President urges ICCR to support Tagore scholars across the world

It was an evening to celebrate the life and legacy of Noble laureate Rabindranath Tagore. In a befitting tribute to Tagore, Prof Lokesh Chandra, president of Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), presented first copies of Tagore's Vision of the Contemporary World and Tagore and Russia to President Pranab Mukherjee, who is a known Tagore scholar, on Monday at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The books are a compilation of papers presented at the International Tagore Conferences organised in New Delhi and Russia in 2011, the occasion of his 150th birth anniversary. Interestingly, one of the conferences on Tagore's vision of the contemporary world, held in New Delhi in 2011, was inaugurated by Pranab Mukherjee, who was then the finance minister.

On Monday, the President complimented ICCR on its many initiatives and its support to Tagore Studies over the years. He also urged the organisation to support Tagore scholars across the world.

Remembering Tagore

Remembering Tagore as a great humanist, writer and poet, Mukherjee spoke about his ideas of global order of harmony, coexistence and cooperation of individuals and civilisations. "Differences can never be wiped out and life would be so much poorer without them. Let all human races keep their own personalities, and yet come together, not in a uniformity that is dead, but in a unity that is living," he said.

Talking about Tagore's vision of India as an epitome of unity in diversity, Prof Chandra spoke of what Tagore wrote about the everlasting spirit of Bharata in August 1903: "Amongst the civilisations of the world Bharatavarsha stands as an ideal of the endeavour to unify the diverse. Amidst many travails and obstacles, fortunes and misfortunes Bharatavarsha has been seeking to experience the One in the universe, as well as in one's own soul."

President Mukherjee remembered Tagore as an ardent traveller. Russia had a special place in Tagore's heart. Tagore was attracted to the Soviet Union having heard of the success of its programmes of rural education.

The President said that mass education was closely allied with the issue of co-operatives, a key ingredient of Rabindranath's Sriniketan experiment.

Recollecting his efforts at Patisar and Bolpur, Tagore had once written, "My object was to strengthen the peasant in selfreliance ... agriculture will never improve unless land can be collectively cultivated by co-operative methods ? when we had our cooperative organisation at Bolpur under the management of the Visva-Bharati, I thought the opportunity had at last come."

The books - Tagore's Vision of the Contemporary World and Tagore and Russia have been edited by Prof Indra Nath Choudhuri and Dr Reba Som.