How far was Tagore's influence?

Here is what Sasibhusan Dasgupta, who was an expert on Vaisnavism, Buddhism and Tantra, says:

"We, for the past few decades, have been influenced by
the ideas propagated by the poet Tagore
in his poems and writings, and also by the writings and speeches of his close
associate, Pandit Ksitimohan Sen; for them Baul represents more a spirit of
unconventional approach to divinity through unassumed love and piety than any
precise religious cult."

Shashibhusan Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Sects, Calcutta: Firma K L M, 1976, p. 160.

Rabindranath Tagore on Bauls

"One day I chanced to hear a song from a beggar belonging to the Baul sect of Bengal…What struck me in this simple song was a religious expression that was neither grossly concrete, full of crude details, nor metaphysical in its rarefied transcendentalism… "

Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The Man of My Heart’, Religion of Man, Hibbert Lectures for 1930.

Who are the Bauls? Part I

"Who then are the Bauls? The word itself means ‘mad’. When Bengalis use the term, they usually mean to indicate a type of mendicant religious singer who, dressed in tattered clothes deliberately made up of the garments of both Hindus and Muslims, wanders from village to village celebrating God in ecstatic songs, existing on whatever his listeners choose to give him. Although today he is possibly a householder… traditionally he has‘only the wind as his home’. His hair is long and beard matted, and as he sings he accompanies himself on a one stringed instrument…"

Edward C. Dimock Jr/ ‘Rabindranath Tagore – “the Greatest of the Bauls of Bengal” ’’, Journal of the Asiatic Society, 29:1, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1959, p. 33.

artist:Dinkar Kaushik