Tagore's Vision of the Contemporary World (PDF)

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations organized an international seminar on Tagore in October 2011 in New Delhi to coincide with the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) to primarily focus on 'Tagore's Vision of the Contemporary World' 'where knowledge is free' and 'where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit' and also to discover, as says Tagore, the most profound unity, the spiritual unity between the races. The primary objective of the conference on Tagore was to bring Tagore into worldwide focus, who was not only seeking unity on a higher level between the Infinite and the finite but also seeking answers to many ticklish issues both social and political and at the same time spiritual and philosophical and dreaming at the same time as how to achieve Human Unity and bring peace. The seminar corroborated that today Asian and European cultural and civilizational traditions are seeking a sort of completion in one another not through a philosophical discourse or mutual cross-questioning but by creating a common space within which the voice of the one evokes a responsive echo in the other and the engaging issues of the contemporary world become a thing of concern for all of us of the East as well as the West.