RABINDRANATH TAGORE

RABINDRANATH
TAGORE


NOT only in Bengal’s arena of transcendental
culture and heritage, Rabindranath Tagore, the
peerless Nobel laureate spread his iridescent,
omnipresent spectrum of literary genius in all
the segments of Indian psyche. However, few would know
that apart from the fragrant greenery of literary excellence,
Tagore had also dabbled in popular writing on several
scientific topics, too.
Tagore with P.C. Mahalanobis (right)
KOUSHIK ROY


Although Bengali literature is replete with the writings
of a galaxy of popular science writers like Acharya Ramendra
Sundar Tribedi, Akshay Kumar Dutta, Acharya Prafulla
Chandra Roy, Jagadananda Roy, and Acharya Jagadish
Chandra Bose, by dint of his inquisitive insight and cerebral
prowess, Rabindranath Tagore easily emulated them to
convince the laypersons about the intricate facts and
inventions of science

.
The palatial, ancestral house at Jorasanki, that nurtured
waves of socio-cultural Renaissance within the British-
occupied Bengal, also baptized the juvenile soul of
Rabindranath into the wonderful world of science and
technology. The person who ignited the sparks of science
within Rabindranath was his science teacher – Sitanath
Ghosh, an enthusiastic scholar in the physical sciences who
was repeatedly recollected by Tagore in his
autobiographies – Jiban Smriti (Remembrance of Life) and
Chhelebela (The Childhood).


Through homely experiments carried out by Sitanath,
the child Rabindranath came to learn about the boiling of
milk, emission of steam and conduction of heat. Being
encouraged by Tagore’s illustrious father and one of the
pioneers of the monotheist Brahmo religiosity in Bengal,
Maharshi Dabendranath Tagore, Sitanath Ghosh used to
contribute articles on general science in lucid language in
the periodicals Hindoo Patrika and Tatvabodhini. These writings


inspired Rabindranath to show interest in scientific
applications, and due to which he urged his son
Rathindranath to go overseas and learn technical
agriculture. Rabindranath also introduced the scientific way
of breeding silk worms and producing silk


SCIENCE REPORTER, September 2010 37
FeatureArticle
Rabindranath got his primary lessons in science from
Sitanath Ghosh who had astonished everyone by setting up
a magnetic healer with 6000 ft. copper wire and galvanized
battery at 54, Mechhua Bazaar Street in central Kolkata, to
cure people of rheumatism and arthritis with the help of
magnetic induction. Sitanath also crafted a weaving mill,
wheat-flour grinding machine, mechanical plough and
making of sepia-ink. During his association with thethe


countrywide “Swadeshi” movement against the autocratic
announcement of the partition of Bengal by Viceroy Lord
Curzon, Tagore urged the manufacture of such indigenous
machines and tools to alleviate the country’s reliance on
foreign-made scientific products and to increase the
importance of science education as well as applications in
India.


That was why he greeted Acharya Prafulla Chandra
Roy for his dexterity in chemistry and his formulas of soaps,
detergents and phenyl in his celebrated institution – “Bengal
Chemical”. He envisioned it as the Bengalee youth’s self-
reliant stride boldly along with the global changes in the
world of science and technology. Tagore’s establishment
of the organization – Shriniketan – within the premises of
Shantiniketan to impart skill to rural women in cottage
industries and entrepreneurship was also inspired by the
thought of scientific innovation in Bengal.


 Rabindranath Tagore was deeply inspired by the
epochal theory of Creative Evolution of living beings
propounded by the French scientist and thinker Henri
Bergson. The French intellectual said: “We change without
ceasing and the state itself is nothing but Change.” In this
context, Tagore went through The Origin of Species By Means


of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin and Philosophique
Zoologique by Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Being curious about
the theory of human evolution, Tagore delved deeper into
anthropological texts to follow the advent of the Modern or
Cro-Magnon man, from his primitive and Paleolithic lineage
of Peking men or Neanderthals.


He showed his avid interest for Africa as the place of
origin of the human species about which he hinted in his
revolutionary poem – “Africa”. He had composed it to
oppose Italian invasion in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). The
chaotic state of a heated, gaseous and nascent Earth, after
her post Big Bang separation from the greater body of the
Sun, as a smaller mass of gas and her subsequent
condensation of water vapour to form oceans and seas are
allegorically stated in this poem:
“In those turbulent days of constant convulsion by the
Creator;

O Africa, you were snatched and grabbed by the wavy
arms of the furious seas.” (Translation by self)
Rabindranath was always fascinated with the
progressively astronomical theories of the genesis of the
Universe and its celestial bodies, which were elucidated in
the treatises of Aryabhatta, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe,
Galileo and Johannes Kepler. Tagore tries to fashion the
rapport among literature, science and philosophy by
exploring such cosmic order of heavenly bodies in many of
his songs and poems:


“Akaaskh bhara surya taara
 Viswa bhara praan
 Tahaari Majhkhaane
 Ami Payechi Mor Sthan”
(The sky is filled with sun and stars. Life spreads in the
entire Universe. I secure my place among them—translation
by self)


While being a believer in the divine form of the sun, as
found in the Vedas, Tagore was also aware of the heliocentric
He tells us about the possible existence of thousands of solar
systems like the Antares star with its diameter of an
overwhelming 39 crores of miles.
He always


wondered at
the peerless
existence of
atoms as the
base of the
creation of this
vast universe.
He showed his
avid interest
for Africa as
the place of
origin of the
human species
about which
he hinted in his
revolutionary
poem –
“Africa”.

SCIENCE REPORTER, September 2010 38
FeatureArticle
theory – the sun as the core of this solar system. Such
interminable might of the sun to originate and to nurture
all the life forms is praised by Rabindranath:
“He bijoyi veer, naba jibonero prate
nabino ashar kharga tomar haate”haate”


(O valiant warrior! At the dawn of new lives, you are
wielding the cutlass of new hopes – translation by self)
Rabindranath’s spectacular work on astronomy and
physics of matter is “Vishwaparuchaya” (Introduction to the
Universe), which he dedicates to the celebrity Bengalee
scientist Satyendranath Bose. In this grand work, Tagore
blends his literary prowess with scientific facts and figures to
make them more attractively readable, as opposed to formula-


oriented texts. He revealed that he had been inspired about
sky–viewing at night by his father while holidaying at
the Dalhousie Hills. He also went through astronomical
titles composed by Laplace, Robert Boyle and Newcombs.
In this book, Tagore says that the mighty sun, as the
universal creator and sustainer of energy, does not let us
know about the constant tempest of fusions of plasma
particles when it rises like a golden dish in the east, daily,
just behind the mango groves. At dawn, he compares the
light beams and light years as “royal messengers” which
make the earth feel the presence of solar beams after eight
and half minutes of sunrise. The light beams are delineated
by Tagore as the compendium of multiple waves of sub-
atomic particles like photons and tachyons. The solar beam’s
spectrum is beautifully compared by him with the seven–
coloured, tail–feather of a dancing peacock or with a regal
chandelier, having tinted, glinting glass, pieces.


The radioactive Gamma and Beta rays were renamed
as Akaashvani, the message from the sky by Tagore. He also
christened the national radio centre with that name,
pointing at those long and short waves that have been
relaying programs from radio-stations to radio-sets.
Rabindranath pays tribute to the German physicist Wilhelm
Conrad Roentgen by writing about the X-ray, which he calls
a penetrative light that discloses our skeleton by crossing
into the cover of our skin. The ultraviolet ray and infrared
ray are renamed in articulate Bengali by Tagore as “Beguni
Paarer Aalo” and “Laal Ujaani Aalo”.


He writes that “Sodium gas” entraps the solar beam
within the Sun’s photosphere and the sun contains all the 92
elementary matters that are available in this planet.
Rabinbranath informs that the gemstone ruby absorbs all
the colours of the spectrum, except the red, for which it
gains that colour itself. If all the mortal objects were used
to suck up all the solar colours, the entire world would
have been dark. Tagore describes atom as the most
fundamental of all particles, which if arranged side-by-side
would occupy only one inch of space.


The positive and negative attributes of both electron
and proton particles within the nucleus of an atom and
atomic structure of hydrogen are lucidly elaborated by
Tagore. He mentions the neutron as “samya-dharmi” or
having egalitarian value. Stating about the nucleic structure
of an oxygen atom, Tagore compares the negative aspect of
electron with ladies and positivism of proton with males.
He further jokes – a family becomes too much masculine if
ladies are prohibited to enter there. Any atom without any
electron would be like that. He also compares protons and
electrons with bear–charmers and chained bears that are
compelled to be guided by those charmers.
Tagore with Karel Hujer, an astronomer