Rabindranath Tagore: Copyright changes put him back in the spotlight

Q. Why is this news

A. Because for many years, the Vishva-Bharati University in West Bengal, India, enjoyed sole copyright on all Tagore's huge body of work, including his poetry, novels, short stories, songs and plays as well as many of his paintings and drawings. Now it's been thrown open because the Indian Government has refused to extend the sole copyright the university has enjoyed beyond 2001.

Q. In brief, why is this important

A. Because Tagore is without question - particularly in terms of his international reputation - the most important literary figure to come out of modern India.

The Bengali poet, short-story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist and painter - who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 - he introduced new prose and verse forms and the use of colloquial language into Bengali literature, thereby freeing it from traditional models based on classical Sanskrit. But, his international reputation arises from his attempts to introduce the best of Indian culture to the West and vice versa.

To many Indians and Bangladeshis - and not just Bengalis - Tagore is to India what Shakespeare is to the English, and the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh are based on songs composed by him.

Q. OK. And what is the Vishva-Bharati University

A. In 1901 Tagore founded an experimental school in rural West Bengal at Shantiniketan ('Abode of Peace'), where he sought to blend the best in the Indian and Western traditions, and this became Vishva-Bharati University in 1921. Tagore set up the university with cash from the Nobel prize and with contributions from friends. Located about 3 kilometres from Bolpur Railway station, the University is now a township on its own.

Q. And why is the university upset about its loss of control

A. Because one of their biggest sources of revenue is no longer guaranteed. And since other publishers are likely to be more competitive, the university will find it difficult to match them.

While this may pose problems for the university, contemporary Bengali writers have welcomed the government's move. They feel lifting the copyright restrictions will go a long way to popularising the writer.

But traditional singers of his songs fear for the pristine quality of the genre. They suspect new musical groups may attempt to stamp their own mark on Tagore's music, now that Vishva-Bharati's control over the way this is gone as well.

Q. So what will change

A. Publishers in India say that this will be a massive business opportunity for them, as Tagore is still tremendously popular with Bengalis, cutting across religious and class lines. Other publishers are planning to publish translations of his works in languages which his they have thus far not appeared in, such as Arabic and Hebrew. Publishers in Bangladesh, where thousands of freedom fighters sang Tagore's songs during the war with Pakistan in 1971, have similar plans.

Q. And a quick biography of Tagore

A. Rabindranath Tagore - or Thakur in Bengali - was born on 7 May 1861 in Calcutta, the son of the prominent Hindu religious reformer Debendranath Tagore, and died there on 7 August 1941. He began to publish poetry in the 1880s and completed Manasi, a collection which contains some of his best-known poems as well as some social and political satire in 1890. Read his Selected Poems.

Gitanjali, Song Offerings (1912), containing Tagore's English prose translations of religious poems from several of his Bengali verse collections, was hailed by W.B. Yeats and Andr Gide and won him the Nobel Prize in 1913. Tagore was awarded a knighthood in 1915, but he renounced it in 1919 in protest at the Amritsar Massacre of Indian civilians by British soldiers.

After 1912 Tagore spent long periods out of India, lecturing and reading from his work in Europe, the Americas and Asia, becoming an eloquent spokesman for the cause of Indian independence. In the late 1920s, at nearly 70 years of age, he took up painting and produced works that won him a place among India's foremost contemporary artists.

For more on Arts & Literature click here

By Simon Smith