of Koreans. In 2011, on the occasion of Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary, a bronze bust of the laureate was unveiled in Daehangro, Seoul’s cultural heart. It enjoys the rare distinction of being the first bust of any foreign dignitary or writer to be installed in South Korea’s capital city. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in2015 presented South Korean President Park Geun-Hye with two pashmina stoles inscribed with the poem by Rabindranath Tagore- in English and Korean- that was published in 1929 in the Korean daily Dong-A Ilbo.

          Today, on the occasion of the statesman and great poet’s 159th birth anniversary, these examples bear the testimony of the immortality of his creations and statesmanship.