WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Tagore, Erstwhile Knight 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.640 Happy Saturday, everybody. Before we get to today's classic. This week, 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:08.840 we put out a playlist of some of our otter 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:12.600 and mostly more upbeat episodes out of the archive. We 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:17.600 called that playlist Offbeat History. With this ongoing coronavirus pandemic, 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:19.680 we thought it might give folks who are practicing some 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:23.160 social distancing or sheltering in place, or otherwise having some 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:27.120 more time in relative isolation a little something extra to 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:31.280 help pass the time. UH and several of our colleagues 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:34.000 other shows in our I Heart Podcast family have done 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:37.040 the same thing, and so we've launched a new feed 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.720 for all of those. So it's all of those pandemic collections. 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:43.720 It's called the best of Stuff, and you should be 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:46.680 able to find it wherever you get your podcasts. And 0:00:46.720 --> 0:00:49.159 now we'll move on to today's Saturday Classic. It is 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:52.279 World Poetry Day, so today we're sharing an episode from 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.760 the archive that's on a poet, rebind Er, not Tagore, 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:58.640 who was a Bengali poet and was the first Asian 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:03.800 Nobel laureate. This episode originally came out on November and 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:09.600 it is from previous hosts Sarah and Deablina, So enjoy. 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:22.720 of My Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:26.640 I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm very happy to be joined 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.360 by my new co host today. Yep, I'm Deblina Chokate 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.240 boardy I will be joining Sarah and talking about history 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:36.440 stuff with you. Yeah. Debilina is the homepage editor here 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:40.240 at How Stuff Works. Um, so she basically programs the 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:43.800 whole homepage every day. So if you've ever visited the site, 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.319 you have seen Debilina's handiwork. Yes, and I hope you've 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.120 clicked on lots of things, clicked lots of links. That's 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.400 what we all want you to do. But um, Debilina, 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.320 why don't you give us a little background on this 0:01:56.400 --> 0:02:00.840 topic and explain why you picked it today? Sure? Well, 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:05.800 today's topic is a little bit maybe appropriately maybe inappropriately 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:11.040 personal to myself. My parents are from India, there Bengali, 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:15.000 and our topic today is Rabat Nath Tagore, who is 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.280 a well known Bengali figure, probably best known for being 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.720 the first Asian Nobel laureate. And it's the hundred and 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:23.920 fiftieth anniversary of his birth. So it's been in the 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:25.960 news a lot lately. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.280 going on to celebrate his birth this year, UM, including 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:33.320 the Kolkata Film Festival, has showed movies that are based 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:37.880 on his works. Um. People are performing his plays, school 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:41.239 children are performing his songs and his dance dramas, and 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:43.840 so it's a big to do. There's even a traveling train, 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:47.040 which seems like probably the best part of the celebration 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.320 in my opinion. The traveling train is indeed awesome. It 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:55.639 is visiting cities throughout India until next May, and each 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:59.040 car features kind of a different aspect and it's featuring 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.280 mostly arts type of stuff. Like the other celebrations are 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:06.320 like a museum on the move essentially exactly great. Um, 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:10.800 but a lot of people don't really appreciate how just 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.360 how much of an accomplished artist this guy was. How 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.560 much of an accomplished poet he was. He was a singer, 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:20.720 a philosopher, he was interested in politics, he was an educator, 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:25.840 a reformer. Um, he wasn't a politician exactly, but I 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:28.480 mean his influence there is pretty great too. He he 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:30.840 just touched on so many different things. It's kind of, 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.480 I don't know, it's kind of inspiring. When you start 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:36.800 looking at his life and also sort of makes you 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.440 feel like not up to that, what have I done? Right? 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:44.160 So his work in the political arena and his reformation 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:46.880 efforts that you mentioned last, those are probably the things 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:49.120 that are lesser known about him. Most people know about 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:51.840 his arts, his involvement in the art scene in India, 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:56.600 all his contributions, there's far songs, plays, dramas, everything goes. 0:03:56.760 --> 0:03:59.600 But I think that people don't know what he contributed 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:01.960 as far as politics well, and he's not that well 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:04.000 known in the West at all. So I mean, we 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.360 have a lot to explore, even the things he's famous 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:09.880 for in India. Definitely one of the things that he 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:11.560 is famous for that will take a look at today 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.080 he was knighted by the British government and some accused 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:16.400 him of being a pro British elitist, and there's some 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.120 controversy around that nighting to tring to talk about a 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.360 little later we will, um. But really what we're gonna 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.640 look at is just was he a nationalist or not? Um? 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.400 Was this just a different approach to nationalism for him? 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:33.919 His involvement in politics and um look at his renunciation 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.840 of the of the knighthood and what surrounded that. So 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.040 before we get into that, let's look at his beginnings. 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:43.400 He was born May six, eighteen sixty one, in Calcutta 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:48.200 into a well to do, well educated, very artistic, progressive family. Yeah, 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.920 he was really exposed to a lot as a kid too. 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:53.640 I mean his family would have been reading Sanskrit and 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:58.800 ancient Hindu text and Persian literature and known Islamic tradition. 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:01.800 So imagine it this really melting pot in his home 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:05.920 of learning and um, just a lot of intelligent discussion, 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.240 I imagine, definitely. I think it was unique to any 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.440 culture at the time. And let's talk about that time 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:15.800 a little bit. It was during British rule in India 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.640 when he was born, and his family, the two Gores, 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.800 they were very active in the Bengal Renaissance, which was 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.960 basically a movement that began in the mid eighteen sixties 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.520 to protect national culture. It was really to preserve, um, 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.919 the local culture, the arts, all the things that his 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:36.760 family wanted to celebrate, the traditional heritage, and it was 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:41.200 a response to Anglicization. So they would throw festivals every 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:44.960 year that featured Angian songs and poems and dances, and 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:48.040 you mentioned wrestling matches when we were talking about this earlier. 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:50.360 I thought that was kind of a surprise thrown in there, 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.120 but hey, it's a part of culture, right, balanced the 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:56.400 arts with a little wrestling boards and aspect of culture. 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:00.320 I like sports. So in addition to being an involved 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:04.840 in this yearly cultural event to Gore's father, Deba's or 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:07.280 not to Gore, he was very involved in something called 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.680 the Brahmo somag. The Brahma Somaj was basically a movement 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:14.839 within Hinduism which was established around or so, and it 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.160 was an attempt to reform Hinduism. What I mean by 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.240 that is that it incorporated some aspects of Christianity. It 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:25.760 denounced things like polytheism and idol worship, and it also 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:29.919 denounced the cast system. So through this they were trying 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:33.200 to um enact some sort of social reform. But it 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:37.000 never really became that widely popular. Um, yeah, I mean it, 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.040 even though I guess it's still technically around today, it 0:06:41.080 --> 0:06:43.720 didn't really grow much past the twentieth century or the 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:47.120 early twentieth century. Yeah, it's definitely recognized as a movement 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.839 within Hinduism, um, but I don't think it reached maybe 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.640 the heights that to Gore's father wanted it to the 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.120 Brahmi Smudge movement. It did loose steam the twentieth century. 0:06:57.160 --> 0:06:59.640 But the important thing about that is that we can 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:02.560 see into Gore's life is that it was combining these 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:05.640 Eastern and Western ideals that will see kind of throughout 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.480 his development and in his work and his philosophy. So 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.000 it's the beginnings of that, I guess. Yeah. But I mean, 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:16.200 if we're talking about his childhood intellectual life aside um, 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:18.720 he was kind of lonely. He wasn't that close to 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:22.080 his parents. This is according to his own memoirs. His 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.840 dad was gone a lot, traveling on business and um. 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:29.280 Some people have suggested that he just didn't really get 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:32.679 much attention and love growing up and sort of felt 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:36.520 neglected in that respect. Yeah, he did. He does give 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:40.040 us accounts of traveling with his father and his adolescence, 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.320 but from what we can tell, he wasn't really that 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:48.320 close to anyone. Roby as he was sometimes called, wasn't 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.640 really close to his folks. But that might have been 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:53.520 a good thing because he was given a lot of freedom. 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:55.360 Because of that, he was given a lot of space 0:07:55.480 --> 0:07:58.880 to develop creatively. And to write, and that's exactly what 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.400 he did. Yeah, So he started writing at a very 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.560 young age and kept on doing it over six decades. 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:09.640 He ended up writing about two thousand, five hundred songs 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:14.560 and twenty eight volumes of poetry, drama, opera, short stories, novels, 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:17.680 essays and diaries, plus a bunch of letters. So this 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:19.640 is what we meant at the beginning when we're saying 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.720 this can make you feel a little inadequate. He lived 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.280 a very long time, but he was writing for his 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:32.200 entire life pretty much NonStop, definitely. In eight seventy seven 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.760 he actually went to England to study for about a 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.600 year at the University College of London, and while he 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:39.480 was there he wrote some more too. He wrote some 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.840 plays and he was introduced to the western style of 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.240 music there, but it didn't really last. He ended up 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.000 coming back after a year, and Um, the only thing 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:51.400 that I could find on that is that he thought 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:55.720 it was too cold. Legitimate complaints. It's legit. I mean, 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.400 I've lived in cold places. It's tough. But that was 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:03.480 definitely an influence in his life though, I think. Yeah, Um, 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.280 so you know, he came back to India after just 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.800 about a year of studies, but he kept on writing 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.480 and he published his first book of poetry when he 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.320 was only about seventeen, and then throughout the eighteen eighties 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:19.319 he kept on putting out books, all leading up to Manasci, 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.240 which was published in eighteen nine. And that's sort of 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.280 one of his first works that is fairly well known, 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:30.080 right yep. A lot of his well known poems and 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:33.400 some of his well known political satire and commentary is 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:36.480 in that book. Uh. And that satire did take kind 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.400 of a critical tone towards towards his fellow Bengalis, and 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:42.640 so we see kind of his starting of his evolution 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.880 of his political views social views there. Yeah, because that 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:48.960 tone starts to change too in the eighteen nineties because 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:53.120 of his traveling and a few events that happened. Yep, 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.280 as we mentioned earlier to Gore's family was pretty wealthy, 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:58.280 so they had both a home in the city and 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:01.840 they had some estates in East Bengal, which we know 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:15.640 today is Bangladesh. So he went for a while in 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:20.240 the eighteen nineties to manage his father's estates there and 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.720 he stayed there for about a decade. But this area 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:26.520 was pretty rural, pretty poverty stricken, and he was in 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:28.679 close contact with the villagers while he was there, so 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:30.960 it really gave him a new outlook, so to speak. 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:33.560 He gained a lot of sympathy for the plight of 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:38.200 the locals there, I think, and this began to inform 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:40.679 his writing a lot, Yeah, and change his style a 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:43.600 little too, even. Yeah, well, he started writing in a 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:44.920 little bit of a new style at that time. He 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.880 started experimenting a little bit more with free verse as 0:10:47.920 --> 0:10:51.200 opposed to earlier when he was I think when he 0:10:51.240 --> 0:10:56.360 was younger, he was mostly writing in traditional classical Indian forms. Um. Again, 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:59.000 part of this whole Bengal Renaissance thing, the idea of 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.440 preserving culture. It as he got more into the eighteen nineties, 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.160 started being a little more flexible with his form. So 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.600 that was one thing. But then also his subject matter 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.080 I think started to explore more of what he had seen, um, 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.080 some of more of the issues that he had seen 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.520 in rural Bengal. And so this informed his work. Yeah, 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.520 And I mean it wasn't just limited to his own 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:24.400 experiences too. He started to be influenced by some world 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.840 events that were going on, namely the Boer War in 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.400 eighteen ninety nine and just a little I've tried to 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:33.400 do a real podcast on the Bower War before and 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.520 it didn't really work out. But to give you a 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:39.760 basic rundown of it, it was a conflict between the 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:43.920 two independent Dutch speaking Bauer republics of South Africa and 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:48.120 the British Empire, and it was very bloody. At the end, 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.719 the Boer Republics agreed to come under the sovereignty of 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:55.280 the British Crown. So to Gore was already starting to 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.280 get kind of interested in politics and political writing when 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.800 this was going on, but the Boer Are really it 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.360 got him more interested in it. It it made him 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:09.680 look more into world politics, world events. Yep. So let's 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:12.560 talk about two Gore's politics a little bit, just to 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:14.680 give people an idea of what was going on in 0:12:14.720 --> 0:12:16.960 his mind and what point of view he was coming from. 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.040 A lot of people, as we said before, especially anti 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:23.360 colonial nationalists, they accused to Gore of being pro British 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:27.840 and against the nationalist movement, and this wasn't kind of 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:30.319 had some truth to it maybe, but wasn't exactly true. 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.280 To Gore was against colonialism. Just put that out there. 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.880 He wanted India to be an independent nation. But he 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:44.040 didn't think that the confrontation and non cooperation UM tactics 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.800 that were used by some of his contemporaries Gandhi obviously 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:51.200 a very famous one, Mahandas Gandhi, who was actually his 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:55.520 friend UM. So they differed in this way. He was 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.439 one who who did use these tactics and and they 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.480 disagree ead on on this, but they were still very 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:05.600 good friends. He was actually the first to call Gandhi 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.960 Mahatma which means great soul, which I just learned that 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.920 in this podcast. So it wasn't it fun fact. But 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.600 he certainly wasn't pro British. He wanted India to be 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:20.400 its own country exactly. He just didn't think that a change, 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:23.160 a straight change in political regime is all that they needed. 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:29.640 His answer to the problem of India was education. He 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:33.760 proposed that only through education could the their nation really 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:38.400 affect true change. UM. Actually, as an example of this, 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:40.560 UM I found a statement that he made in nineteen 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:43.200 o nine which was actually a letter to an American 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:45.760 lawyer who had written him talking about the problem of 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:49.080 India and what was going on with colonialism. And it 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:52.959 was from a lawyer named Myron H. Phelps and to 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.760 Gore put it this way to him, he said, for us, 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:58.760 there can be no question of blind revolution, but of 0:13:58.760 --> 0:14:02.680 steady and purposeful education. He said, that's basically what it 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:05.600 would take to snap his people out of the quote 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:10.160 trance that cold blooded repression had put them under. Yeah, so, 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:12.640 I mean some people see this as just a different 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:19.280 approach to nationalism. It's it's not revolution, it's revolution through education. Yeah. 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:22.960 He wanted his country not just to be independent, but 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:25.880 to be independent and truly truly be independent in every 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:30.120 aspect um, you know, not just be free from an 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.000 oppressive government, but to be able to stand alone as 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.440 a nation. And he thought education was the only way 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:38.000 that they would be able to do that. So, yeah, 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:39.720 you're right, some people do just think that this is 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:43.160 a different approach to nationalism um that he was taking. 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:45.800 So a good thing to do, though, if you're interested 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:49.360 in education is to start your own school, why not, 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:51.520 which is exactly what he did. And he did just that. 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.840 He founded an experimental school at Shanta Nikitan. It's a 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.000 small town in West Bengal which means a bode of peace. 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.120 And this wasn't his first experience with this town. His 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:06.880 dad I had founded a oshroom there, so he founded 0:15:06.880 --> 0:15:10.480 a school there too. And his whole idea behind the 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.120 school was pretty much goes along with his philosophy that 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:15.040 he's had all along. You know. He felt that the 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.000 East and West needed each other, and so he wanted 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:20.920 to incorporate both types of thought into this school that 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:22.840 he had. So what he did is he got both 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:26.400 Indiana and Western scholars to teach there. And um, it 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:28.960 was a different kind of environment than had outdoor classes. 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:31.480 They had outdoor classes. That's pretty neat like the sound 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:35.040 of that. Um, But just because he's running this school 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:37.400 sounds like that would kind of keep you preoccupied. I 0:15:37.480 --> 0:15:41.880 don't think he's not writing. He's still writing prolifically. Um 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:45.680 and unfortunately going through a few personal tragedies in the 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:50.880 early nineteen hundreds. His wife died in nineteen o two. Incidentally, 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:53.520 they had gotten married when she was only ten years 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.600 old and he was twenty two. Um. And then after 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:00.520 his wife died, he also lost his father and two 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:04.400 of his children, all in this really short period of time. Yes, 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.080 And it was the sadness resulting from these events that 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:14.040 inspired several poems. Song poems as They're sometimes called, which 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.880 he translated into English and published as a collection called 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:22.560 Joy in nineteen twelve. And some have said that the 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.240 fact that he did translate themselves is not necessarily a 0:16:25.240 --> 0:16:29.960 good thing. Yeah, I mean they still sold well. Apparently 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:34.520 between March and November nineteen thirteen there were ten reprints. Um. 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.840 But yeah, his his translations came under a lot of 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.880 scrutiny later. If if you've ever come across him in 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:44.840 a literature class or something and you're outside of India, 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:48.400 it might be some sort of comparison to WB. Yates. 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.520 And they were friends, if you could call it that, 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:53.960 for about thirty seven years. That had a really long 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:58.840 relationship with each other. And Yates is largely credited to 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.680 exposing him to the West, you know, introducing him to 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:06.600 the West and helping make him famous there. But they 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:11.399 had kind of a tumultuous friendship to say the least. Yep, 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:15.720 they actually met through William Rothenstein. He was an artist 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:20.240 who hosted to Gore in London in around thirteen so 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:24.840 around the time that he was publishing this translation and 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.520 When to Go arrived. He gave Rothenstein an English translation 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:33.240 of these poems and Rothenstein then sent them to Yates 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:37.560 and some other some other people about town. Yates apparently 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:42.280 loved them. He was really really into them. He apparently said, quote, 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:45.760 I've carried the translations of these manuscripts about with me 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:49.120 for days, reading it in railway trains or on top 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.560 of omnibuses or in restaurants, and I've often had to 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.880 close it less some strangers see how much it moved me. Um, 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.000 but I don't know. Maybe we should talk about Yates later. 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.560 Her opinion in a minute, Because this is the this 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:05.640 is to Gore's rising star at this point. This is 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.320 his fame starting to spread throughout the West as well 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:11.920 as the East. So people finally got to know him 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:14.040 through this. They finally got to know him through this 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.240 English translation and through people kind of spreading the word 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.479 about him, and it led I will not people spreading 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:23.359 the word, but just his talent, I guess led to 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.760 him winning the Noble Price for literature. As we mentioned, 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:29.960 he was the first Asian to receive such an honor, 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:34.400 and after that his fame kind of grew exponentially, fame 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:38.520 outside of India, that is, he was knighted by King George, 0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.159 the fifth of Britain in nineteen fifteen, and he started 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.600 traveling abroad a lot more. He wasn't in India as 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:46.480 much as he used to be. He was doing lectures 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:51.040 and readings. He went to Europe, North America, South America, Asia, 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:54.679 East Asia, um, all over the place. So yeah, he 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:57.120 was one of the most famous Indians in the world 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:08.840 at this point, perhaps the most famous. But then, unfortunately, 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:13.399 something really bad happened. On April thirteenth, nineteen nineteen, in 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:16.359 a Star, which is located in the state of Punjab 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:20.600 in India. British soldiers fired on an unarmed gathering of men, 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:22.840 women and children who had come into the city to 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:26.840 partake in a traditional Sikh festival. There was a peaceful 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:29.520 nationalist demonstration going on that day, but many of the 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.880 people who who were around, who were involved in the shooting, 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:35.879 they weren't even really a part of the demonstration exactly. 0:19:35.960 --> 0:19:38.840 They were completely kind of innocent of whatever was going on. 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.640 So a lot of lives were lost, and we don't 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.280 know exactly how many. A lot of sources you look 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:48.240 at and I think the official number reported by the 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.159 British Raj was three seventy nine, but some people say 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.400 that it could have been as many as a thousand 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:56.560 or more well. And then the accounts of it in 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.600 the British press were especially disturbed, and you know, they 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:03.560 were treating it as though it had been a riot 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:06.680 and the people who were killed had gotten themselves into 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:11.960 trouble essentially, and people just had a very unfortunate reaction 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:15.119 to to the whole thing that went down. Yeah, it 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:18.439 was weird. It was a big cover up um for 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:21.000 obvious reasons. They didn't want people to know that this 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.280 had gone down the way it had, because there was 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:26.040 basically no reason for these people being killed, so they 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:28.919 had to spin it. They had to spin it and uh. 0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:31.640 But then there were murmurings, of course, of what had 0:20:31.640 --> 0:20:34.399 really happened throughout India and too Core caught wind of this, 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.639 and he was pretty disgusted by the entire situation and 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:40.600 it kind of changed his outlook and it definitely changed 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.520 the way he felt about being a British night. So 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:46.520 he wrote a letter to Lord Chelmsford, who was the 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:50.080 Viceroy of India at the time, and renounced his knighthood. 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.800 And if you read his letter, it's interesting because it 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.400 is so formal, so polite. It's very written in very 0:20:56.400 --> 0:21:00.119 precise English, but I don't know. He's clearly very very 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:04.240 deeply disturbed by what's happened and can't reconcile being a 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.200 night with supporting this definitely. Um, we have a little 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:10.320 excerpt from the letter just to give you an idea 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:14.119 of how incensed he was via the situation. He says, 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:17.960 the very least I can do for my country to 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:21.320 take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:25.080 protest of millions of my countrymen surprised into dumb anguish 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:28.440 of terror. The time has come when badges of honor 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.680 make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation. 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:35.399 And I, for my part, wish to stand shorn of 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:38.040 all special distinctions by the side of those of my 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:41.760 countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.760 suffer a degradation not fit for human beings. Yeah. So 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:49.720 this was the end of this quote, total cooboration with 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:55.560 the British, and it changed people's opinions of him too. Um, 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.240 he wasn't the same guy anymore. And I mean we 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:01.800 can talk about that maybe first in a literary sense 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:06.880 with Yates, because people have suggested that this is part 0:22:06.880 --> 0:22:10.840 of the reason why Yates's opinion of Tore soured. According 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:14.639 to Anna Jelna car To, Gore's resigning his knighthood just 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:19.040 didn't match up correctly with the idea Yates had of 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:24.040 him as this serene mystic from the east who certainly 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:27.680 wouldn't get involved in politics, certainly wouldn't do anything as 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:32.560 bold as renounced his knighthood. Um, it just didn't match 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:34.879 up with Yates is to Gore. And of course, I 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:37.080 mean we can assume there's some other reasons in here. 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:42.120 Yates really didn't like to Gore's translations. As we mentioned earlier, Um, 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:47.760 he was probably bound to be disappointed in this creation 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:51.840 he had imagined for himself, because to Gore did write 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:55.960 so much more than just romantic poetry. He wrote essays 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:59.080 and plays and prose. But I mean we have to 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.320 assume it did play a role. Yeah, I mean I 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:04.480 think it did. But I think at the same time 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:06.320 there had to be more to it. I mean, they 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:08.119 knew each other, so he must have known that there 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:11.399 was more to Gore than just this romantic literature and 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:14.159 poetry that he wrote. Um, he did a lot of 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:17.000