Governments change, but why does Tagore remain a site of contestation in Bangladesh?

Controversies surrounding Rabindranath Tagore are hardly new to Bangladesh. His songs have, at various points in history, been dismissed as expressions of foreign cultural influence; his literary and cultural legacy has been called into question; and, on occasion, there have even been attempts to erase his image from public spaces. In October 2026, the defacement of a Tagore graffiti mural in Dhaka brought these longstanding tensions back into view. The incident raises an unsettling question: why should a poet whose Amar Sonar Bangla is the national anthem of Bangladesh repeatedly find himself at the receiving end of political hostility?

The answer lies in a history far more complex than a straightforward rejection of Tagore. It calls for an examination of the competing claims of religious and linguistic nationalism, the historical tensions between Bangladesh and India, and the persistence of cultural intolerance across successive political regimes. From the years of Sheikh Hasina's rule to the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, the pattern suggests that a change in political leadership does not necessarily bring about a corresponding transformation in the cultural climate.

On 10 October, a graffiti mural of Tagore outside the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in Segunbagicha, Dhaka, was allegedly defaced with black paint. According to The Business Standard in its report of 13 October, several individuals identifying themselves as activists of the July movement were accused of involvement in the incident. One woman reportedly justified the removal of Tagore's image as a protest against Indian aggression, arguing that because Tagore was Indian, his image had no place in Bangladesh. Four people were detained in connection with the incident and subsequently remanded by a court. They face allegations including criminal conspiracy, promoting enmity between different groups, and deliberately outraging religious feelings. These remain allegations, however, and must be distinguished from any eventual judicial determination of guilt.

The reasoning behind the act deserves closer scrutiny. Can disagreements with the Indian government legitimately be transferred to the literature, music and artistic legacy of a poet? And can the geographical circumstances of a person's birth alone determine the cultural inheritance to which that person belongs?

Tagore was born in 1861 in undivided Bengal, decades before the political boundaries that now separate India and Bangladesh came into existence. His life and work belong to a shared cultural history that predates Partition and cannot be neatly contained within the territorial limits of either nation-state. His poetry, songs and ideas have shaped the linguistic, literary and cultural imagination of both Bengals. To claim him exclusively as an Indian cultural figure is to impose the logic of modern political borders upon a history that long preceded them.

The contradiction becomes particularly striking when one considers that Amar Sonar Bangla, written by Tagore, is the national anthem of Bangladesh. His work is thus woven into the very fabric of the country's sovereign identity. To erase his image from its public spaces is not merely to reject an individual poet; it is to raise questions about the cultural inheritance through which Bangladesh has come to understand itself.

The historical roots of anti-Tagore sentiment

The roots of this tension can be traced to the years following Partition in 1947, when East Bengal became part of Pakistan. The Pakistani state was founded on the principle of religious nationalism, while the people of East Bengal continued to locate much of their collective identity in the Bengali language, literature and cultural traditions. The resulting conflict was not simply a disagreement over cultural preferences. It was a struggle over the very terms on which a community could define itself.

For many Bengalis, Tagore's songs and writings represented an indispensable part of their cultural inheritance. Sections of Pakistan's ruling establishment, however, regarded Rabindra Sangeet as an expression of Hindu cultural influence and Indian ideological presence. His work consequently became entangled in the state's attempts to establish a more narrowly defined Pakistani cultural identity.

The tensions were already apparent during the celebrations marking Tagore's birth centenary in 1961, when cultural activists in East Pakistan encountered official resistance. Following the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, restrictions were imposed on the broadcasting of Rabindra Sangeet. In 1967, Khawaja Shahabuddin, Pakistan's Minister for Information and Broadcasting, declared Tagore's music incompatible with the cultural ideals of Pakistan. The pronouncement provoked protests from intellectuals, including teachers at Dhaka University. Chhayanaut, the cultural organisation that would become closely associated with the preservation and promotion of Rabindra Sangeet, played an important role in resisting this cultural exclusion.

What was at stake was considerably larger than the fate of a particular body of music. The effort to marginalise Tagore formed part of a broader attempt to subordinate Bengali linguistic and cultural identity to a religiously defined national ideal. The resistance to that attempt eventually became inseparable from the struggle for political self-determination.

During the Liberation War of 1971, Amar Sonar Bangla acquired a powerful association with the aspirations of an independent Bangladesh. The song that had once been viewed with suspicion by Pakistan's ruling establishment became the national anthem of the country that emerged from the struggle. Its journey from an object of cultural contestation to a symbol of national sovereignty captures one of the defining contradictions in Bangladesh's history: the cultural identity that the Pakistani state sought to contain became central to the emergence of an independent nation.

And yet, the question of Tagore's place in Bangladesh has never been entirely settled.

Tagore and the politics of belonging

During Sheikh Hasina's tenure, Tagore and the wider Bengali cultural tradition occupied a prominent place in the state's articulation of secular Bengali nationalism. The Awami League presented him as an emblem of Bengali cultural consciousness, emphasising the linguistic and cultural foundations of national identity.

This association, however, also attracted criticism. Some critics argued that the Hasina government had allowed reverence for Tagore to become too closely aligned with its own political and ideological position. When a cultural figure becomes an emblem of a ruling establishment, even legitimate questions about that figure's ideas or the state's use of his legacy can become entangled in partisan disputes.

The problem, therefore, is not that Tagore was celebrated, but that his cultural significance could become inseparable from the political authority claiming to represent him. Under such circumstances, disagreement with the government's cultural politics could be mistaken for opposition to the cultural tradition itself. The space for independent interpretation, critical engagement and intellectual disagreement consequently risked becoming narrower.

This distinction matters. Tagore belongs to no political party, nor does his literary legacy require unquestioning reverence. His writings can be examined critically; his philosophical positions can be challenged; and the political appropriation of his work can be subjected to scrutiny. Such engagement is not an act of cultural betrayal but an essential part of keeping a literary inheritance intellectually alive.

Criticism, however, is not the same as erasure. To question Tagore's ideas is one thing; to destroy his image because he is perceived as an extension of a neighbouring state is quite another. To challenge the political use of his songs is not to invalidate the cultural world from which those songs emerged.

If Tagore is reduced to a symbol of the Hasina regime, criticism of that government risks becoming a rejection of the poet himself. Such a conflation does little to advance a meaningful reassessment of Bangladesh's political past. Instead, it confines a complex literary and cultural legacy within the narrow boundaries of partisan allegiance.

The larger question is whether a nation can critically examine the political uses of its cultural icons without disowning the cultural history that gave those icons their meaning.

A change of government but what about the collective cultural conscience?

The fall of Sheikh Hasina's government on 5 August 2024 marked the beginning of a new political chapter in Bangladesh. With Muhammad Yunus at the helm of the interim government, the mass uprising raised hopes of a more open public sphere, greater freedom of expression and a retreat from the political repression associated with the previous administration.

Yet political transition does not, by itself, dismantle entrenched cultural prejudices or guarantee the protection of artistic expression. The events that followed offered reasons to question whether the promised transformation had extended sufficiently into the cultural sphere.

In December 2025, Chhayanaut Sanskriti Bhavan in Dhaka's Dhanmondi area was attacked and vandalised amid tensions following the death of Sharif Osman Hadi. According to The Daily Star in its report of 19 December, a group of people stormed the building, damaging rooms, offices and the auditorium and looting or destroying musical instruments, computers, furniture and other belongings. Chhayanaut stated that some objects had also been set on fire. The organisation condemned the attack and called for those responsible to be identified and brought to justice.

The significance of the incident extends beyond the destruction of property. Chhayanaut has played a historic role in sustaining Bengali cultural expression, particularly through the practice and promotion of Rabindra Sangeet during the years of Pakistani rule. An attack on the institution therefore strikes at a repository of cultural memory, one whose history is closely bound up with the struggle to preserve Bengali identity against attempts to subordinate it to a narrower ideological framework.

The motives behind the attack, the identities of those involved and any links to particular political organisations must, of course, be established through investigation rather than assumption. It would be misleading to attribute every act of cultural violence to a single political agenda. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of cultural institutions during periods of political upheaval remains a matter of serious concern.

The defacement of Tagore's graffiti in October 2026 brings these anxieties into sharper focus. The two incidents are distinct in their circumstances and should not be treated as interchangeable. Yet both compel us to consider the relationship between political resentment and cultural expression. What happens when anger directed at a government, an ideology or a neighbouring country is redirected towards the cultural institutions, artistic traditions and historical figures through which a society has understood itself?

Why Tagore remains a contested figure in Bangladesh?

One possible explanation lies in the tendency to collapse Tagore's identity into that of India. In a climate of strained bilateral relations, a cultural figure associated with India can become a convenient target for grievances that have little to do with his work. Opposition to Indian government policies, concerns about regional power imbalances and debates about India's influence in Bangladesh are all legitimate subjects of political discussion. None of these, however, requires the rejection of Tagore's literary and cultural inheritance.

The distinction between a state and its cultural traditions is fundamental. A poet cannot be held responsible for the policies of a government merely because he was born within the territory that the government now administers. Nor can a shared cultural inheritance be reduced to an instrument of geopolitical allegiance.

Tagore's place in Bangladesh is especially revealing in this regard. His work belongs to a Bengali cultural world that existed before the formation of India and Pakistan, survived Partition, and became an important source of inspiration during Bangladesh's struggle for independence. His significance is not dependent on political approval from either New Delhi or Dhaka. It rests on a historical and literary relationship that cannot be adequately explained through the vocabulary of national rivalry.

A research paper by Mohammad A. Quayum, published in the International Journal of Asian Studies in 2026, examines the tensions within Bangladesh's identity politics, particularly the competing claims of Bengali nationalism rooted in language and culture and religious nationalism. This framework helps illuminate why Tagore repeatedly becomes a contested figure: his legacy sits at the intersection of two competing visions of what it means to be Bangladeshi.

For those who understand national identity primarily through religion, Tagore's association with a shared Bengali linguistic and cultural tradition may appear politically uncomfortable. For those who locate that identity in language, literature and historical experience, excluding him represents a repudiation of a significant part of the nation's cultural inheritance. The resulting conflict is not merely about one poet. It concerns the competing definitions of the nation itself.

But no nation can resolve its uncertainties about identity by erasing the figures who expose those uncertainties. The attempt to remove Tagore from a wall may be an act of protest, but it also reveals the limitations of a politics that substitutes symbolic destruction for critical engagement.

Why Tagore cannot be erased?

There is something profoundly paradoxical about the effort to erase Tagore from Bangladesh's public spaces. The country continues to sing his words as its national anthem even as some seek to cast him as an alien presence. His work is simultaneously embedded in the nation's identity and treated, by those who oppose it, as an intrusion into that identity.

This contradiction cannot be resolved by demanding unquestioning admiration for Tagore. Nor should his legacy be insulated from criticism simply because he occupies a central place in Bengali culture. The point is not to make a literary figure immune to debate, but to distinguish intellectual disagreement from cultural hostility.

A mature cultural tradition does not depend on the absence of criticism. It depends on the freedom to interpret, question, challenge and reinterpret its inherited ideas without resorting to intimidation or destruction. Tagore's work, like any substantial literary inheritance, can withstand scrutiny. What is threatened when his image is erased is not merely the reputation of an individual poet, but the possibility of engaging with cultural history beyond the rigid categories imposed by political and religious identities.

A wall can be repainted. A mural can be obliterated. But neither act can undo the historical relationship between Tagore and the Bengali-speaking people on both sides of the border. The attempt to erase him cannot diminish the literary legacy he leaves behind; it instead draws attention to the insecurities and exclusions that make such erasure seem necessary to those who undertake it.

The deeper question, then, is not whether Tagore belongs to India or Bangladesh. It is whether a shared cultural inheritance can survive the insistence that every cultural figure must belong exclusively to one nation, one ideology or one political camp.

Governments change. Political loyalties shift. The language of nationalism acquires new forms. Yet the prejudices embedded in the struggle over identity can outlast the regimes that once gave them expression.

Tagore's graffiti may disappear beneath a coat of black paint. His songs, however, remain woven into Bangladesh's national life, just as his literature continues to inhabit the cultural memory of Bengal. The more revealing casualty of such acts is not the poet himself, but the openness of the society that seeks to erase him.

In the end, the politics of erasure tells us less about the vulnerability of Tagore's legacy than about the anxieties of those who would suppress it. It is a reminder that cultural freedom cannot be secured merely by changing governments. It requires a willingness to confront inherited prejudices, to accommodate complexity and to recognise that a nation's cultural inheritance is rarely as narrow as its political boundaries.