Gagan Harkara
Gagan Chandra Dam mainly known as GaganHarkara was a Bengali Baul poet. The most underrated baul poet in Bangladesh. Gagan Harkara was born around 1845 at Kasba village in kumarkhali district in khushtia and passed away in 1910. He was a postman on kumarkhali. So people of kumarkhali called him as a Harkara, which is the Bengali meaning of the postman.
GaganHarkara was a baul song writer and composer. He mainly followed the great baul Lalon Shah. He is the disciple of Lalon Shah.
Rabindranath Tagore used to go regularly to look after zamindari in Shilaidah and Shahjadpur Bangladesh from 1889 to 1901. Then Rabindranath Tagore met with Gagan Harkara. Gagan Harkara was delivered and collecting letter from Rabindranath Tagore. Whenever Rabindranath Tagore was in shilaidaha he used to hear Gagan’s song. He liked the way Gagan Harkara was singing and writing song.
Rabindranath Tagore loved baul song most. Most of the time Rabindranath Tagore wanted to listen Lalon and Harkara’s own song from Gagan Harkara. Among the entire disciple of Lalon Shah, Rabindranath Tagore loved Gagan Harkara most. Rabindranath published most of Harkara’s song in his magazine. Rabindranath Tagore niece Sarala Devi had also published an article about Lalon and Gangan Harkara in ‘Bharati’. Rabindranath Tagore tried to help and promote the Bengal baul song.
Most of Gagan Harkara’s song was unfound. His most renowned song was ‘Ami kothay pabo tare, Amar moner manush jare’. After coming to Shilaidah, Rabindranath was influenced by Sanyaji Lalon and after Lalon Rabindranath again influenced by Gagan Harkara’s song. Rabindranath Tagore composed ‘Amar sonar Bangla’ on the basis of Gagan’s popular song ‘Ami kothaypabo tare.’ During break down of Bengal in 1905 Rabinranath Tagore composed this song. After the liberation war of Bangladesh, we used ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’ as our national anthem.
Some people said that Rabindranath Tagore copied Gagan Harkara’s song but this is not true. Rabindranath was a huge fan of baul song of Bangla. He helped local baul of kushtia by publishing their lyrics in his magazine. This is not an only song which Rabinranath influenced. Many of his songs were influenced by Bengali baul song. See what Rabinranath mentioned about Gagan-
“In the same village I came into touch with some Baul singers. I had known them by their names, occasionally seen them singing and begging in the street, and so passed them by, vaguely classifying them in my mind under the general name of Vairagis, or ascetics. The time came when I had occasion to meet with some members of the same body and talk to them about spiritual matters. The first Baul song, which I chanced to hear with any attention, profoundly stirred my mind. Its words are so simple that it makes me hesitate to render them in a foreign tongue, and set them forward for critical observation. Besides, the best part of a song is missed when the tune is absent; for thereby its movement and its color are lost, and it becomes like a butterfly whose wings have been plucked. The first line may be translated thus: 'Where shall I meet him, the Man of my Heart?' This phrase, 'the Man of my Heart,' is not peculiar to this song, but is usual with the Baul sect. It means that, for me, the supreme truth of all existence is in the revelation of the Infinite in my own humanity. 'The Man of my Heart,' to the Baul, is like a divine instrument perfectly tuned. He gives expression to infinite truth in the music of life. And the longing for the truth which is in us, which we have not yet realised, breaks out in the "Ami Kothay Pabo Tare". The name of the poet who wrote this song was Gagan. He was almost illiterate; and the ideas he received from his Baul teacher found no distraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age. He was a village postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he died before he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gave such intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of his sect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lower floor of society, where the light of modern education hardly finds an entrance, while wealth and respectability shun its utter indigence. In the song I have translated above, the longing of the singer to realize the infinite in his own personality is expressed. This has to be done daily by its perfect expression in life, in love. For the personal expression of life, in its perfection, is love; just as the personal expression of truth in its perfection is beauty.”
Rabindranath Tagore wrote a drama named ‘Dakghar’ which is about Gagan Harkara’s life story. Later Satyjit Ray made a movie based on this drama named ‘The Postman’.
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