Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm very happy to be joined
Speaker 1: by my new co host today. Yep, I'm Deblina chokoate
Speaker 1: boardy I will be joining Sarah and talking about history
Speaker 1: stuff with you. Yeah. Deblina is the homepage editor here
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works. Um so she basically programs the
Speaker 1: whole homepage every day. So if you've ever visited the site,
Speaker 1: you have seen Debilina's handiwork. Yes, and I hope you've
Speaker 1: clicked on lots of things quick, lots of length. That's
Speaker 1: what we all want you to do. But um, Debilina,
Speaker 1: why don't you give us a little background on this
Speaker 1: topic and explain why you picked it today? Sure? Well,
Speaker 1: today's topic is a little bit maybe appropriately maybe inappropriately
Speaker 1: personal to myself. My parents are India, they're Bengali, and
Speaker 1: our topic today is Rabindranath Tagore, who is a well
Speaker 1: known Bengali figure, probably best known for being the first
Speaker 1: Asian Nobel laureate. And it's the hundred and fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: of his birth. So it's been in the news a
Speaker 1: lot lately. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on
Speaker 1: to celebrate his birth this year, UM, including the kol
Speaker 1: Kappa Film Festival, has showed movies that are based on
Speaker 1: his works. Um. People are performing his plays, school children
Speaker 1: are performing his songs and his dance dramas, and so
Speaker 1: it's a big to do. There's even a traveling train,
Speaker 1: which seems like probably the best part of the celebration
Speaker 1: in my opinion. The traveling train is indeed awesome. It
Speaker 1: is visiting cities throughout India until next May, and each
Speaker 1: car features kind of a different aspect, and it's featuring
Speaker 1: mostly arts type of stuff. Like the other celebrations are
Speaker 1: like a museum on the move, essentially exactly great. Um,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people don't really appreci she how
Speaker 1: just how much of an accomplished artist this guy was.
Speaker 1: How much of an accomplished poet he was? He was
Speaker 1: a singer, a philosopher, he was interested in politics, he
Speaker 1: was an educator, a reformer. Um, he wasn't a politician exactly,
Speaker 1: but I mean his influence there is pretty great too.
Speaker 1: He he just touched on so many different things. It's
Speaker 1: kind of, I don't know, it's kind of inspiring when
Speaker 1: you start looking at his life and also sort of
Speaker 1: makes you feel like got up to that, what have
Speaker 1: I done? Right? So his work in the political arena
Speaker 1: and his reformation efforts that you mentioned last, those are
Speaker 1: probably the things that are lesser known about him. Most
Speaker 1: people know about his arts, his involvement in the arts
Speaker 1: scene in India, all his contributions there's far songs, plays, dramas,
Speaker 1: everything goes. But I think that people don't know what
Speaker 1: he contributed as far as politics well, and he's not
Speaker 1: that well known in the West at all. So I mean,
Speaker 1: we have a lot to explore, even the things he's
Speaker 1: famous for in India definitely. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that he is famous for that will take a look
Speaker 1: at today he was knighted by the British government and
Speaker 1: some accused him of being a pro British elitist and
Speaker 1: there's some controversy around that Nighting to try to talk
Speaker 1: about a little later we will, um, But really what
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at is just was he a nationalist
Speaker 1: or not? Um? Was this just a different approach to
Speaker 1: nationalism for him? His involvement in politics and um look
Speaker 1: at his renunciation of the of the knighthood and what
Speaker 1: surrounded that. So before we get into that, let's look
Speaker 1: at his beginnings. He was born May six, eighteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: in Calcutta into a well to do, well educated, very artistic,
Speaker 1: progressive family. Yeah, he was really exposed to a lot
Speaker 1: as a kid too. I mean, his family would have
Speaker 1: been reading Sanskrit and ancient Hindu text and Persian literature
Speaker 1: and known Islamic tradition. So imagine it this real melting
Speaker 1: pot in his home of learning and um, just a
Speaker 1: lot of intelligent discussion, I imagine, definitely. I think it
Speaker 1: was unique to any culture at the time. And let's
Speaker 1: talk about that time a little bit. It was during
Speaker 1: British rule in India when he was born, and his family,
Speaker 1: the two Gores, they were very active in the Bengal Renaissance,
Speaker 1: which was basically a movement that began in the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties to protect national culture. It was really to preserve, um,
Speaker 1: the local culture, the arts, all the things that his
Speaker 1: family wanted to celebrate, the traditional heritage, and it was
Speaker 1: a response to Anglicization. So they would throw festivals every
Speaker 1: year that featured Angian songs and poems and dances, and
Speaker 1: you mentioned wrestling matches when we were talking about this earlier.
Speaker 1: I thought that was kind of a surprise thrown in there,
Speaker 1: but hey, it's a part of culture, right that the
Speaker 1: arts with a little wrestling boards of aspect of culture
Speaker 1: like sports. So in addition to being involved in this
Speaker 1: yearly cultural event to Gore's father, Deb's enough to Gore,
Speaker 1: he was very involved in something called the Brahma Somage.
Speaker 1: The Aramis Homage was basically a movement within Hinduism, which
Speaker 1: is established around or so, and it was an attempt
Speaker 1: to reform Hinduism. What I mean by that is that
Speaker 1: it incorporated some aspects of Christianity. It denounced things like
Speaker 1: polytheism and idol worship, and it also denounced the cast system.
Speaker 1: So through this they were trying to um enact some
Speaker 1: sort of social reform. But it never really became that
Speaker 1: widely popular. Um. Yeah, I mean, even though I guess
Speaker 1: it's still technically around today, it didn't really grow much
Speaker 1: past the twentieth century or the early twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely recognized as a movement within Hinduism, um, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it reached maybe the heights that to
Speaker 1: Gore's father wanted it to the Brahmismdge movement. It did
Speaker 1: loose steam the twentieth century. But the important thing about
Speaker 1: that is that we can see into Gore's life is
Speaker 1: that it was combining these Eastern and Western ideals that
Speaker 1: will see kind of throughout his development and in his
Speaker 1: work and his philosophy. So that's the beginnings of that,
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. But I mean, if we're talking about
Speaker 1: his childhood intellectual life aside um, he was kind of lonely.
Speaker 1: He wasn't that close to his parents. This is according
Speaker 1: to his own memoirs. M His dad was gone a lot,
Speaker 1: traveling on business and um. Some people have suggested that
Speaker 1: he just didn't really get much attention and love growing
Speaker 1: up and sort of felt neglected in that respect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did. He does give us accounts of traveling with
Speaker 1: his father and his adolescence, but from what we can tell,
Speaker 1: he wasn't really that close to anyone. Roby as he
Speaker 1: was sometimes called, wasn't really close to his folks. But
Speaker 1: that might have been a good thing because he was
Speaker 1: given a lot of freedom. Because of that, he was
Speaker 1: given a lot of space to develop creatively and to
Speaker 1: write and that's exactly what he did. Yeah, So he
Speaker 1: started writing at a very young age and kept on
Speaker 1: doing it over six decades. He ended up writing about
Speaker 1: two thousand, five hundred songs and twenty eight volumes of poetry, drama, opera,
Speaker 1: short stories, novels, essays and diaries, plus a bunch of letters.
Speaker 1: So this is what we meant at the beginning when
Speaker 1: we're saying this can make you feel a little inadequate.
Speaker 1: He lived a very long time, but he was writing
Speaker 1: for his entire life pretty much NonStop, definitely. In eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, he actually went to England to study for
Speaker 1: about a year at the University College of London, and
Speaker 1: while he was there he wrote some more too. He
Speaker 1: wrote some plays and he was introduced to the western
Speaker 1: style of music there, but it didn't really last. He
Speaker 1: ended up coming back after a year, and um, the
Speaker 1: only thing that I could find on that is that
Speaker 1: he thought it was too cold. Legitimate complaints. It's legit.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've lived in cold places. It's tough. But
Speaker 1: that was definitely an influence in his life though, I think. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: so you know, he came back to India after just
Speaker 1: about a year of studies, but he kept on writing,
Speaker 1: and he published his first book of poetry when he
Speaker 1: was only about seventeen, and then throughout the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: he kept on putting out books, all leading up to Manasci,
Speaker 1: which was published in eighteen nine. And that's sort of
Speaker 1: one of his first works that is fairly well known,
Speaker 1: right yep. A lot of his well known poems and
Speaker 1: some of his well known political satire and commentary is
Speaker 1: in that book. Uh. And that satire did take kind
Speaker 1: of a critical tone toward towards his fellow Bengalis, and
Speaker 1: so we see kind of his starting of his evolution
Speaker 1: of his political views social views there. Yeah, because that
Speaker 1: tone starts to change too in the eighteen nineties because
Speaker 1: of his traveling and a few events that happened. Yep,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier to Gore's family was pretty wealthy,
Speaker 1: so they had both a home in the city and
Speaker 1: they had some estates in East Bengal, which we know
Speaker 1: today is Bangladesh. So he went for a while in
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties to manage his is father's estates there
Speaker 1: and he stayed there for about a decade. But this
Speaker 1: area was pretty rural, pretty poverty stricken, and he was
Speaker 1: in close contact with the villagers while he was there,
Speaker 1: so it really gave him a new outlook, so to speak.
Speaker 1: He gained a lot of sympathy for the plight of
Speaker 1: the locals there, I think, and this began to inform
Speaker 1: his writing a lot, Yeah, and change his style a
Speaker 1: little too even. Yeah, well, he started writing in a
Speaker 1: little bit of a new style at that time. He
Speaker 1: started experimenting a little bit more with free verse as
Speaker 1: opposed to earlier when he was I think when he
Speaker 1: was younger, he was mostly writing in traditional classical Indian forms. Um.
Speaker 1: Again part of this whole Bengal Renaissance thing, the idea
Speaker 1: of preserving culture. But as he got more into the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, started being a little more flexible with his form.
Speaker 1: So that was one thing. But then also his subject
Speaker 1: matter I think started to explore more of what he
Speaker 1: had seen, um some of more of the issues that
Speaker 1: he had seen in rural Bengal. And so this informed
Speaker 1: his work, uh, And I mean it wasn't just limited
Speaker 1: to his own experiences too. He started to be influenced
Speaker 1: by some world events that were going on, namely the
Speaker 1: Boer War in eighteen ninety nine and just a little
Speaker 1: I've tried to do a real podcast on the Bower
Speaker 1: War before and it didn't really work out. But to
Speaker 1: give you a basic rundown of it, it was a
Speaker 1: conflict between the two independent Dutch speaking Bauer republics of
Speaker 1: South Africa in the British Empire, and it was very bloody.
Speaker 1: At the end, the Boer Republics agreed to come under
Speaker 1: the sovereignty of the British Crown. So to Gore was
Speaker 1: already starting to get kind of interested in politics and
Speaker 1: political writing when this was going on, but the Boer
Speaker 1: War really it got him more interested in it. It
Speaker 1: it made him look more into world politics, world events. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about two Gore's politics a little bit,
Speaker 1: just to give people an idea of what was going
Speaker 1: on in his mind and what point of view he
Speaker 1: was coming from. A lot people, as we said before,
Speaker 1: especially anti colonial nationalists, they accused to Gore of being
Speaker 1: pro British and against the nationalist movement, and this wasn't
Speaker 1: kind of had some truth to it, maybe, but wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly true. To Gore was against colonialism, to put that
Speaker 1: out there. He wanted India to be an independent nation.
Speaker 1: But he didn't think that the confrontation and non cooperation
Speaker 1: UM tactics that were used by some of his contemporaries
Speaker 1: Gandhi obviously a very famous one, Mahandas Gandhi, who was
Speaker 1: actually his friend. UM So they differed in this way.
Speaker 1: He was one who did use these tactics and and
Speaker 1: they disagreed on this, but they were still very good friends.
Speaker 1: He was actually the first to call Gandhi Mahatma, which
Speaker 1: means great soul, which I just learned that in this podcast.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't it fun fact. But he certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: pro British. He wanted India to be its own country exactly.
Speaker 1: He just didn't think that a change, a straight change
Speaker 1: in political regime is all that they needed. His answer
Speaker 1: to the problem of India was education. He proposed that
Speaker 1: only through education could the their nation really affect true change.
Speaker 1: And actually, as an example of this, um I found
Speaker 1: a statement that he made in nineteen o nine which
Speaker 1: was actually a letter to an American lawyer who had
Speaker 1: written him talking about the problem of India and what
Speaker 1: was going on with colonialism. And it was from a
Speaker 1: lawyer named Myron H. Phelps and to Gore put it
Speaker 1: this way. To him, he said, for us, there can
Speaker 1: be no question of blind revolution, but of steady and
Speaker 1: purposeful education. He said, that's basically what it would take
Speaker 1: to snap his people out of the quote trance that
Speaker 1: cold blooded repression had put them under. Yeah, so, I
Speaker 1: mean some people see this as just a different approach
Speaker 1: to nationalism. It's it's not revolution, it's revolution through education. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He wanted his country not just to be independent, but
Speaker 1: to be independent and truly truly be independent in every
Speaker 1: aspect um, you know, not just be free from an
Speaker 1: oppressive government, but to be able to stand alone as
Speaker 1: a nation. And he thought education was the only way
Speaker 1: that they would be able to do that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, some people do just think that this is
Speaker 1: a different approach to nationalism um that he was taking.
Speaker 1: So a good thing to do, though, if you're interested
Speaker 1: in education is to start your own school, why not,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what he did, and he did just that.
Speaker 1: He founded an experimental school at Shanta Nikitan. It's a
Speaker 1: small town in west Bengal which means a bode of peace.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't his first experience with this town. His
Speaker 1: dad I had founded a oshroom there, So he founded
Speaker 1: a school there too, And his whole idea behind the
Speaker 1: school was pretty much goes along with his philosophy that
Speaker 1: he's had all along. You know. He felt that the
Speaker 1: East and West needed each other, and so he wanted
Speaker 1: to encore break both types of thought into this school
Speaker 1: that he had. So what he did is he got
Speaker 1: both Indiana and Western scholars to teach there. And um,
Speaker 1: it was a different kind of environment than outdoor classes.
Speaker 1: They had outdoor classes. That's pretty neat like the sound
Speaker 1: of that. Um, But just because he's running this school,
Speaker 1: sounds like that would kind of keep you preoccupied. I
Speaker 1: don't think he's not writing. He's still writing prolifically. Um.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately going through a few personal tragedies in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. His wife died in nineteen o two. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: they had gotten married when she was only ten years
Speaker 1: old and he was twenty two. Um. And then after
Speaker 1: his wife died, he also lost his father and two
Speaker 1: of his children, all in this really short period of time. Yes,
Speaker 1: And it was the sadness resulting from these events that
Speaker 1: inspired several poems song poems as they're sometimes called, which
Speaker 1: he translated into English and published as a collect and
Speaker 1: called Keith and Joy in nine twelve. And some have
Speaker 1: said that the fact that he did translate themselves is
Speaker 1: not necessarily a good thing. Yeah. I mean they still
Speaker 1: sold well apparently between March and November nineteen thirteen, ten reprints. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, his his translations came under a lot of
Speaker 1: scrutiny later. If if you've ever come across him in
Speaker 1: a literature class or something, and you're outside of India,
Speaker 1: it might be some sort of comparison to W. B. Yates.
Speaker 1: And they were friends, if you could call it that,
Speaker 1: for about thirty seven years. They had a really long
Speaker 1: relationship with each other, and Yates is largely credited to
Speaker 1: exposing him to the West, you know, introducing him to
Speaker 1: the West and helping make him famous there. But they
Speaker 1: had kind of a tumultuous friendship to say the least. Yep,
Speaker 1: they actually met through William Rothenstein. He was an artist
Speaker 1: who hosted to Gore and One in in around nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve nineteen thirteen, so around the time that he was
Speaker 1: publishing this translation and When to Go arrived. He gave
Speaker 1: Rothenstein an English translation of these poems and Rothenstein then
Speaker 1: sent them to Yates and some other some other people
Speaker 1: about town. Yates apparently loved them. He was really really
Speaker 1: into them. He apparently said, quote, I have carried the
Speaker 1: translations of these manuscripts about with me for days, reading
Speaker 1: it in railway trains or on top of omnibuses or
Speaker 1: in restaurants, and I've often had to close it less
Speaker 1: some strangers see how much it moved me. Um, But
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe we should talk about yates His
Speaker 1: later opinion in a minute, because this is the this
Speaker 1: is to Gore's rising star at this point, this is
Speaker 1: his fame starting to spread throughout the West as well
Speaker 1: as the East. So people finally got to know him
Speaker 1: through this. They finally got to know him through this
Speaker 1: English translation and through people kind of spreading the word
Speaker 1: abou out him, and it led and will not people
Speaker 1: spreadying the word, but just his talent, I guess, led
Speaker 1: to him winning the Noble Prize for Literature in thirteen.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned, he was the first Asian to receive
Speaker 1: such an honor, and after that his fame kind of
Speaker 1: grew exponentially, fame outside of India, that is, he was
Speaker 1: knighted by King George the Fifth of Britain in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: and he started traveling abroad a lot more. He wasn't
Speaker 1: in India as much as he used to be. He
Speaker 1: was doing lectures and readings. He went to Europe, North America,
Speaker 1: South America, Asia, East Asia, um, all over the place.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he was one of the most famous Indians
Speaker 1: in the world at this point, perhaps the most famous.
Speaker 1: But then, unfortunately, something really bad happened. On April thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, in a Star which is located in the
Speaker 1: state of Punjab in India. British soldiers fired on an
Speaker 1: unarmed gathering of men, women and children who had come
Speaker 1: into the city to partake in a traditional Sikh festival.
Speaker 1: There was a peaceful nationalist demonstration going on that day,
Speaker 1: but many of the people who who were around, who
Speaker 1: were involved in the shooting, they weren't even really a
Speaker 1: part of the demonstration exactly. They were completely kind of
Speaker 1: innocent of whatever was going on. So a lot of
Speaker 1: lives were lost, and we don't know exactly how many.
Speaker 1: A lot of sources you look at, and I think
Speaker 1: the official number reported by the British Raj was three
Speaker 1: seventy nine, but some people say that it could have
Speaker 1: been as many as a thousand or more. Well, and
Speaker 1: then the accounts of it in the British press were
Speaker 1: especially disturbing. You know, they were treating it as though
Speaker 1: it had been a riot and the people who were
Speaker 1: killed had gotten themselves into trouble essentially, and people just
Speaker 1: had a very unfortunate reaction to to the whole thing
Speaker 1: that went down. Yeah, it was weird. It was a
Speaker 1: big cover up um for obvious reasons. They didn't want
Speaker 1: people to know that this had gone down the way
Speaker 1: it had, because there was basically no reason for these
Speaker 1: people being killed, so they had to spin it. They
Speaker 1: had to spin it and uh. But then there were murmurings,
Speaker 1: of course, of what had really happened throughout India and
Speaker 1: to Gore caught wind of this, and he was pretty
Speaker 1: disgusted by the entire situation and it kind of changed
Speaker 1: his outlook and it definitely changed the way he felt
Speaker 1: about being a British night. So he wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to Lord Chelmsford, who was the Viceroy of India at
Speaker 1: the time, and renounced his knighthood. And if you read
Speaker 1: his letter, it's interesting because it is so formal, so polite,
Speaker 1: it's very written in very precise English, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: He's clearly very deeply disturbed by what's happened and can't
Speaker 1: reconcile being a night with supporting this definitely. Um, we
Speaker 1: have a little excerpt from the letter just to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of how incensed he was via the situation.
Speaker 1: He says, the very least I can do for my
Speaker 1: country to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice
Speaker 1: to the protest of millions of my countrymen surprised into
Speaker 1: dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when badges
Speaker 1: of honor make our shame glaring in their incongruous context
Speaker 1: of humiliation. And I, for my part, wish to stand
Speaker 1: shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those
Speaker 1: of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are
Speaker 1: liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this was the end of this quote, total cooperation
Speaker 1: with the British, and it changed people's opinions of him too. Um,
Speaker 1: he wasn't the same guy anymore. And I mean we
Speaker 1: can talk about that, maybe first in a literary sense,
Speaker 1: with Yates, because people have suggested that this is part
Speaker 1: of the reason why Yates's opinion of Tore soured. According
Speaker 1: to Anna Jaelna car Too, Core's resigning his knighthood just
Speaker 1: didn't match up correctly with the idea Yates had of
Speaker 1: him as this serene mystic from the east who certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't get involved in politics, certainly wouldn't do anything as
Speaker 1: bold as renounced his knighthood. Um, it just didn't match
Speaker 1: up with the Yates is to Gore. And of course,
Speaker 1: I mean we can assume there's some other reasons in here.
Speaker 1: Yates really didn't like to Gore as translations. As we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Um, he was probably bound to be disappointed
Speaker 1: in this creation he had imagined for himself because to
Speaker 1: Gore did write so much more than just romantic poetry.
Speaker 1: He wrote essays and plays and prose. But I mean
Speaker 1: we have to assume it it did play a role. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it did. But I think at
Speaker 1: the same time there had to be more to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, they knew each other, so he must have
Speaker 1: known that there was more to Gore than just this
Speaker 1: romantic literature and poetry that he wrote. Um, he did
Speaker 1: a lot of political writing, a lot of speaking. He
Speaker 1: was kind of a voice for for the way he
Speaker 1: had he had publicly promoted him though yep, I guess,
Speaker 1: so that's true. But I guess was bound to happen,
Speaker 1: since to Gore wrote other things anyway, so there was
Speaker 1: bound to be some kind of falling out between them
Speaker 1: at some point. But it changed. It changed what Yates
Speaker 1: thought of to Gore, at least in the you know, outwardly,
Speaker 1: and it changed I think what to Gore thought of
Speaker 1: his own views a little bit too. Definitely, he didn't
Speaker 1: really he didn't really change his views about the East
Speaker 1: and West needing each other. He still thought that. He
Speaker 1: still thought, you know, he wanted to see um kind
Speaker 1: of a universal land where people all cultures would come
Speaker 1: together and there weren't all these barriers between them. But
Speaker 1: at the same time he I think he was very
Speaker 1: conflicted about the situation that happened, especially because he had
Speaker 1: English friends and so it made the situation kind of
Speaker 1: difficult for them, and he tried to express these feelings
Speaker 1: through his work after the fact. Yeah, and after this
Speaker 1: he kept on traveling, so he was still out and
Speaker 1: about in the world very much. So Um He said
Speaker 1: to have visited more than thirty country ease on five
Speaker 1: continents of lecturing and having these extended conversations with people
Speaker 1: like Einstein on truth and beauty. They have this amazing
Speaker 1: debate and music. I mean stuff that you wouldn't even
Speaker 1: you know, think of Einstein talking about. Yeah, anyway, but
Speaker 1: I mean to Gore's is all over the world. He
Speaker 1: meets Mussolini and it takes them a little while before
Speaker 1: he starts hearing reports about the fascism that's going on
Speaker 1: in Italy from some exiles and denounces MUSSLINI But yeah,
Speaker 1: even then, you know his his denunciations are still very
Speaker 1: polite and proper interesting to read them. Yep. He never
Speaker 1: loses his smooth talking never. UM. But so he this
Speaker 1: going around the world is partially to speak because he's
Speaker 1: asked and to to speak on behalf of the independence movement, UM.
Speaker 1: But it's also to earn money for his school. He's
Speaker 1: still stumping for his cause, which is education, and he's
Speaker 1: still out there trying to keep the school, the six
Speaker 1: centric school that he started going UM and later this
Speaker 1: school in Shathan Ni Kitan it becomes a university called
Speaker 1: Visba Barathi university in nineteen one, um, and so he
Speaker 1: has some success with that, but it's sort of peters
Speaker 1: out as he Um. Yeah, you were talking about it
Speaker 1: to support it. What it's like today kind of more
Speaker 1: of a place where you can learn about him than
Speaker 1: a university. I think it's more to study his philosophies
Speaker 1: and so forth than necessarily. But it does still exist. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can still visit it today. Actually, I think that
Speaker 1: India's recently nominated to be a World here at UNESCO
Speaker 1: World Heritage Site. So you've been there. I've been there.
Speaker 1: I went there when I was fourteen, um, although I
Speaker 1: can't remember too much unfortunately, but I do remember it
Speaker 1: being very serene and um and uh liking it a lot.
Speaker 1: That's the rule of the podcast. You always have to
Speaker 1: mention the places been too. It makes everybody think we're
Speaker 1: going all over the world seeing all this stuff. Oh dear,
Speaker 1: not really, guys, um, But I don't know. Even with
Speaker 1: all of this traveling around the world and promoting his
Speaker 1: school and promoting his writings, he kind of kept his
Speaker 1: distance from the more confrontational side of the nationalist movement.
Speaker 1: He didn't get super involved in that. Even after this
Speaker 1: renouncing his knighthood and all that. No, he still kept
Speaker 1: his distance. Um, he was still part of it through
Speaker 1: his writings and through his talks that he gave UM
Speaker 1: and he was still friends with Gandhi of course, even
Speaker 1: though he didn't necessarily support a reaction that he did.
Speaker 1: But Um, but he didn't get to to involved. And
Speaker 1: unfortunately he passed away about seven years before India actually
Speaker 1: achieved independence in nine But on the bright side, maybe
Speaker 1: Um India's national anthem john a Ghanamana is based on
Speaker 1: one of his song poems, and another of his songs,
Speaker 1: am Our Shawnar bang La is Bangladesh's national anthem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty impressive, I think. So he still gets
Speaker 1: to be a part of it. It's not easy to
Speaker 1: forget him at all. He's still a big part of
Speaker 1: the national culture. Every time they sing the national anthem
Speaker 1: or hear it, they'll think of him and Um and music. Art. Actually,
Speaker 1: an interesting fact about his art he didn't take up
Speaker 1: painting until he was about seventy years old, which I
Speaker 1: think is amazing. So he takes the painting at age seventy.
Speaker 1: Yet somehow he managed to create about two thousand paintings
Speaker 1: and drawings before he died and around age eighty he
Speaker 1: was busy. So that's incredible. It's kind of insane. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a recipe for corporal tunnel to me. But
Speaker 1: he did well and he was considered, you know, among
Speaker 1: some of India's best content briardist still So if you
Speaker 1: would like to see some of his paintings, and you
Speaker 1: are around India and can check out this awesome train
Speaker 1: that we mentioned before, catch the train. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: whole car that's dedicated to his paintings and his drawings,
Speaker 1: So check it out. Well, I think that about wraps
Speaker 1: it up. Do you have anything else you want to
Speaker 1: say about Decore before we leave off? I don't think
Speaker 1: I do at the moment, but if anyone else does.
Speaker 1: If you have a favorite song or a favorite poem, um,
Speaker 1: maybe a novel or play, he had a couple. He
Speaker 1: wrote a couple of novels too, also in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. And if you have anything that you want
Speaker 1: to mention or please write to us. Yeah, we're at
Speaker 1: history podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're also
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Miston History and on Facebook, so you
Speaker 1: can post away your favorite poems and stories there um
Speaker 1: and if you want to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about his contemporary Gandhi, you can check out an article
Speaker 1: by our own Jane McGrath. It's called why did Gandhi
Speaker 1: March two hundred and forty miles for Salt? And you
Speaker 1: can find it by searching for Gandhi on the homepage.
Speaker 1: It's www dot how stuff works dot com For more
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