The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies

Life

Unveiling the Plaque to Anapurna Turkhud Littledale, Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Nalini’ on Ana’s 132nd Death Anniversary, 2 July 2023

This is an account of the life of Anapurna Turkhud Littledale who was a special presence in the life of Rabindranath Tagore, whom he called ‘Nalini’.  Historical research and investigations with The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies led to identifying where her body, and the body of her Denzil her child, came to their final resting places in Morningside Cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland. The following is a recording of a memorial ceremony and unveiling of a plaque to commemorate her life and the life of her child Denzil. Read more

Rabindrnath Tagore (right) with his German publisher Kurt Wolff (left) in 1921. Image credit: Martin Kaempchen/ Visva-Bharati University

Rabindranath Tagore in Germany by Martin Kaempchen

“If I were asked who was the greatest poet India has produced, including the greatest of ancient India, Kalidasa, my firm answer would be: ‘Tagore’ … It is tragic, however, that his greatness as a poet will never be generally acknowledged, like the greatness of Goethe, Hugo or Tolstoy.”[1] Read more

Newspaper article from The Mail

Rabindranath Tagore’s plans of travelling to Australia and his reception in the Australian media by Subrata Kumar Das

Australia is one of the two continents which Rabindranath Tagore did not visit. When the Nobel Committee announced the award for literature in 1913 on 13 November, the news spread across the world, including the Australian continent. Many Australian newspapers published articles on the Bengali poet. Afterwards, Tagore was repeatedly invited to visit Australia, yet he never managed to go. The last attempt that he made to go there was when Rabindranath was seventy-six years old.  Read more

Rabindranath Tagore with Mahatma Gandhi

An Immeasurable Legacy

The idea and endeavour of Visva-Bharati thrived in its first two decades, the 1920s and the 1930s.  Santiniketan became a hive of diverse communities. Rabindranath’s English biographer Edward Thompson, who had been visiting Santiniketan from 1913, wrote: Read more

Rabindranath Tagore painting

A Painter

Rabindranath painted mostly by instinct. He never liked to learn conventionally, by practice. This was even more apparent in the last years of his life when he became a prolific painter. He once fell very ill in 1937 and slipped into a coma. At the time his passion for painting was such that the first thing he did on regaining consciousness was to paint a landscape. He himself explained why painting was important to him as an altogether separate language of articulation. He wrote: Read more