Scientific cooperation with India

India drew our attention last year more than ever. We remembered 150th birth anniversary and 70th death anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, the Laureate of Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Tagore visited the Czechoslovak Republic twice and he got in a close contact with the representatives of the Czech intellectual and artistic elite. For example, Leoš Janáček was inspired by him to compose choral The Wandering Madman. Tagore was also in contact with Karel Čapek, Tomáš G. Masaryk and Vincent Lesný, a scientist from Oriental Institute who contributed to the development and research of Indian languages. He was also a mentor to a new generation of students of Indology in the Czech Republic.