To do this, Mukherjee-Reed, director of South Asian studies at 91��ɫ, became a core member of the Tagore Anniversary Celebrations Committee Toronto (TACCT), which will organize a series of events throughout the year to celebrate Tagore. The first is a tribute to Tagore in conjunction with the ’s (ROM) 3rd annual South Asia Heritage Day tomorrow. Mukherjee-Reed will deliver an introduction to Tagore at the ROM theatre.

“Our primary objective is to bring Tagore's work and his worldview into the mainstream, particularly in North America,” says Mukherjee-Reed. “His brilliant work and his profound philosophical worldviews based on equality, humanism and justice have much to offer to us today.”

Right: A photo of Rabindranath Tagore taken during his visit to Canada. Photo by John Vanderpant, Library and Archives Canada.

In addition to poetry, Tagore wrote novels, short stories, essays and plays, and composed music and became a painter in his late sixties. He was also a leading social philosopher and fought for equality and justice for all, striving to build ties beyond borders of race, class, caste, ethnicity and culture. “He had a profound influence on the making of modern India,” says Mukherjee-Reed. His ideas of de-colonization, local self-reliance and autonomy, and a cooperative way of life deeply inspired India’s anti-colonial struggle. His views have influenced Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mukherjee-Reed says as she watches the events in Egypt and Libya, she is reminded of Tagore's words. “No matter how mighty a power is and how much artillery it has at its disposal, if there is a collective will to challenge its illegitimacy, it eventually cannot endure." These thoughts permeate the vast repertoire of poetry and music that became household chants during India’s struggle for independence. "Tagore saw colonialism as one major impediment to equality, but also feared that nationalist, elitist visions of progress would be equally problematic,” she says.

Tagore had great faith in the power of youth and those who would challenge established norms. “One of our aims is to engage the young with Tagore’s ideas,” says Mukherjee-Reed. “Unleashing the creativity inherent in people, particularly the young, was something Tagore strongly advocated.”

Left: Ananya Mukherjee-Reed

His strong belief in the power of education saw him establish two universities in India. “We have a lot to learn from Tagore’s ideas of education,” says Mukherjee-Reed. The first, he named Visva-Bharati, a Sanskrit name meaning "where the whole world forms its one single nest". It brought scholars, artists and students from every part of the world together to create a community, and even touched the lives of ordinary people.

“Tagore’s objective was to break with the traditional model of the university where the elite pursued knowledge for its own sake. It was no accident that Visva-Bharati was located in a village and not in a city, not amidst the urban, British-schooled affluent classes,” says Mukherjee-Reed.

“Very close to Visva-Bharati, Tagore established the Institute of Rural Reconstruction, yet another university designed specifically to serve the rural economy. The predicament of rural India was at the heart of Tagore’s work. His views on this remain very salient in today’s India where the benefits of ‘development’ still elude millions of its citizens.”

For more information or to hear Mukherjee-Reed’s discussion about Tagore on CBC Radio’s Fresh Air and CHRY Radio, visit the website.

For more information about the performances, live music, children’s activities and poetry readings during South Asia Heritage Day tomorrow at the ROM, visit the ’s website.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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It has taken many years of toiling, but 91��ɫ Professor Emeritus Paul Herzberg has now completed a biography of his mother Luise Herzberg, the wife of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerhard Herzberg (Hon DSc. '69) and an astrophysicist in her own right. Luise Herzberg, Astrophysicist: A Memoir is more than just a tribute to his mother, it is a chance for Luise to step out of the shadow of her world-famous husband and have her own accomplishments recognized.

Paul’s mother was born Luise Hedwig Oettinger in 1906 and educated in Germany where she received her PhD in physics in 1933. Her husband lost his academic post because Luise was a Jew. In 1935, they arrived as refugees in Canada. (See YFile, Nov. 15, 2007.)

In (91��ɫ Bookstore, 2010), Paul describes how Luise met the challenge of combining family and career. When she returned to research in physics and astronomy after the war, she faced nepotism rules and worked largely unnoticed. In the last decade of her life, however, she gained considerable recognition as an astrophysicist. Some of her work is still referred to today, although some is mistakenly attributed to her husband.

On Luise’s death, a friend wrote: “She remained totally female, despite high intelligence, active work in science and constant contact in the learned circles of the world. It was not her nature to want to shine, but nevertheless she was completely aware of everything that was happening.”

Luise died in 1971, just months before Gerhard won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, a success which he could not have achieved without her devotion and support.

Constructing the details of Luise’s extraordinary life was not an easy task. Paul, who was a professor in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, completed a two-year stint learning German just so he could read the cache of family letters, which would provide further insight into his mother’s life, and interviewed his elderly father several times before his death at the age of 94.

Paul started down the same path as his parents, but after earning a master’s degree in physics switched fields to specialize in quantitative psychology. He taught at 91��ɫ from 1966 to 2002 where he developed a unique introductory statistics course featuring learning-to-mastery, self-pacing and tutoring by undergraduate student peers.

In 1996, he received the University-Wide Teaching Award. It had always been in the back of his mind, however, to write about his mother. A biography of his father by Boris Stoicheff, , was published in 2002.

Paul's book may be purchased online or directly at the . For more information, contact Paul Herzberg at herzberg@yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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