It is my pleasure to publish the Fourth Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Lecture delivered by Mr Jawhar Sircar on 7th March, 2019 at Netaji Subhas Open University. It's a privilege for me to extend homage through this publication to the great poet Kaviguru, the legendary cultural icon of our history. The attempt of organizing such lecture in memory of Tagore was initiated by the School of Humanities in March, 2011 in which notable speakers were invited to share their views in the broad area of humanities. NSOU has already published four such lectures. I am delighted to see that the fourth lecture is finally ready for publication.

Mr Jawhar Sircar, IAS, the former CEO of Prasar Bharati, Govt of India, is known by his name in our country. He is an outstanding scholar of Indian history & culture who's ability to propagate new insights and ideas that are nascent in our socio-political identity received wide recognition. He travelled almost all over the world and lectured immensely to the international audience. However he cherished Bengali identity in his life and in pan-indian circle. In this lecture his topic is all about the 'Bengali Bhadralok' with a special focus to West Bengal. It would have been a good read for all of us.

I am really grateful to him that he finally managed time from his explicitly busy schedule, to develop the final texts of the lecture. I am also thankful to all my fellow colleague for organizing the lecture and taking initiative for publishing such a thought provoking lecture.