-
Archives
- November 2021
- March 2021
- November 2020
- November 2019
- August 2019
- May 2019
- November 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- November 2017
- September 2017
- June 2017
- July 2016
- May 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- April 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- January 2013
- September 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- August 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- March 2011
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- February 2010
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- October 2008
- September 2008
- January 2007
- May 2005
-
Meta
You are at:
Talk: Tagore in Singapore: a talk by Angela Faye Oon
No Comments
venue: The Pod. Level 16, National Library, 100 Victoria Street
date | time: Saturday, 30 Oct 2010 | 3.00pm
admission: Free and open to the public
enquiries: shs.secretary@gmail.com (Wendy)
Rabindranath Tagore’s visit to Singapore and the Malay peninsula in 1927 is little known even amongst Tagore scholars.
Why did this extraordinary Bengali polymath
– the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature
– decide to embark on a journey through Singapore and Malaya for an entire month?
Where were the places he went to, and what did he do when he was here? How was he received by the various local communities and how did he in turn present himself to different audiences? This talk will make use of contemporaneous news and magazine articles, photographs and letters to trace Tagore’s route through Singapore and the Federated Malay States.
More than simply nugget trivia about Tagore, however, his visit also provides important insights into the social and political milieu of interwar colonial Singapore and Malaya. The talk will explore the different reactions his visit engendered among the Indian, Chinese and European communities, all illuminating the nascent notions of nationalism of the period. In particular, it will investigate an important controversy that Tagore unexpectedly found himself mired in during his trip, arising out of anti-colonial comments that he supposedly made to a Shanghainese newspaper earlier. The incident aroused the ire of many editors of the English press in Singapore, but was covered quite differently in the pages of Chinese-language newspapers
Angela Faye Oon is a research associate in the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Her lecture describes part of the Centre’s current project investigating the Asian travels of Rabindranath Tagore. It makes use of materials from the National Library Board’s newspaper archives, including the Malaya Tribune, Malay Mail, Singapore Free Press, Straits Times, Malacca Observer, Penang Gazette, Nanyang Siang Pao, Le Bao, and Union Times.