Remembering Rabindranath Tagore Volume - High Commission of ...

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Remembering Rabindranath Tagore
Ravana (1949) and Nala Damayanti (1950). Premakumara produced Selalihini Sandesaya (1948)
and Titta Bata ( 1953). The other major figure of Sinhala ballet is Vasantha Kumara, who
also had studied at Santiniketan. His major works were Kumburu Panatha and Hiroshima
produced during the late 1950’s. These three artistes were teachers to many young dancers
during the 1960’s and the ‘70’s. Chitrasena founded a school of dancing in Colombo and it
is active even today.
Sri Lankan students of music were also attracted to Santiniketan in the 1930 and the
‘40’s. Thus we can mention Edwin Samaradiwakara, Surya Shankar Molligoda, Ananda
Samarakoon, Sunil Shanta, Lionel Edirisinghe and W.B. Makuloluwa, who after their return
to the island became major figures in the Sinhala art world. Samaradiwakara was appointed
the leader of the Radio Ceylon orchestra, Molligoda taught at Sri Palee, Samarakoon was the
creator of Sri Lanka's national anthem , Sunil Shanta along with Samarakoon were creators
of a national idiom of music and Edirisinghe became the head of the music section of the
Government College of Fine Arts and Makuloluwa became the chief inspector of Music in
the Department of Education. Several Sri Lankan painters were also trained at Santiniketan.
Ananada Samarakoon in addition to being a musician was also an accomplished painter. Of
the other painters who studied at Santiniketan the most famous was Somabandhu who was
also the costume designer for the ballets of Chitrasena and Premakumar. His paintings
adorn the famous modern temple at Bellanwila in the outskirts of Colombo.
Tagore’s poetry too has influenced our poets. His Gitanjali has been translated into Sinhala
many times. Several poets of the Colombo School of Sinhala poetry were inspired by
Tagore’s poetry. Prominent among them were P.B. Alwis Perera and H.M. Kudaligama.
Perera’s Sobadahama (1942) in particular displays attempts to imitate Tagore’s philosophy . A
factor which precluded the Sinhala poets from being fully immersed in the spirit of Tagorian
poetry is the dissonance between the theistic belief system which was the foundation
of Tagore’s poetic sensibility which was incompatible with the atheistic philosophy of
Buddhism which formed the belief system of the Sinhala poets, making their works appear
unnatural and pretentious. (19)
In Sri Lanka there was a total acknowledgement of Tagore’s position as a great Indian artist
and philosopher and his nationalistic thinking, particularly his exhortations in the cause of
indigenous culture, found a ready response from many a young man in Sri Lanka. In one of
his speeches during the visit of 1934 Tagore had stated,
I thought it was my mission to come to Ceylon to spread
this message of our Oriental culture to those who by
some unfortunate external circumstance have forgotten
their own past and who are ready to disown their richest
inheritance. (20)