TAGORE AND RUSSIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 424, 15 November 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

TAGORE AND RUSSIA

It will be interesting to know what | the Indian puct liabamrunaih lagjie makes of Soviet Russia. lie is on a visit there now, and since he is a travelled man, no greenhorn to be taken in by a set piece, we may be quite sure that he will have something intelligent to say about Communism and the Bolshevik’s attempt to make Communism a practical social system. Moscow, no doubt, will make much of Air iagorc both because he is a distinguished writer and because he is an Indian, i'or the {Soviet Government sees in the present unrest in Asia a symptom ol that world revolution i’or which it so devoutly hopes and works, and is especially inclined to look through Afghanistan towards India, partly, perhaps, out of genuine sympathy with j subject peoples, but partly, too, because its foreign policy is strangely ! like that of old Imperial Russia. The ! Soviet Government, however, is not likely to get much change out of Dr. I Tagore; for his nationalism —and he is a nationalist, probably more so at this time than ever before in his career — is a good deal more complex than, for instance, the younger Nehru’s, who was so greatly impressed by the Bolsheviks a few years ago. He has never thrown in his lot with the Congress party, though the Non-Co-operators demonstrate and go to prison with his songs on their lips; and if, philosophically, he is in revolt against the West he often visits Europe and is thoroughly conversant with its art and literature. Altogether Mr Tagore is a remarkable figure —poet and prophet, held in greater esteem outside his country than in it. He probably bears the same sort of relationship to the national movement in India as the poets of the Celtic revival bore to Sinn Fein; and his ancient India is perhaps as imaginative as their Celtic twilight. —Waikato Timos.