Tagore, Debendranath

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Debendranath Tagore

Debendranath Tagore
Born	May 15, 1817 Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Died	January 19, 1905 Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Occupation	Religious reformer
Spouse(s)	Sarada Devi

Debendranath Tagore (Bangla: দেবেন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর Debendronath Ţhakur) (May 15, 1817 - January 19, 1905) was an Indian Bengali philosopher and Hindu reformer from current-day West Bengal, in India.

Biography

He was born in Calcutta, India. His father, Dwarkanath Tagore, was a wealthy landowner and successful entrepeneur with interests in shipping and banking, among other ventures. Dwarkanath was a co-founder, with Ram Mohun Roy of the reformist Brahmo Samaj. From the age of nine, Debendranath recieved a classical Brahmin education which included the study of Sanksrit as well as Persian but he also studies English and Western philosophy. In 1827 he enrolled in the Anglo-Hindu College in Calcutta, which Roy had founded. Debendranath was an active Brahmo, and was against sati, idol worship and the concept of multiple gods. The Brahmo Samaj was formed from Debendranath's Tattvabodhini Sabha and the Brahmo Sabha, ten years after the death of the latter's founder, Raja Ram Mohan Roy. The Brahmo Sabha had fallen away from its original practices put forth in its trust deed, such as the renunciation of all idols; however, Tagore brought back the importance of this deed. However, when the Vedanta of Ram Mohan Roy was attacked by a Presbyterian minister, Duff, and the scientific deist Dutt, Tagore abandoned it in favor of direct contact with the divine. His experiences were fleeting contact, and this love in separation, known in Hindu poetry as mullai, caused him to strive to regain the bliss of that contact. When Keshub Chunder Sen left the Adi Samaj, it caused considerable pain to him and he withdrew from public activity for quite some time.

Teaching

Debendranath's spiritual prowess was of the highest order, even while he maintained his worldly affairs - not renouncing his material possessions as some Hindu traditions prescribed but rather continuing to enjoy them in a spirit of detachment. He received approbation from no less a spiritual master than Sri Ramakrishna who compared him to the Puranic king Janaka, father of Sita, the heroine of the epic Ramayana, extolled in the scriptures as an ideal man who perfectly synthesized material and spiritual accomplishments.

His considerable material property included several estates spread over the districts of Bengal; most famously, the later acquisition Santiniketan estate near Bolpur in the Birbhum district where his youngest son, the Nobel prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore set up his school and later, the Visva-Bharati University.

What is remarkable in this achievement is that he excelled his father, who received the title Prince from the British colonial government owing to his large fortune and yet retained his dignity before them, famously wearing an all-white outfit bereft of all jewellery in a party attended by the Queen, with only his shoes studded with two diamonds bettering the Koh-i-noor in the Queen's crown. This was a gesture symbolising the mastery of wealth, as opposed to its slavish pursuit.

Debendranath was a master of the Upanishads and played no small role in the education and cultivation of faculties of his sons. Dwijendranath (1840-1926) was a great scholar, poet and music composer. He initiated shorthand and musical notations in Bengali. He wrote extensively and translated Kalidas’s Meghdoot into Bengali. Satyendranath (1842-1923) was the first Indian to join the Indian Civil Service. At the same time he was a great scholar with a large reservoir of creative talents. Jyotirindranath (1849-1925) was a scholar, artist, music composer and theatre personality. Rabindranath (1861-1941) was his youngest son. His other sons Hemendranath (1844-1884), Birendranath (1845-1915) and Somendranath did not achieve that great fame but everybody was filled with creative talents. His daughters were Soudamini, Sukumari, Saratkumari, Swarnakumari (1855-1932) and Barnakumari. Soudamini was one of the first students of Bethune School and a gifted writer. Swarnakumari was a gifted writer, editor, song-composer and social worker. All of them were famous for their beauty and education.

His part in creating the legacy of Thakurbari - the House of Tagore - in the cultural heritage of Bengal, centred in Kolkata, was not negligible. It was largely through the influence of the Tagore family, following that of the writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, that Bengal took a leading role on the cultural front as well as on the nationalistic one, in the Renaissance in India during the nineteenth century.

The house of the Tagore family in Jorasanko, popular as Jorasanko Thakur Bari in North-western Kolkata, was later converted into a campus of the Rabindra Bharati University, eponymously named after Rabindranath.

Sivanath Sastri has paid glowing tributes to Debndranath Tagore in History of the Brahmo Samaj:

Maharshi Devendranath Tagore was one of the greatest religious geniuses this country ever produced. He was truly a successor of the great rishis of old. His nature was essentially spiritual. … He was a devout follower of the Upanishadic rishis, but was no pantheist on that account. Devendranath in spite of his real sainthood never put on the grab or habits of sadhu or saint. His piety was natural, habitual and modest. He hated or shunned all display of saintliness...

He was a true and living embodiment of that teaching of the Gita where it is said: “A truly wise man is never buffeted by his trials and tribulations, does not covet pleasure, and is free from attachment, fear and anger; the same is a muni.” Maharshi Devendranath was a true muni in that respect. He calmly bore all; even the greatest grieves of life. After having done his duty, he quietly rested, regardless of consequences.

Though personally not much in favour of the idea of female emancipation, he was one of the first men in Bengal to open the door of higher education to women. Valuing conscience in himself, he valued it in all about him. Religious life was growth to him; not an intellectual assent but a spiritual influence that pervaded and permeated life; consequently, he had not much sympathy with merely reformatory proceedings.

From the west he took only two ideas: first, the idea of fidelity to God; secondly the idea of public worship; in all other things he was oriental. His idea was to plant the Samaj in India, as the Hindu mode of realising universal theism, leaving the other races to realise that universal faith according to their traditional methods.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Furrell, James W The Tagore Family: A memoir, New Delhi: Rupa, 2004 ISBN 978-8129104113
• Sharma, Arvind. The Concept of Universal Religion in Modern Hindu Thought. New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1998 ISBN 9780312216474
• Ṭhākura, Debendranātha. Brahmo Dharma. Brahmo classics. Calcutta: [Printed at the Brahmo Mission Press], 1928.
• Tagore, Satyendranath and Devi, Indira Autobiography of Debendranath Tagore, Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2006 ISBN 978-1428614970

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