Deeno Daan: Rabindranath Tagore

 Hello Readers! 

I am Nidhi Jethava and a student of MK Bhavnagar University. In this blog I am going to discuss a very interesting and controversial poem by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore named ‘Deeno Daan’. This poem is originally written in Bengali. Tagore's original date mark is at 20th of Shravan, 1307, which happened to fall on August 5th of this year. 

Poem :-

‘There is no god in that temple, said the hermit’: Rabindranath Tagore

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.”

1) The poem was written 120 years (approx.). Can you find any resemblance between the poem and the pandemic time? 

Answer :- 

The poem ‘ Deeno Daan’ discusses the same situation in this corona pandemic time also. We  have the same situation in this century. As we all know this 2020 year has brought a pandemic named corona. The same event happened in India in Ayodhya. In this poem there is very interesting talk between the hermit and king.  The king wanted the holy hermit to stay in the golden temple but the hermit refused to live there because there is no God in the temple. Temple has the pride and power of a king. God was exiled when kind refused to give shelter when their citizens had no shelter. The hermit said that, at that time with civilians God also exiled.  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. Thousands 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 #Mandir_Nirman. 

2) Why do you think the King is angry with the Sage?

Answer :- 

Hermit speaks truth to the king. He talks about reality. King said that he builded gold temple and God is not in his gold temple. As a king he has to save civilize first and when people went for shelter in the difficult time king exiled them and that time God also went with them. So the sage speaks the bitter truth which hurts the pride of the king. He thought that God loves only rich people but it is not so. In the original lines of the poem we are also aware about this. 

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?”

King thought that the sage was a godless man. King might think that the golden temple is the only place for God and God is only there. It symbolically suggests the mentality of the people who are at the highest position. King furious said its cost is "two million gold coins," The hermit wanted to say that God has the universe to stay. God is in humanity, simpyth and it is your duty as a king to save and protect the life of people. King can not get the point because he becomes blind with pride, power and arrogance. 

3) Why do you think the Sage refuses to enter the temple?

Answer :-

The sage knew that when the people needed shelter, the king refused them to give shelter. Now 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.

“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.

4) Can there be any connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayodhya Ram Mandir?  

Answer :- 

Yes, Here in this poem there is some connection between the text of the poem and the verdict of Ayodhya Ram Mandir.

This poem was first posted on Facebook by Banojyotsna Lahiri, an alumna of Presidency University and JNU, she explained how the poem was written exactly 120 years ago, according to the Bengali calendar. 

On 5th august 2020, in Ayodhya Pm Narendrabhai was busy with #Bhumi_Pujan while In the country there might be 40000+ corona cases. People are constantly dying. 

News18:- 

“August 5th marked a historic day in India when Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid down the first bricks of the much-contested Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. The ceremony was marked with much fanfare and celebrations. The celebrations were in the middle of a pandemic that has gripped the world. On the same day, deaths from Covid-19 in India crossed the 40,000 mark, the fifth highest in the world, even as the country recorded its biggest single-day surge in fatalities at 918 on Wednesday, with the count crossing 900 for the first time.” 

Thank You...