Contemporary Relevance of Rabindranath Tagore's Idea of Love in the Śāntiniketan Essays
Monday, April 18, 2022
2:00 PM in Humanities Gateway 1010
By Medha Bhattacharyya, PhD, Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence
Rabindranath Tagore was the first Nobel Laureate of Asia. His Śāntiniketan essays are among the least researched texts he has written. However, these essays are the closest to his mind. It has been found love and joy are themes common and synonymous in Rabindranath Tagore’s philosophy. In a world struck with hatred and division, Tagore’s thought reveals the importance of love in overcoming these divisive forces. This provides us with an impetus to explore the idea of love as represented in Tagore’s Śāntiniketan essays.
Dr Medha Bhattacharyya is an Assistant Professor, Department of Basic Science and Humanities (English) in Bengal Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India. Her book published recently by Routledge (London & New York) is titled: Rabindranath Tagore’s Śāntiniketan Essays: Religion, Spirituality and Philosophy. Her book has been declared as one of the ‘great reads for 2020’ by Amazon (USA) on 24 January 2020. She was the Academic Advisor for the entry on “Rabindranath Tagore” in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism series by Gale-Cengage, Vol. 324 (2016). She obtained the prestigious award of ‘Certificate of Appreciation’ from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology (formerly known as WBUT) on the occasion of Teachers’ Day 2018 celebration in West Bengal, India, for her outstanding contribution to “teaching, learning and research”. She has been invited to deliver talks in India and abroad including at Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. Her current research areas involve Rabindranath Tagore Studies, Translation Studies and South Asian Diaspora Studies.