Rabindranath Tagore’s nine-day visit to Thailand, then known as Siam, in 1927 will be showcased in a permanent exhibition at Jorasanko Thakurbari.
A room has been allotted to the Thai authorities to decorate with exhibits on the first floor of Ram Bhavana, on the way to the room where Tagore was born.
The inauguration of the gallery will take place on Friday with the ambassador of Thailand Pattarat Hongtong and higher education minister Bratya Basu in attendance.
Thailand will be the fifth country to commemorate Tagore’s visit through an exhibition at his family seat after Japan, China, the US and Hungary.
The idea was mooted in 2016 and work on the gallery started in 2019 with budgetary support from the Thai ministry of foreign affairs.
“There was a delay because of the pandemic. The university (Rabindra Bharati University) was shut for long. But we are happy that it is opening in the 75th anniversary year of the establishment of Thailand’s diplomatic relations with India,” Thai consul general Acharapan Yavaprapas told The Telegraph.
There are 21 panels, including one with a timeline of Tagore’s major engagements between October 8 and 16.
The door to the Thai Gallery has been decorated in an ornate style prevalent at the time of the monarchs Rama VI and VII of Siam, and used at the Suan Kularb Residential hall, a palace currently converted to a museum inside the Paruskavan Palace complex in Bangkok.
One panel has the English translation of To Siam (Prothom Dorshone, dated October 11, 1927), one of the two poems composed and translated to English by Tagore that were occasioned by the visit (the other being Farewell to Siam). He recited the first poem in front of King Rama VII.
His visit was widely reported in the local newspapers.
The Siam Observer wrote on October 10 how he was greeted by over 500 people at the Hualumpong rail station in Bangkok on his arrival from Penang.
Tagore was accompanied on the visit by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Kalabhavana vice-principal Surendranath Kar, Visva-Bharati professor Ariam Williams and Dhiren Krishna Deva Barman of Kalabhavana.
“Tagore visited 35 places in the course of the nine days of his visit, covering not just Bangkok but also its outskirts, like Lopburi and Nonthaburi, near Ayutthaya. Some of the spots he went to, like the royal palace, the Emerald Buddha Temple, the Temple of Dawn, the Marble Temple and the Thailand National Museum are frequented by Indians. But there are also lesser-known heritage places like Phya Thai Palace, where he was put up as a state guest, or Chilalongkern University where he delivered an address on education. We have suggested to the Tourism Authority of Thailand in Delhi to come up with a Tagore route for tourists to discover all the places visited by him,” said consul Nutt Svasti-Salee, who spearheaded the gallery project on behalf of the Thai consulate general in Kolkata.
The exhibition also covers personalities like Fua Haripitak, who visited Visva-Bharati in 1941 and learnt to reproduce and conserve murals from Nandalal Bose, and Karuna Kusalasaya, one of the foremost cultural figures of Thailand who had also studied at Visva-Bharati and met Tagore.