The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies

Works

Rabindranath (right) singing with Abanindranath Tagore. Image credit: Ministry of Culture, Government of India

Tagore Songs: The Inner Spring and Outer Sources by Swapan Gupta

In the songs that Rabindranath Tagore composed, he assimilated many different classical ragas of India as well as melodies of the folk music of Bengal. He had a strong interest in Scottish, Irish and English popular songs, which he internalised and presented with unique Indian cultural inputs and personal feelings. His creations bear the stamp of his individuality while  retaining an affinity with the Western origin at the same time.  Read more

Rabindranath Tagore (Valmiki) and Indira Devi Chowdhurani (Lakshmi) in Vālmīki-Praṭibhā. Rabindra Smriti — Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 1974.

Tagore’s Career in Theatre by Ananda Lal

The purpose of this article is to introduce Tagore as a dramatist, director, actor and choreographer to readers who do not know of his pioneering contributions in these areas. He wrote over 60 plays, directed, acted in, scored the songs and music for, and choreographed many of them. Read more

Tagore and Dance troop

Tagore and Dance by Amita Dutt [Mookerjee]

Tagore established dance as a respectable branch of learning against a lot of opposition. He wrote songs for dance, presented dance and danced himself. He sent friends and students to various corners of India and the globe to learn dance movements, styles and choreography, and dancers presented themselves in Santiniketan. It is due to his efforts that dance became a respectable profession and is performed and taught throughout India today. Read more

constructive swadeshi

Rabindranath Tagore and Rural Reconstruction by Dr Christine Marsh

Rabindranath Tagore was ‘a poet who was an indefatigable man of action’,[1] whose son said of him that ‘his greatest poem is the life he has lived.’[2] Tagore saw rural reconstruction as his ‘life’s work’.[3] There were three main phases to his endeavours. The first was while he was managing the family estates in the 1890s, the second was the national programme of ‘constructive swadeshi’ he put forward in 1903-8, the third was Sriniketan, a department of his Visva-Bharati university, in the 1920s. Read more

Rabindranath Tagore, 1936. Image credit: Ministry of Culture, Government of India.

Rabindranath Tagore’s Philosophy

Rabindranath Tagore was not a systematic philosopher, but the worldview behind his works and his ideas are complex as well as original. He developed a spiritual humanism that connected ancient Indian philosophical ideas with Western ideas and gave them his own original twist. He believed that human beings could fulfil their potential and find freedom and fulfilment through love, knowledge and freedom, if they succeeded in connecting their narrow self with the universal Being.  Read more