AmartyaSen

> RABINDRANATH TAGORE <

> AMARTYA SEN. & VISVA-BHARATI UNIVERSITY <

> VISVA BHARATI UNIVERSITY <

A central university and an institution of national importance

Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর) (May 1861 – 7 August 1941), sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath. As a poet, novelist, musician, and playwright, he reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As author of Gitanjali and its „profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse“, he became Asia’s first Nobel laureate by winning the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature.

A Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta, Tagore wrote poems at age eight. At age sixteen, he published his first substantial poetry under the pseudonym Bhanushingho („Sun Lion“) and wrote his first short stories and dramas in 1877. Tagore denounced the British Raj and supported the Indian Independence Movement. His efforts endure in his vast canon and in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.


Tagore, Gandhi and India today

By Sabyasachi Mukherjee

When Wordsworth found that England was but a „fen of stagnant waters“ he invoked the spirit of Milton in one of his sonnets praying „O! Raise us up, return to us again, and give us manners, virtue, freedom“. It was 1801. Addington was then prime minister and Napolean was a terror to the island. But that was not what troubled the poet who regretted that his people had become „selfish men“. But whom should we invoke today when our country has fallen on evil days, when condition is worse than at nay time in the past.

We should invoke two kindred souls who understood us and taught us how to save ourselves. We are in such abject condition because we have thrown away the ideals they gave us. I mean Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.

Both had strong differences of opinion regarding some vital national questions. Documents showing these differences appear in R.K Prabhu and R. Kelekar’s edition of Tagore Gandhi correspondence published in a volume entitled Truth Called Them Differently (1961). Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates: between Gandhi and Tagore 1915-1941 published by the National Book Trust in 1997 is a more detailed work on the subject containing precious additional material. In his masterly introduction to this work Professor Bhattacharya says: „Overriding the numerous differences aired in the debates between them in public or in private correspondence, there was a commonality at the core of their world-outlook“.

Gandhi’s words on the subject are used as the motto of Prabhu and Kelekar’s book. „I have found no conflict between us. I started with a disposition to detect a conflict between Gurudev and myself but ended with the glorious discovery that there was none“.

Must we forgot that Gandhi addressed the poet as Gurudev in a letter dated 21 January 1918 and the poet addressed Gandhi as „Dear Mahatmaji in a letter dated 12 April 1919. Nor should we forget Rabindranath’s poem on Mahatma Gandhi composed on 13 December 1940, eight months before his death. In this poem the poet says that our patriots face the utmost hardship for the sake of the country because „taglo bhale Gandhirajer chhap“ (on their brow is the stamp of Gandhiraj)

The problem is that in the north the image of Gandhi is now blurred by other Gandhis and in Bengal Maxist rulers have thrown away all idealism to the winds. Who will then invoke the saint and the poet for our salvation? The soil is no longer congenial for the spirit which the two men represented. They stood for principles. Our politicians care only for power. But still there are some who bear no political labels and who will still care for the ideals which Rabindranath and Gandhi embodied.

For our spiritual and moral regeneration, it is necessary to invoke Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. But we have our political and economic problems for which it is necessary to remember Rabindranath and Gandhi who assimilated the teachings of the saint of Dakshineswar and his disciple.

 

But how is Rabindranath essentially a poet, relevant to our problems in the 21st century?

 

The poet was a very important figure in our struggle for freedom. He was very closely associated with our swadeshi movement and composed inspiring songs for those who burnt Lancashire cotton goods in the streets during the movement. He even foresaw the end of British rule in one of his patriotic songs: „bojha tor bhari hale dubbe tarikhan“ (You will sink under the weight of your power). He renounced his knighthood conferred on him in 1915, in a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, dated 29 May 1919 in protest against the Jalinwallabag massacre which had taken place on 13 April that year.

In his last public address delivered on 14 April 1941, less than four months before leaving the world, the poet said: „The wheels of Fate will one day compel the British to give up their Indian Empire. But what kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery?

But what is the poet’s message for today? He has a message for us which is particularly important for us today when we are in the midst of moral ruin. The voice of the poet is not different from the voice of the Mahatma. Both stressed the need for moral forces as the only weapon against evil. This affinity between the two is due to their being nursed on our ancient tradition. Pandit Nehru saw this when he said that both Rabindranath and Gandhi „drew their inspiration from the same wells of wisdom.“ (Letter to Krisna Kripalani dated 27 August 1941).

To understand the message of the poet we must care for his philosophy. Did not Coleridge say that there was never a great poet who was not also a great philosopher? An Englishman said in his book that the foundation of the poet’s philosophy is the Vedanta (Ernest Rhys, Rabindranath: A Biographical study, 1915). In his The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (Macmillan, 1918) Radhakrishan calls the poet „Vedanta’s latest exponent“ and he described his philosophy as „concrete idealism“. But who will speak of idealism in contemporary India?

Marxists have condemned Rabindrannath as a bourgeois poet exalting bourgeois values. But, on the whole, our poet has no place in our politics whatever be the label of our politicians. I have many tributes to the poet but the one which has touched me most is Johan Bojer’s: “ He is India bringing to Europe a new divine symbol, not the Cross but the Lotus“. We must, however, distinguish the lotus from the flower which is the symbol of a political party which has reduced our religion to a worship of temples.

Mahatma Gandh’s ideal of non-violence which is essentially an ideal of love in all our thought and work is the only remedy for the terrible malady of the world. The only superpower in the world today has taken over the charge of the world for its own benefit. The UN is no longer the guardian of world peace. The European Union is a federation of national interests. Gandhi’s own country has renounced Gandhi for the sake of other Gandhis reducing our politics to a hopeless and unending wrangle. What must we do now? The president and prime minister may initiate a process towards an international conference on Gandhi’s idea of non- violence and our world’s future.

In the 10- years of this country more books have been published about Gandhi than about any other world leader. The title of one of these books is Gandhi in His Tune and Ours (1903). Its author, David Hardiman, who teaches at the University of Warwick, says at the end of his book „still there people who stand for a human spirit that refuses to be crushed by the leviathan of the modern system of violence, oppression and exploitation, and which aspires for a better, more equitable and non-violent future. In this, they inspire huge numbers. In them Gandhi-their model-still lives“. This noble statement has been made by one who belongs to the country of Winston Churchill who called Gandhi „a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, posing as a fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of Viceroy’s palace.

I wish to recall the statement of the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers who says in his Future of Mankind (1958; Eng tr EB Ashton, 1961): „Today we face the question how to escape from physical force and from war. Gandhi in work and deed gives the true answer. Only a supra-political force can bring political salvation“. Plato expelled poets from his ideal republic. I am waiting for a philosopher who will suggest expulsion of politicians from our republics.

Quelle: DAILY EXCELSIOR