One of our members, Sujoy Roy, writes on how Rabindranath Tagore went on a lecture tour to the USA in 1916 and nearly fell into a crossfire of political assassination and American official counter-intelligence.
James B. Pond was Tagore’s tour agent. Pond wrote to Macmillan, the publishers, that “Tagore’s tour could be made one of the biggest lecture tours.” However, half-way through the tour, the Minneapolis Tribune called the poet “the best businessman who ever came to us out of India”. He managed to scold Americans “$700 per scold” and “$700 dollars per plead”. What was meant was that Tagore did not miss out on manifest frowning down on America’s penchant for gross materialism and narrow nationalism; while in the same breath, he was earning every dollar for his school in Santiniketan. This ambivalence was seemingly verging on hypocrisy and was to prove dangerous quite soon.
Back in 1912-13, he had visited the Bay Area on the West Coast with some huge success, making him a cult figure. He had taken San Francisco’s intellectual elites by storm. Now came a fomenting danger from Indian revolutionaries living in the Bay Area, who despite being appreciative of his intellectual prowess, considered Tagore to be standing aloof of anti-imperialist revolutionary movement. They considered the heart of India was in the anti-British revolutionary movement.
A near parallel underlined the minds of Indian youths to Goethe’s non-committal attitude towards Germany’s war of liberation a century ago. A plot to assassinate him was hatched. Two Indian youths were despatched to Tagore’s hotel to do a hatchet job, but the youths chickened out. The American administration got the scent of it and spirited him away to Santa Barbara with police protection.
The newspapers headlined “Hindu Savant Safe After Wild Flight Under Body Guard”. Tagore gave no credence to the approaching political storm over him. He spent a day relaxed, sitting on the beach under the fragrant groves of orange trees. To a reporter he declared about Californian women “It was a pleasure simply to watch them”.
Tagore mooted for the first time the nucleus of his vision of founding Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan as a web of world culture and wrote to his son, Rathindranath, accordingly. This should strike us as a quirky utopia which dawned on him in southern California, in the vicinity of Hollywood—and just a few days after some of his own countrymen anti-British revolutionaries thought of eliminating him. The place was a land of hedonistic culture where gross materialism and instant gratification were the holy grail.
But for the poet, there were hassles. The poet was living out of briefcase, as it were from trains and hotels through a roving lecture tour. He preferred eating quietly alone in his room with Boston Baked Beans, thereby going weak with vegetarian regimen trying to save money for Santiniketan. Perhaps, the food gave him a gaseous estimation of himself.
One early morning, he woke up Pearson on the train telling him that he had tipped his set of teeth down the lavatory basin, where he had kept them on the night before. Fortunately, his dentist at Yokohama had made him a denture which suited him better for public speaking. To add to the troubles, his wardrobe became dispersed. The enraged man had to give a lecture in a silk shirt and tweed trousers providing a hilarious amusement to spectators.
The New York Times commented after reviewing his 10 volumes of work in December that Tagore’s was a lone voice above clamour of nations and their aggrandizement. But the press was divided. He was also regarded as a vaporously philanthrophic thinker like Whitman and others. Now, war clouds were in the air. His views on humanitarian world unity would have to go through wrecking trials in two world wars. He had a dream of bridging an east-west unity between men and matters. But the west itself was divided between imperialist nations going at each other’s throat.
He terminated his tour in America in 1916. “Ich bin mude (I am tired),” he said to his friend Harriet Moody in America.
Postscript At one time, Rabindranath was once lodged in a grand log-house known as Yama Farms in Catskill Mountains north of New York City. This was a kind of retreat, where outstanding industrialists and intellects like Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Waterman of fountain pen fame, Mr Colgate and the Kodak among others stayed in close proximity. As the story goes, Tagore was being sketched by two Russian artists in a house on the estate.
Rabindranath pulled out a dime from his pocket saying: “Isn’t it odd that an old gentleman gave me this when he was waiting for his car. Do I look like a tramp?” That evening, the owner of Yama Farms identified the donor as Rockefeller, who had mentioned giving a dime to “an old Negro”.

One of our members, Ms Sukla Gupta, describes to Mousumi Gupta how the values her upbringing in Tagore’s abode, Santiniketan, imbibed in her helped her cope with the challenges in life. Ms Sukla Gupta was brought up in Santiniketan, in fact, in Sriniketan in the 1930s and 1940s. “My father was first posted there with the agricultural development authority in 1932. But for some reason, he left the place and went on to work in some other city. He came back to Santiniketan in 1936 on a call from Rabindranath Tagore, who wanted him to develop the area,” said Ms Gupta. It was from then that the family started to live in Sriniketan, the twin city of Santiniketan. “The area at that time was almost barren with very less rainfall and agriculture. The place started to develop during his time,” recalls the lady. She was taught in a co-education school in Sriniketan, and the interesting part of that school was all the teachers were women, her mother was also associated with that school.
“The school was till Class VI after which she was shifted to Santiniketan, where she came in contact with several well-known personalities as either teacher or schoolmate. One such big name, Amartya Sen, was two classes senior to me. The way they studied was typical Santiniketan style, classes under the trees, going barefoot, sitting on mats and moreover, no punishment in class and evaluation through grading. The unique part is the students used to shift from one place to another for their classes and not the teachers,” said Ms Gupta.
According to Tagore, children can’t sit at one place for long. There used to be classes, each of 40 minutes’ duration, and 5 minutes to shift with their mat from one place to other. The classes used to get over at 11am. For people belonging to the deprived sections of society, Tagore founded Shiksha Satra (free education). All the poor children from surrounding villages not only studied there free of cost but also got training in craft, tant-knitting, printing, painting, pottery, agriculture etc. in the evening from 5 every day.
“The thought behind was every child had to know and get training in their family’s main occupation, e.g. a farmer’s son had to know about farming, a tanti’s (weaver) son had to know about tant and so on, so that after completing the education they would go back to their respective villages and improve the village with their best educational training,” said the lady.
She has also spoken about two important festivals of Halakarshan Utsav and Briksha Ropon Utsav. Briksha Ropon Utsav obviously was planting of saplings. This festival was initiated by Tagore regularly in 1936 and since then it is being continued as ritual of Santiniketan. It not only the festival but also has greeting meaning to save nature. This ceremony is preceded by Halakarshan Utsav.
“Halakarshan Utsav implies ploughing of fields during the end part of August. The ploughing ceremony is a symbolic tribute to the activity of ploughing the land. The ceremony aimed to provide the work of ploughing with the dignity, that was its due,” explains Ms Gupta.
The important dignitaries were invited to drive the plough of which her father was one. They used to decorate a flat-topped block with different dals and made a colourful alpana and dressed up two big bullocks with garlands and bright clothes and a hal attached with the bullocks. As a child they were disheartened to see that beautifully decorated block being crushed with thehal.
“The upbringing in that peaceful area gave me the moral values and conduct I carry till now,” she said.