Poetic justice

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POLITICALLY POTENT: Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore in London.

There is a joke Asia's Bengalis like to tell that begins: "One Bengali is a poet, two Bengalis are a trade union, three Bengalis are a committee..."

No matter the variations, it always begins with the poet and this year marks the 150th anniversary of their greatest, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).

While 300 million Bengalis in Bangladesh and India are known for their humour, it is not wise to question Tagore's relevancy.

"No matter how much you want to stir me up, my belief in Tagore will be steadfast like the nation's belief in the All Blacks," says Auckland Bengali Amit Ohdedar, of the Prayas Theatre Group.

The group, dedicated to performing Indian theatre in English for New Zealand audiences, will stage Tagore's play, Tasher Desh or The Kingdom of Cards, in Auckland this month.

"My entire existence, my cultural identity, rests on Tagore – almost. To a Bengali, Tagore is still as holy as goddess Kali and as important as a fish curry cooked in mustard oil."

Gitanjali – "an offering of songs" – which is Tagore's collection of English poems published in 1913, went to the top of bestseller lists, leading on to his becoming the first non-European Nobel Prize laureate.

The British bestowed a knighthood, but when General Reginald Dyer's troops opened fire on thousands of unarmed people at the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar, killing over a thousand, Tagore renounced it.

Born in Kolkata (then Calcutta), his first published poems appeared when he was 16. He was also an artist, an educator and a political activitist, denouncing the British Raj.

He was dead by the time of independence, but the nation selected a piece of music he wrote in 1911, "Jana Gana Mana", as its national anthem. When Bangladesh came into existence in 1971, they chose Tagore's "Amar Shonar Bangla" (My Golden Bengal) as their anthem. Tagore had written it to protest Britain's 1905 communal partition of Bengal.

Tasher Desh is a satire on the class system, using cards to show a kingdom's people trapped in countless inane rituals. Tagore was thinking of the Raj as he wrote it in 1933, but it remains current.

Prayas, which has nine plays and musical shows to its credit, has a cast and crew across ethnicities and ages for the play.

"What is amazing is that each of them can almost immediately relate and get excited about the play – some see the humour and cleverness of the dialogues, some love the songs, others see the political subtlety of the text," Ohdedar says.

"His philosophy of freedom of humanity based on enlightenment through education and emancipation of poverty and injustice through an equitable social order are equally relevant and applicable in the present day world."

Ohdedar says Tagore's seeming "highbrow" image is undeserved.

He suffers from identification as "a mystic guru which is an easy-fit western stereotype", but there is also the problem that much of his work remains poorly translated out of Bengali.

"The rich poetic lyrics are very difficult to translate and in Tagore's own words without the understanding of the lyrics the melody alone will be like a butterfly with clipped wings, so one is not complete without the other."

Prayas shares the "rich tradition of Indian theatre and we take great pride in breaking the stereotype of branding Indian culture with Bollywood".

The Kingdom of Cards is on at TAPAC in Auckland's Western Springs from November 24-27.

- © Fairfax NZ News