Anna Akhmatova (1889 – 1966)

“In common with thousands of his countrymen I owe much to one who by his poetic genius and singular purity of life has raised India in the estimation of the world.” “I regard the Poet as sentinel warning us against the approach of enemies called Bigotry, Lethargy, Intolerance, Ignorance, Inertia and other members of that…

Nicholas Roerich attest to Tagore’s popularity in Russia: “Gitanjali came like a revelation. The poems were read at gatherings and at private ‘at homes’. Only true talent could create such a precious mutual understanding. Now everyone at once became imbued with love for Tagore. It was evident how most contradictory people, the most irreconcilable psychologists…

“Nothing could exceed the simplicity and unpretentiousness of this visitor from an older world. He was content to take things as he found them, and did not expect one to discourse all day on philosophy… and he could on rarer occasions be prevailed upon to sing his songs to the veritable wild and beautiful Indian…

His white hair flowed softly down both sides of his forehead; the tufts of hair under the temples also were long like two beards, and linking up with the hair on his cheeks, continued into his beard, so that he gave an impression, to the boy I was then, of some ancient Oriental wizard.

C.H. Woolfe, Acting Colonial Secretary, introducing Tagore at Singapore’s Victoria Theatre on 25th July, 1927: “You have before you one of the world’s greatest men.”

“No wonder that Mr. Tagore appeals so strongly to the common heart of his people and that his songs are sung and understood in the villages of his province as well as in the churches of the Brahma Samaj.” “I should not have said that these song-offerings are ”one side” of him. They are, rather,…