Hello readers
This is the blog to the response of the task assigned by Heena ma’am.As a part of our syllabus we are studying Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry.And today in this blog i am going to answer the question assigned by mam as a task.
There is no god in the temple....
Said the royal attendant, “Despite entreaties, king,
The finest hermit, best among men, refuses shelter
In your temple of gold, he is singing to god
Beneath a tree by the road. The devout surround him
In numbers large, their overflowing tears of joy
Rinse the dust off the earth. The temple, though,
Is all but deserted; just as bees abandon
The gilded honeypot when maddened by the fragrance
Of the flower to swiftly spread their wings
And fly to the petals unfurling in the bush
To quench their eager thirst, so too are people,
Sparing not a glance for the palace of gold,
Thronging to where a flower in a devout heart
Spreads heaven’s incense. On the bejewelled platform
The god sits alone in the empty temple.”
At this,
The fretful king dismounted from his throne to go
Where the hermit sat beneath the tree. Bowing, he said,
“My lord, why have you forsaken god’s mighty abode,
The royal construction of gold that pierces the sky,
To sing paeans to the divine here on the streets?’
“There is no god in that temple,” said the hermit.
Furious,
The king said, “No god! You speak like a godless man,
Hermit. A bejewelled idol on a bejewelled throne,
You say it’s empty?”
“Not empty, it holds royal arrogance,
You have consecrated yourself, not the god of the world.”
Frowning, said the king, “You say the temple I made
With twenty lakh gold coins, reaching to the sky,
That I dedicated to the deity after due rituals,
This impeccable edifice – it has no room for god!”
Said the tranquil hermit, “The year when the fires
Raged and rendered twenty thousand subjects
Homeless, destitute; when they came to your door
With futile pleas for help, and sheltered in the woods,
In caves, in the shade of trees, in dilapidated temples,
When you constructed your gold-encrusted building
With twenty lakh gold coins for a deity, god said,
‘My eternal home is lit with countless lamps
In the blue, infinite sky; its everlasting foundations
Are truth, peace, compassion, love. This feeble miser
Who could not give homes to his homeless subjects
Expects to give me one!’ At that moment god left
To join the poor in their shelter beneath the trees.
As hollow as the froth and foam in the deep wide ocean
Is your temple, just as bereft beneath the universe,
A bubble of gold and pride.”
Flaring up in rage
The king said, “You false deceiver, leave my kingdom
This instant.”
Serenely the hermit said to him,
“You have exiled the one who loves the devout.
Now send the devout into the same exile, king.”
The poem is about a sage who tells a king that the temple which has been built with "two million gold coins" does not have a God inside. Upon hearing this, the king gets angry, calls him an atheist, and asks if such a grand temple could be empty. The sage replies that it isn't empty but in fact filled with the king's pride.
The sage then reminds the king that it was wrong on his part to spend the riches in building a temple in the same year when the people of his kingdom were struck by a calamity and had nothing for themselves
1) The poem was written 120 years (approx.). Can you find any resemblance between the poem and the pandemic time?
Talking about the coincidence of the poem and the current situation of the Coronavirus pandemic and migrant issues in India, Lahiri said to The Telegraph,
“I found it extremely meaningful and topical. I saw the poem being shared by more and more people on social media. There are many non-Bengalis on my friend list. I thought they should also know the essence of the poem. I translated it in English and shared a second post in the afternoon."
So we find the resemblance between the poem and the pandemic.The poem talks about the conversation between the king and the hermit. Now it talks about the relevance of Ram Mandir, when our Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid down the first bricks of the much-contested Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. In the same manners of people are dying due to corona. Hospital has no bed, no oxygen cylinder and so many people meet death lack of doctors that time our kind was busy with making of that temple.Still others have questioned the need to perform such a ceremony at a time when the country is fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
2) Why do you think the King is angry with the Sage?
King is angry with the sage because sage is speaking about the harsh reality of the society and of the temple.
At this,
The fretful king dismounted from his throne to go
Where the hermit sat beneath the tree. Bowing, he said,
“My lord, why have you forsaken god’s mighty abode,
The royal construction of gold that pierces the sky,
To sing paeans to the divine here on the streets?’
“There is no god in that temple,” said the hermit.
These line is about the real image of society and the line was spoken by the Sage.so because of this reason king became angry.
3) Why do you think the Sage refuses to enter the temple?
The sage knew that when the people needed shelter, the king refused them to give shelter. At the same time the king thought that the sage would come to the temple because it is built with gold. No, God is not in any so-called golden temple. No God is in humanity, in compassion not in any temple. The sage is the true devotee of God. That’s why he refuses to enter the temple. Last line of the poem is very fascinating. It clears the whole idea.
The king said, “You false deceiver, leave my kingdom
This instant.”
Serenely the hermit said to him,
“You have exiled the one who loves the devout.
Now send the devout into the same exile, king.”
The sage said that by exiling people you also exiled God. Now I am a devotee of them and so exiled him also because God is not in the temple.So these line shows that how sage is speaking against the temple and God And because of this reason Sage refuses to enter the temple.
4) Can there be any connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayodhya Ram Mandir?
Yes we can find the connection between Ayodhya Mandir Nirman and this poem .In the poem, a saint reminds the king that he turned away from helping the suffering poor even as he built the temple at a cost of 2 million gold coins.
In the course of the conversation, the saint reminds the king that the poor masses were left devastated without food or shelter in a recent drought. At the time, the king had turned them away when they sought help but he is now glad to spend his gold on the grand temple.
The English translation of a 120-year-old poem by Nobel laureate and freedom fighter Rabindranath Tagore is going viral on social media, a day after the groundbreaking ceremony for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. While the event, which was led by PM Narendra Modi, has been celebrated by many, several others have expressed their grief at what this means for the secular fabric of the country. So this connection we find between poem and Ayodhya Mandir.
Thank you 😊
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