CONTRASTING CONCERNS

CONTRASTING CONCERNS

The distant Frenchman Romain Rolland wrote classic biographical studies of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Could Tagore not do so? He could but he did not. Other than a couple of paragraphs on Vivekananda, an address at Swamiji's memorial meeting in 1902, an address at the Ramakrishna Centenary Memorial Celebration of 1937 and a short sort of a poem on Ramakrishna, he did not bother to write anything more on these two seminal sages of the day.

Tagore was well acquainted with Vivekananda and had seen Ramakrishna at a Brahmo Samaj meeting at Nandan Bagan, Kolkata. Yet he could not find time or opportunity or occasion or inspiration to devote his pen to these two divine personalities, although he wrote lengthy essays on Buddha, Christ, Rammohun, Vidyasagar, Debendranath and Gandhi. One wonders if Tagore had met either Buddha or Christ. Nonetheless, that was his author's discretion who he chose to write on. But Ramakrishna and Vivekananda certainly did not deserve his attention for reasons one may well guess.

On the other hand, Romain Rolland who had never visited India in his lifetime was thrilled by Ramakrishna and Vivekananda so, that he took to doing the impossible of writing about them, eventhough he had hardly any knowledge of English and knew not Bengali at all, the mother tongue of the divine duo who were the subjects of his distant meditation and literary expression thereof. His sister, Madeleine Rolland, translated from English to French the available literature on Ramakrishna and Vivekananda which became Rolland's material for biographical writing.

Tagore had all the access to information ready at hand if he desired it and Rolland had none save distant translingual communications from Belur Math which he had to penetrate, overcoming linguistic barriers, and then interpret it right before he could produce his two masterpieces [Vie de Ramakrishna (Life of Ramakrishna), 1929, and Vie de Vivekananda (Life of Vivekananda) and L'Évangile Universel (The Universal Gospel), 1930]. Yet, the former ignored it while the latter dedicated himself to the task of 'bringing to Europe, as yet unaware of it, the fruit of a new autumn, a new message of the Soul, the symphony of India, bearing the name of Ramakrishna.' Strange, isn't it? But then charity hardly ever begins at home.

Written by Sugata Bose