The Pandemic and the Poet: The Renewed Relevance of Rabindranath Tagore May 10, 2021, 2:32 PM IST Dr Suparna Banerjee is a researcher, college teacher, and media writer based in Bengal. She has been contributing articles and reviews to leading national dailies since 2012. Her book 'Science, Gender and History: The Fantastic in Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood' was published by Cambridge Scholars in late 2014 and has since been widely reviewed. Her interests include gender dynamics, democratic state politics in the Indian context, and canonical Anglo-American literature. She currently teaches English at Krishnath College, Berhampore, West Bengal. LESS... MORE In the midst of a raging pandemic that is currently in its second, more ferocious spell in my country, it might seem elitist to be celebrating a poet’s birth anniversary, even if he happens to be Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. But it is precisely this context—that of a deadly disease sweeping through the globe—that makes Tagore newly relevant to the world. It is this backdrop indeed that highlights the marvellous prescience of his observations on geopolitics and on the future of humanity—observations he made in his lectures delivered in India and abroad and in his numerous essays. Expressed nearly a hundred years back, in the context of British imperialism and the First World War, these reflections brought out the nub of the global scenario then, highlighting the dangers to humanity of hyper-nationalism and the absolute need for countries and communities to come together.