Behind the Veil

The Lady behind the veil, who opens her face to Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) in the final moment beyond death, flits through the corpus of his life work. More specifically, however, she appears in four forms of his work; poems, songs, think pieces in prose and paintings. Jivanadevata is mentioned by name only in a few poems, and in some prose pieces including The Religion of Man. Her identification is a matter of guess work in the rest of his work, especially in paintings.

Rajat Kanta Ray is a historian. He has taught at the Presidency College of Kolkata for more than three decades. At present he is the Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati.