Year-long exhibition on Tagore and Gandhi at RBU
Kolkata: A year-long exhibition highlighting the mutual respect between Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi began at the Rabindra Bharati University here on Thursday, coinciding with the 78th death anniversary of Tagore.
The exhibition at the Jorasanko campus would showcase correspondence between the "two great souls of India", besides displaying archival photos, a university official said.
Christened 'Smarane barane Gurudev of Mahatma' (Remembering and recalling Gurudev and Mahatma), it would display a rare picture of Tagore's meeting with 'Bapu' (as Gandhiji used to be called) on March 6 in 1915 in Santiniketan for the first time, university Curator Baisakhi Mitra told PTI here.
"We are holding this exhibition to mark the death anniversary of Tagore and the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhi. An Annamalai, Director of National Gandhi Museum, will deliver a speech at the inauguration, dwelling on the respect shared by the two great souls of India," she said.
The exhibition, which will be open on all days except national holidays, has been organised to make the present generation aware of the relations between Tagore and Gandhi, RBU Vice-Chancellor Sabyasachi Basu Roy Chowdhury said.
There will be 22 panels having archival photos and correspondence - letters and telegrams - between the two personalities during the period from 1915 to 1941, she said.
Tagore breathed his last on August 7, 1941.
The exhibits have been sourced from the university's archive and also from the National Gandhi Museum.
"There is also the last correspondence between the two in May 1941 - Gandhi's telegram on 'Pochise Baisakh' (the date in Bengali calendar associated with Tagore's birthday) - and the poet's witty reply to the same. It is our prized possession," Mitra said.
The photos of Gandhi's first visit to Tagore's ancestral house at Jorasanko in 1901 to meet Maharshi Debendranath Tagore (Rabindranath Tagore's father) in the company of great Bengali thinker Shibnath Shastri will also be on display.
At the inauguration of the exhibition, singers would render Tagore's compositions such as 'Ekla Chalo Re', 'Jibon Nakhon sukaye jay' and 'Anadaloke Mangala loke' - which were favourite songs of Bapu.
'Anandaloke Mangala loke' was one of the prayer songs of Gandhiji's Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat, the curator said.
