How The Tribune shaped Tagore’s decision to return knighthood

The Tribune commemorates Jallianwala Bagh Centennial Year

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Tribune News Service

Shantiniketan, February 4

Rabindranath Tagore was awarded knighthood in 1915, two years after the poet received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He returned the title on May 31, 1919, to protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on April 13 — a decision, documents reveal, that was influenced by the bold stance taken by The Tribune, the arrest of its editor Kalinath Ray, and vital information passed on to him from Lahore by The Tribune’s functionaries.

“Ruchi Ram Sahni (a longtime Trustee of The Tribune) was giving various information about the Jallianwala Bagh incident to Banwari Lal Chaudhary (a Congressman from Punjab), who was passing these to Tagore. Rabindranath was becoming very restless by the news of the atrocities,” PC Mahalanobis, who was with Tagore all through the period immediately preceding the return of knighthood, wrote in a piece that was published on July 6, 1941, a month before Tagore’s death. Mahalanobis, a close associate of Tagore, was co-founder of the Indian Statistical Institute.

The papers pertaining to Tagore’s return of knighthood are preserved in a folder titled “Knighthood Files” in the digitised archives of Visva Bharati University at Shantiniketan.

Sahni, a Lahore-based pioneering scientist and social and political activist, was also a member of Lahore’s Dyal Singh College and Library. He was instrumental in giving the Nobel laureate a poignant description of the massacre, which prompted Tagore to give up knighthood.

Mahalanobis’ account, which was approved and signed by Tagore, is also backed by another book. In “Mongpu-te Rabindranath” (Rabindranath in Mongpu) that was published in 1943, Maitreyi Devi wrote that the poet, who was a guest at her residence in Mongpu hills, had mentioned that “Chaudhary” — a reference to Banwari Lal, who briefed Tagore on Sahni’s behalf — had told him about Jallianwala Bagh.

“It caused me insufferable pain. I felt I cannot go on living if I do not do anything,” Tagore was quoted by the Sahitya Akademi Award winning writer.

The excerpt from “Mongpu-te Rabindranath” was reproduced in an essay in Bengali magazine ‘Desh’ in 1948 by Amal Home, who too was from The Tribune family. Anticipating his arrest, Kalinath Ray had brought Home to Lahore to edit the paper in his absence.

On April 17, 1919 — four days after the massacre — Ray was arrested in Lahore. The Tribune remained closed for a while and when it resumed publishing, Home was in charge. In a letter to Home dated July 27, Tagore, who knew him well, wrote that he had heard that Ray was not keeping well in prison. In the essay, Home described how difficult it was to send any information to Bengal from Punjab due to the strict censorship imposed by the British.

Tagore’s niece Sarala Devi, who was married to a Congress leader from Punjab, Rambhuj Dutt Chaudhari, had written to Tagore about the situation in Punjab but the letter never reached the poet.

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