Rabindranath Tagore is India’s best-known writer and artist. He is the first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize and is the only known person to have written the national anthems for two different countries.
Rabindranath Tagore has had a profound influence on India’s philosophy and educational thought. He founded the influential Visva-Bharati University.
In the early twentieth century when travel was not easy he visited many countries lecturing on his ideas for a national education based on the lives of the people living in that nation. In his book The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote, "He (Tagore) has been India's internationalist par excellence, believing and working for international co-operation, taking India's message to other countries and bringing their message to his own people."
India has commemorated his spreading of India’s ideas to many countries by assisting in the setting up of statues and busts in more than 20 countries.
Suriname was honored to be one of a dozen countries that received busts of Tagore on the 150th anniversary of his birth in 2011. AlphaMax Academy was selected as the place in Suriname where the bust was placed because of the Academy’s commitment to Tagore’s ideals. Several time a month Tagore’s poem “ Where the Head is Held High” from his Nobel Prize collection “ Gitanjali” is recited by the school’s community at their morning assembly.
The ceremony began with the singing of the national anthems of Suriname and India. Devesh Chaturdevi Indian Cultural Center musician then sang an enchanting Tagore song in Bengali. The audience warmly applauded his sincere rendition.
The Indian Ambassador, the head of the Indian Cultural Center, the first secreatary of the Indian Embassy , ICC staff and other senior members of the AlphaMax Community then garlanded the bust. The AlphaMax staff and students then recited Tagore’s “ Where the Head is Held High.”
Mr. Sean Taylor made a short speech in which he said that Tagore not only belonged to India but to countries like Suriname which cherished his ideals.
This part of the ceremony ended with brief remarks by the Indian Ambassador who expressed her deep appreciation of AlphaMax Academy’s commitment to Tagore’s ideals.
The audience then went to the school’s major auditorium for a short presentation. This consisted of a harvest dance “ Pous Utsav” by seven female AlphaMax students. Mrs. Kawita Thani of AlphaMax and Carinlangs choreographed this dance item.
Three members of the school’s drama group—members of the class of 2014 Reann Kersenhout (also member of the 2014 GAC class), Randy Esajas and Senior student Daniel Kolf did dramatic renditions of three poems from Gitanjali.
The audience applauded both the dance and the readings. The dance created a happy successful mood and the intense charged presentations of the poems stirred the audience with the emotional power of Tagore’s work
