Keeping Tagore’s Legacy Alive with New-Age Digitisation

Project ‘Bichitra’, a unique technology initiative, is collating all the legendary works of Rabindranath Tagore.

E-Version of Tagore’s Works

• Project titled Bichitra sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, part of Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations
• There was a strong need to create a worthwhile electronic edition of the literary genius’ works
• Procuring the material was a daunting task which included sourcing books and manuscripts from across the world
• The technological strengths of the project has sparked off a great interest among those keen on database technology

Today is Rabindranath Tagore’s 74th death anniversary. His rich legacy, which was digitised two years ago, will soon boast 3,00,000 hits.

It has been a stupendous journey for the team from the School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University, which created the world’s single biggest integrated data resource on just one prominent writer. It is a knowledge site with all the parts created in one go and interlinked.

Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India with the collaboration of Rabindra - Bhavana, Santiniketan, the project titled Bichitra, which means ’the various’, was part of Rabindranath Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations. There was a strong need to create a worthwhile electronic edition of the literary genius’ works.

The project was co-ordinated by Jadavpur University’s Professor Emeritus Sukanta Chaudhuri , an internationally renowned scholar of English literature of the Renaissance period, who has also extensively  translated Tagore’s works. Chaudhuri was supported by renowned poet Sankho Ghosh, a Tagore scholar and retired professor of Bengali, Jadavpur University. The team comprised 30 full-time members together with a few consultants. All the hands-on project workers were under the age of 35.

A Challenging Task

Interestingly, this isn’t just the marriage of art and technology but a remarkable combination of youth and experience. Two generations of readers and scholars of Tagore as well as computer scientists have worked together to create this electronic variorum of Tagore’s writings. Different versions of the text would now be readily available.

It was a long road filled with challenges. The team had to obtain different versions of Tagore’s texts. For instance, there were 12 manuscripts of Raktakarabi or Red Oleanders  before the play was finally staged. Bisarjan or Sacrifice had 8 different printed versions produced over 40 years as Tagore, the master craftsman was constantly revising his own creations. The poem with which Tagore came into his own, Nirjhorer Swapnabhanga or The Fountain Awakens from its Dream, has 260 lines in its longest version. Tagore kept shortening it and five decades later the same poem was reduced to 30 lines.

“At Bichitra we have preserved images of nearly all manuscripts and important printed texts showing variations. There is a total of almost 1,40,000 images”

— Professor Emeritus Sukanta Chaudhuri, Jadavpur University

Procuring the material was a daunting task. While a large number of printed books and manuscripts were available at Rabindra - Bhavana in Santiniketan, Harvard University had a collection of early drafts of English manuscripts which Tagore had shared with his friend, painter William Rothenstein. Printed journals were also sourced from  the National Library, the Calcutta University, the Bangiya Sahitya Parishat and the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta.

“We were fortunate to get the first Macmillan edition of Tagore’s Gitanjali for which he got the Nobel Prize in 1913. One of our project staff found it in the Senate House Library of London University. With a handheld camera, he photographed the entire book,” recollects Chaudhuri.

The value addition that Bichitra offers is first, the search engine which has probably the most elaborate hyperconcordance, the list of words used by an author linked to the texts where they appear. Second,  collation, a programme seen as its biggest achievement, allowing comparison between the different versions of a text. Large texts can be dealt with at three levels. Chapters, paragraphs within chapters and words within paragraphs. Third, a hugely comprehensive bibliography, again linked to the texts it lists.

Chaudhuri reiterates this project was successful because of the manner in which art and technology flourish side by side in Jadavpur University. It was on the campus itself that the highly complex software was developed.

Journey of Learning

For the first time in India, Jadavpur University has introduced a one-year course in digital humanities and cultural informatics. King’s College in London is the only one in the world which has a full-fledged department of digital humanities.

While researchers now have access to original manuscripts and later revisions by the iconic literary figure, the technological strengths of the project have sparked off a great interest among those keen on database technology. Last year Chaudhuri addressed a conference on ‘Digital Humanities’ at Lausanne in Switzerland.

For the professor and Tagore scholar, Bichitra has been a journey of learning. “This project has been the most exciting and rewarding work that I have done in my life and that too after my retirement,” he adds with a sense of satisfaction.

Later this year, a book documenting the making of Bichitra will be published by Springer Verlag, one of the world’s largest scientific publishers.

(The writer is a Kolkata-based senior journalist.)