Book Section
Peter D. McDonald
Rabindranath Tagore’s সমাজ/Samaj/Communities of Song
What happens when songs or lyric poems, composed at particular moments, become state anthems, performed again and again across generations? This essay addresses this question through the extraordinary figure of Rabindranath Tagore, who, despite his radically anti-statist vision of community, composed songs that became the celebrated national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
Keywords: Rabindranath Tagore; Amit Chaudhuri; James Joyce; Baul; ‘Jana Gana Mana’; ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’; anthemization; anti-statism
| Title |
Rabindranath Tagore’s সমাজ/Samaj/Communities of Song
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| Author(s) |
Peter D. McDonald
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
What happens when songs or lyric poems, composed at particular moments, become state anthems, performed again and again across generations? This essay addresses this question through the extraordinary figure of Rabindranath Tagore, who, despite his radically anti-statist vision of community, composed songs that became the celebrated national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
28 October 2024
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| Subject |
Rabindranath Tagore
Amit Chaudhuri
James Joyce
Baul
‘Jana Gana Mana’
‘Amar Sonar Bangla’
anthemization
anti-statism
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
97
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| page end |
112
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| Source |
Rethinking Lyric Communities, ed. by Irene Fantappiè, Francesco Giusti, and Laura Scuriatti, Cultural Inquiry, 30 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2024), pp. 97–112
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Publication scheduled for 28 October 2024
References
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- Chaudhuri, Amit, ‘In a Silent Way/Indian National Anthem’, YouTube, 9 January 2023 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6uhjEcHIQ> [accessed 21 March 2023]
- Chaudhuri, Rosinka, ‘ Viśvasāhitya: Rabindranath Tagore’s Idea of World Literature’, in The Cambridge History of World Literature, ed. by Debjani Ganguly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 261–78 <https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009064446.014>
- Dutta, Krishna, and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore (London: Bloomsbury, 1995)
- Joyce, James, Finnegans Wake (London: Faber, 1975)
- Kappal, Bhanuj, ‘“My Music Is Based on Convergences”: Amit Chaudhuri on his New Compositions’, The Hindu, 19 January 2023 <https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/amit-chaudhuri-writer-singer-music-single-album-in-a-silent-way-jana-gana-mana-75-india-independence/article66395879.ece> [accessed 21 March 2023]
- Keats, John, Poetical Works, ed. by H. W. Garrod (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)
- McDonald, Peter D., Artefacts of Writing: Ideas of the State and Communities of Letters from Matthew Arnold to Xu Bing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) <https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198725152.001.0001>; supplementary website: <https://artefactsofwriting.com/> [accessed 25 July 2023]
- McDonald, Peter D., ‘Seeing through the Concept of World Literature’, Journal of World Literature, 4 (2019), pp. 13–34
- Nandy, Ashish, Illegitimacy of Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994)
- Saha, Poulomi, ‘Singing Bengal into a Nation: Tagore the Colonial Cosmopolitan?’, Journal of Modern Literature, 36.2 (2013), pp. 1–12
- Shemaroo, ‘Jana Gana Mana’, YouTube, 7 August 2014 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtMF973tXIY> [accessed 21 March 2023]
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘The Morning Song of India’ <https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Morning_Song_of_India> [accessed 25 July 2023]
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘My Golden Bengal’, trans. by Anjan Ganguly <https://www.geetabitan.com/lyrics/rs-a2/aamar-sonaar-bangla-ami-english-translation.html> [accessed 21 March 2023]
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘An Indian Folk Religion’, in Creative Unity (London: Macmillan, 1922), pp. 67–90
- Tagore, Rabindranath, The Religion of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1931)
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘Satyer Ahaban’ (The Call of Truth), in Rabindra Rachanabali, 18 vols (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 1991), XII, p. 585
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘Nationalism in the West’, in The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. by Sisir Kumar Das (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1994–96), II (1994), pp. 418–22
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘The Bengali of Maktabs and Madrasas’, trans. by Tista Bagchi, in Selected Writings on Literature and Language, ed. by Sisir Kumar Das and Sukanta Chaudhuri (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 358–60
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘Literature’, in Selected Writings on Literature and Language, ed. by Sisir Kumar Das and Sukanta Chaudhuri (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 49–50
- Tagore, Rabindranath, I Won’t Let You Go: Selected Poems, trans. by Ketaki Kushari Dyson (Tarset: Bloodaxe Books, 2010)
- Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘Nationalism in India’, in Indian Philosophy in English, ed. by Nalini Bhushan and Jay L. Garfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 21–36
- VocalNationalAnthems, ‘Amar Shona Bangla’, 9 May 2010 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVjbVPFeo2o> [accessed 21 March 2023]
Cite as:
Peter D. McDonald, ‘Rabindranath Tagore’s সমাজ/Samaj/Communities of Song’, in Rethinking Lyric Communities, ed. by Irene Fantappiè, Francesco Giusti, and Laura Scuriatti, Cultural Inquiry, 30 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2024), pp. 97-112 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-30_04>