Indian noted writer Tagore makes return to Java at JIS

Indian noted writer Tagore makes return to Java at JIS

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): As he stepped down at Jakarta's Tanjung Priok
harbor in August 1927, India's poet philosopher Rabindranath
Tagore burst into verse in praise of the "golden threads of
kinship that existed between Indonesia and India".

The Little Theater at the Jakarta International School in
Cilandak will resonate on Saturday night as an ode is once again
paid to the legendary Tagore, not just a poet but also a social
reformer, educationist, composer, painter and humanist.

Tagore's visit to Java and Bali were part of a series of
lecture tours he organized for himself to share with the rest of
Asia his romantic and idealized concept of a single eastern
civilization. Most of Asia at that time was a slave of colonial
masters and Tagore felt that Asia must find her voice if humanity
was to be saved. The greed of western countries caused him great
concern.

And wherever the Calcutta-born Tagore went he attracted large
crowds, for he was already world famous. W.B. Yeats wrote the
introduction for the English translation of Gitanjali (Song of
Offerings), which won for Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1913.

Over the years, the Indian poet's initial concept of a
spiritual East standing aloof from a materialistic West flowered
into a world ideal that he hoped would one day unify all
humankind. His religion, he explained to Albert Einstein during
their 1930 conversation at Einstein's home near Berlin, was in
the reconciliation of the super personal man, the universal human
spirit in his own individual being.

Tagore advocated a worldwide commerce of heart and mind so
that the individual's sense of purpose in life is enhanced. He
took the initiative to contact leading thinkers in other parts of
Asia. In Java one of his closest allies was Ki Hajar Dewantoro,
founder of the Taman Siswa schools, and the country's
first minister of education. Dewantoro was inspired by
Tagore's talk of nationalism without closing the door
to modernism.

A literal translation of kindergarten or the garden of
children, the Taman Siswa schools remain the oldest national
education institutions here, started in 1932. Dewantoro was
impressed with Tagore's school at Santiniketan and Viswa Bharati,
the world university founded by Tagore in 1918 with all the money
he received as Nobel laureate. Dewantoro, painter Affandi
and Dr. Ida Bagus Mantra of Bali visited the university
of universal learning which Tagore saw as a center of
Indian culture and also the thread linking India to
the world.

The idea was to revive the traditional Indian way of teaching,
in the open, under a tree, in close contact with nature. Both
Tagore and Dewantoro believed that all the elements in one's own
culture have to be strengthened, not to resist western culture
but to accept and assimilate it, to get mastery over it and not
to live at its outskirts.

Tagore died in 1941 but his ideas continue to live through the
works of all those who look upon all civilizations in different
continents as being complementary to each other. It is in the
same spirit that Abhyudaya, an Indonesia-India cultural assembly
came into being half a decade ago. Since then every May is
dedicated to the memory of Tagore whose birth anniversary falls
this month.

Chitrangada, an episode about a warrior princess from
the Mahabharata which Tagore wrote as a dance-drama,
was performed in the past by Indian dancer Nilanjana Ghosh along
with Balinese dancers, and also Tridhara, yet another offering of
Indian dance, music and song to Indonesian audiences.

"As we live, work and bring up children in foreign countries
it becomes our personal responsibility to keep them connected
with our culture and values," says Aparesh Mukerjee, production
manager and one of the founders of Abhyudaya.

The highlight of the evening will be an excerpt from a film
on Tagore made by Satyajit Ray, perhaps the greatest film maker
of India and an alumnus of Santiniketan.

The Performance will take place at Little Theater, the Jakarta
International School, Cilandak Campus, on May 19, at 6.15 p.m.
Further Inquiries at 021-7500340