New Delhi, Seems ‘History’ is being ‘repeated’ on the eve of “Baishe Shravan”- the day of demise of ‘Bard of Bengal’-Rabindranath Tagore.
The clairvoyance of a 120-year-old Bengali poem by the Nobel Laureate ‘stunned’ many on Wednesday, two days before the World poet’s day of depart, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed the ‘Bhoomi Pujan’ of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
In the poem ‘Deeno Daan’, written by Tagore in 1900, a sage tells the King that the temple he has build with “Two million golf coins” does not have God inside because it is full of “Royal pride”.
The sage reminds the King it was ‘inopportune’ to have spent the riches in building a temple in a year people hit by a calamity came begging at his door for help, “Only to be turned away”.
“With remarkable prescience that prophesied this year’s plight of the migrants and others in the aftermath of the Covid-19 Induced Lockdown, Tagore had written : “In the very year in which 20 million of your subjects were struck by a terrible drought…..pauperised masses without any food or shelter, came begging at your door crying for help, only to be turned away…. in that very year when you spent Two million gold coins to build that grand temple…..”
‘Deeno Daan’ is part of ‘Kahini’, an anthology of poems by Tagore written in 1900 (Bengali year 1307). According to Banajyotshna Lahiri a Presidency and JNU alumna, who figured among the ‘stunned audience’ said, “Is this a coincidence only, that only 120 years ago, on this very day, Tagore wrote the poem ‘Deeno Daan’ about a temple?