RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Rabindranath Tagore (original name Rabindranath Thakur)  (born May 7, 1861, Calcutta – died August 7, 1941, Calcutta) Bengali poet and mystic who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913; he was most influential in introducing the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa.

The son of the great Sage (Maharashi) Devendranath Tagore, he began to write verses early and, after several books of songs in the 1880s, wrote Manashi (1890), a collection that marks the maturing of his genius. It contains some of his best known poems, including many in verse forms new Bengali, among them odd. It also contains his first social and political poems.

In 1891 he went to manage his father's estates in Shilaidah and Saiyadpur. He lived there in close contact with village folk, and his sympathy for their poverty and backwardness was the keynote of much later writing. Stories "on humble lives and their small miseries" were collected in Galpaguccha (1912; "A Bunch of Stories"). He also became interested in political and social problems, though he never regarded independence for India as an end in itself. At Shilaidah he came to love the Bengal countryside, most of all the Ganges River, perhaps in most frequently repeated image. During these years he published several collections – Sonar Tari (1893; "The Golden Boat"), Citra (1896), Caitali (1896; "Late Harvest"), Kalpana ("Imagination") and Ksanika (both 1900), Naibedya (1901; "Sacrifice") – and lyrical plays; Chtrangada (1902); Chitra (1913) and Malani (1895).

Years of sadness (his wife and a son and daughter died between 1902 and 1907) inspired some of Tagore's best poetry. The English version of his well known collection Gitanjali (1910; "Song Offering") won him the Nobel Prize. He was awarded a Knighthood in 1915 but he surrendered it in 1919 as a protest against the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.

Despite the variety of his activities, Tagore was a prolific writer: 21 collections appeared in the last 25 years of his life. Much of that period was spent to lecture in Europe, the Americas, China, Japan, Malaya and Indonesia. Many of his work were translated into English, by himself and others; but the English version fall far below the Bengali originals. His novels, although less outstanding than his poems and short stories, are worthy of attention; the best known is Gora (1907-1910; English translation 1924). Tagore was also a gifted composer, setting hundreds of poems to music; and he was among India's foremost painters.

In 1901 Tagore founded a school at Santiniketan, near Bolpur; there he sought to blend the best in the Indian and Western traditions. In 1921 he inaugurated the Visva-Bharati University there.

The Child who is decked with prince's robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play his dress hampers him at every step.                                                               - Rabindranath Tagore

"We offer you, as you go from us, our admiration and our affection. We feel that we have been cleansed and ennobled by meeting you … we were cynics before you came … but one look at you and we know that we were wrong … Something of the ancient idealism of the East has been poured into our blood, by the wine and music of your verse …"                                                                                                                                - Will Durant

 Swami Vivekananda

Original name Narendranath Datta, Datta also spelled Dutt (born Jan 12, 1863, Calcutta – died July 4, 1902, Calcutta). Hindu spiritual leader and reformer who attempted to combine Indian spirituality with Western material progress, maintaining that the two supplemented and complemented one another. His Absolute was man's own higher Self to labour for the benefit of mankind was the noblest endeavour.

Born into an upper-middle-class Kayastha family in Bengal, he was educated at a western-style university where he was exposed to Western philosophy, Christianity; and Science. Social reform was given a prominent place in Vivekananda's thought, and he joined the Brahmo Samaj (Society; of

Brahma), dedicated to eliminating child marriage and illiteracy and determined to spread education among women and the lower castes. He later became the most notable disciple of Ramakrishna, who demonstrated the essential unity of all religions. Always stressing the universal and humanistic side of the Vedas as well as belief in service rather than dogma, Vivekananda attempted to infuse vigour into Hindu thought, placing less emphasis on the prevailing pacifism and presenting Hindu spirituality to the west. He was an activating force behind the Vedanta (interpretation of the Upanishads) movement in the United States and England. In 1893 he appeared in Chicago as a spokesman for Hinduism at the World's Parliament of Religions and so captivated the assembly that a newspaper account described him as "an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament".  Thereafter he lectured throughout the United States and England, making converts to the Vedanta movement.

On his return to India with a small group of Western disciples in 1897, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission (q.v.) at the monastery of Belur Math on the Ganges River near Calcutta. Self-perfection and service were his ideals, and the order continued to stress them. He adapted and made relevant to the 20th century, the very highest ideals of the Vedantic thought and although he lived only two years into that century he left marks of his personality on East and West alike.

The mother's heart, the hero's will, the sweetness of the southern breeze, the sacred charm and strength that dwell on Aryan alters, flaming, free – All these be yours …                                    - Swami Vivekananda

Constant devotion, …, was the means by which he maintained his unbroken concentration. Concentration was the secret of those incessant flashes of revelation which he always giving. It was the quality of his thought as much as its beauty or its intensity, that told of the mountain snows of spiritual vision, whence it was drawn.        - Margaret Noble (Sister Nivedita)

  Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, by name, (born October 2, 1869, Porbandar, India – died Januray 30, 1948, Delhi), leader of the Indian national movement against British rule, considered to be the father of his country. He is internationally esteemed for his doctrine of non-violence to achieve political and social progress.

Reared in a morally rigorous environment that decreed pacifism and the sanctity of all living things, Gandhi received an indifferent formal education in India and in 1888 began law studies in England, where he soon met prominent social idealists, including G. B. Shaw. In quest of clerical work he went to South Africa (1893-1914) and was shocked at the racial discrimination. He became an advocate for his fellow Indians and undertook a series of challenges to the Government that led him to jail. After thorough soul-searching, he entered politics in India in 1919 to protest against British sedition laws. He emerged as the head of the Indian National Congress and advocated a policy of non-violent non-cooperation to achieve Indian

Independence. In 1930 he led a march to the sea to protest the tax on salt, which affected the poorest section of the community, and by the following spring the making of salt for personal use was permitted. Repressed throughout World War II, in August 1947 he negotiated for an autonomous Indian state. In January 1948 he was shot dead by a Hindu fanatic.

"The moral influence which Gandhi has exercised upon thinking people may be far more durable than would appear likely in our present age, with its exaggeration of brute force." said Albert Einstein. "We are fortunate and grateful that fate has bestowed upon us so luminous a contemporary, a beacon for generations to come".

No sooner did the cup of sin in Assyria and Babylon become full than it broke. When Rome trod the path of immorality, none of her great men could save her. The ancient Greeks were an accomplished people, still all their art and philosophy could not continue in their immorality for long … This mysterious moral law brings prosperity to the man who observes it …                                                                             - Mahatma Gandhi

"Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."                                                                                                                               - Albert Einstein

  Sri Aurobindo

Original name Aurobindo Ghosh, Aurobindo also spelled Aravinda (born August 15, 1872, Calcutta – died. December 5, 1950, Pondicherry),  seer, poet and Indian nationalist who originated the philosophy of cosmic salvation through spiritual evolution.

His education began in a Christian convent school in Darjeeling, and then still a boy, he was sent to England for further schooling, living there for 14 years till he was 21. He entered Cambridge, where he became proficient in two classical and three modern European languages. After returning to India in 1892, he took various administrative and professorial posts in Baroda and Calcutta, and then turned to his native culture and began serious study of yoga and Indian languages, including classical Sanskrit.

The years from 1902 to 1910 were stormy ones for Aurobindo, as he embarked on a course of action to free India from the British raj (rule). As a result of his political activities and revolutionary literary efforts he was imprisoned in 1908. Two years later he fled British India to

seek refuge in the French colony of Pondicherry in southeastern India, where he devoted himself for the rest of  his life solely to the development of his unique philosophy. There he founded an asrama (retreat) as an international cultural centre for spiritual development, attracting students from all over the world.

According to Aurobindo's theory of cosmic salvation, the paths to union with Brahman are two-way streets or channels. Enlightment comes from above (thesis), while the spiritual mind strives through yogic illumination to reach upwards from below (antithesis). When these two forces blend a gnostic individual is created (synthesis). This yogic illumination transcends both reason and intuition and eventually leads to the freeing of the individual from the bonds of individuality and by extension, all mankind will eventually achieve mukti (liberation). Thus Aurobindo created a dialectic mode of salvation not only for the individual but for all mankind.

His voluminous literary output includes philosophical writings, poetry, plays and other works. Among his works are The Life Divine (1940), The Human Cycle (1949), The Ideal of Human Unity (1949), On the Veda (1956), Collected Poems and Plays (1942), Essays on the Gita (1928), The Synthesis of Yoga (1948) and Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol (1950).

The Strength of a man, the beauty of woman;

  The laugh of a boy; the blush of a girl;

 The hand that sent Jupiter spinning through heaven,

  Spends all its cunning to fashion a curl,

 These are His works and His veils and His shadows.

                                                                       - Sri Aurobindo

"Sri Aurobindo's vision is a rational elaboration of the fundamentals of everyday experience as well as of a higher experience in which the cosmic events and the smallest common details are provided with a justified and meaningful place, for he wanted his view to agree with all facts of existence.        - Georges Vrekhem

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