I deleted an earlier QT because it felt unnecessary. But I really wish more people would engage with non-English language scholarship before passing sweeping comments on figures like Tagore.

The Tagores made their money off salt, opium and shipping, apart from owning vast tracts of zamindari land - what do you think their class position was? Their "fallen" Brahmin status was firmly reduced to non-significance courtesy their enormous wealth.

Even the eventual loss of that wealth (Tagore himself witnessed it while setting up Viswa Bharati) didn't leave them destitute - it just made that lifestyle difficult to maintain. Two branches of the Tagore family (including Dwarkanath) headed two "dals" in Calcutta.

What were these "dals" (groups)? They were caste groups centred around a wealthy household, whose head would be the dalapati or the leader, and who would intervene in property and marriage disputes, determine ritual purity in the mleccha city, etc.

The dals had considerable sway over Calcutta till the mid-1900s.

The Brahmo Samaj, both the Anusthanic and Ananusthanic branches, constituted of the Brahmin, Kayastha and Baidya elite, and despite the denial of caste by the Anusthanics, did not do away with caste privilege.

Consider Patha Bhavan in its earliest days, and it becomes clear. The entity that Viswa Bharati becomes eventually, in Tagore's lifetime, does not entirely transform that either. (What becomes of it as a central university is a different story altogether.)

The Tagore of the early essays like "Brahmon" and the Tagore of "Gora" are the same person. There is no 'true' Tagore that is to be cherrypicked from his large body of work, just as there is no Tagore without his enormous caste and class privilege.

Now, whether or not he merits reading is something that is best left to the reader. But I hope more people will want to engage with Bangla-langauge scholarship, if only to understand why Bengalis in two countries won't shut up about him.