The Biography of Famous Personalities of India will tell you about the controversies, the dark sides of a person that you may have never heard of.
Tagore Versus Gandhi and Mind Without Fear
Tagore Versus Gandhi
“No two persons could possibly differ so much as Gandhi and Tagore. ” – Jawaharlal Nehru
Tagore greatly admired Gandhi but he had many disagreements with him on a variety of subjects, including nationalism, patriotism, the importance of cultural exchange, the role of rationality and of science, and the nature of economic and social development.
Mahatma Gandhi and the Bengali born poet Rabindranath Tagore were friends for over forty years and this friendship led them to name each other. Gandhi called Tagore Gurudev and Tagore gave Gandhi the title of Mahatma. Yet they disagreed strongly over the best way for India to achieve independence.
Tagore objected the burning of foreign cloth because it was foreign. Gandhi stressed the need for Indian self-sufficiency in every sphere of life. The poet was also sceptical concerning other features central to Gandhi’s agenda, like the latter’s prescription that everyone should spin as a part of their daily routine. Tagore failed to see what would be gained by people better suited for other work struggling to become clumsy spinners.
Tagore believed that India had a message for the world, but he thought that India must also incorporate others’ messages into her own cultural repertoire. Like Gandhi, Tagore believed that inner Swaraj and cultivation of the self was vital.
Tagore was also not a supporter of the non¬cooperation movement as he felt the end result of disassociation from the British would be futile, since the future would only lead back to assimilation. Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore differed in this way in their thinking on how to free India. Tagore and Gandhi, however, had a fond affinity for one another.
Although Tagore stayed out of politics he remained a good friend of Gandhi. In fact, it was Tagore who would often persuade Gandhi to give up his fasts in the interest of the nation.
Tagore remonstrated him eloquently on how he would be able to do more service alive than dead. Gandhi consulted Tagore regarding methods of liberating India, stating that knowing his best friend was spiritual with him sustained him in the midst of the storms he entered.
Mind Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held
high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
-From The Book Gitanjali