Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
Bgcolour	silver
Name	Satyajit Ray
Birth date	May 02, 1921
Birth place	Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Death date	April 23, 1992
Death place	Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Occupation	Film director, producer, screenwriter, writer, music director, lyricist
Years active	1950–1991
Spouse	}}

Satyajit Ray ( ; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian Bengali filmmaker. He is regarded as one of the greatest auteurs of 20th century cinema. Ray was born in the city of Kolkata into a Bengali family prominent in the world of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, Ray was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing the Italian neorealist film ''Bicycle Thieves'' of Vittorio De Sica during a visit to London.

Ray directed thirty-seven films, including feature films, documentaries and shorts. He was also a fiction writer, publisher, illustrator, graphic designer and film critic. Ray's first film, ''Pather Panchali'' (1955), won eleven international prizes, including ''Best Human Documentary'' at the Cannes film festival. Alongside ''Aparajito'' (1956) and ''Apur Sansar'' (1959), the three films form ''The Apu Trilogy''. Ray did the scripting, casting, scoring, cinematography, art direction, editing and designed his own credit titles and publicity material. Ray received many major awards in his career, including 32 Indian National Film Awards, a number of awards at international film festivals and award ceremonies, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1991.

Early life and background

Satyajit Ray's ancestry can be traced back for at least ten generations. Ray's grandfather, Upendrakishore Ray was a writer, illustrator, philosopher, publisher, amateur astronomer and a leader of the Brahmo Samaj, a religious and social movement in nineteenth century Bengal. Sukumar Ray, Upendrakishore's son and father to Satyajit, was a pioneering Bengali writer of nonsense rhyme and children's literature, an illustrator and a critic. Ray was born to Sukumar and Suprabha Ray in Kolkata.

Sukumar Ray died when Satyajit was barely three, and the family survived on Suprabha Ray's meager income. Ray studied at Ballygunge Government High School, Calcutta, and completed his B.A. (Hons.) in economics at Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, though his interest was always in fine arts. In 1940, his mother insisted that he study at the Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Ray was reluctant due to his love of Kolkata, and the low opinion of the intellectual life at Santiniketan His mother's persuasion and his respect for Tagore finally convinced him to try. In Santiniketan, Ray came to appreciate Oriental art. He later admitted that he learned much from the famous painters Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee. Later he produced a documentary film, ''The Inner Eye,'' about Mukherjee. His visits to Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta stimulated his admiration for Indian art.

Early career

In 1943, Ray started work at D.J. Keymer, a British-run advertising agency, as a "junior visualiser," earning eighty rupees a month. Although he liked visual design (graphic design) and he was mostly treated well, there was tension between the British and Indian employees of the firm. The British were better paid, and Ray felt that "the clients were generally stupid."

Ray also worked for Signet Press, a new publishing house started by D. K. Gupta. Gupta asked Ray to create cover designs for books to be published by Signet Press and gave him complete artistic freedom. Ray designed covers for many books, including Jim Corbett's ''Maneaters of Kumaon,'' and Jawaharlal Nehru's ''Discovery of India.'' He worked on a children's version of ''Pather Panchali,'' a classic Bengali novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, renamed as ''Am Antir Bhepu'' (''The mango-seed whistle''). Designing the cover and illustrating the book, Ray was deeply influenced by the work. He used it as the subject of his first film, and featured his illustrations as shots in his groundbreaking film.

Along with Chidananda Dasgupta and others, Ray founded the Calcutta Film Society in 1947. They screened many foreign films, many of which Ray watched and seriously studied. He befriended the American GIs stationed in Kolkata during World War II, who kept him informed about the latest American films showing in the city. He came to know a RAF employee, Norman Clare, who shared Ray's passion for films, chess and western classical music.

Renoir and London

In 1949, the French director Jean Renoir came to Kolkata to shoot his film ''The River''. Ray helped him to find locations in the countryside. Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming ''Pather Panchali'', which had long been on his mind, and Renoir encouraged him in the project. In 1950, D.J. Keymer sent Ray to London to work at its headquarters office. During his three months in London, Ray watched 99 films. Among these was the neorealist film ''Ladri di biciclette'' (''Bicycle Thief'') (1948) by Vittorio De Sica, which had a profound impact on him. Ray later said that he came out of the theater determined to become a filmmaker.

Marriage and family

Earlier in 1949, Ray married Bijoya Das, his first cousin and longtime sweetheart. The couple had a son, Sandip, who is now a film director.

The Apu Years (1950–1959)

Ray decided to use ''Pather Panchali'' (1928), the classic bildungsroman of Bengali literature, as the basis for his first film. The semi-autobiographical novel describes the maturation of Apu, a small boy in a Bengal village.

Ray gathered an inexperienced crew, although both his cameraman Subrata Mitra and art director Bansi Chandragupta went on to achieve great acclaim. The cast consisted of mostly amateur actors. He started shooting in late 1952 with his personal savings and hoped to raise more money once he had some passages shot, but did not succeed on his terms. As a result, Ray shot ''Pather Panchali'' over three years, an unusually long period, based on when he or his production manager Anil Chowdhury could raise additional funds. He refused funding from sources who wanted a change in script or supervision over production. He also ignored advice from the government to incorporate a happy ending, but he did receive funding that allowed him to complete the film.

Ray showed an early film passage to the notable Anglo-Irish director John Huston, who was in India scouting locations for ''The Man Who Would Be King''. The passage was of the vision which Apu and his sister have of the train running through the countryside, the only sequence which Ray had yet filmed due to his small budget. Huston notified Monroe Wheeler at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) that a major talent was on the horizon.

With a loan from the West Bengal government, Ray finally completed the film. It was released in 1955 to great critical and popular success. It earned numerous prizes and had long runs in both India and abroad.

In India, the reaction to the film was enthusiastic; ''The Times of India'' wrote that "It is absurd to compare it with any other Indian cinema [...] ''Pather Panchali'' is pure cinema." In the United Kingdom, Lindsay Anderson wrote a glowing review of the film. But, the reaction was not uniformly positive. After watching the movie, François Truffaut is reported to have said, "I don’t want to see a movie of peasants eating with their hands." Bosley Crowther, then the most influential critic of ''The New York Times'', wrote a scathing review of the film. Its American distributor Ed Harrison was worried Crowther's review would dissuade audiences, but the film had an exceptionally long run when released in the United States.

Ray's international career started in earnest after the success of his next film, ''Aparajito'' (''The Unvanquished''). This film shows the eternal struggle between the ambitions of a young man, Apu, and the mother who loves him. Critics such as Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak rank it higher than Ray's first film. ''Aparajito'' won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, bringing Ray considerable acclaim.

Before completing ''The Apu Trilogy'', Ray directed and released two other films: the comic ''Parash Pathar'' (''The Philosopher's Stone''), and ''Jalsaghar'' (''The Music Room''), a film about the decadence of the Zamindars, considered one of his most important works.

When making ''Aparajito'', Ray had not planned a trilogy, but after he was asked about the idea in Venice, it appealed to him. He finished the last of the trilogy, ''Apur Sansar'' (''The World of Apu'') in 1959. The critics Robin Wood and Aparna Sen found this to be the supreme achievement of the trilogy.

Ray introduced two of his favourite actors, Soumitra Chatterjee and Sharmila Tagore, in this film. It opens with Apu living in a Kolkata house in near-poverty. He becomes involved in an unusual marriage with Aparna. The scenes of their life together form "one of the cinema's classic affirmative depictions of married life." They suffer tragedy. After ''Apur Sansar'' was harshly criticised by a Bengali critic, Ray wrote an article defending it. He rarely responded to critics during his filmmaking career, but also later defended his film ''Charulata'', his personal favourite.

Ray's film successes had little influence on his personal life in the years to come. He continued to live with his wife and children in a rented house, with his mother, uncle and other members of his extended family.

From ''Devi'' to ''Charulata'' (1959–1964)

During this period, Ray composed films on the British Raj period (such as ''Devi''), a documentary on Tagore, a comic film (''Mahapurush'') and his first film from an original screenplay (''Kanchenjungha''). He also made a series of films that, taken together, are considered by critics among the most deeply felt portrayals of Indian women on screen.

Ray followed ''Apur Sansar'' with ''Devi'' (''The Goddess''), a film in which he examined the superstitions in the Hindu society. Sharmila Tagore starred as Doyamoyee, a young wife who is deified by her father-in-law. Ray was worried that the censor board might block his film, or at least make him re-cut it, but ''Devi'' was spared. In 1961, on the insistence of Prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ray was commissioned to make a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore, on the occasion of the poet's birth centennial, a tribute to the person who likely most influenced Ray. Due to limited footage of Tagore, Ray faced the challenge of making a film out of mainly static material. He said that it took as much work as three feature films.

In the same year, together with Subhas Mukhopadhyay and others, Ray was able to revive ''Sandesh'', the children's magazine which his grandfather once published. Ray had been saving money for some years to make this possible. A duality in the name (''Sandesh'' means both "news" in Bengali and also a sweet popular dessert) set the tone of the magazine (both educational and entertaining). Ray began to make illustrations for it, as well as to write stories and essays for children. Writing became his major source of income in the years to come.

In 1962, Ray directed ''Kanchenjungha.'' Based on his first original screenplay, it was his first film in colour. The film tells of an upper-class family spending an afternoon in Darjeeling, a picturesque hill town in West Bengal. They try to arrange the engagement of their youngest daughter to a highly paid engineer educated in London. He had first conceived shooting the film in a large mansion, but later decided to film it in the famous hill town. He used the many shades of light and mist to reflect the tension in the drama. Ray noted that while his script allowed shooting to be possible under any lighting conditions, a commercial film contingent present at the same time in Darjeeling failed to shoot a single scene, as they only wanted to do so in sunshine.

In the sixties, Ray visited Japan and took particular pleasure in meeting the filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, for whom he had very high regard. While at home, he would take an occasional break from the hectic city life by going to places such as Darjeeling or Puri to complete a script in isolation.

In 1964 Ray made ''Charulata'' (''The Lonely Wife''); it was the culmination of this period of work, and regarded by many critics as his most accomplished film. Based on "Nastanirh", a short story of Tagore, the film tells of a lonely wife, Charu, in 19th-century Bengal, and her growing feelings for her brother-in-law Amal. Critics have referred to this as Ray's Mozartian masterpiece. He said the film contained the least flaws among his work, and it was his only work which, given a chance, he would make exactly the same way. Madhabi Mukherjee's performance as Charu, and the work of both Subrata Mitra and Bansi Chandragupta in the film, have been highly praised. Other films in this period include ''Mahanagar'' (''The Big City''), ''Teen Kanya'' (''Three Daughters''), ''Abhijan'' (''The Expedition'') and ''Kapurush o Mahapurush'' (''The Coward and the Holy Man'').

New directions (1965–1982)

In the post-''Charulata'' period, Ray took on projects of increasing variety, ranging from fantasy to science fiction to detective films to historical drama. Ray also made considerable formal experimentation during this period. He expressed contemporary issues of Indian life, responding to a perceived lack of these issues in his films. The first major film in this period is ''Nayak'' (''The Hero''), the story of a screen hero traveling in a train and meeting a young, sympathetic female journalist. Starring Uttam Kumar and Sharmila Tagore, in the twenty-four hours of the journey, the film explores the inner conflict of the apparently highly successful matinée idol. In spite of the film's receiving a "Critics prize" at the Berlin Festival, it had a generally muted reception.

In 1967, Ray wrote a script for a film to be called ''The Alien'', based on his short story "Bankubabur Bandhu" ("Banku Babu's Friend") which he wrote in 1962 for ''Sandesh'', the Ray family magazine. Columbia Pictures was the producer for what was a planned U.S.-India co-production, and Peter Sellers and Marlon Brando were cast as the leading actors. Ray found that his script had been copyrighted and the fee appropriated by Mike Wilson. Wilson had initially approached Ray through their mutual friend, Arthur C. Clarke, to represent him in Hollywood. Wilson copyrighted the script credited to ''Mike Wilson & Satyajit Ray'', although he contributed only one word. Ray later said that he never received a penny for the script. After Brando dropped out of the project, the project tried to replace him with James Coburn, but Ray became disillusioned and returned to Kolkata. Columbia expressed interest in reviving the project several times in the 1970s and 1980s, but nothing came of it. When ''E.T.'' was released in 1982, Clarke and Ray saw similarities in the film to his earlier ''Alien'' script. In a 1980 ''Sight & Sound'' feature, Ray had discussed the collapse of his American co-project. His biographer Andrew Robinson provided more details in ''The Inner Eye'' (1989). Ray believed that Spielberg's film would not have been possible without copies of his script of ''The Alien'' having been available in the United States. Spielberg has denied this charge. Besides ''The Alien'', two other unrealized projects which Ray had intended to direct were adaptations of the ancient Indian epic, the ''Mahābhārata'', and E. M. Forster's 1924 novel ''A Passage to India''.

In 1969, Ray released what would be commercially the most successful of his films. Based on a children's story written by his grandfather, ''Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne'' (''The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha''), it is a musical fantasy. Goopy the singer and Bagha the drummer, equipped by three gifts allowed by the King of Ghosts, set out on a fantastic journey. They try to stop an impending war between two neighbouring kingdoms. Among his most expensive enterprises, the film project was difficult to finance. Ray abandoned his desire to shoot it in colour, as he turned down an offer that would have forced him to cast a certain Bollywood actor as the lead.

Ray made a film from a novel by the young poet and writer, Sunil Gangopadhyay. Featuring a musical motif structure acclaimed as more complex than ''Charulata'', ''Aranyer Din Ratri'' (''Days and Nights in the Forest'') traces four urban young men going to the forests for a vacation. They try to leave their daily lives behind. All but one of them become involved in encounters with women, which express their characters. Critics thought the film to be a revealing study of the Indian middle class. Ray cast Bombay-based actress Simi Garewal as a tribal woman. She was pleased that he could envision someone as urban as she in that role.

After ''Aranyer'', Ray addressed contemporary Bengali life. He completed what became known as the ''Calcutta Trilogy'': ''Pratidwandi'' (1970), ''Seemabaddha'' (1971), and ''Jana Aranya'' (1975), three films that were conceived separately but had thematic connections. ''Pratidwandi'' (''The Adversary'') is about an idealist young graduate; if disillusioned at the end of film, he is still uncorrupted. ''Jana Aranya'' (''The Middleman'') showed a young man giving in to the culture of corruption to make a living. ''Seemabaddha'' (''Company Limited'') portrayed an already successful man giving up his morality for further gains. In the first film, ''Pratidwandi'', Ray introduces a new, elliptical narrative style, such as scenes in negative, dream sequences, and abrupt flashbacks. In the 1970s, Ray adapted two of his popular stories as detective films. Though mainly addressed to children and young adults, both ''Sonar Kella'' (''The Golden Fortress'') and ''Joy Baba Felunath'' (''The Elephant God'') found some critical following.

Ray considered making a film on the Bangladesh Liberation War but later abandoned the idea. He said that, as a filmmaker, he was more interested in the travails of the refugees and not the politics. In 1977, Ray completed ''Shatranj Ke Khiladi'' (''The Chess Players''), a Hindi film based on a story by Munshi Premchand. It was set in Lucknow in the state of Oudh, a year before the Indian rebellion of 1857. A commentary on issues related to the colonization of India by the British, this was Ray's first feature film in a language other than Bengali. It is his most expensive and star-studded film, featuring Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Amjad Khan, Shabana Azmi, Victor Bannerjee and Richard Attenborough.

In 1980, Ray made a sequel to ''Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne'', a somewhat political ''Hirak Rajar Deshe'' (''Kingdom of Diamonds''). The kingdom of the evil Diamond King, or ''Hirok Raj,'' is an allusion to India during Indira Gandhi's emergency period. Along with his acclaimed short film ''Pikoo'' (''Pikoo's Diary'') and hour-long Hindi film, ''Sadgati,'' this was the culmination of his work in this period.

The last phase (1983–1992)

In 1983, while working on ''Ghare Baire'' (''Home and the World''), Ray suffered a heart attack; it would severely limit his productivity in the remaining 9 years of his life. ''Ghare Baire'' was completed in 1984 with the help of Ray's son (who operated the camera from then on) because of his health condition. He had wanted to film this Tagore novel on the dangers of fervent nationalism for a long time, and wrote a first draft of a script for it in the 1940s. In spite of rough patches due to Ray's illness, the film did receive some critical acclaim. It had the first kiss fully portrayed in Ray's films. In 1987, he made a documentary on his father, Sukumar Ray.

Ray's last three films, made after his recovery and with medical strictures in place, were shot mostly indoors, and have a distinctive style. They have more dialogue than his earlier films and are often regarded as inferior to his earlier body of work. The first, ''Ganashatru'' (''An Enemy of the People'') is an adaptation of the famous Ibsen play, and considered the weakest of the three. Ray recovered some of his form in his 1990 film ''Shakha Proshakha'' (''Branches of the Tree''). In it, an old man, who has lived a life of honesty, comes to learn of the corruption of three of his sons. The final scene shows the father finding solace only in the companionship of his fourth son, who is uncorrupted but mentally ill. Ray's last film, ''Agantuk'' (''The Stranger''), is lighter in mood but not in theme. When a long-lost uncle arrives to visit his niece in Kolkata, he arouses suspicion as to his motive. This provokes far-ranging questions in the film about civilization.

In 1992, Ray's health deteriorated due to heart complications. He was admitted to a hospital, and would never recover. An honorary Oscar was awarded to him weeks before his death, which he received in a gravely ill condition. He died on 23 April 1992 at the age of seventy-one.

Film craft

Satyajit Ray considered script-writing to be an integral part of direction. Initially he refused to make a film in any language other than Bengali. In his two non-Bengali feature films, he wrote the script in English; translators interpreted it in Hindi or Urdu under Ray's supervision. Ray's eye for detail was matched by that of his art director Bansi Chandragupta. His influence on the early films was so important that Ray would always write scripts in English before creating a Bengali version, so that the non-Bengali Chandragupta would be able to read it. The craft of Subrata Mitra garnered praise for the cinematography of Ray's films. A number of critics thought that his departure from Ray's crew lowered the quality of cinematography in the following films. Though Ray openly praised Mitra, his single-mindedness in taking over operation of the camera after ''Charulata'' caused Mitra to stop working for him after 1966. Mitra developed "bounce lighting", a technique to reflect light from cloth to create a diffused, realistic light even on a set. Ray acknowledged his debts to Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut of the French New Wave for introducing new technical and cinematic innovations.

Ray's regular editor was Dulal Datta, but the director usually dictated the editing while Datta did the actual work. Because of financial reasons and Ray's meticulous planning, his films were mostly cut "on the camera" (apart from ''Pather Panchali''). At the beginning of his career, Ray worked with Indian classical musicians, including Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan and Ali Akbar Khan. He found that their first loyalty was to musical traditions, and not to his film. He had a greater understanding of western classical forms, which he wanted to use for his films set in an urban milieu. Starting with ''Teen Kanya'', Ray began to compose his own scores.

He used actors of diverse backgrounds, from famous film stars to people who had never seen a film (as in ''Aparajito''). Robin Wood and others have lauded him as the best director of children, pointing out memorable performances in the roles of Apu and Durga (''Pather Panchali''), Ratan (''Postmaster'') and Mukul (''Sonar Kella''). Depending on the talent or experience of the actor, Ray varied the intensity of his direction, from virtually nothing with actors such as Utpal Dutt, to using the actor as "a puppet" (Subir Banerjee as young Apu or Sharmila Tagore as Aparna). Actors who had worked for Ray praised his customary trust but said he could also treat incompetence with "total contempt".

Literary works

Ray created two very popular characters in Bengali children's literature—Feluda, a sleuth, and Professor Shonku, a scientist. He was a prominent writer of science fiction. Feluda often has to solve a puzzle to get to the bottom of a case. The Feluda stories are narrated by Topshe, his cousin, something of a Watson to Feluda's Holmes. The science fictions of Shonku are presented as a diary discovered after the scientist had mysteriously disappeared. Ray also wrote a collection of nonsense verse named ''Today Bandha Ghorar Dim,'' which includes a translation of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky". He wrote a collection of humorous stories of Mullah Nasiruddin in Bengali.

His short stories for adults were published as collections of 12 stories, in which the overall title played with the word twelve (for example ''Aker pitthe dui'', or literally "Two on top of one"). Ray's interest in puzzles and puns is reflected in his stories. Ray's short stories give full rein to his interest in the macabre, in suspense and other aspects that he avoided in film, making for an interesting psychological study. Most of his writings have been translated into English, and are finding a new group of readers.

Most of his screenplays have been published in Bengali in the literary journal ''Eksan''. Ray wrote an autobiography about his childhood years, ''Jakhan Choto Chilam'' (1982).

He also wrote essays on film, published as the collections: ''Our Films, Their Films'' (1976), along with ''Bishoy Chalachchitra'' (1976), ''Ekei Bole Shooting'' (1979). During the mid-1990s, Ray's film essays and an anthology of short stories were also published in English in the West. ''Our Films, Their Films'' is an anthology of film criticism by Ray. The book contains articles and personal journal excerpts. The book is presented in two sections: Ray first discusses Indian film, before turning his attention toward Hollywood, specific filmmakers (Charlie Chaplin and Akira Kurosawa), and movements such as Italian neorealism. His book ''Bishoy Chalachchitra'' was published in translation in 2006 as ''Speaking of Films''. It contains a compact description of his philosophy of different aspects of the cinema. Satyajit Ray designed four typefaces for roman script named Ray Roman, Ray Bizarre, Daphnis, and Holiday Script, apart from numerous Bengali ones for the Sandesh magazine. Ray Roman and Ray Bizarre won an international competition in 1971. In certain circles of Kolkata, Ray continued to be known as an eminent graphic designer, well into his film career. Ray illustrated all his books and designed covers for them, as well as creating all publicity material for his films. He also designed covers of several books by other authors.

Critical and popular response

Ray's work has been described as full of humanism and universality, and of a deceptive simplicity with deep underlying complexity. The Japanese director Akira Kurosawa said, "Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon." But his detractors find his films glacially slow, moving like a "majestic snail." Some find his humanism simple-minded, and his work anti-modern; they criticize him for lacking the new modes of expression or experimentation found in works of Ray's contemporaries, such as Jean-Luc Godard. As Stanley Kauffman wrote, some critics believe that Ray "assumes [viewers] can be interested in a film that simply dwells in its characters, rather than one that imposes dramatic patterns on their lives." Ray said he could do nothing about the slow pace. Kurosawa defended him by saying that Ray's films were not slow, "His work can be described as flowing composedly, like a big river".

Critics have often compared Ray to artists in the cinema and other media, such as Anton Chekhov, Renoir, De Sica, Howard Hawks or Mozart. The writer V. S. Naipaul compared a scene in ''Shatranj Ki Khiladi'' (The Music Room) to a Shakespearean play; he wrote, "only three hundred words are spoken but goodness! – terrific things happen." Even critics who did not like the aesthetics of Ray's films generally acknowledged his ability to encompass a whole culture with all its nuances. Ray's obituary in ''The Independent'' included the question, "Who else can compete?"

Political ideologues took issue with Ray's work. In a public debate during the 1960s, Ray and the Marxist filmmaker Mrinal Sen engaged in an argument. Sen criticized him for casting a matinée idol such as Uttam Kumar, whom he considered a compromise. Ray said that Sen only attacked "easy targets", i.e. the Bengali middle-classes. Advocates of socialism said that Ray was not "committed" to the cause of the nation's downtrodden classes; some critics accused him of glorifying poverty in ''Pather Panchali'' and ''Ashani Sanket'' (Distant Thunder) through lyricism and aesthetics. They said he provided no solution to conflicts in the stories, and was unable to overcome his bourgeoisie background. During the naxalite movements in the 1970s, agitators once came close to causing physical harm to his son, Sandip. Early in 1980, Ray was criticized by an Indian M.P. and former actress Nargis Dutt, who accused Ray of "exporting poverty." She wanted him to make films to represent "Modern India."

Legacy

Satyajit Ray is a cultural icon in India and in Bengali communities worldwide. Following his death, the city of Kolkata came to a virtual standstill, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered around his house to pay their last respects. Satyajit Ray's influence has been widespread and deep in Bengali cinema; a number of Bengali directors, including Aparna Sen, Rituparno Ghosh and Gautam Ghose in India, Tareq Masud and Tanvir Mokammel in Bangladesh, and Aneel Ahmad in England, have been influenced by his film craft. Across the spectrum, filmmakers such as Budhdhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen and Adoor Gopalakrishnan have acknowledged his seminal contribution to Indian cinema. Beyond India, filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, James Ivory, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Kazan, François Truffaut, Carlos Saura, Isao Takahata and Danny Boyle have been influenced by his cinematic style, with many others such as Akira Kurosawa praising his work. Gregory Nava's 1995 film ''My Family'' had a final scene that repeated that of ''Apur Sansar''. Ira Sachs's 2005 work ''Forty Shades of Blue'' was a loose remake of ''Charulata.'' Other references to Ray films are found, for example, in recent works such as ''Sacred Evil'', the ''Elements trilogy'' of Deepa Mehta and even in films of Jean-Luc Godard. According to Michael Sragow of ''The Atlantic Monthly'', the "youthful coming-of-age dramas that have flooded art houses since the mid-fifties owe a tremendous debt to the Apu trilogy". The trilogy also introduced the bounce lighting technique. ''Kanchenjungha'' (1962) introduced a narrative structure that resembles later hyperlink cinema. ''Pratidwandi'' (1972) helped pioneer photo-negative flashback and X-ray digression techniques.

The character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in the American animated television series '' The Simpsons'' was named in homage to Ray's popular character from ''The Apu Trilogy''. Together with Madhabi Mukherjee, Ray was the first Indian film figure to be featured on a foreign stamp (Dominica).

Many literary works include references to Ray or his work, including Saul Bellow's ''Herzog'' and J. M. Coetzee's ''Youth''. Salman Rushdie's ''Haroun and the Sea of Stories'' contains fish characters named ''Goopy'' and ''Bagha'', a tribute to Ray's fantasy film. In 1993, UC Santa Cruz established the Satyajit Ray Film and Study collection, and in 1995, the Government of India set up Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute for studies related to film. In 2007, British Broadcasting Corporation declared that two ''Feluda'' stories would be made into radio programs. During the London Film Festival, a regular "Satyajit Ray Award" is given to a first-time feature director whose film best captures "the artistry, compassion and humanity of Ray's vision". Wes Anderson has claimed Ray as an influence on his work; his 2007 film, ''The Darjeeling Limited'', set in India, is dedicated to Ray.

Awards, honours and recognitions

Numerous awards were bestowed on Ray throughout his lifetime, including 32 National Film Awards by the Government of India, in addition to awards at international film festivals. At the Berlin Film Festival, he was one of only three filmmakers to win the Silver Bear for Best Director more than once and holds the record for the most number of Golden Bear nominations, with seven. At the Venice Film Festival, where he had previously won a Golden Lion for ''Aparajito'' (1956), he was awarded the Golden Lion Honorary Award in 1982. That same year, he received an honorary "Hommage à Satyajit Ray" award at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.

Ray is the second film personality after Chaplin to have been awarded honorary doctorates by Oxford University. He was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 1985 and the Legion of Honor by the President of France in 1987. The Government of India awarded him the highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna shortly before his death. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Ray an honorary Oscar in 1992 for Lifetime Achievement. It was one of his favourite actresses, Audrey Hepburn, who represented the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on that day in Calcutta. Ray, unable to attend the ceremony due to his illness, gave his acceptance speech to the Academy via live video feed in his home. In 1992 he was posthumously awarded the ''Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement in Directing'' at the San Francisco International Film Festival; it was accepted on his behalf by actress Sharmila Tagore.

In 1992, the ''Sight & Sound'' Critics' Top Ten Poll ranked Ray at #7 in its list of "Top 10 Directors" of all time, making him the highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll. In 2002, the ''Sight & Sound'' critics' and directors' poll ranked Ray at #22 in its list of all-time greatest directors, thus making him the fourth highest-ranking Asian filmmaker in the poll. In 1996, ''Entertainment Weekly'' magazine ranked Ray at #25 in its "50 Greatest Directors" list. In 2007, ''Total Film'' magazine included Ray in its "100 Greatest Film Directors Ever" list.

See also

Bengali cinema

* Cinema of West Bengal

Cinema of India

* Parallel Cinema

Notes

References

. . . .

Ishaghpour, Y (2002). ''Satyajit Ray, l'Orient et l'Occident'', Editions de la Différence, collection : Les essais, France. ISBN 2729114017

. . . . . . . . . . . .

External links

Satyajit Ray, Ray's Films and Ray-Movie

Experiencing Ray's "The Apu Trilogy"

Satyajit Ray Foundation

SatyajitRay.org

Biography at Calcuttaweb.com

BBC-h2g2 Entry: Satyajit Ray's Goopy-Bagha Trilogy

"Remembering Ray, frame by frame"

Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection

article by Andrew Robinson

Category:1921 births Category:1992 deaths Category:Academy Award winners Category:Akira Kurosawa Award winners Category:Alumni of Presidency University, Kolkata Category:Bengali film directors Category:Bengali writers Category:Bengali-language writers Category:Recipients of the Bharat Ratna Category:Brahmos Category:Filmfare Awards winners Category:Indian children's writers Category:Indian film directors Category:Kolkata culture Category:National Film Award winners Category:Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipients Category:Légion d'honneur recipients Category:People associated with Santiniketan Category:People from Kolkata Category:Recipients of the Ananda Purashkar Category:Recipients of the Padma Bhushan Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri Category:Recipients of the Padma Vibhushan Category:Recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award Category:Recipients of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship Category:Silver Bear for Best Director recipients Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:Visva-Bharati University alumni Category:Writers who illustrated their own writing Category:Ramon Magsaysay Award winners Category:Indian science fiction writers Category:Indian screenwriters Category:Indian composers Category:Indian film producers Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:Indian Hindus Category:Indian film score composers

ar:ساتياجيت راي an:Satyajit Ray bn:সত্যজিৎ রায় be:Сацьяджыт Рэй be-x-old:Сат’яджыт Рай bs:Satyajit Ray br:Satyajit Ray bg:Сатяджит Рей ca:Satyajit Ray cy:Satyajit Ray da:Satyajit Ray de:Satyajit Ray et:Satyajit Ray es:Satyajit Ray eo:Satyajit Ray fa:ساتیاجیت رای hif:Satyajit Ray fr:Satyajit Ray gl:Satyajit Ray gu:સત્યજીત રે ko:사티야지트 레이 hi:सत्यजित राय hr:Satyajit Ray id:Satyajit Ray is:Satyajit Ray it:Satyajit Ray he:סטיאג'יט ריי kn:ಸತ್ಯಜಿತ್ ರೇ la:Satyajit Ray lv:Satjadžits Rejs lt:Satjadžitas Rėjus ml:സത്യജിത് റേ mr:सत्यजित रे arz:ساتياجيت راى nl:Satyajit Ray ne:सत्यजित राय ja:サタジット・レイ no:Satyajit Ray nn:Satyajit Ray oc:Satyajit Ray pnb:ستیہ جیت راۓ pl:Satyajit Ray pt:Satyajit Ray rue:Сатьяджит Рей ru:Рай, Сатьяджит sa:सत्यजित राय simple:Satyajit Ray sl:Satjadžit Raj sr:Сатјађит Рај sh:Satyajit Ray fi:Satyajit Ray sv:Satyajit Ray ta:சத்யஜித் ராய் roa-tara:Satyajit Ray te:సత్యజిత్ రే th:สัตยาจิต เรย์ tr:Satyajit Ray uk:Сатьяджит Рай ur:ستیہ جیت رائے vi:Satyajit Ray war:Satyajit Ray zh:萨蒂亚吉特·雷伊

Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
name	Rabindranath Tagoreরবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর
birth date	May 07, 1861
birth place	Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
death date	August 07, 1941
death place	Calcutta, Bengal Province, British India
occupation	Poet, playwright, philosopher, composer, artist
period	Bengal Renaissance
influenced	D.R. Bendre, Vijay Ghate, André Gide, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Yasunari Kawabata, Kuvempu, Henry Miller, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz
signature	Rabindranath Tagore Signature.svg|altClose-up on a Bengali word handwritten with angular, jaunty letters.
awards	}}

Rabindranath Tagore () (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped Bengali literature and music. Author of ''Gitanjali'' and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he was the first non-European Nobel laureate. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; his seemingly mesmeric persona, floccose locks, and empyreal garb lended him a prophet-like aura in the West. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.

A Pirali Brahmin from Kolkata, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At age sixteen, he cheekily released his first substantial poems under the pseudonym ''Bhanushingho'' (Bhānusiṃha: "Sun Lion"), which were duly seized upon by the region's obligatory literary grandees as long-lost classics. Tagore graduated to his first short stories and dramas—and the aegis of his birth name—by 1877. He came to denounce the British Raj and he supported Indian independence; his efforts endure in his vast canon, comprising paintings, sketches, doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs, and in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.

Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms. His novels, stories, songs, dance-dramas, and essays spoke to political and personal topics. ''Gitanjali'' (''Song Offerings''), ''Gora'' (''Fair-Faced''), and ''Ghare-Baire'' (''The Home and the World'') are his best-known works, and his verse, short stories, and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism, and contemplation. Tagore penned two national anthems: India's ''Jana Gana Mana'' and Bangladesh's ''Amar Shonar Bangla''.

Early life (1861–1901)

mod 1}} |0 = |1 = |2 = }}

The youngest of thirteen surviving children, Tagore was born in the Jorasanko mansion in Kolkata of parents Debendranath Tagore (1817–1905) and Sarada Devi (1830–1875). Tagore family patriarchs were of gentle provenance and were the Brahmo founding fathers of the Adi Dharm faith. The fabulously loyalist "Prince" Dwarkanath Tagore, with his European estate managers and his serial visits with Queen Victoria and other occidental royals, was his grandfather. "Rabi" was raised mostly by servants, as his mother had died in his early childhood; his father travelled widely. Tagore largely begged off classroom schooling and preferred to roam the manor or nearby idylls: Bolpur, Panihati. His ''upanayan'' initiation at age eleven augured a pivotal trip; Tagore forthwith left Calcutta on 14 February 1873 with his father for a months-long tour of outer India. They visited his father's Santiniketan estate and stopped in Amritsar en route to the Himalayan Dhauladhars, their destination the remote hill station at Dalhousie.

Amid crystalline peaks and a vivid chill Tagore read biographies in the rented lodge; his stridently learned father tutored him in history, astronomy, other modern sciences, and Sanskrit; they examined the poetry of together. Through the months a frigid regime of twilight baths in icy water attended the sessions. He survived to return to Jorosanko and commence a writing spree; he completed a set of major works by 1877, one a long poem in the Maithili style of Vidyapati. Published pseudonymously, experts accepted them as the lost works of Bhānusiṃha, a newly discovered 17th-century poet. He debuted the short-story genre in Bengali with "Bhikharini" ("The Beggar Woman"), and his ''Sandhya Sangit'' (1882) includes the famous poem "Nirjharer Swapnabhanga" ("The Rousing of the Waterfall").

Tagore fancied himself a prospective barrister, and so in 1878 he took up studies anew, this time at a public school in Brighton, East Sussex, England. He stayed for some months at a house that the Tagore family owned near Brighton and Hove, in Medina Villas; in 1877, his nephew and niece—Suren and Indira, the children of Tagore's brother Satyendranath—were sent together with their mother, Tagore's sister-in-law, to live with him. He did read law at University College London, but again left school to undertake freelance study of Shakespeare and other greats: ''Religio Medici'', ''Coriolanus'', and ''Antony and Cleopatra''. In 1880 he returned to Bengal degree-less. In life and art Tagore resolved to hence reconcile English strictures and his Hindu background; he'd take the best from each. In 1883 he married Mrinalini Devi, born Bhabatarini, 1873–1902; they had five children, two of whom died in childhood.

In 1890 Tagore began managing his family's vast estates in Shilaidaha, a region now in Bangladesh; he was joined by his wife and children in 1898. Tagore released his ''Manasi'' (1890) poems, among his best-known work. As ''Zamindar Babu'', Tagore criss-crossed the riverine holdings in command of the ''Padma'', the luxurious family barge. He was a friendly feudalist who collected mostly token rents; he would bless villagers and in turn suffered their impromptu honorary feasts. This period from 1891 to 1895, Tagore's ''Sadhana'' period, after one of Tagore's magazines, was his most fecund. In it, he wrote more than half the stories of the three-volume, 84-story ''Galpaguchchha''. Ironic and grave, they savoured the lazuline lacunae, the verdant verges of Bengali rural life.

Santiniketan (1901–1932)

mod 2}} |0 = |1 = }}

In 1901, Tagore moved to Santiniketan to found an ''ashram'' with a marble-floored prayer hall—"The ''Mandir''"—an experimental school, groves of trees, gardens, a library. There, his wife and two of his children died. His father died in 1905. He received monthly payments as part of his inheritance and income from the Maharaja of Tripura, sales of his family's jewellery, his seaside bungalow in Puri, and a derisory 2,000 in book royalties. He was gaining Bengali and foreign readers alike; he published ''Naivedya'' (1901) and ''Kheya'' (1906) and translated poems into free verse. In November 1913, Tagore learned he'd won the year's Nobel Prize in Literature: the Swedish Academy appreciated the idealistic—and for Westerners—accessible nature of a small body of his translated material focussed on the 1912 ''Gitanjali: Song Offerings''. In 1915, the British Crown granted Tagore a knighthood. He renounced it after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

In 1921, Tagore and agricultural economist Leonard Elmhirst set up the "Institute for Rural Reconstruction", later renamed Shriniketan or "Abode of Welfare", in Surul, a village near the ashram. With it, Tagore afforded short shrift to Gandhi's scroggy ''Swaraj'' protests, which he despised as wretched recompense for India's mental—and thus ultimely colonial—dénouement. He sought aid from donors, officials, and scholars worldwide to "free village[s] from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance" by "vitalis[ing] knowledge". In the early 1930s, he targeted India's "abnormal caste consciousness" and untouchability. He lectured against these, he penned Dalit heroes for his poems and his dramas, and he campaigned—successfully—to open Guruvayoor Temple to Dalits.

Twilight years (1932–1941)

mod 2}} |0 = |1 = }}

Tagore's international travels affirmed his opinion that human divisions were shallow. During a May 1932 visit to a Bedouin encampment in the Iraqi desert, the tribal chief told him that "Our prophet has said that a true Muslim is he by whose words and deeds not the least of his brother-men may ever come to any harm ..." Tagore confided in his diary: "I was startled into recognizing in his words the voice of essential humanity." To the end Tagore scrutinized orthodoxy—and in 1934, he struck. That year, an earthquake hit Bihar and killed thousands. Gandhi hailed it as seismic ''karma'', as divine retribution avenging the oppression of Dalits. Tagore immediately blasted him for his seemingly unseemly, cullionly cant and his ignominious inferences. He mourned the perennial poverty of Calcutta and the rising tide of militant mediocrity—social, cultural, architectural—in Bengal, as detailed in an unrhymed hundred-line poem whose technique of searing double-vision foreshadowed Satyajit Ray's film ''Apur Sansar''. Fifteen new volumes appeared, among them prose-poem works ''Punashcha'' (1932), ''Shes Saptak'' (1935), and ''Patraput'' (1936). Experimentation continued in his prose-songs and dance-dramas: ''Chitrangada'' (1914), ''Shyama'' (1939), and ''Chandalika'' (1938); and in his novels: ''Dui Bon'' (1933), ''Malancha'' (1934), and ''Char Adhyay'' (1934).

Tagore studied science in his last years, writing ''Visva-Parichay''—a collection of essays—in 1937. His respect for scientific laws and his exploration of biology, physics, and astronomy impacted his poetry, which exhibited extensive naturalism. He wove the ''process'' of science, the narratives of scientists, into stories in ''Se'' (1937), ''Tin Sangi'' (1940), and ''Galpasalpa'' (1941). His last five years were marked by chronic pain and two long periods of illness. These began when Tagore lost consciousness in late 1937; he remained comatose and near death for a time. This was followed in late 1940 by a similar spell. He never recovered. Poetry from these years is among his finest, a vestigial valour hieing towards death. A period of prolonged agony ended with Tagore's death on 7 August 1941, aged eighty; he was in an upstairs room of the Jorasanko mansion he was raised in. The date is still mourned. A. K. Sen, brother of the first chief election commissioner, received dictation from Tagore: his last poem. He was the last to see Tagore alive.

Travels

mod 2}} |0 = |1 = }}-->

Between 1878 and 1932, Tagore set foot in more than thirty countries on five continents; these trips acquainted non-Indians with his works and polemics. In 1912, he took a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they impressed missionary and Gandhi protégé Charles F. Andrews, Irish poet William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others. Yeats wrote the preface to the English translation of ''Gitanjali''; Andrews joined Tagore at Santiniketan. In November 1912, Tagore began touring the United States and the United Kingdom, staying in Butterton, Staffordshire with Andrews's clergymen friends. From May 1916 until April 1917, he lectured in Japan and the United States and denounced nationalism. His essay "Nationalism in India" was scorned and praised, this latter by pacifists like Romain Rolland.

|quoted=1 |width=20% |align=left}}

Shortly after returning to India, the 63-year-old Tagore accepted an invitation from the Peruvian government. He travelled to Mexico. Each government pledged 100,000 to his school to commemorate the visits. A week after his 6 November 1924 arrival in Buenos Aires, an ill Tagore shifted to the Villa Miralrío at the behest of Victoria Ocampo. He left for India in January 1925. On 30 May 1926, Tagore reached Naples, Italy; the next day he met Mussolini in Rome. Their warm rapport waned when Tagore questioned ''Il Duce'''s fascist finesse. He had earlier enthused: "[w]ithout any doubt he is a great personality. There is such a massive vigour in that head that it reminds one of Michael Angelo’s chisel." A "fire-bath" of fascism was to have educed "the immortal soul of Italy ... clothed in quenchless light".

On 14 July 1927, Tagore and two companions began a four-month tour of Southeast Asia, visiting Bali, Java, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, Penang, Siam, and Singapore. Tagore's travelogues from the tour were collected into the work "Jatri". In early 1930 he left Bengal for nearly a year-long tour of Europe and the United States. Upon returning to Britain—while his paintings were being exhibited in Paris and London—he stayed at a Quaker settlement in Birmingham. There he wrote his Oxford Hibbert Lectures and spoke at London's annual Quaker gathering. There (addressing relations between the British and Indians, a topic he would grapple with over the next two years), Tagore spoke of a "dark chasm of aloofness". He visited Aga Khan III, stayed at Dartington Hall, toured Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany from June to mid-September 1930, then went on into the Soviet Union. In April 1932, Tagore—who was acquainted with the legends and works of the Persian mystic Hafez—was hosted by Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran. The well-heeled Tagore chatted with certain people: Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Romain Rolland. Tagore's final foreign sojourns were in Persia and Iraq (in 1932) and Sri Lanka (in 1933): these only sharpened his views on the fissiparous freedoms afforded by communalism and nationalism.

Works

Known mostly for his poetry, Tagore wrote novels, essays, short stories, travelogues, dramas, and thousands of songs. Of Tagore's prose, his short stories are perhaps most highly regarded; he is indeed credited with originating the Bengali-language version of the genre. His works are frequently noted for their rhythmic, optimistic, and lyrical nature. Such stories mostly borrow from deceptively simple subject matter: commoners. Tagore's non-fiction grappled Indian history, linguistics, and spirituality. He wrote autobiographies. His travelogues, essays, and lectures were compiled into several volumes, including ''Europe Jatrir Patro'' (''Letters from Europe'') and ''Manusher Dhormo'' (''The Religion of Man''). His brief chat with Einstein, "Note on the Nature of Reality", is included as an appendix to the latter. On the occasion of Tagore's 150th birthday an anthology (titled ''Kalanukromik Rabindra Rachanabali'') of the total body of his works is currently being published in Bengali in chronological order. This includes all versions of each work and fills about eighty volumes.

Novels

Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among them ''Chaturanga'', ''Shesher Kobita'', ''Char Odhay'', and ''Noukadubi''. ''Ghare Baire'' (''The Home and the World'')—through the lens of the idealistic ''zamindar'' protagonist Nikhil—excoriates rising Indian nationalism, terrorism, and religious zeal in the ''Swadeshi'' movement; a frank expression of Tagore's conflicted sentiments, it emerged out of a 1914 bout of depression. The novel ends in Hindu-Muslim violence and Nikhil's—likely mortal—wounding. ''Gora'' raises controversial questions regarding the Indian identity. As with ''Ghare Baire'', matters of self-identity (''''), personal freedom, and religion are developed in the context of a family story and love triangle.

In ''Jogajog'' (''Relationships''), the heroine Kumudini—bound by the ideals of ''Śiva-Sati'', exemplified by —is torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and compassionate elder brother and his foil: her exploitative, rakish, and fatuously patriarchal husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist leanings; ''pathos'' depicts the plight and ultimate demise of Bengali women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour; he simultaneously trucks with the fall of Bengal's landed oligarchy. The story revolves around the underlying rivalry between two families—the Chatterjees, aristocrats now on the decline (Biprodas) and the Ghosals (Madhusudan), representing new money and new arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas' sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to Madhusudan. She was brought up in a sheltered home where she had followed the traditional way of life and observed all the religious rituals like all the other womenfolk in the family.

Others were uplifting: ''Shesher Kobita''—translated twice as ''Last Poem'' and ''Farewell Song''—is his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by the main character, a poet. It contains elements of satire and postmodernism; stock characters gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by the name of ''Rabindranath Tagore''. Though his novels remain among the least-appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Satyajit Ray and others: ''Chokher Bali'' and ''Ghare Baire'' are exemplary. In the first, Tagore elaborately inscribes coeval Bengali society via its heroine: a rebellious widow who would live for herself alone. He exposes the custom of perpetual mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to seclusion and loneliness. It is of choleric melancholy, a stirring tale of deceit and sorrow arising from dissatisfaction and sorrow. Tagore wrote of it: "I have always regretted the ending".

The latter work illustrates the battle Tagore had with himself, between the ideas ''of'' Western culture and revolution ''against'' Western culture. These moieties are portrayed in two of the main characters: Nikhil, who is rational and opposes violence; and Sandip, who in pursuit of his goals will not be stopped. These rivals are key in understanding the history of his region and its contemporary problems. There is much controversy over whether Tagore was representing Gandhi in Sandip. But many argue that Tagore would not even venture to personify Sandip as Gandhi because Tagore could—grudgingly—offer a sort of derogatory devotion to Gandhi's antiquarian ardor, and Gandhi was anti-violence while Sandip would employ violence ''in any respect'' to keep body and soul.

Music and art

mod 1}} |0 = |1 = }}

Tagore composed 2,230 songs and was a prolific painter. His songs compose ''rabindrasangit'' ("Tagore Song"), which is one with his literature, most of which—poems or parts of novels, stories, or plays alike—were lyricised. Influenced by the ''thumri'' style of Hindustani music, they ran the entire gamut of human emotion, ranging from his early dirge-like Brahmo devotional hymns to quasi-erotic compositions. They emulated the tonal color of classical ''ragas'' to varying extents. Some songs mimicked a given raga's melody and rhythm faithfully; others newly blended elements of different ragas.

Tagore influenced ''sitar'' maestro Vilayat Khan and ''sarodiyas'' Buddhadev Dasgupta and Amjad Ali Khan. His songs are immensely popular and undergird the Bengali ethos to an extent perhaps rivaling Shakespeare's impact on the English-speaking world. It is said that his songs are the outcome of five centuries of Bengali literary churning and communal yearning. Dhan Gopal Mukerji has said that these songs transcend the mundane to the aesthetic and express all ranges and categories of human emotion. The poet gave voice to all—big or small, rich or poor. The poor Ganges boatman and the rich landlord air their emotions in them. They birthed a distinctive school of music whose practitioners can be fiercely traditional: novel interpretations have drawn severe censure in both West Bengal and Bangladesh.

For Bengalis, the songs' appeal, stemming from the combination of emotive strength and beauty described as surpassing even Tagore's poetry, was such that the ''Modern Review'' observed that "[t]here is in Bengal no cultured home where Rabindranath's songs are not sung or at least attempted to be sung ... Even illiterate villagers sing his songs". Arthur Strangways of ''The Observer'' introduced non-Bengalis to ''rabindrasangit'' in ''The Music of Hindostan'', calling it a "vehicle of a personality ... [that] go behind this or that system of music to that beauty of sound which all systems put out their hands to seize."

In 1971, ''Amar Shonar Bangla'' became the national anthem of Bangladesh. It was written—ironically—to protest the 1905 Partition of Bengal along communal lines: lopping Muslim-majority East Bengal from Hindu-dominated West Bengal was to avert the region's pyrolatrous demise. Tagore saw the partition as a ploy to upend the independence movement, and he aimed to rekindle Bengali unity and tar communalism. ''Jana Gana Mana'' was written in ''shadhu-bhasha'', a Sanskritised register of Bengali, and is the first of five stanzas of a Brahmo hymn that Tagore composed. It was first sung in 1911 at a Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress and was adopted by the Constituent Assembly as the Indian national anthem in 1950.

At sixty, Tagore took up drawing and painting; successful exhibitions of his many works—which made a debut appearance in Paris upon encouragement by artists he met in the south of France—were held throughout Europe. He was likely red-green color blind. The result: his hale paintings betrayed fey colour schemes and off-beat aesthetics. Tagore limned craftwork from northern New Ireland, Haida carvings from British Columbia, and woodcuts by Max Pechstein. His artist's eye for his handwriting were revealed in the simple artistic and rhythmic leitmotifs embellishing the scribbles, cross-outs, and word layouts of his manuscripts.

Theatre

At sixteen, Tagore led his brother Jyotirindranath's adaptation of Molière's ''Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme''. At twenty, he wrote his first drama-opera ''Valmiki Pratibha'' (''The Genius of Valmiki''), which describes how the pandit Valmiki reforms his ethos, is blessed by Saraswati, and composes the ''Rāmāyana''. Through it, Tagore vigorously explores a wide range of dramatic styles and emotions, including usage of revamped ''kirtans'' and adaptation of traditional English and Irish folk melodies as drinking songs. Another play, ''Dak Ghar'' (''The Post Office''), describes how a child striving to escape his stuffy confines, ultimately "fall[s] asleep" (which suggests his physical death). A story with worldwide appeal—it received rave reviews in Europe—''Dak Ghar'' dealt with death as, in Tagore's words, "spiritual freedom" from "the world of hoarded wealth and certified creeds". In the Nazi-era Warsaw Ghetto, Polish doctor-educator Janusz Korczak had orphans in his care stage "The Post Office" in July 1942. In ''The King of Children'', biographer Betty Jean Lifton suspected that Korczak, agonising over whether one should determine when and how to die, was easing the children into accepting death. Three weeks later, the Nazis sent them to Treblinka.

His other works emphasizing fusion of lyrical flow and emotional rhythm tightly focused on a core idea, were unlike previous Bengali dramas. His works sought to articulate, in Tagore's words, "the play of feeling and not of action". In 1890 he wrote ''Visarjan'' (''Sacrifice''), regarded as his finest drama. The Bengali originals included intricate subplots and prolonged monologues. His latter dramas probed more philosophical and allegorical themes; these included ''Dak Ghar''. Another is Tagore's ''Chandalika'' (''Untouchable Girl''), which was modeled on an ancient Buddhist legend describing how Ananda—the Gautama Buddha's disciple—asks water of an ''Adivasi'' (belonging to an indigenous tribe) girl. Lastly, among his most famous dramas is ''Raktakaravi'' (''Red Oleanders''), which tells of a kleptocratic king who enriches himself by forcing his subjects to mine. The heroine, Nandini, eventually rallies her common people to destroy these symbols of subjugation. Tagore's other plays include ''Chitrangada'', ''Raja'', and ''Mayar Khela''. Dance-drama adaptations of Tagore's plays are known as ''rabindra nritya natyas''.

Stories

mod 2}} |0 = |1 = }}

The "Sadhana" period, 1891–1895, was among Tagore's most fecund, yielding more than half the stories contained in the three-volume ''Galpaguchchha'', itself a group of eighty-four stories. They reflect upon Tagore's surroundings, on modern and fashionable ideas, on mind puzzles. Tagore associated his earliest stories, such as those of the "''Sadhana''" period, with an exuberance of vitality and spontaneity; these traits were cultivated by ''zamindar'' Tagore’s life in villages such as Patisar, Shajadpur, and Shilaida. Seeing the common and the poor, he examined their lives with a depth and feeling singular in Indian literature up to that point.

In "The Fruitseller from Kabul", Tagore speaks in first person as a town dweller and novelist imputing exotic origins to an Afghan seller. He channels the lucubrative lust of those mired in the blasé, nidorous morass of Indian city life: for distant vistas. "There were autumn mornings, the time of year when kings of old went forth to conquest; and I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it ... I would fall to weaving a network of dreams: the mountains, the glens, the forest .... ". Other ''Galpaguchchha'' stories were written in Tagore’s ''Sabuj Patra'' period of 1914–1917; it too named for one of his magazines.

Tagore's ''Golpoguchchho'' (''Bunch of Stories'') ranks among the most popular pieces of Bengali fiction, and it provides much fodder for film and theatre. The Satyajit Ray film ''Charulata'' echoed Tagore's controversial novella ''Nastanirh'' (''The Broken Nest''). In ''Atithi''—again, made into a film—the young Brahmin boy Tarapada shares a boat ride with a village ''zamindar''. The boy reveals his flight from home and his subsequent wanderings. Taking pity, the elder adopts him; he fixes the boy to marry his own daughter. The night before the wedding, Tarapada runs off—again. ''Strir Patra'' (''The Letter from the Wife'') is among Bengali literature's earliest depictions of female emancipation. Mrinal is wife to a Bengali middle class man: prissy, preening, patriarchal. Travelling alone, she writes a letter, comprising the story. She details the pettiness of her life with him; she refuses to return to her husband, chanting ''Amio bachbo. Ei bachlum'': "And I shall live. Here, I live".

''Haimanti'' assails Hindu arranged marriage and the dismal domesticity of Bengali wives, hypocrisies plaguing the Indian middle classes, and how Haimanti, a young woman, due to her sensitivity and free spirit, sacrifices her life. In the last passage Tagore blasts the reification of Sita's self-immolation attempt; she had meant to appease her consort Rama's doubts of her chastity. ''Musalmani Didi'' eyes recrudescent Hindu-Muslim tensions and, in many ways, embodies the essence of Tagore's humanism. ''Darpaharan'' exhibits Tagore's self-consciousness, describing a fey young man harboring literary ambitions. Though he loves his wife, he wishes to stifle her literary career, deeming it unfeminine. In youth, Tagore likely agreed with him. ''Darpaharan'' depicts the final humbling of the man as he ultimately ''acknowledges'' his wife's talents. As do many other Tagore stories, ''Jibito o Mrito'' equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram: ''Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai''—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't."

Poetry

Tagore's poetic style ranges from classical formalism to the comic, visionary, and ecstatic, yet proceeds from a lineage established by 15th- and 16th-century Vaishnava poets. His ken was the ancestral mysticism of the ''rishi''-authors of the Upanishads ''à la'' Vyasa, the Bhakti-Sufi mystic Kabir, and Ramprasad Sen. Tagore's poetry became most innovative and mature after his exposure to rural Bengal's folk music, which included Baul ballads—especially those of the bard Lalon. These—rediscovered and repopularised by Tagore—resemble 19th-century hymns that emphasize inward divinity and rebellion against religious and social orthodoxy. During his Shilaidaha years, his poems took on a lyrical quality, speaking via the ''maner manus'' (the Bāuls' "man within the heart") or meditating upon the ''jivan devata'' ("living God within"). This figure thus sought connection with divinity through appeal to nature and the emotional interplay of human drama. Such tools saw use in his poems—chronicling the Radha-Krishna romance—which were repeatedly revised over seventy years.

Tagore responded to the somewhat bastardised uptake of modernist and realist techniques in Bengali literature by writing matching experimental works in the 1930s. These include ''Africa'' and ''Camalia'', among the better known of his latter poems. He occasionally wrote poems using ''Shadhu Bhasha'', a Sanskritised dialect of Bengali; he later adopted a more popular dialect known as ''Cholti Bhasha''. Other works include ''Manasi'', ''Sonar Tori'' (''Golden Boat''), ''Balaka'' (''Wild Geese''—the title being a metaphor for migrating souls), and ''Purobi''. ''Sonar Tori'''s most famous poem, dealing with the fleeting vitality of life and achievement, goes by the same name; hauntingly it ends: "শূন্য নদীর তীরে রহিনু পড়ি / যাহা ছিল লয়ে গেল সোনার তরী" ("''Shunno nodir tire rohinu poŗi / Jaha chhilo loe gêlo shonar tori''"—"all I had achieved was carried off on the golden boat—only I was left behind."). Internationally, ''Gitanjali'' () is Tagore's best-known collection, winning him his Nobel. Song VII ( 127) of ''Gitanjali'':

{| |- | :আমার এ গান ছেড়েছে তার সকল অলংকার, :তোমার কাছে রাখে নি আর সাজের অহংকার। :অলংকার যে মাঝে পড়ে মিলনেতে আড়াল করে, :তোমার কথা ঢাকে যে তার মুখর ঝংকার। :তোমার কাছে খাটে না মোর কবির গর্ব করা, :মহাকবি তোমার পায়ে দিতে যে চাই ধরা। :জীবন লয়ে যতন করি যদি সরল বাঁশি গড়ি, :আপন সুরে দিবে ভরি সকল ছিদ্র তার। || :''Amar e gan chheŗechhe tar shôkol ôlongkar'' :''Tomar kachhe rakhe ni ar shajer ôhongkar'' :''Ôlongkar je majhe pôŗe milônete aŗal kôre,'' :''Tomar kôtha đhake je tar mukhôro jhôngkar.'' :''Tomar kachhe khaţe na mor kobir gôrbo kôra,'' :''Môhakobi, tomar paee dite chai je dhôra.'' :''Jibon loe jôton kori jodi shôrol bãshi goŗi,'' :''Apon shure dibe bhori sôkol chhidro tar.'' |}

Free-verse translation by Tagore (''Gitanjali'', verse VII): {| |- | :"My song has put off her adornments. She has no pride of dress and decoration. Ornaments would mar our union; they would come between thee and me; their jingling would drown thy whispers." || :"My poet's vanity dies in shame before thy sight. O master poet, I have sat down at thy feet. Only let me make my life simple and straight, like a flute of reed for thee to fill with music." |}

"Klanti" (; "Fatigue"), the sixth poem in ''Gitanjali'':

{| |- | :ক্লান্তি আমার ক্ষমা করো,প্রভু, :পথে যদি পিছিয়ে পড়ি কভু। :এই যে হিয়া থর থর কাঁপে আজি এমনতরো, :এই বেদনা ক্ষমা করো,ক্ষমা করো প্রভু।। :এই দীনতা ক্ষমা করো,প্রভু, :পিছন-পানে তাকাই যদি কভু। :দিনের তাপে রৌদ্রজ্বালায় শুকায় মালা পূজার থালায়, :সেই ম্লানতা ক্ষমা করো, ক্ষমা করো প্রভু।। || :''Klanti amar khôma kôro, probhu'' :''Pôthe jodi pichhie poŗi kobhu'' :''Ei je hia thôro thôro kãpe aji êmontôro,'' :''Ei bedona khôma kôro, khôma kôro probhu.'' :''Ei dinota khôma kôro, probhu,'' :''Pichhon-pane takai jodi kobhu.'' :''Diner tape roudrojalae shukae mala pujar thalae,'' :''Shei mlanota khôma kôro, khôma kôro, probhu.'' |}

Tagore's poetry has been set to music by composers: Arthur Shepherd's triptych for soprano and string quartet, Alexander Zemlinsky's famous Lyric Symphony, Josef Bohuslav Foerster's cycle of love songs, Leoš Janáček's famous chorus "Potulný šílenec" ("The Wandering Madman") for soprano, tenor, baritone, and male chorus—JW 4/43—inspired by Tagore's 1922 lecture in Czechoslovakia which Janáček attended, and Garry Schyman's "Praan", an adaptation of Tagore's poem "Stream of Life" from ''Gitanjali''. The latter was composed and recorded with vocals by Palbasha Siddique to accompany Internet celebrity Matt Harding's 2008 viral video. In 1917 his words were translated adeptly and set to music by Anglo-Dutch composer Richard Hageman to produce what is regarded as one of the finest art songs in the English language: "Do Not Go, My Love". The second movement of Jonathan Harvey's "One Evening" (1994) sets an excerpt beginning "As I was watching the sunrise..." from a letter of Tagore's, this composer having previously chosen a text by the poet for his piece "Song Offerings" (1985).

Politics

mod 1}} |0 = |1 = |2 = }}

Tagore's political thought was tortured. Foremost, he opposed imperialism and supported Indian nationalists. His views have their first poetic release in ''Manast'', mostly composed in his twenties. Evidence produced during the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial and latter accounts affirm his awareness of the Ghadarites, and stated that he sought the support of Japanese Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake and former Premier Ōkuma Shigenobu. Yet he lampooned the Swadeshi movement as brahminising barbermongering; he denounced it in "The Cult of the Charka", an acrid 1925 essay. He exhorted the masses to eschew victimological foppery and hew instead to self-help and mental uplift; he attributed the congenital presence of British grifters to a condign "political symptom of our social disease". He held that even for Indians at a loose end "there can be no question of blind revolution"; he would that they took to a "steady and purposeful education".

|quoted=1 |width=20% |align=left}}

Such views enraged many. He escaped a ghastly assassination—and only narrowly—by Indian expatriates during his stay in a San Francisco hotel in late 1916; the plot failed only because the would-be assassins fell into argument. Yet Tagore wrote songs lionizing the Indian independence movement and renounced his knighthood. Two of Tagore's more politically charged compositions, "Chitto Jetha Bhayshunyo" ("Where the Mind is Without Fear") and "Ekla Chalo Re" ("If They Answer Not to Thy Call, Walk Alone"), gained mass appeal, with the latter favoured by Gandhi. Given to sedulously reviling Gandhi's senescent brand of abstemious militancy, Tagore was yet key in resolving a Gandhi-Ambedkar dispute involving separate electorates for untouchables and thereby mooting at least one of Gandhi's fasts "unto death".

Tagore lauded rote classroom schooling as puerile pedagogy imparting a simian sagacity: in "The Parrot's Training", a bird is caged and force-fed—to death—textbook pages. Tagore, visiting Santa Barbara in 1917, conceived a new type of university: he sought to "make Santiniketan the connecting thread between India and the world [and] a world center for the study of humanity somewhere beyond the limits of nation and geography." The school, which he named Visva-Bharati had its foundation stone laid on 24 December 1918 and was inaugurated precisely three years later. Tagore used a ''brahmacharya'' system: ''gurus'' gave pupils ''personal'' guidance—emotional, intellectual, spiritual. Teaching was often done under trees. He staffed the school, he contributed his Nobel Prize moneys, and his duties as steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy: mornings he taught classes; afternoons and evenings he wrote the students' textbooks. He fundraised widely for the school in Europe and the United States between 1919 and 1921.

Impact

mod 1}} |0 = |1 = |2 = |3 = }}

Tagore's relevance can be gauged by the honours paid him: ''Kabipranam'', Tagore's birth anniversary; the annual Tagore Festival held in Urbana, Illinois; grueling ''Rabindra Path Parikrama'' walking pilgrimages from Calcutta to Shantiniketan; austere recitals of Tagore's poetry held on important anniversaries. Bengali culture is fraught with this legacy: from language and arts to history and politics. Amartya Sen scantly deemed Tagore a "towering figure", a "deeply relevant and many-sided contemporary thinker". Tagore's Bengali source—the 1939 ''''—is canonised as one of his nation's greatest cultural treasures, and he was roped into a reasonably humble role: "the greatest poet India has produced".

Tagore ''was'' famed throughout much of Europe, North America, and East Asia. He co-founded Dartington Hall School, a progressive coeducational institution; in Japan, he influenced such figures as Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Tagore's works were widely translated into English, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other European languages by Czech indologist Vincenc Lesný, French Nobel laureate André Gide, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, former Turkish Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, and others. In the United States, Tagore's lecturing circuits, particularly those of 1916–1917, were widely attended and wildly acclaimed. Some controversies involving Tagore, possibly fictive, trashed his popularity and sales in Japan and North America after the late 1920s, concluding with his "near total eclipse" outside Bengal.

Via translations Tagore influenced Chileans Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral, Mexican writer Octavio Paz, and Spaniards José Ortega y Gasset, Zenobia Camprubí, and Juan Ramón Jiménez. Between 1914 and 1922, the Jiménez-Camprubí spouses translated twenty-two of Tagore's books from English into Spanish and extensively revised and adapted such works as Tagore's ''The Crescent Moon''. In this time, Jiménez developed "naked poetry". Ortega y Gasset wrote that "Tagore's wide appeal [may stem from the fact that] he speaks of longings for perfection that we all have ... Tagore awakens a dormant sense of childish wonder, and he saturates the air with all kinds of enchanting promises for the reader, who ... pays little attention to the deeper import of Oriental mysticism". Tagore's works circulated in free editions around 1920—alongside those of Plato, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, and Tolstoy.

Tagore was deemed overrated by some. Graham Greene doubted that "anyone but Mr. Yeats can still take his poems very seriously." Yet vestigial Latin reverence of Tagore was discovered by an astonished Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.

Corpus

The SNLTR hosts Tagore's complete Bengali works, as does Tagore Web, including annotated songs. English translations are found at Project Gutenberg and Wikisource. More sources are below.

;— Bengali — {| |- ! Poetry |- | * ভানুসিংহ ঠাকুরের পদাবলী || ''Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākurer Paḍāvalī'' || (''Songs of Bhānusiṃha Ṭhākur'') || 1884 |- | * মানসী || ''Manasi'' || (''The Ideal One'') || 1890 |- | * সোনার তরী || ''Sonar Tari'' || (''The Golden Boat'') || 1894 |- | * গীতাঞ্জলি || ''Gitanjali'' || (''Song Offerings'') || 1910 |- | * গীতিমাল্য || ''Gitimalya'' || (''Wreath of Songs'') || 1914 |- | * বলাকা || ''Balaka'' || (''The Flight of Cranes'') || 1916 |- ! Dramas |- | * বাল্মিকী প্রতিভা || ''Valmiki-Pratibha'' || (''The Genius of Valmiki'') || 1881 |- | * বিসর্জন || ''Visarjan'' || (''The Sacrifice'') || 1890 |- | * রাজা || ''Raja'' || (''The King of the Dark Chamber'') || 1910 |- | * ডাকঘর || ''Dak Ghar'' || (''The Post Office'') || 1912 |- | * অচলায়তন || ''Achalayatan'' || (''The Immovable'') || 1912 |- | * মুক্তধারা || ''Muktadhara'' || (''The Waterfall'') || 1922 |- | * রক্তকরবী || ''Raktakaravi'' || (''Red Oleanders'') || 1926 |- ! Fiction |- | * নষ্টনীড় || ''Nastanirh'' || (''The Broken Nest'') || 1901 |- | * গোরা || ''Gora'' || (''Fair-Faced'') || 1910 |- | * ঘরে বাইরে || ''Ghare Baire'' || (''The Home and the World'') || 1916 |- | * যোগাযোগ || ''Yogayog'' || (''Crosscurrents'') || 1929 |- ! Memoirs |- | * জীবনস্মৃতি || ''Jivansmriti'' || (''My Reminiscences'') || 1912 |- | * ছেলেবেলা || ''Chhelebela'' || (''My Boyhood Days'') || 1940 |}

;— English — {| | * ''Thought Relics'' || 1921 |}

;— Translations — {| |- | * ''Chitra'' || 1914 |- | * ''Creative Unity'' || 1922 |- | * ''The Crescent Moon'' || 1913 |- | * ''Fireflies'' || 1928 |- | * ''Fruit-Gathering'' || 1916 |- | * ''The Fugitive'' || 1921 |- | * ''The Gardener'' || 1913 |- | * ''Gitanjali: Song Offerings'' || 1912 |- | * ''Glimpses of Bengal'' || 1991 |- | * ''The Home and the World'' || 1985 |- | * ''The Hungry Stones and other stories'' || 1916 |- | * ''I Won't Let you Go: Selected Poems'' || 1991 |- | * ''The Lover of God'' || 2003 |- | * ''My Boyhood Days'' || 1943 |- | * ''My Reminiscences'' || 1991 |- | * ''Nationalism'' || 1991 |- | * ''The Post Office'' || 1914 |- | * ''Sadhana: The Realisation of Life'' || 1913 |- | * ''Selected Letters'' || 1997 |- | * ''Selected Poems'' || 1994 |- | * ''Selected Short Stories'' || 1991 |- | * ''Songs of Kabir'' || 1915 |- | * ''Stray Birds'' || 1916 |}

Notes

; Hindi: . ''''. }} }} "Visva-Bharati" also translates as "India in the World".}} and Rash Behari Bose, his yen for Soviet Communism, and papers confiscated from Indian nationalists in New York allegedly implicating Tagore in a plot to overthrow the Raj via German funds. These ''destroyed'' Tagore's image—and book sales—in the United States. His relations with and ambivalent opinion of Mussolini revolted many; close friend Romain Rolland despaired that "[h]e is abdicating his role as moral guide of the independent spirits of Europe and India".}}

Citations

References

;Articles

;Books |0 = [[File:Chandalika Barisha Udayan Palli 2010 Arnab Dutta.JPG|thumb|upright| A scene from ''Chandalika'' carved for Tagore’s sesquicentennial birth anniversary, Barisha Udayan Palli, Kolkata.]] |1 = }}

(editor) (2011), ''Rabindranath Tagore—Wanderer zwischen Welten'', Klemm & Oelschläger, ISBN 978-3-86281-018-5 (2004), ''The Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature'', Vintage, ISBN 0-375-71300-X ; (1989), ''The Art of Rabindranath Tagore'', Monthly Review Press, ISBN 0-233-98359-7 (editor); Robinson, A. (editor) (1997), ''Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore'', Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-59018-3 (1961), Tagore—A Life, National Book Trust of India, ISBN 81-237-1959-0 (1977), ''Rabindranath Tagore'', Twayne Publishers, Boston, ISBN 978-0805762426 (1985), Selected Poems (English translation of Bengali poems), Penguin, London, ISBN 0-14-018366-3 (2009), ''Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and His Song'', Viking, ISBN 978-0-670-08248-3

External links

; Analyses

"Tagore, ...", Banglapædia

" ... and his India", The New York Review of Books

"... Current Articles", Parabaas

"... The Founder", Visva-Bharati University

; Audiobooks

"Sadhana: ...", LibriVox

; Complete Works

... A new site dedicated to his works

... The complete collection of his works

; Talks

... with Albert Einstein and H. G. Wells, School of Wisdom

; Texts

... at Project Gutenberg

... at Tagore Web

... at Wikilivres

; Sources

Mary Lago Collection, University of Missouri

----

Category:1861 births Category:1941 deaths Category:Alumni of Presidency University, Kolkata Category:Alumni of University College London Category:Bengali Nobel laureates Category:Bengali writers Category:Bengali zamindars Category:Brahmos Category:Contemporary Indian philosophers Category:Founders of Indian schools and colleges Category:Hindu mystics Category:Hindu revivalists Category:Hindu–German Conspiracy Category:Indian artists Category:Indian Nobel laureates Category:Indian painters Category:Indian poets Category:National anthem writers Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:People associated with Santiniketan Category:People associated with the Bengal Renaissance Category:Vangiya Sahitya Parishad Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:University of Calcutta faculty

am:ራቢንድራናት ታጎር ar:روبندرونات تاكور an:Rabîndranâth Tagore as:ৰবীন্দ্ৰনাথ ঠাকুৰ az:Rabindranat Taqor bn:রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর zh-min-nan:Rabíndranáth Thákur be:Рабіндранат Тагор be-x-old:Рабіндранат Тагор bcl:Rabindranath Tagore bar:Rabindranath Tagore bs:Rabindranath Tagore br:Rabindranath Tagore bg:Рабиндранат Тагор ca:Rabindranath Tagore cs:Rabíndranáth Thákur cy:Rabindranath Tagore da:Rabindranath Tagore de:Rabindranath Thakur dv:ރަބިންދްރަނާތު ޓޭގޯރ et:Rabindranath Tagore el:Ραμπιντρανάθ Ταγκόρ es:Rabindranath Tagore eo:Rabindranath Tagore eu:Rabindranath Tagore fa:رابیندرانات تاگور hif:Rabindranath Tagore fr:Rabîndranâth Tagore ga:Rabindranath Tagore gd:Rabindranath Tagore gl:Rabindranath Tagore gu:રવિન્દ્રનાથ ટાગોર ko:라빈드라나트 타고르 hy:Ռաբինդրանաթ Թագոր hi:रवीन्द्रनाथ ठाकुर hr:Rabindranath Tagore io:Rabindranath Tagore id:Rabindranath Tagore os:Тагор, Рабиндранат is:Rabindranath Tagore it:Rabindranath Tagore he:רבינדרנת טאגור jv:Rabindranath Tagore kn:ರವೀಂದ್ರನಾಥ ಠಾಗೋರ್ ka:რაბინდრანათ თაგორი ks:रवीन्द्रनाथ ठाकुर sw:Rabindranath Tagore ku:Rabindranath Tagore la:Rabindranath Thakur lv:Rabindranats Tagore lt:Rabindranatas Tagorė hu:Rabindranath Tagore mk:Рабиндранат Тагоре ml:രബീന്ദ്രനാഥ് ടാഗോർ mr:रवींद्रनाथ ठाकूर arz:رابندرانات طاجور ms:Rabindranath Tagore cdo:Lá-bĭng-dáik-lá-nà-sṳ̆ Tái-gŏ̤-ī mn:Рабиндранат Таагүр my:တဂိုးရာဗင်ဒြာနတန် nl:Rabindranath Tagore ne:रवीन्द्रनाथ टेगोर ja:ラビンドラナート・タゴール no:Rabindranath Tagore nn:Rabindranath Tagore oc:Rabindranath Tagore pnb:رابندرناتھ ٹیگور pms:Rabindranath Tagore pl:Rabindranath Tagore pt:Rabindranath Tagore kaa:Rabindranath Tagore ro:Rabindranath Tagore qu:Rabindranath Tagore rue:Рабіндранат Таґор ru:Тагор, Рабиндранат sah:Рабиндранат Тагор sa:रवीन्द्रनाथठाकुरः sq:Rabindranath Tagore si:රබින්ද්‍රනාත් තාගෝර් simple:Rabindranath Tagore sk:Rabíndranáth Thákur sl:Rabindranath Tagore sr:Рабиндранат Тагор sh:Rabindranath Tagore fi:Rabindranath Tagore sv:Rabindranath Tagore tl:Rabindranath Tagore ta:இரவீந்திரநாத் தாகூர் roa-tara:Rabindranath Tagore te:రవీంద్రనాధ టాగూరు th:รพินทรนาถ ฐากูร tr:Rabindranath Tagore uk:Рабіндранат Тагор ur:رابندر ناتھ ٹیگور za:Daiqgwzwj vi:Rabindranath Tagore war:Rabindranath Tagore yo:Rabindranath Tagore bat-smg:Rabėndranats Taguorė zh:罗宾德拉纳特·泰戈尔

Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
name	Shyam Benegal
birth date	December 14, 1934
birth place	Trimulgherry,
occupation	Film director, Screenwriter
awards	1976 Padma Shri1991 Padma Bhushan2005 Dadasaheb Phalke Award }}

Shyam Benegal () (born 14 December 1934, in Trimulgherry, near Secunderabad is a prolific Indian director and screenwriter. With his first four feature films ''Ankur'' (1973), ''Nishant'' (1975) ''Manthan'' (1976) and ''Bhumika'' (1977) he created a new genre, which has now come to be called the "middle cinema" in India although he himself has expressed dislike in the term preferring his work to be called New or Alternate cinema.

He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1976 and the Padma Bhushan in 1991. On 8 August 2007, he was awarded the highest award in Indian cinema for lifetime achievement, the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2005. He has won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi seven times.

Biography

Early life and education

Shyam Benegal, was born in a Konkani speaking Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin family on 14 December 1934 in Trimulgherry, Secunderabad then a British Cantonment, and now a twin city of the state capital, Hyderabad. It was here, at age twelve that he made his first film, on a camera given to him by his photographer father Sridhar B. Benegal. He received an M.A. in Economics, from Nizam College, Osmania University, Hyderabad. It was here that he formed the Hyderabad Film Society.

Family

Benegal is related to the famous film director and actor Guru Dutt; his paternal grandmother and Guru Dutt's maternal grandmother were sisters, both hailing from the Konkani speaking Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin community.

Early career

He started his career working in 1959, as an advertising copywriter, at a Bombay-based advertising agency, Lintas Advertising, where he steadily rose to become a creative head. Meanwhile, he made his first documentary in Gujarati, ''Gher Betha Ganga'' (Ganges at Doorsteps) in 1962. His first feature film though, had to wait another decade, while he worked on the script.

In 1963 he started a brief stint with another advertising agency called ASP (Advertising, Sales and Promotion). During his advertising years, he directed over 900 sponsored documentaries and advertising films.

Between 1966 and 1973, Shyam also taught at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, and twice served as the institute's chairman, (1980–83) and (1989–92). By this time he already started making documentaries. One of his early documentaries ''A Child of the Streets'' (1967) garnered him wide acclaim, in all he has made over 70 documentary and short films.

Soon, he was awarded the Homi Bhabha Fellowship (1970–72), which allowed him to work at the Children Television Workshop, New York, and later at Boston's WGBH-TV.

Feature films

After returning to Bombay, he received independent financing for his film and ''Ankur'' (''The Seedling'') was finally made in 1973. It was a story of economic and sexual exploitation from his home state, Andhra Pradesh, and Benegal instantly shot to fame. The film also introduced actors, Shabana Azmi and Anant Nag and won Shyam Benegal the 1975 National Film Award for Second Best Feature Film. Shabana Azmi won the National Film Award for Best Actress.

The success that New India Cinema enjoyed in the 1970s and early 1980s could largely be attributed to Shyam Benegal's quartet: ''Ankur'' (1973), ''Nishant'' (1975), ''Manthan'' (1976) and ''Bhumika'' (1977). Benegal used a variety of new actors mainly from the FTII and NSD like Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Amrish Puri.

In Benegal's next effort, ''Nishant'' (''Night's End'') (1975), a teacher's wife is abducted and gang-raped by four zamindars and officialdom turns a deaf ear to the distraught husband's pleas for help. ''Manthan'' (''The Churning'') (1976) is a film on rural empowerment and is set against the backdrop of Gujarat's fledgling dairy industry. For the first time, over five lakh rural farmers in Gujarat, contributed Rs 2 each, and thus became film's producers. Upon its release, truckloads of farmers came to see "their film", making it a success at the box office. After this trilogy on rural oppression, he made a biopic, ''Bhumika'' (''The Role'') (1977), broadly based on the life of well-known Marathi stage and film actress of the 1940s, Hansa Wadkar (played by Smita Patil) who led a flamboyant and unconventional life. The main character sets out on at an individual search for identity and self-fulfillment, at same the time grappling with exploitation by men.

Meanwhile, in the early 70's, Shyam made 21 film modules for Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), sponsored by UNICEF. This allowed him to interact with children of SITE and many folk artists. Eventually he used many of these children in his feature length rendition of the classic folk tale, ''Charandas Chor'' (''Charandas the Thief'') in 1975. He made the film for the Children Films Society of India. To quote film critic, Derek Malcolm:

"…what Benegal has done is to paint a magnificent visual recreation of those extraordinary days and one that is also sensitive to the agonies and predicament of a talented woman whose need for security was only matched by her insistence on freedom."

The 80s

Unlike most New Cinema filmmakers, Benegal has had private backers for many of his films, and institutional backing for a few, including ''Manthan'' (National Diary Development Board), ''Susman'' (1987)(Handloom Co-operatives) and ''Yatra'' (1986) (Indian Railways). This gave him an added advantage, as he managed to survive the collapse of the New Cinema movement in the late 80s due to paucity of funding, with which were lost many neo-realist filmmakers. Benegal continued making films throughout the next two decades. He also served as the Director of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) from 1980 to 1986.

Following the success of these four films, Benegal was backed by film star Shashi Kapoor for whom he made ''Junoon'' (1978) and ''Kalyug'' (1981). The former is an interracial love story set amidst the turbulent period of the Indian Mutiny of 1857. ''Kalyug'', was based on the ''Mahābhārata'' and was not a big hit although both of the films won Filmfare Best Movie Awards in 1980 and 1982 respectively.

Benegal's next film, ''Mandi'' (1983) was a satirical comedy about politics and prostitution, starring Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil. Later, working from his own story, based on the last days of Portuguese in Goa, in the early 1960s, Shyam explored human relationship in ''Trikaal'' (1985).

In the 1980s, however, with the collapse of the New Cinema movement, Benegal's films had not had proper releases. He turned to TV where he directed serials like ''Yatra'' (1986) for the Indian Railways, and one of the biggest projects undertaken on Indian Television, the 53-episode television serial based on Jawaharlal Nehru's book, ''Discovery of India'' (''Bharat Ek Khoj'') (1988).

Soon, Shyam Benegal stepped beyond traditional narrative films and took to biographical material to achieve greater freedom of expression. His first venture in this genre was with a documentary film based on Satyajit Ray’s life, titled, ''Satyajit Ray, the Filmmaker'', in 1985. This was followed by similar biographical works like ''Sardari Begum'' (1996), and ''Zubeidaa'', which was written by film critic (and film-maker) Khalid Mohammed.

The 90s and beyond

The 90s saw Shyam Benegal making a trilogy on Indian Muslim women, starting with ''Mammo'' (1995), ''Sardari Begum'' (1996), and ''Zubeidaa'' (2001). With ''Zubeidaa'', he entered the Bollywood mainstream for the first time, as it starred top Bollywood star Karishma Kapoor, and boasted music by A. R. Rahman.

In 1992, he made another film, ''Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda'' (''Seventh Horse of the Sun'') based on a novel by Dharmavir Bharati, which won the 1993 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi. In 1996 he made another film based on a book, ''The Making of the Mahatma'', based on Fatima Meer's, ''The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma''. This turn to biographical material, resulted in ''Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero'', his 2005 English language film. He criticised the Indian caste system in ''Samar'' (1999). The movie went on to win the National Film Award for Best Film.

Shyam Benegal is the current President of the Federation of Film Societies of India. He owns a production company called Sahyadri Films.

He has also authored three books based on his own films, ''The Churning'' with Vijay Tendulkar (1984), based on ''Manthan''; ''Satyajit Ray'' (1988), based on his biographical film, ''Satyajit Ray, Filmmaker''; and ''The Marketplace'' (1989) which was based on ''Mandi''.

Recent projects

In 2008 his film ''Welcome to Sajjanpur'', starring Shreyas Talpade and Amrita Rao was released to a good response. The film's music is by Shantanu Moitra, and it is produced by Chetan Motiwalla. Shyam Benegal is slated to direct an epic musical ''Chamki Chameli'' inspired by George Bizet's classic Spanish opera Carmen. The story revolves around the eponymous Chamki, a beautiful gypsy girl with a fiery temper and is written by Shama Zaidi. The music is by A. R. Rahman and the lyrics are written by Javed Akhtar.

In March 2010, Benegal released the political satire ''Well Done Abba''.

One of Benegal's future projects is a film based on ''Noor Inayat Khan'' - a descendant of Tipu Sultan, who served as a British-Indian spy during World War II.

Personal life

Shyam Benegal is married to Nira Benegal and has a daughter called Pia, who is a costume designer for feature films. He is also involved with the Mumbai based film school Whistling Woods International as chairman of the academic council.

Filmography

Awards

Shyam Benegal has won the following awards and nominations.

National

;National Film Awards

1975 Second Best Feature Film for ''Ankur''

1976 Best Feature Film in Hindi for ''Nishant''

1977 Best Feature Film in Hindi for ''Manthan''

1978 Best Screenplay for ''Bhumika''

1979 Best Feature Film in Hindi for ''Junoon''

1982 Best Feature Film in Hindi for ''Arohan''

1984 Best Historical Reconstruction for ''Nehru''

1985 Best Biographical Film for ''Satyajit Ray, Filmmaker''

1986 Best Director for ''Trikaal''

1993 Best Feature Film in Hindi for ''Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda''

1995 Best Feature Film in Hindi for ''Mammo''

1996 Best Feature Film in English for ''The Making of the Mahatma''

1997 Best Feature Film in Urdu for ''Sardari Begum''

1999 Best Feature Film for ''Samar''

1999 Best Feature Film on Family Welfare for ''Hari-Bhari''

2001 Best Feature Film in Hindi for ''Zubeidaa''

2005 Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration for ''Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero''

2009 Best Film on Other Social Issues for Well Done Abba

;Filmfare Awards

1980 Best Director for ''Junoon''

1982 Best Director for ''Kalyug'': Nominated

2008 welcome to sajjanpur

International

;Cannes Film Festival 1976: Golden Palm: ''Nishant'': Nominated

;Berlin International Film Festival 1974 Golden Berlin Bear for ''Ankur'': Nominated

;Moscow International Film Festival

1981 Golden Prize: ''Kalyug''

1997 Golden St. George: ''Sardari Begum'': Nominated

Honours

1970 Homi Bhabha Fellowship (1970–72)

1976 Padma Shri

1989 Sovietland Nehru Award

1991 Padma Bhushan

2005 Dadasaheb Phalke Award

Bibliography

''Benegal on Ray: Satyajit Ray, a Film'', by Shyam Benegal, Alaknanda Datta, Samik Banerjee. Seagull Books, 1988. ISBN 8170460212.

''Shyam Benegal's the Churning (Manthan): Screenplay'', by, Vijay Tendulkar, Shyam Benegal, Samik Banerjee. Seagull Books, 1984. ISBN 0861320700.

Further reading

Shyam Benegal (BFI World Directors) - Sangeeta Datta. ''2003, British Film Institute''. ISBN 0851709087.

Bollywood Babylon: Interviews with Shyam Benegal, William van der Heide. ''2006, Berg Publishers.'' ISBN 1845204050.

BBC's Tom Brook interviews Shyam Benegal on 25 August 2006

Girish Karnad interviews Shyam Benegal, National Film Theatre, 2002

Sen, Meheli (2011) “Vernacular Modernities and Fitful Globalities in Shyam Benegal’s Cinematic Provinces”, in: manycinemas 1, 8-22, Online, pdf-version

References

External links

'Shyam Benegal: A Life in Pictures' interview at BAFTA

Shyam Benegal on Upperstall

Awards & recognition for Shyam Benegal's films

Category:Osmania University alumni Category:Indian film directors Category:Indian screenwriters Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri Category:Recipients of the Padma Bhushan Category:Hindi-language film directors Category:Indian documentary filmmakers Category:Filmfare Awards winners Category:Members of the Rajya Sabha Category:Nominated members of the Rajya Sabha Category:Dadasaheb Phalke Award recipients Category:People from Hyderabad, India Category:1934 births Category:Living people Category:Indian Hindus Category:Konkani people

de:Shyam Benegal es:Shyam Benegal fr:Shyam Benegal hi:श्याम बेनेगल it:Shyam Benegal kn:ಶ್ಯಾಮ್ ಬೆನಗಲ್ ml:ശ്യാം ബെനഗൽ mr:श्याम बेनेगल te:శ్యామ్ బెనగళ్ tr:Shyam Benegal ur:شیام بینیگل

Sukumar Ray (), (), (1887–1923) was a Bengali humorous poet, story writer and playwright who mainly wrote for children. As perhaps the most famous Indian practitioner of literary nonsense, he is often compared to Lewis Carroll. His works such as the collection of poems "Aboltabol" (Bangla: "আবোলতাবোল")("Gibberish"), novella "HaJaBaRaLa" (Bangla:হযবরল), short story collection "Pagla Dashu" (Bangla:"পাগলা দাশু") ("Crazy Dashu") and play "Chalachittachanchari" (Bangla: "চলচিত্তচঞ্চরী") are considered nonsense masterpieces equal in stature to Alice in Wonderland, and are regarded as some of the greatest treasures of Bangla literature. More than 80 years after his death, Ray remains one of the most popular of children's writers in both West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Sukumar Ray was the son of famous children's story writer Upendrakishore Ray (Ray Chowdhury) and the father of legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray and grandfather of famous Bengali filmmaker Sandip Ray. Sukumar Ray was also known as the convenor of "Monday Club" (), a weekly gathering of likeminded people at the Ray residence, where the members were free to express their irreverent opinions about the world at large. A number of delightful poems were penned by Sukumar Ray in relation to the matters concerning "Monday Club", primarily soliciting attendance, announcing important meetings etc.

Life

Ray was born in a Brahmo family in Calcutta, India on 30 October 1887. Born in the era which can be called the pinnacle of the Bengal Renaissance, he grew up in an environment that fostered his literary talents. His father was a talented writer of stories and popular science; painter and illustrator extraordinaire; musician and composer of songs; a pioneering technologist and hobbyist astronomer. Upendrakishore was also a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, who directly influenced Sukumar. Among other family friends were Jagadish Chandra Bose and Prafulla Chandra Roy. Upendrakishore studied the technology of blockmaking, conducted experiments, and set up a business of making quality blocks. The firm M/s U. Ray & Sons, where Sukumar and his younger brother Subinay were involved.

In 1906, Ray graduated with Hons. in Physics and Chemistry from the Presidency College, Kolkata. He was trained in photography and printing technology in England and was a pioneer of photography and lithography in India. While in England, he also delivered lectures about the songs of Rabindranath before he (Tagore) won the Nobel Prize. Meanwhile, Sukumar had also drawn acclaim as an illustrator. As a technologist, he also developed new methods of halftone blockmaking, and technical articles about this were published in journals in England.

Upendrakishore started a publishing firm, which Sukumar and Subinay helped to run. While Sukumar went to England to learn printing technology, Upendrakishore purchased land, constructed a building, and set up a printing press with facilities for high-quality halftone colour blockmaking and printing. He also launched the children's magazine, "Sandesh" (Bangla: সন্দেশ). Very soon after Sukumar's return from England, Upendrakishore died, and Sukumar ran the printing and publishing businesses and the Sandesh (magazine) for about eight years. His younger brother Subinoy helped him, and many relatives pitched in writing for "Sandesh".

Apart from the cultural and creative activities, Sukumar Ray was also a young man who was a leader of the reformist wing in the Brahmo Samaj. The Barahmo Samaj is the monotheistic unitarian branch of Hinduism launched by Raja Rammohan Roy following the philosophy of the monotheistic Hindu scripture Isha-Upanishad of 7th Century AD. Sukumar Ray wrote a long poem "Atiter Katha" (Bangla: অতীতের কথা), which was a popular presentation of the history of the Brahmo Samaj—it was published as a small booklet to introduce the rationale of the Brahmo Samaj to children. Sukumar also campaigned to bring in Rabindranath Tagore, the most famous Brahmo of his time, as a leader of the Samaj.

Death

Sukumar Ray died on September 10, 1923 of severe infectious fever, leishmaniasis, for which there was no cure at the time. He left behind his widow and their only child, Satyajit. Satyajit Ray would later become the most well known of Indian filmmakers and shoot a documentary on Sukumar Ray in 1987, 5 years before his own death.

Works

Abol tabol (Gibberish)

Pagla Dashu (Crazy Dashu)

Khai-Khai (Eat-Eat)

Heshoram Hushiyarer Diary (The diary of Heshoram Hushiyar)

HaJaBaRaLa (Mumbo-Jumbo)

Jhalapala O Onanyo Natok (Cacophony and Other Plays)

Lakkhaner Shoktishel (The Weapon of Lakkhan)

Chalachittachanchari

Shabdakalpadrum

Bohurupee

Bibliography

English Editions of Sukumar Ray, in chronological order. Each edition here has its distinct merits.

''Nonsense Rhymes.'' Translated by Satyajit Ray. Calcutta: Writer's Workshop, 1970.

This volume by the author's son is the slimmest and is difficult to find.

''The Select Nonsense of Sukumar Ray''. Translated by Sukanta Chaudhuri. New Delhi: OUP, 1987.

The standard edition for many years.

''Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray''. Translated by Sampurna Chattarji. New Delhi: Puffin, 2004.

This edition, the most complete, also has works from ''Khapchhada'', ''Bohurupee'', ''Other Stories'', ''Haw-Jaw-Baw-Raw-Law'', ''Khai-Khai'', and ''Pagla Dashu''.

''The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense'', edited by Michael Heyman, with Sumanyu Satpathy and Anushka Ravishankar. New Delhi: Penguin, 2007.

This volume includes, amongst other Indian nonsense texts, quite a few Ray translations by Chattarji, including some that are not in her solo edition of ''Abol Tabol''.

References

External links

Sukumar Ray Kobita

Complete Sukumar Ray

"Drighangchu" by Sukumar Ray translation of short story in ''The Cafe Irreal''

Category:Alumni of Presidency University, Kolkata Category:Bengali poets Category:People from Kolkata Category:Bengali writers Category:Bengali-language writers Category:Bengali zamindars Category:Kolkata culture Category:Indian children's writers Category:Brahmos Category:Indian photographers Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:1887 births Category:1923 deaths Category:Deaths from leishmaniasis Category:People associated with the Bengal Renaissance

bn:সুকুমার রায় de:Sukumar Ray hi:सुकुमार राय ru:Рай, Сукумар sv:Sukumar Ray

Coordinates	37°46′45.48″N122°25′9.12″N
name	Debabrata Biswas দেবব্রত বিশ্বাস
birth date	August 22, 1911
birth place	Kishoreganj, Bengal Province, British India (Now Bangladesh)
death date	August 18, 1980
death place	Kolkata, West Bengal, India
nationality	Indian
other names	George-''da''
known for	Rabindra Sangeet singer
occupation	vocalist
years active	1940-71 }}

Debabrata Biswas () (22 August, 1911 - 18 August, 1980), also known as George Biswas () or George-''da'' (), was an Indian Rabindra Sangeet singer.

He was born in 1911 in Barishal and then later came to Kishorgonj of Mymensing district of British colonial undivided Bengal province of India, when King George V was visiting India for the Delhi Durbar, so he was nicknamed ''George''. He was popularly called ''George Biswas'' and ''George-da'' which means Brother George.

Early career

His music, though not always technically pristine, was notable for its exceptional depth of emotional expression verging on the dramatic. His early gramophone recordings of Tagore songs brought out in the early 1940s demonstrate soulful full-throated expression of melody with a strict adherence to the rules and norms of tradition, written and unwritten, which he felt obliged to break in the early 1960s - considered by most to be his heyday up to the year 1969. His renderings in this period show amazing power of voice and modulation, compounded with overt emotional expression of a kind hitherto unpractised by his contemporaries and even himself. His voice at this period ranged at ease within the three octaves and with varied tempos and rhythms and showed greater variety of emotional expression from the thunderous and rumbling to the soft and mellow. Somewhat audacious and overpowering in his personal feelings and mores, his enunciation of the words of over-used and hackneyed Tagore lyrics extracted new meanings and freshness from the compositions. Some of his numbers which surely goes deep into the heart of Bengalis are Akash bhora surjo tara, Je ratey mor duarguli, Pinakete lagey tonkar, Tomar kache ebor magi etc.

Conflict

Authoritarian eyebrows started to be raised from 1964 onwards with the liberties he started taking by challenging the published tune-notations, scansion, traditional tempo, beat and rhythms which people were accustomed to associate with Tagore lyrics, as well as with his inclination towards the use of western musical instruments for the purposes of accompaniment and interlude - an obsession that remained with him till his death. He challenged the sensibilities of Tagore song listeners with the use of the spanish guitar, the saxophone,the clarionet, the piano and the cello along with the sitar,the sarode, the esraj and the violin; and all this in the name of 'interpretation' and 'freedom of expression'. His popularity swelled beyond bounds with the masses , young and old - connoisseurs and dilletante alike for, despite these excesses, the power and intrinsic purity of style and spirit of his renditions were unparalleled.

In the later part of the 1960s Debabrata was seriously challenged by the authorities over his audacious style and quite a number of his records were prohibited from commercial production for reasons attributed to wrong spirit, wrong tempo and other melodic excesses not regarded as harmonious to the purity of Tagore compositions. Although initially he did brace himself to meet the challenge,he retreated later and on his own volition stopped all record production. As further controversy fuelled,his public live performances continued with an even increasing demand but with age (now he was 60)and a declining voice and his lifelong affliction of the asthma, he withdrew from public appearance, venting his anguish and frustrations in his autobiographical reflections : ''Bratyo Janer Rudhha Sangit''' (or ''The Stifled Music of an Untouchable''), published in 1979, a year before his death on August 18, 1980.

Personal life

A bachelor, a teetotaller, an excellent cook of spiced food, a visitor to the Calcutta Horse Racing Turf, a traditionalist at heart yet posing as a bohemian in a tongue-in- cheek style, and by any standards an eccentric, he lived a simple, modest and spartan life at his rented flat in South Calcutta, retiring in 1971 from the Life Insurance Corporation of India where he held a clerical position throughout his tenure; this, despite his being a post-graduate in economics from the Calcutta University. A confirmed communist throughout his life, he held his party membership with the Communist Party of India till the mid 1950s. However, he was hurt at the fact that a conflict had arisen among the core groups of the Communist Party itself. Hence, when Communist Party of India (Marxist) was formed, he was in a confused state. However, he remained in touch with the communist party till his death. In one of his memoirs he has said: "When the party got divided into two sections, I was confused, because I was attached to the members of both, Communist Party of India or CPI, as well as the newly formed Communist Party of India (Marxist). So, I decided to remain away from active politics. However, I must confess that I have been lucky to get the true love of all the members of both the wings of the communist party all through my life."

Apart from Rabindrasangeet, he is known to have held the masses spellbound with his booming and baritone voice singing ''Ganasangit'' or Peoples' Songs in party gatherings, meetings and plenary sessions up to the mid-1950s. He remains one of the towering personalities of the peak era of Indian People Theatre Association (IPTA) as a cultural delegate of which he visited China twice in the early 1950s with other great cultural luminaries from India. He recorded his experiences with China in a well-written but somewhat simplistic and naive book titled ''Antaranga Chin'' or China of My Heart.

A broad-hearted man of caustic humour even to the point of self-mockery, buffonery and feigned frivolity, he was fond of sketching and often gave drawings along with autographs. One such signature features himself praying to Tagore and another showing Tagore hitting a sixer with a cricket bat. Immensely popular as he was, he had shunned the press and the media all his life, even not allowing his own photographs or career history on blurbs or record cases.

He lent his voice to a number of films and after his death was the subject of a documentary film by his name, based on archival footage and interviews.

To this day he remains the most popular exponent in the art of ''Rabindrasangeet'', a model of orthodoxy when orthodox and an icon of protest against establishment, organised media and cultural dictatorship when breaking away from the orthodox. Even after 30 years from his death, his records remain in supreme demand.

References

Website on Debabrata Biswas : www.debabratabiswas.in

Category:Bengali singers Category:University of Calcutta alumni Category:1980 deaths Category:Rabindra Sangeet exponents Category:Indian singers Category:1911 births Category:Indian people of Bangladeshi descent

bn:দেবব্রত বিশ্বাস