Mumbai, June 25 -- A set of 35 handwritten letters by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore to renowned sociologist and musicologist Dhurjati Prasad Mukerji, between 1927 and 1936, will come up for auction on Wednesday. The letters, all written in a measured and neat Bengali script, carry a world of details that offers insights into the poet's internal world as well as his response to the literary milieu of the time. Mukerji, though most known for his work as a Marxist sociologist, was also a keen critic of literature, drama and music. Many of these letters are written on different letterheads, including Visva-Bharati, the university he founded in Santiniketan, his Uttarayan residence, Glen Eden in Darjeeling, and aboard his houseboat, Padma. Through these exchanges, we see an aging Tagore explain his literary choices candidly to Mukerji - in one instance, he requests Mukerji to not repeat his assessment of a performance by Uday Shankar, a famous danseuse, and in another, he rains scorn over the puritanism of sections of Bengali intelligentsia, and refers to them as the "Bengali Ku Klux Klan", comparing them to the White supremacists of the US, for their rabid intolerance towards stylistic difference. In yet another, Tagore doesn't spare Mukerji, either. Critiquing the renowned sociologist's book for its stern realism, Tagore refers to his own play, Bansari, which mocks pretensions of realism. Tagore defends the value of imagination and illusion in art. Human beings, he insists, need more than facts - they need stories, music, and painting. Tagore finally requests Mukerji to publish the letter in order to make his literary position clear. Mukerji seemed to have taken it on the chin and for good reason. Tagore also wrote letters defending Mukerji from other literary critics. In one, Tagore reflects on the type of people who, under the guise of duty, take pleasure in inflicting harm. He compares them to a Bengali version of the Ku Klux Klan, driven not by moral conviction but by a craving for violence and domination. Tagore defends a piece written by Mukerji, and says it was misrepresented by malicious critics. "The letters are deeply philosophical and capture Rabindranath Tagore's voice during a pivotal era of artistic and intellectual transformation," said Siddharth Sivakumar, director, curation and artist relations, Astaguru. "These aren't just letters, they're windows into a shifting India, into a poet's evolution, into the founding philosophy of Santiniketan itself," Manoj Mansukhani, CMO, AstaGuru Auction House, said....