Marketing Tagore

Every race or community has its own history and culture. For us, Bengalis, it starts and ends with him! He is often rightly termed the last Renaissance Man in Bengal.... But who was the first one? Raja Rammohan Roy? Maybe yes.... Again, the Raja — known more as a social reformer than anything else in the context of Bengali culture — was not what we may call as a Renaissance Man, as he was more inclined to the West though his heart was embedded in Bengal.

Twenty-eight years after the Raja was buried — not cremated like the Hindu tradition — in Bristol, birth of a child at his friend Prince Dwarkanath's Jorasanko house marked the beginning of a new era in the Bengali tradition that we all carry forward for years.

And, that summer day also celebrated the birth of Brand Tagore — the best company Bengalis always take pride on. Whatever be our decline in fields of manufacturing industries or in the mines or elsewhere in the last 50 years, our governments — yes, every government irrespective of political colours — have developed this idea of promoting Brand Tagore. Even in a country where Amlasole has been synonymous with "hunger-death"or Irom Sharmila an icon of protecting human rights, the government does not think twice to announce a Rs 1-crore award for spreading the message of peace and brotherhood of Tagore!

Marketing Tagore is the best thing that India, especially Bengal, can do at this time of crisis — not financial, but mental — when we have lost our values, forget the industries. Tagore was the last one to show which way the Bengalis should go though we have drifted quite a few miles from it. "Mahajana jeno gata sa pantha" is the sloka we remember but never implement. Crores are spent on Tagore's birthday every year — and in the sesquicentennial year, we splurge it like never before — when nobody bothers how problems of unemployment can be addressed. Lakhs are doled out to local clubs by politicians — and we've seen many a hundred clubs are blessed by a particular party this season — so that late-night booze parties are held on the same stage where Rabindrasangeet, the quintessential Tagore mark, had been performed just 12 hours back! How can RJs on popular FM channels change this mindscape with innumerable songs played through the day like what we saw yesterday?