The place of Tamil in propagating Rabindranath Tagore's works is pre-eminent. Almost 80 per cent of his works have been translated into Tamil, and Chennai-based Alliance Publishers were the first regional publishers to get the rights from the poet himself for Tamil translation.
However, the contribution of two brothers — T.N. Kumaraswamy and T.N. Senapathy — was unique, as they translated his works directly from the Bengali.
A. Srinivasaraghavan, a legendary English professor, who made equally valuable contribution to the Tamil language, translated over 100 poems of Tagore into Tamil. V.R.M. Chettiyar is another Tagore ‘bhakta', who dedicated his entire life to translating and propagating the poet in Tamil Nadu even in the face of a financial crisis.
Kumaraswamy, a novelist and short story writer, learnt Bengali on his own and mastered the language. He taught Bengali to his younger brother and both did the translation for Alliance Publishers.
“My father met Tagore at Viswabharathi in the 1930s and obtained permission for translation. He did most of the translation while his brother Senapathy also contributed,” says K. Aswin Kumar, son of Kumaraswamy.
Alliance publishers brought out 25 volumes of Tagore in Tamil and have reprinted them now on the occasion of the 150 birth anniversary of the Nobel-winning poet-dramatist.
When the birth centenary of Prof A. Srinivasaraghavan was celebrated in 2005, his works in six volumes were published and the sixth volume contained his translation of 120 poems of Tagore.
“Though Srinivasaraghavan translated his poems from English, he took the help of Rabindranath Bhattacharya, a biologist who worked for the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Tuticorin to ensure that he retained the beauty and rhythm of the Bengali language in translation,” said Vijaya Thiruvengadam, former director of the All India Radio, who was one of the member of the centenary celebrations committee.
Karaikudi-based V.R.M. Chettiyar was smitten by the poet when he listened to Tagore giving a talk on the “message of the forest” at St Joseph College, Tiruchi, in 1914. “I was too young to understand much of what he spoke,” Chettiyar had recalled in an article in Thai Nadu magazine in 1948.
Chettiyar's next experience with Tagore was in Saigon in 1929. Giving a detailed account of Tagore's visit, Chettiyar and his friend succeeded in inviting Tagore to the first anniversary of the Murugananda Vasagasalai (Library). This piece was reproduced in the literary magazine ‘Kavitha Mandalam' in February last.
Prof R.M. Ramanathan, who knew Chettiyar, said he ran a publishing house to print Tagore's works. “But he was not able to sell them. He was in dire straits and sold them to a waste paper merchant in Karaikudi,” Mr Ramanathan said.
The caption for the photograph accompanying this article has been corrected
