Many friends of the Cosmopolitan Club will know the names of two members of the famous Tagore family from near Calcutta in West Bengal, India. One of India's greatest poets was Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). He had made a great name for himself as a writer of poems, songs, novels, plays, and short stories, by the turn of the century. In 1901 he turned his attention to the improvement of education in India by founding antiniketan, an experimental school north of Calcutta.
Tagore believed that an improvement in agriculture was important to the betterment of his country. With this in mind, he sent his son Rathindranath (or Rathi) and Santosh Majumdar, a friend of his son, to the University of Illinois to study agriculture.
Rathi and Santosh acquired many friends, particularly among the congregation of the newly founded Unitarian Church in Urbana, led by its young, liberal-minded, and religiously eclectic minister, the Reverend Albert Vail (who included readings from the Koran and from Buddhist and Hindu scriptures in his services). The congregation had recently opened its new church on Oregon Street in Urbana. This building still stands, operated by the Channing-Murray Foundation. The building now is known as the Tagore Center and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Unitarian ideas were already familiar to Rathi and Santosh through the Brahmo Samaj, a religious reform movement in India that had some interactions with the Unitarian movement.
The spirit of universal harmony that characterized the life and work of the elder poet Tagore, was also evident in Rathi and Santosh. This spirit in the two Indian students is noteworthy to Cosmopolitan Club friends and members to this day, because it was their universalist beliefs that led them to assist in the founding of the University of Illinois branch of the Cosmopolitan Club on our campus during their tenure here.
One day, in answer to a question about Indian poets by one of the Unitarian Church members, Santosh volunteered the name of his friend's father as the greatest living Indian poet. And thus was born the Tagore Circle, a group of internationally-minded individuals who met periodically for discussions on philosophy and culture. Occasionally at these meetings, Santosh would read some of Rabindranath's poetry. And thus Tagore was introduced to Champaign-Urbana in absentia.
Rathi and Santosh graduated in 1906 and returned to India. However, Rathi later returned for graduate studies and his father Rabindranath came to Urbana for a visit in November, 1912. The elder Tagore, of course, participated in the meetings of the Tagore Circle, and he gave lectures on religious topics, poetry, and art at the Unitarian Church. In fact, the first lecture Tagore gave in America was at that church in Urbana. Subsequently, he went on a lecture tour to Chicago and various other places throughout the country, returning to Urbana as his "home base." While in Urbana throughout much of 1913, Tagore stayed at the house of a friend on West High Street. It was during this stay in Urbana that he received word that he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his collection of poems, Gitanjali, an award that greatly delighted his friends in the Tagore Circle.
The well-traveled Rabindranath returned for a second visit to Champaign-Urbana and to America in 1916. Again, he went on a lecture tour throughout the country. There was some tension on this tour, however, because Tagore preferred to lecture on politics and creativity, whereas his audiences had come to see him as a poet and mystic and they expected him to fulfill that role. Furthermore, his stance against self-interested nationalism, as opposed to universalism, did not always go well with audiences at the time of the first World War.
After his departure from America the second time, he continued to write prolifically on the themes of devotion, love of nature, and the unity of all life and all people. Our Midwestern community should be proud of having been home for a short while to this giant of world literature. Some Cosmo members may know that Tagore's role in the history of our community has been honored for the last ten years with the Tagore Festival in October, which includes presentations of music, poetry, and dance related to Tagore (plus a delicious meal!).
Furthermore, the Cosmopolitan Club should likewise feel proud of its critical connection, through Rathi and Santosh, with this great messenger of universal harmony for all humankind.