A Clarification - 29 January 2011

Several readers of this journal have been struck by the excerpts from Rabindranath Tagore that appeared in Mainstream Annual 2010 (dated December 25, 2010) and have asked us from where those were taken. Hence this clarification.

The excerpts from Tagore, on the cover of Mainstream Annual 2010, have been taken from a speech that he delivered at a festival at Sriniketan in 1931. It is in Tagore’s Collected Works (Tagore Centenary Edition 1961), Volume 10, as an appendix to his “Letters from Russia†, on pages 738 to 746. This, however, is in the original Bengali and entitled “Palliseva†.

But this has been brought out in English in a book Letters from Russia by Tagore (on the occasion of Tagore centenary 1861-1961); this was published by the Visva-Bharati in September 1960. The letters, speeches and articles in the volume were translated by Dr Sasadhar Sinha. The relevant speech is in Appendix IV in the book and entitled “Village Service†(pages 145-155).

—Editor