My Take | Rabindranath Tagore in Hong Kong and mainland China
- The profound questions he raised and provoked 100 years ago about China and its people during his tumultuous visit may be even more relevant today than ever before
In 1923-24, the great Indian poet, visionary and 1913 recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature, Rabindranath Tagore, was touring Southeast Asia, passing through Rangoon, Penang and Singapore. And then he landed in China.
I am inclined to think the itinerary was deliberate, as it retraced the opium-trading route of his grandfather that began in India and ended in China.
Tagore grew up in a privileged and wealthy family on excellent terms with the British overlords. His grandfather once partied with Queen Victoria, and his elder brother was the first Indian to be admitted as an official into the Indian civil service. By education, he appreciated the genius of Western philosophy, science and literature. By experience, he understood the blood-soaked crimes of Western imperialism.
That made him torn between the West and the East, the pain of which was distilled into a wisdom that was, as it turned out, not very well received by his many Chinese detractors back in 1924. Perhaps today, we are in a better position to understand this sage and most complex man.
To begin with, the journey itself was not a happy one. He became increasingly worried about the fate of Asia.