In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was awarded the Nobel award and Prize for Literature. He was the first non-European to receive it. His coming by the Nobel created much excitement not only in India but outside it as well. Rabindranath, not at all known outside India before the publication of his Gitanjali in its English version in November 1912 from London, made millions of people sit up and take notice of him through the prize.
Story of Nobel Award
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), a reputed Irish poet even before 1913 and eventually a Nobel laureate himself, in 1923, was a great admirer of Rabindranath during his Gitanjali days, though he did not rejoice at the declaration of the Nobel Committee on November 13, 1913. A study of Nobel nominations will perhaps give us an idea of the process involved. On 10 December every year the year’s laureate has to receive the prize and deliver a lecture. Very recently the web site of the Nobel Committee released a wealth of information that gives us a fresh perspective on the Nobel process itself.
Let us take a look at the nominations for Nobel Literature Prizes from India and Bangladesh from 1901 to 1950. A name that was sent up five times, the highest in our perspective, was that of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), the noted philosopher. He was nominated in the five years between 1933 and 1937 by Hjalmar Hammarskjold, a member of the Swedish Academy. Additionally, between those years there were some more nominations — for Devadatta R Bhandarkar, a professor of History and Sanskrit at Calcutta University by Hari Mohan Banerjee in 1936, for instance. In the following year the name of Satyendranath Sen, a professor of Literature, was put forth by Bensadhar Majumdar. In 1938, Sanjib Chaudhuri was nominated by Professor Mahmoud Hasan of Dhaka University. Sanjib Chaudhuri obtained a second nomination in 1939 from Professor K R Danungo of the Department of History, Dhaka University. Mukundadeb Chatterjee nominated Bensador Mazumder in 1939 for the second time. In 1939, Sri Aurobindo was proposed by Francis Younghusband, member of the Royal Society of Literature, London. But before all these nominations came the name of Roby Datta (1883-1917) from two individuals, Raya Yatindra N Choudhury of the Bengal Academy of Literature and Mano M Gangedy of Indian Royal Asiatic Society of London. It may be mentioned here that Roby Datta’s Echoes from East and West, published from Cambridge University in 1909, included eleven poems and songs of Rabindranath. It is interesting that Rabindranath never proposed a name for the Nobel from India or from any other country, though he obtained the right to nominate after winning the prize in 1913.
It is a well-known fact that among the eighteen members of the Nobel Literature Committee, only the Orientalist Esaias Henrik Vilhelm Tegner (1843-1928) knew Bangla. Save for him, Gitanjali could make no impression on the other members. But one person who was most impressed was Verner von Heidenstam (1859-1940), a well known poet of Sweden later awarded the Nobel in 1916. It is generally less known that Heidenstam also was nominated in the year 1913 beside Rabindranath. It is noteworthy that his name had earlier been proposed in 1909, 1911 and 1912 and afterwards in 1915 too. In 1913, Heidenstam’s name was proposed by Fredrik Wulff, a reputed professor and linguist of Sweden. Wulff proposed the name of another Swedish writer, Sven Hedin, (1865-1952) as well. Heidenstam, a poet senior to Rabindranath, was deeply impressed by Gitanjali.
Now let us take a look at the case of W. B Yeats, who attained the Nobel in Literature for 1923. Many people, with and without hesitation, easily suggest that it was Yeats who polished the text of Gitanjali as a result of which the work was able to draw the attention of the Nobel Committee. Yeats’ name was first proposed for the Nobel in 1902. He was subsequently nominated in 1914, 1915, 1918 and 1921. In 1922, the Nobel Committee itself proposed his name, to no avail. In the following year, 1923, again the committee made the proposal.