Tagore in Urbana

Our worship theme for April 2025 is Joy. That’s also the April theme for our Soul Matters groups. Included in this month's Soul Matters materials is a quote in the Wise Words section from Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The quote reads: 

 I slept and dreamt that life was joy.

 I awoke and saw that life was service.

 I acted and, behold, service was joy.

In the early Twentieth Century, Rabindranath Tagore visited Urbana twice and delivered lectures at the Unitarian Church on Oregon & Mathews Street. That church, of course, is now the home of the Channing-Murray Foundation. 

In the autumn of 1912, Rabindranath Tagore accompanied his son, Rathindranath, and daughter-in-law, Pratima, to Urbana, where his son worked on his graduate degree. The younger Tagore had earned a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture Science at the University of Illinois in 1909. Contradictions in the multiple sources about that the visit make it difficult to be precise about the dates and titles of Tagore’s presentations, but perhaps, on November 9, his program was “The Bible of the World: The Upanishads of India.” On November 10, 17, 24, and December 1, 1912, the elder Tagore probably spoke on “World Realisation”, “Self-Realisation”, “Realisation of Brahma”, and “The Problem of Evil”. 

In his own words, Rabindranath Tagore describes his first visit to Urbana.

“For a long time after arriving in America I kept quietly to a corner of a room in a small town called Urbana, unavailable to everyone. But the people of this country have a mania for listening to lectures. Those around me were constantly insisting on my giving a lecture. To begin with I remained firm, because I was absolutely certain that if I were to lecture in the English language, I could not possibly keep my dignity. … In the end I could not refuse a request to say something to an Urbana club called the Unity Club. It is a small kind of place, not very formidable and with a limited membership, and I somehow accepted. Then, after writing out my talk and going there, I found the hall packed with people. Escape was impossible. When my reading was over everyone congratulated me. That gave me courage and I went on to read five papers to that group, one after the other. “

In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first non-European and Indian citizen to do so.  He was, in fact, the first Indian to win any Nobel Prize.

Tagore returned to Urbana in December 1916 and again spoke at the Unitarian Church. Some of his talks during that visit included “Personality and Art”, “World Personality”, “The Second Birth”, “Western Nationalism”, and “Nationalism in India”. The Unitarian minister, Rev. A. R. Vail, seems to have been pleased to share the pulpit, as he gave a number of sermons and analytical talks in the following decade drawn from Tagore’s writings, including his poetry.

According to their website, the Annual Tagore Festival commemorates the Nobel Laureate’s visit to Urbana. “Tagore’s creative genius has been celebrated here over the years with novel presentations of music, art, poetry, prose, and his overall philosophy. The Tagore Festival presents a unique, cross-cultural forum within which the Champaign-Urbana community explores Tagore’s legacy in the global context.”