reading, but he laboured through them and tried to absorb their gist. He liked Sir Robert Boyle’s (1627-1691) book the most. Then he started reading Huxley’s (1894-1963) essays on biology. He writes in the Preface to Visva Parichay: The universe has hidden its micro-self, reduced its macro-self or shelved it out of sight behind the curtain. It has dressed itself up and revealed itself to us in a form that man can perceive within the structure of his simple power. But man is anything but simple. Man is the only creature that has suspected its own simple perception, opposed it and has been delighted to defeat it. To transcend the limits of simple perception man has brought near what was distant, made the invisible visible, and has given expression to what is hard to understand. He is ever trying to probe into the unmanifest world that lies behind the manifest world in order to unravel the fundamental mysteries of the universe. The majority of people in this world do not have the opportunity or power to participate in the endeavour that has made this possible. Yet, those who have been deprived of the power and gift of this endeavour have remained secluded and ignored in the outskirts of the modern world... It is needless to say that I am not a scientist, but from childhood my strong desire to enjoy the rasa of science knew no bounds. …My mind was exercised only with astronomy and life science. That cannot be called proper knowledge, in other words, it does not have the sound foundation of scholarship. But constant reading created a natural scientific temper in my mind. My lack of respect for the stupidity of blind faith has, I hope, saved me from the extravagance of cleverness to a INDIA PERSPECTIVES
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large extent. Nevertheless, I have never felt that it hurt my poetry or imagination in any way. Today, at the end of my life, my mind is overwhelmed with the new theory of nature – scientific mayavada. What I read earlier I did not understand fully, but I kept on reading. Today also it is impossible for me to understand everything of what I read, as it is for many specialist pundits too. (translation mine; italics added)
Tagore’s life long and intimate friendship with Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937) must have also helped him no end to develop a reverence for science. The Acharya’s life was devoted to the search for reason in the workings of nature, for a unity in the diversity of nature, a synergism between spiritualism and reason. This search did not remain confined to philosophical speculations alone but led him to invent instruments of unprecedented precision and sensitivity for collecting direct evidence from nature. This must have greatly influenced Rabindranath who, like Raja Rammohun (1774-1833), Bankimchandra (1838-1894) and Iswarchandra Vidyasagar (1820-1891), forebears of the Bengal Renaissance, searched for a synergism between spiritualism and reason in the Indian tradition. Not only did Rabindranath help his friend with money to carry on his path breaking experiments in England, he also wrote extensively about them and made them known to the public at large in Bengal.
Landscape – a painting by Tagore
He also had extensive conversations with other leading scientists of his time like Albert Einstein on the nature of reality and causality in Germany in 1930 and with Heisenberg (1901-1976) on the philosophical implications of quantum theory in Calcutta in 1928. This involvement with and understanding of science helped him develop his own interpretation of the Upanishadic philosophy of Nature to which he was introduced at an early age by his father. It engrossed his mind when he delivered the Hibbert lectures in Oxford in 1930. These lectures were later published as the Religion of Man. (Tagore, 1931). Although he was critical of technology dominating over man in some of his plays
(Muktadhara, Raktakarabi), he readily embraced its beneficial effects. In Sriniketan where the emphasis was on rural reconstruction he introduced many technologies like weaving, carpentry, leather work, etc. In Personality (1917) he wrote: Science is at the beginning of the invasion of the material world and there goes on a furious scramble for plunder. Often things look hideously materialistic, and shamelessly belie man’s own nature. But the day will come when some of the great powers of nature will be at the beck and call of every individual, and at least the prime necessities of life will be supplied to all with very little care and cost. To live will be as easy to man as to breathe, and his spirit will be free to create his own world.
To Rabindranath scientific truths were not mere abstractions and INDIA PERSPECTIVES
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formulas but concrete, living truths that inspired him to write great poems and compose wonderful songs. He assimilated and internalized his scientific knowledge and weaved it into the very fabric of his philosophy and his artistic creations. So complete was the fusion that the songs and poems appear to stand by themselves as great artistic creations far removed from the world of science.
◆ The author is an eminent Physicist of international repute, and a specialist of educational management, taught at the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata. He has authored numerous books including Testing Quantum Mechanics on New Ground (1999), Cosmic Quest (2000), Riddles in your Tea-cup (1990, with Dipankar Home and Suparno Chaudhuri), etc.