This article first appeared in the Scroll on May 28, 2024
Although the poet had been reluctant to come, Tagore’s brief visit endeared him to Canada, a country that was founded just seven decades earlier. “The Poet had been repeatedly invited to visit Canada by the National Council of Education of Vancouver, but had always declined to do for a variety of reasons,” scientist and statistician Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, who served as Tagore’s secretary, wrote in his book Rabindranath Tagore’s Visit to Canada and Japan.