Ronger Rabindranath

I have been searching for a few days for articles and essays written by Tagore especially those elaborating more on the nature and importance of art for man and the world which he inhabits.



While at that I happened to stumble across an interesting article that took me into a unique and as yet unknown aspect of Tagore; his vision and his private world of colours triggered by a “partial colour vision deficiency” he had since childhood.

In the book: ‘Tagore of Colours/ A Study of the Use of Colour in the Writings and Art of Rabindranath Tagore’ Ketaki Kushari Dyson and Sushobhan Adhikary (Ronger Rabindranath/ Rabindranather Sahitye o Chitrakalay Ronger Byabahar) explore the impact of this colour deficiency on Tagore’s paintings, on his language and also provide beautiful evidences of how the man wove his “deficiency” into unique perceptions that manifest into fabulous words and poetry that evoked an imagery like none other…


You can read the complete article here:


Some excerpts:

If Tagore was a protanope, then he was arguably the greatest protanopic creative genius the world has ever seen.
I learned for the first time in my life that Tagore had probably had a partial colour vision deficiency, the kind known as protanopia, in which the wavelengths of light that we see as the colour red are lost to the eye, and there is confusion between red and green in perception. It is not an illness, just a genetically inherited condition. There is no ‘cure’ for it.

It seemed obvious to us, however, that a colour vision deficiency was bound to ‘colour’ a person’s entire psychology of perception, and if that person was a poet, a writer, an artist, it would surely have important consequences in his writings and art. Perception is indeed a private process, each person being his or her own processor, but when the perceiver is also a compulsive communicator, we are inevitably allowed innumerable glimpses into that private chamber.


He tends to refer to reds in a roundabout, often anomalous, manner. When describing sunsets and sunrises, he frequently feels frustrated and helpless, and concentrates on the colour golden. He talks about the leaves of the krishnachura (the gulmor, about rain on them, sunlight through them, their branches at night, but never about the dazzling beauty of their red flowers. Red, which he probably perceived as a darkness, as an absence of colour, is used by him regularly in negative associations and contexts.
In Tagore’s colour symbolism blue is existence, blue is rup,blue is lavanya,blue is ananda.Red is often unknown, unseen, a-jana, a-dekha,associated with duhkha and vyatha.Indeed, once we delve into the depths of his mature texts we realize that Tagore is often acknowledging his problematic vision of red, but only obliquely. “Tomar ashoke kingshuke/ alakshyo rong laglo amar akaroner sukhe” - “In your ashok and kingshuk an invisible colour touches my happiness without reason” - so he says to Phagun, the first month of spring.
My purpose here is to whet your appetite for the details, which will enable you to look at Tagore’s themes and images (both verbal and visual) in a new light. If you allow us to take you on a conducted tour of the colour-world of the man who wrote: “Aaj shobar ronge rong mishate hobe”- “Today I must blend my colours with everyone else’s colours”, many lines of Tagore with which you are already familiar will reveal new vistas of meaning.