VIVEKANANDA AND TAGORE ... 1

Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda are complementary aspects of our ancient culture in its current representation, somewhat like the obverse and reverse of the same coin, or, as you might say, the divergent features of a convergent cause, for they not only were similar in their emphasis on cardinal points of our heritage but differed widely as well in their practice, located as they were in different stations in life. The dissimilarities are quite apparent and therefore they are but apparent only and not real. Both these seminal beings were principal contributors to the great cause of the Indian Renaissance, Tagore on the cultural front and Vivekananda on the spiritual. Yet, the magnitude of their personalities was such that their work flooded the banks of their domains and fertilised the surrounding terrain with the silt of its deposition. Swamiji went early, literally bursting at the seams of his otherwise seamless personality, health hazarded to destruction by the wanton winds of the troubled times whose direction he reset, and Gurudev carried on from there his unfinished work of setting up his dream university where renascent India would 'spring to life and freedom'. Tagore's Sri Niketan was in fulfilment as well of Vivekananda's aspiration for agricultural institutes in India so that his countrymen would learn the science of modern farming and not starve in the land of Annapurna as he witnessed them to do, so many times in his brief but tumultuous life.

Tagore was greatly influenced in his socio-spiritual thinking by Vivekananda and took to engaging his devotees and followers towards the silent fruition of the seer's dreams without admitting in so many terms the undercurrent of his thoughts, for those were formative years of the Indian revolution and the times were treacherous and loaded with peculiar perfidies which the poet wished to avoid. We must not forget his earlier experiences with the people of his Presidency who spared no means to humiliate, malign and belittle him before his winning of the coveted prize settled the dust on his genius. And this association of kindred spirits, as Vivekananda and Tagore were, was the high-water mark of the Indian Renaissance, not to forget those two other peerless patriots, Nivedita and J.C. Bose, and what a feast it must have been on that momentous morn when the quartet met at the Sister's Bosepara residence and melodic streams flowed out through the open casements as Swamiji and then Gurudev took turns to singing songs composed by the poet. My heart fills with bliss to behold in my vision what transports of delight the foursome must have experienced that sunlit moment, for rare in history such a convergence takes place of 'the choice and master spirits of the Age'. What more may I say than this that I prostrate my form before the hallowed souls, the poet and the prophet, and fulfil myself with the fragrance of their beings which shall remain a springtime of harvest forever with me? Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!