HOW COULD TAGORE TAKE THE KNIGHTHOOD IN THE FIRST PLACE ?

HOW COULD TAGORE TAKE THE KNIGHTHOOD IN THE FIRST PLACE ?

I have often wondered how Tagore could have accepted the knighthood of the British Empire in the first place from the rapacious colonisers before somewhat redeeming himself in renouncing it. Would Swamiji or Netaji or Rash Behari Bose have accepted such an 'honour' from the molesters of the motherland? And knight? Whose knight? A knight of the most dastardly regime of all time, the wicked British Crown that tyrannised over a third of the world for centuries and reduced flourishing peoples to penury? Serving as a knight of such a savage imperial order and then to be hailed as supreme renouncer of title at the quickened consciousness about British dastardliness post the Amritsar massacre? Would a right-feeling man have accepted such an 'honour' as Tagore did from the bloodstained hands of the hangmen who were regularly sending our brave revolutionaries to the gallows or to animal incarceration in the Andamans? Hemchandra Ghosh decried the deed. What would Khudiram say?

Written by Sugata Bose