Tagore and China
- Tan Chung - Professor of Chinese, University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi.
- Amiya Dev - formerly at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal
- Wang Bangwei - Peking University, Beijing, China
- Wei Liming - Peking University, Beijing, China
Literature Reviews
Tagore and China presents a comprehensive account of the until now unexplored events leading to Rabindranath Tagore's visit to China in 1924 and explores the significance it had on the China–India relations, or what has come to be known as Chindian relations. This well-researched book also brings out new material from the Chinese sources on his friendship with Xu Zhimo and the details of Tagore's two short personal visits to Zhimo and Zhimo's visit to Santiniketan.
The book delves into the developments, cultural cum civilizational, that happened in the aftermath of Tagore's visit to China. The visit as such is taken up in detail; so also are the talks given by Tagore while in China as well as their effect on the Chinese audiences including the note of dissent from the radicals and their probable reasons or misunderstanding behind it.
Special emphasis is given to the establishment of the Cheena-Bhavana at Santiniketan with Tan Yun-shan. Tagore's poetry has been discussed in length with a view to understand the probable influence that Tagore might have had on Chinese poetry and vice versa.
That Tagore is not merely history but is relevant today, indeed a ray of hope for our much beleaguered times, is a theme that runs through the book.
[The book] is an extraordinary, perhaps unique collection (perceptive and scholarly) that provides penetrating original insights into Tagore’s significant contributions towards “social obligations”…Erudite, lively, wide-ranging, this assemblage brings together a mosaic of forward-looking ideas as well as perspectives on china’s past “civilisational sagacity” and its intellectual circles’ sensitivity against “western cultural poison”, and offers precise and informative, if not critical, knowledge of Tagore’s cosmology of ideas…An extremely rich book, it is an essential reading for all who are interested in the history of Sino-Indian cultural concord or in the secular ideas of Tagore in regard to a deeper understanding of Indian and Chinese civilisations, and the educated public in general.
There are arcane discoveries of great value to academics, such as an inquiry into the origins of specific documents and inscriptions, leading to a reassessment of some of the chronology and understanding of Tagore’s time in China. There is also exceptional granular detail in some instances.
The well-researched and illuminating articles in this collection make Tagore and China an authoritative work on the very special relationship Rabindranath Tagore shared with China. It is a collection of illuminating articles by scholars from India and China on the very special relationship Tagore shared with China. Tagore and China is, indeed, a tribute to that vision.
Tagore was a visionary, always forward-looking. He sought to promote the cause of India-China understanding, envisioning the ascent of India and China to a higher platform of civilizational leadership and fraternal partnership.
Tagore was the first thinker of modern India to be invited by the thinking elite of China, along with the likes of John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, as the Chinese grappled with the question of China`s place in a modern world.
This collection of articles by eminent academics and scholars...is a timely and significant addition to the existing literature on Tagore and will promote our understanding of Tagore, as we celebrate the universalism of his ideas and thoughts.