From anti-colonial to pre-independence struggles: Rabindranath Tagore’s songs in the time of famine

From anti-colonial to pre-independence struggles: Rabindranath Tagore’s songs in the time of famine

In 1940s’ Bengal, famine and war displaced Rabindrasangeet (the corpus of songs composed by Rabindranath Tagore that synthesises lyrical poetry and music and occupies a central place within Bengali cultural life) from its performative location within the bhadralok domain, the English-educated, upper-caste, middle-class elite of colonial Bengal, whose authority was grounded in notions of respectability, cultural capital, and intellectual refineme…