WRT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/27093

Again Appeal to Authority argument. Amartya Sen's qualification has
nothing to do whether Tagore was a real feminist or not.

Tagore can be found explicitly in his quotations in his essays. I would
request everyone to read the following essays of Tagore - "Roma Bai
er Boktrita Upolokkhe", "Jaatree : Poshchim Jatrir Dairy", "Praccho-
Proteecho", "japan Jatree", "Stree shikkha" to know the gory details of
"Rabindra
feminism" for which Biplab is so proud of!

I am not surprised that Biplab did not hear Dr. Humayun Azad's name
before he visited MM. Many West Bengal people (not all) such
tendency of not reading, knowing the culture of "opaar Bangla".
Biplab himself once confessed (while debating with Tushar Sarkar)
that he did not have a chance to read any literature recently from
BD. He erroneously thought members from Bangladesh perhaps might
have not read any literature of their counterparts too. Here he made
a very wrong assumption. In fact we Bangladeshis were brought up reading Sunil,
Shirshendu, Shakar, Satyajit whereas, I am sorry to say - very few
west Bengal people I have came across - bother to read Humayun
Azad, Ahmed Sharif, Humayun Ahned, Ahmed Sofa, Shirajul Islam
Chowdury, selima Hossain, Syed Samsul huq, Samsur Rahman and others.
WB people are familiar only with one Bangladeshi writer; she is -
the Taslima Nasrin, but that's of course not for her "literary
genius", but for other political reasons. In fact Humayun Azad and
Ahmed Sharif have produced way more scholarly write-ups on many
issues compared to Taslima Nasrin, which WB members are not aware
of. Forget about common people - Joy Goswami, one of the popular
poet of Calcutta once wrote a poem dedicated to Farhad Mazhar,
however, he could not write there the spelling of FM correctly!
There are many such examples that can be cited.

Sunil and Buddha may have changed their stand about Tagore, but
there are many scholars both in east and west -including Humayun Azad,
Ahmed Sharf, Shirajul Islam Chowdhury, Akimun Rahaman, Sturge
Moore, Philip Larkin, D.H Lawrence, Rainer Maria Rilke, Thimas Mann,
Oswald Spengler, Franz Kafka, Bertrand Russell, Gyorgy Lukacs et al
were very negative about Tagore life long. So basing Sunil or
Buddha's position to judge Tagore's greatness or feminism is an
inherently subjective matter.

Regards
Avijit