Concert Honors Rabindranath Tagore
WASHINGTON DC, March 31, 2011 — The life and times of Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-Westerner to win a Nobel Prize in 1913, was celebrated with a presentation of his works and a musical performance at George Washington University’s Sigur Center.
“Tagore was perhaps the most myriad minded of men among intellectuals,” said Judith Plotz, Professor Emerita at GWU and moderator of the event co-sponsored by Asia Society Washington. The event featured a lecture by Professor Sudeshna Basu, and a concert by Professor Basu, Debu Nayak, Jeff Bauer, and Nistha Raj.
Plotz described Tagore as a humanist, an activist for India’s independence from Britain, and a practitioner of all the arts. (His volume of work includes 12 novels, 3,000 poems, 2,025 songs, and a collection of short stories, plays, and essays).
Basu added an overview of Tagore’s life, from Bengal to his travels abroad and his efforts to reform education and resisting the ill-treatment of the British Raj. She also commented on Tagore's love for music, noting that he was "impressed" by Western music and that he wrote and performed an opera in the Bengali language.
In response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which hundreds of unarmed civilians were killed by British soldiers, Tagore wrote an open letter to the British Raj and denounced his knighthood. Basu read from that letter:
“Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population disarmed and resourceless by a power which has the most terribly organized efficiency for the destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification.”
Following the presentation, Basu took to the stage to perform some of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs, including those influenced by Indian classical music, Western music, and Indian folk music.
Reported by Adrian Stover