Silchar celebrates Rabindranath with Zest

The 162nd birth anniversary of Kabiguru Rabindranath Tagore is being celebrated in Silchar, the city of culture. Cultural organisations could be seen taking out processions to celebrate Rabindra Jayanti at various places in Silchar city since morning. A procession was taken out from Bangabhavan under the initiative of Barak Upatyaka Banga Sahitya O Sanskriti Sammelan. 

In the presence of students from various schools and colleges, this procession passed through the main road of the city and paid respects at the feet of the Rabindranath statue at Tarapur. A unique procession was organised by Uttamasha Lalit Kala Kendra from South Silchar area. The procession passed through the city with various pictures of Biswo Kobi painted by the students and ended at the foot of Rabindra statue, where the participants in the procession paid their respects to the statue of Rabindranath. Silchar Lions Club Central, Silchar Municipality and Bodhani Samiti of Arya Sanskriti organised a cultural program at the statue of Rabindranath Tagore located in Tarapur.

Almost all clubs and organisations of Silchar paid tributes to the statue of Rabindranath Tagore. Apart from this, cultural programs are also being organised today. A day-long Rabindra Smoron Onusthan has been organised at the Gandhi Bhavan by a joint platform of about thirty organisations named Sammilita Sanskritik Mancha. Besides, Rabindra Jayanti is also being celebrated in every school and college.

Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath who became the first Asian as well as the first non European to win the Nobel Prize in 1913 “because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.” He is widely known by the sobriquet “Biswo Kobi”, “World Poet” and “Gurudeb”. He was a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. His works have an everlasting impact on Bengali literature and culture.

Rabindranath Tagore was awarded Knighthood for Services to Literature by King George V of United Kingdom in 1915. Tagore renounced his title of Knighthood after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in which innocent people were massacred on order of Colonel Reginald Dyer who were protesting against the Rowlatt Act and arrest of pro-independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlew and Satyapal.

Though Tagore did not visit Silchar however he spent a few hours at Badarpur railway station on his way to Sylhet from Guwahati in the year 1919. Silchar finds a mention in Tagore’s novel “Shesher Kobita” as the protagonist Amit Ray finds bliss, peace and eternal joy while wandering all alone in the wilds of Silchar and Sylhet. This finds mention in the lines, “Tai o jokhon bhabche, palai pahar beye neme giye paye hete Sylhet-Silchar bhitor diye jekhane khushi, emon samay asarh elo pahare pahare bane bane tar sajal ghonochayar chadar lutiye.” (When he thought of dismounting the hills and wandering deep inside Sylhet-Silchar, came down heavy showers in the hills and woods, throwing around the dark blanket.) Silchar is also mentioned in a poem of Tagore with the line “Silchar haay kil chor khay…”