“…To embrace the very essence of Christianity”: the experience of explanation of the Other religion by Rabindranath Tagore in the speeches 1910–1914 years

The understanding of Christianity within the philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore is unexplored in the philosophical Indology. The tradition of understanding of Other religions had been created in 19th – early 20th c, India, and Christianity became an object of keen inquiry in the Bengal Renaissance. Tagore the inheritor of the tradition turned his attention to Christianity in mature period and achieved new level to interpret its true essence. Tagore interprets it as the religion of love and active compassion for human, the path of Christ, who endured death for the sake of human salvation. Based on a hermeneutic analysis of Tagore’s Bengali addresses delivered at Shantiniketan at ‘Festival of Christ’ and English lectures ‘Sadhana’, his approach to understand and explain the truths of Christianity is reconstructed in the article.The experience of understanding of Christianity by Tagore is analyzed for the first time in Russian Indology. He drew parallels between ideas within Indian spiritual heritage and the teachings of Christ: the love between human and God, the aspiration to the Kingdom of God and eternal life, the freedom and liberation from the bondage of external circumstances and, union with God. The experience demonstrates that Tagore grasped meaning of Christianity and articulated it to Indians of different faiths by new language. He brought to the forefront the core meaning of the faith, without contradiction to the majority of Christians. The truth of Christianity is embodied in the Person of Jesus Christ, whose life and suffering revealed how God manifests Himself in a human. Tagore perceived the rupture of the primordial union with God as the ‘fall’ of human nature, along with sin and suffering emerging as consequences of this fallen state. Loving humanity, God Himself suffers of the evil committed by people. According to Tagore, human repentance, the rejection of evil and sin, the restoration of a bond of love with God, and the attainment of true life is the essence of the path by Christ and Christianity.