Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore visited Sikh temple during Vancouver visit

by Charlie Smith on August 9th, 2013 at 3:55 PM

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Bengali poet, essayist, and songwriter Rabindranath Tagore was a literary giant of the early 20th century, becoming the first non-European ever to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

And according to local cultural historian Naveen Girn, he visited the West 2nd Avenue Sikh temple when he visited Vancouver in 1929.

Girn, research curator of the Surrey Art Gallery, told the Georgia Straight that while Tagore was at the temple (which is now on Ross Street), a photograph was taken of him surrounded by local admirers.

"The community knew he was coming," Girn revealed. "They brought together different community leaders—some from the island, and from Vancouver, and also Reverend [Charles Freer] Andrews."

Andrews, an Anglican priest, was a supporter of South Asians' right to vote and the Indian independence movement. He was a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi and was portrayed in Richard Attenborough's biopic of the Indian independence leader.

Tagore was aware of Ghadar activists

This year marks the centenary of Tagore winning the Nobel Prize in 1913.

It's also the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Ghadar party of Indian independence activists along the west coast of North America. Several went back to India to support an armed struggle to try to force the British out of India.

"They passed articles by Tagore, too," Girn said. "They were very proud of him because he was a Nobel laureate."

The following year, Canadian immigration officials refused to allow more than 350 South Asian passengers on the Komagata Maru to disembark in Vancouver. The ship was sent back to India, where several were shot by British soldiers.

Tagore renounced his knighthood in 1919 after British Brig.-Gen. Reginald Dyer oversaw the massacre of peaceful demonstrators at the Jallianwala Bagh Garden in Amritsar in 1919.

This official death toll was 379 and another 1,100 were reported wounded. To this day, Britain has refused to apologize for the mass shooting, which was depicted in Attenborough's film.

Nehru also dropped by the temple

The Hotel Vancouver hosted then-Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira (a future prime minister) when they visited Vancouver in November 1949.

"He came to Vancouver because he knew about the community here," Girn said. "He knew about the Komagata Maru; he knew about the Ghadar party. They had been sending him updates about what was happening in the community."

Girn said that Nehru also spoke at the West 2nd Avenue gurdwara during his visit.

"He talks in the speech about the assassination of Gandhiji [Mahatma Gandhi], partition, and how South Asians living in Canada need to take an active life in Canadian life and not to ghettoize themselves. So before [Pierre] Trudeau, he’s talking about this idea of multiculturalism and how people should live together."

Comments

9 Comments

Michael Puttonen

Aug 9, 2013 at 11:36pm

My copy of Tagore's "The Gardener", bought in Victoria, is inscribed

"To Laura with love, From Allan Watson, April 4, 1929"

Laura was undoubtedly a Tagore devotee. She pasted on the inside flyleaf a photograph of Tagore on a dias in Victoria surrounded by a selection of "the quality", men in top hats, the ladies in furs. She must have taken it herself.

On the back flyleaf she's written,

"Visited Victoria & Vancouver, April 1929. Met him in Vancouver at Hotel Vancouver at musical party."

On the inside of the back cover she pasted Tagore's 1941 obituary.

The monograph that is linked-to at the end of the article says that at the end of Tagore's visit to the Temple on April 11, "the ceremony concluded with a hymn, and the poet returned to the Hotel Vancouver, where he is resting." We're also told that the line-ups for tickets to his speaking engagements stretched for blocks along Georgia.

When Tagore visited the Temple for the first time, he'd been in Vacouver for three days already.

The monograph also says that Tagore was the keynote speaker at the National Council of Education of Canada conference on the 14th. On the the 16th he was seen off upon his departure by Their Excellencies the Governal General and his wife, Lord and Lady Willingdon, whereupon his train departed for Los Angeles. Good ol' L.A., in the U.S.A.

Tagore was a star, he was world-famous by the time he was nineteen, he was quite simply one of the most amazing men any nation, not just India, has produced. He was a Knight of the Realm and Prince of Bengal. He was in town for a series of sold-out speaking engagements. He wasn't refused at the Hotel Van. If he was - prove it please.

Tagore adored Sikhism - didn't he suggest that the point of unity for Hindus and Moslems in a united, free India should be a common admiration the Sikhs - so if he did sleep in the basement of the gurdwara, it was by choice, a great spiritual poet's gesture of faith and love, an act of inspiration, not oppression...

Michael Puttonen

Aug 10, 2013 at 4:58pm

Oh...one more bit of pedantry...it wasn't his Nobel that Tagore renounced in 1919 after the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh...it was his Knighthood. Here's part of his letter to the British Viceroy...

"...This callousness has been praised by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, which have in some cases gone to the brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least check from the same authority, relentlessly careful in something every cry of pain of judgment from the organs representing the sufferers. Knowing that our appeals have been in vain and that the passion of vengeance is building the noble vision of statesmanship in out Government, which could so easily afford to be magnanimous, as befitting its physical strength and normal tradition, the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror.

The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.

And these are the reasons which have compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due reference and regret, to relieve me of my title of knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration. Yours faithfully,..."

One hell of a man.

Charlie Smith

Aug 10, 2013 at 6:22pm

Thanks Mike I've changed it.
Charlie Smith

Michael Puttonen

Aug 11, 2013 at 9:08am

Charlie – First let me thank you for unexpectedly re-igniting my youthful passion for the great Tagore. The GS headline is wrong, though, and it’s popping up, of course, on every little “Tagore” search I do...that’s the power of ‘churnalism’ to re-write history.

The Canadian Theosophist magazaine, Vol. X., No. 3 May 15, 1929, discusses the Tagore visit extensively. Note this, dateline May 1, 1929....

“It is just three weeks since I had an interview with Sir Rabindranath Tagore in his private suite at the Hotel Vancouver. Of that meeting, I have set down nothing in writing, and did not intend to do so, until the Editor of the Canadian Theosophist suggested that I might prepare something for the perusal of the readers of his magazine..."

Tagore was not refused a room at the Hotel Vancouver. He had a suite of rooms in fact. The Hotel Van was “headquarters” for he and his party (the eminent C.F. Andrews etc.) during his week in Vancouver.

In “Tagore in the United States” by Dr. Rajat Chanda gives this description of Tagore’s reason for not staying in the USA but for his trip down the coast from Van to L.A.:

“During the tour of 1929, Rabindranath received invitations from several U.S. cities, and eventually arrived at Los Angeles. It was the encounter with immigration officials at this port of entry that offended Tagore greatly (translator's note: he was detained for half an hour, asked questions such as if he had any criminal record, and finger-printed, among other acts of humiliation). Abruptly cutting his visit short, he decided to go to Japan instead. "I am sorry I must take back this memory of American bad manners," he said later. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that he was detained for several hours by U.S. customs in 1912.”

O.k.... Tagore was not refused entry to the USA. He was merely treated like shit, and not for the first time, either, but rather than take any more shit from the Americans, he told them to take their country and shove it for a while (he returned to USA the very next year for a lecture tour).

So, for that headline, which is obviously wrong...how about something like "Nobel Laureate's deep ties to Sikhism reafirmed during 1929 Visit to Vancouver"? Except less trite, I guess. I'm sure you'll come up with sump'n.

Cheers, MP

Charlie Smith

Aug 11, 2013 at 12:08pm

Hi Mike,

I based my story on an interview with Naveen Girn, as you can see above. I've adjusted the headline and the copy to address your comments. Thanks for setting the record straight.

cathy

Aug 11, 2013 at 10:56pm

i guess it's been clarified that he stayed at the Hotel Van but the photo caption still has him sleeping at the Sikh Temple after being refused by the hotel.

Anyways the Hotel Van regularly refused black entertainers like Louis Armstrong. Armstrong even stayed with the Fiippones of Penthouse "fame" back in the 40's or 50's as he couldn't get a hotel room.

Have a feeling that Tagore staying at the Hotel Vancouver was a big exception to a "whites only" policy.

Michael Puttonen

Aug 12, 2013 at 9:42am

Tagore did more than just "drop by".

The real story is that this man, born to great wealth gave it all away, then used his world-wide fame to make more money, and gave that away, too. If there was a colour-bar at the Hotel Van, it didn't exist for Tagore. He had immense cultural influence, and carried a massive moral power in the Commonwealth & Empire. Yet, he took most of the day on April 11, 1929 to make his way to the Temple to express his solidarity with the Sikh community of B.C..

He didn't "drop by". He spent his childhood summers away from Bengal in Amritsar, and he went to Temple every night. On West Second, he was welcomed like family, and he spoke to the assembled as family. He envisioned a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, democratic India. He knew that Sikhs got a raw deal in the Punjab and in Canada. He thought that the tenets of Guru Nanak provided the foundation, or a model for such a state.

Tagore was a member of the 1% who road the elevator down from the penthouse to join the Occupy crowd. He knew that wasn't perfect, but it was better than just staying in the penthouse. It is entirely like him to spend the night at the gurdwara...but by choice, always by choice.

I think the only man I would compare him to, man to man, would be Frederick Douglass. A sort of man that simply doesn't exist today.

"dropped by" is pitiful.

On the bright side, I've made a deal with my distributor this weekend to publish Tagore in audio book. Listen for him in 2014 from Post Hypnotic Press.