Rabindranath tagore was the first Indian to win the Nobel prize for literature, in 1913. The adulation which followed in his native Bengal distressed him; he sensed that “the people honour the honour in me and not myself.” His fellow Bengali, the economist Amartya Sen, might have echoed those words when he too was mobbed by thousands on his return home in 1998 with Bengal’s second Nobel prize.
Tagore was a global figure in the first quarter of the 20th century but is hardly known today. It was he who conferred the title Mahatma (Great soul) on Gandhi. And as a family friend it was also he who chose Sen’s unusual first name. Amartya means someone who is impossible to kill. Sen was born in Santiniketan (the home of peace), a university in the forest founded by Tagore. Amartya’s maternal grandfather, Kshiti Mohan Sen, author of a classic work on Hinduism, worked there, and his daughter had gone back to Santiniketan for her confinement.
Santiniketan was a modern version of the ashrams where ancient rishis in olden times imparted knowledge. But it was the humanist Tagore who made it likely that Sen would be a citizen not of Bengal nor even India, but of the world. British colonialism was in its last retreat by the time Sen was born in 1933. It had its defects, none so blatant as the Great Famine in Bengal in 1943, which took 2m lives. Yet what endured in Sen’s life was not just the memory of the famine, but the sound educational system of St Gregory’s School of Dhaka and then the prestigious Presidency College, Calcutta. Here was the best of an English education provided by those clever colonials themselves. You hear echoes of it in the hauteur of Nirad Chaudhuri (the most anglophile Bengali ever).
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
