Rabindranath Tagore remains an enduring presence in the intellectual and artistic landscape of South Asia and beyond. His multifaceted legacy, spanning poetry, music, drama, fiction, creative nonfiction, painting, education, and political thought, offers not just a body of work, but a way of thinking and being. This special issue on his 165th birth anniversary invites contributors to engage personally and creatively with the question: What does Tagore mean to you as a creative writer, artist and thinker?
This is not a call for conventional academic exegesis. Instead, it is an invitation for deeply personal, reflective contributions that explore how Tagore’s ideas, aesthetics, and ethical commitments have shaped one’s creative and/or intellectual journey. The question we ask potential contributors is: how does one internalize and carry forward the Tagorean spirit in the contemporary world which is confronted with the crises arising from global conflicts, the dangers posed by climate change and inequality?
Tagore’s influence has been unobtrusive, but persuasive and persistent, his writing reflecting the rhythm of life itself. His deep humanism and belief in freedoms, has taught us to resist the tyranny of the outer world and embrace fluidity, pluralism and our innate imaginative impulse. His recognition of the unavoidable interplay between solitude and community, between the individual spirit and the collective song, mirrors the struggle of writers and artists in us as we strive to balance the need for private reflection with the urgency of public engagement.
Tagore’s prose and poetry have helped us to understand the power of emotional restraint — how profound feelings can reside in simple metaphors, how political resistance can dwell within a lyric. His meditations on the natural world, on love and mortality, on colonialism and nationalism, continue to collectively offer a model for integrated thinking. He reminds us that the creative act is not merely a reaction to the world, but a re-creation of it — infused with empathy, curiosity, the consciousness of truth and a cry for positive change.
This issue will welcome diverse voices from around the world – of poets, fiction writers, essayists, artists, playwrights, educators, environmentalists, historians and philosophers and the work of artists—reflecting on how Tagore has influenced their thinking and creativity. Contributions can take the form of personal essays, lyrical reflections, creative nonfiction, artwork and diverse hybrid forms. We are especially interested in pieces that do not merely praise Tagore, but enter into a dialogue with him on different aspects of his work.
How has Tagore imbued your sense of language, of beauty, of purpose? How do you view his legacy across boundaries of culture, caste, gender, and ideology? In a time when the humanities, the arts and culture are under threat of being considered dispensable, what does it mean to hold on to Tagore’s vision of the world as ‘a prayer of the soul for the light of the divine’
This special issue hopes to create a space for the freedoms we value – of expression and creativity as we bear witness to the continuing impact of one of the greatest literary minds of the modern era in Rabindranath Tagore.
Each entry will need to be preceded by two reflective lines on how Rabindranath has influenced/inspired the piece being submitted to this issue of Gitanjali and Beyond. We will welcome poems of not more than 32 lines with up to 3 poems by a poet, prose pieces with a word limit of 2,000 words and up to three items of artwork by an artist. This issue will not publish reviews or academic articles. Please submit your entries over the following email address:
- [email protected]
- Please mention “165th Birth Anniversary Issue of Tagore” in the subject line of your email.
- Please attach with the email your submission as a word document formatted strictly according to the MHRA Style Sheet.
- Please follow the MHRA Style Guide for prose submissions.
- Please also submit a 150-word biography from each contributor.
