Beginning in the 1880s, Tagore published a steady stream of poems, stories and novels. These had a profound impact in his native Bengal, but were little known outside. In 1912 he carried some translations of his poems to England; these were shown to the Irish poet W.B. Yeats, who helped refine them and, more importantly, gave them his endorsement. The translations, published under the title Gitanjali, were a great success, going into ten printings within six months. When the award of the Nobel Prize followed, the Bengali writer had become a world figure. His appeal was enhanced by his appearance—with a handsome oval face and piercing eyes, framed by a flowing white beard, and dressed in long colourful robes, he looked every inch the Oriental guru.
Tagore was a patriot without quite being a nationalist. He was no apologist for colonial rule; after British soldiers fired on an unarmed crowd in Amritsar in 1919, he returned his knighthood to the King. At the same time, he was dismayed by the xenophobic tendencies of the populist edge of the Indian national movement. He thought that India had much to learn from other cultures, including (but not restricted to) the West.
Tagore’s understanding of countries other than his own was deepened by his extensive travels abroad. He made four trips to the United States and many more to Europe. He visited Japan several times, went to China, travelled through West and Southeast Asia and also went to South America. In 1930, touching seventy, he spent several weeks in the Soviet Union. Through these trips he deepened an already substantial interest in aesthetics, music and literature. He was catholic enough to admire both the medieval Persian poet Hafiz and the Anglo-American modernist T.S. Eliot.
Tagore was the most widely travelled Indian of his generation. From what he saw at home and abroad, he arrived at an understanding of India’s place in the world that was more nuanced, more layered, more complex and more profound than that articulated by any of his compatriots. He sought to give this vision an institutional form, founding a university in 1921 on land his family owned in rural Bengal. The curriculum he developed here bridged science and the humanities. Music and art were also taught and there was a special focus on the study of Japan and China, the two civilizations with which India might, in Tagore’s view, share mutually beneficial interactions in a post-colonial future. The campus where these myriad activities took place was named Santiniketan, the Abode of Peace; with the university calling itself Viswa-Bharati, or India in the World. To forestall criticism that this was an elitist or ‘ivory tower’ vision of learning, Tagore simultaneously started an institute of rural reconstruction.
Tagore died in 1941. Seven decades later, his songs are still sung in Bengal. His stories and poems are now available in decent English translations. One poem serves as the national anthem of India; another, as the national anthem of Bangladesh. In his own lifetime, Tagore had a profound impact on Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who are commonly (and rightly) regarded as the two most influential individuals in modern Indian history. Rabindranath Tagore the poet and novelist would have pride of place in any history of Indian literature; but, as I think the excerpts below demonstrate, Rabindranath Tagore the thinker and prophet is by no means out of place in an anthology of Indian political writing.
India and the West
Dismayed by the xenophobia of the Swadeshi movement, Tagore wrote a series of essays in Bengali in 1909–10 advocating a more nuanced understanding of relations between East and West. Excerpts from a later English translation follow.1
… Whether India is to be yours or mine, whether it is to belong more to the Hindu, or to the Moslem, or whether some other race is to assert a greater supremacy than either, that is not the problem with which Providence is exercised. It is not as if, at the bar of the judgment seat of the Almighty, different advocates are engaged in pleading the rival causes of Hindu, Moslem or Westerner, and that the party which wins the decree shall finally plant the standard of permanent possession. It is our vanity which makes us think that it is a battle between contending rights—the only battle is the eternal one between Truth and untruth …
Of late the British have come in and occupied an important place in India’s history. This was not an uncalled for, accidental intrusion. If India had been deprived of touch with the West, she would have lacked an element essential for her attainment of perfection. Europe now has her lamp ablaze. We must light our torches at its wick and make a fresh start on the highway of time. That our forefathers, three thousand years ago, had finished extracting all that was of value from the universe, is not a worthy thought. We are not so unfortunate, nor the universe, so poor. Had it been true that all that is to be done has been done in the past, once for all, then our continued existence could only be a burden to the earth, and so would not be possible …
The Englishman has come through the breach in our crumbling walls, as the messenger of the Lord of the world-festival, to tell us that the world has need of us; not where we are petty, but where we can help with the force of our Life, to rouse the World in wisdom, love and work, in the expansion of insight, knowledge and mutuality. Unless we can justify the mission on which the Englishman has been sent, until we can set out with him to honour the invitation of which he is the bearer, he cannot but remain with us as our tormentor, the disturber of our quietism. So long as we fail to make good the arrival of the Englishman, it shall not be within our power to get rid of him.
The India to which the Englishman has come with his message, is the India which is shooting up towards the future from within the bursting seed of the past. This new India belongs to humanity. What right have we to say who shall and who shall not find a place therein? Who is this ‘We’? Bengali, Marathi or Panjabi, Hindu or Mussalman? Only the larger ‘We’ in whom all these—Hindu, Moslem and Englishman, and whosoever else there be—may eventually unite shall have the right to dictate who is to remain and who is to leave.
On us to-day is thrown the responsibility of building up this greater India, and for that purpose our immediate duty is to justify our meeting with the Englishman. It shall not be permitted to us to say that we would rather remain aloof, inactive, irresponsive, unwilling to give and to take, and thus to make poorer the India that is to be.
So the greatest men of modern India have all made it their life’s work to bring about an approachment with the West. The chief example is Rammohan Roy. He stood alone in his day for the union of India with the world on the broad base of humanity. No blind belief, no ancestral habit was allowed to obscure his vision. With a wonderful breadth of heart and intellect he accepted the West without betraying the East … Rammohan Roy did not assist India to repair her barriers, or to keep cowering behind them,—he led her out into the freedom of Space and Time, and built for her a bridge between the East and West. That is why his spirit still lives with us, his power of stimulating India’s creative energies is not yet exhausted. No blind habit of mind, no pettiness of racial pride, were able to make him commit the folly of rebellion against the manifest purpose of time …
What then are we to make of the antagonism which has arisen of late between the Englishman and the Indian, educated as well as uneducated? Is there nothing real in this? Is it only the machination of a few conspirators? Is this antagonism essentially different in purpose from the constant action and reaction of making and breaking which are at work in the making of Indian History? It is very necessary for us to come to a true understanding of its meaning …
We began with a blind, foolish, insensate begging at the door of Europe, with our critical sense entirely benumbed. That was not the way to make any real gain. Whether it be wisdom, or political rights, they have to be earned, that is to say to be attained by one’s own shakti after a successful struggle against obstructing forces. If they be put into our hands by others, by way of alms, they do not become ours at all. To take in a form which is derogatory can only lead to loss. Hence our reaction against the culture of Europe and its ideals. A feeling of wounded self-respect is prompting us to return upon ourselves …
Rammoh
an Roy was able to assimilate the ideals of Europe so completely because he was not overwhelmed by them: there was no poverty or weakness on his side. He had ground of his own on which he could take his stand and where he could secure his acquisitions. The true wealth of India was not hidden from him, for this he had already made his own. Consequently he had with him the touchstone by which he could test the wealth of others. He did not sell himself by holding out a beggar’s palms, but assessed the true value of whatever he took.
This shakti which was natural to our first great leader, is steadily developing itself amongst us through constantly conflicting stresses and strains, actions and reactions. Pendulum-wise do our movements touch now this extreme, now the other. An undue eagerness of acceptance and an undue timidity of rejection assail us by turns …
The West has come as India’s guest; we cannot send away the visitor while the object of his visit remains unfulfilled; he must be properly accommodated. But, whatever be the reason—whether it be some defect in our power of recognition, or the miserliness of the West in revealing itself in its truth—if the flow of this great purpose of Time should receive a check, there is bound to be a disastrous irruption.
If we do not come into touch with what is true, what is best, in the Englishman; if we find in him merely a merchant, or a military man, or a bureaucrat; if he will not come down to the plane in which man may commune with man and take him into confidence;—if, in fine, the Indian and the Englishman needs must remain apart, then will they be to each other a perennial source of unhappiness. In such case the party which is in power will try to make powerless the dissatisfaction of the weaker by repressive legislation, but will not be able to allay it. Nor will the former find any satisfaction in the situation; and feeling the Indian only to be a source of trouble the Englishman will more and more try to ignore his very existence …
All the trouble that we see now-a-days is caused by this failure of East and West to come together. Bound to be near each other, and yet unable to be friends, is an intolerable situation between man and man, and hurtful withal. Therefore the desire to put an end to it must become overwhelming sooner or later. Such a rebellion, being a rebellion of the heart, will not take account of material gains or losses; it will even risk death.
And yet it is also true that such rebelliousness can only be a temporary phase. In spite of all retarding factors our impact with the West must be made good—there can be no escape for India until she has made her own whatever there may be worth the taking from the West. Until the fruit is ripe it does not get released from the stem, nor can it ripen at all if it insists on untimely release …
Those of us who go to the Englishman’s durbar with bowed heads and folded hands, seeking emoluments of office or badges of honour, we only attract his pettiness and help to distort his true manifestation in India. Those, again, who in a blind fury of passion would violently assail him, succeed in evoking only the sinful side of the Englishman’s nature. If, then, it be true that it is our frailty which excites his insolence, his greed, his cowardice or his cruelty, why blame him? Rather should we take the blame on ourselves.
In his own country the Englishman’s lower nature is kept under control and his higher nature roused to its fullest capacity by the social forces around him. The social conscience there, being awake, compels each individual, with all its force, to take his stand on a high level and maintain his place there with unceasing effort. In this country his society is unable to perform the same function. Anglo-Indian society is not concerned with the whole Englishman. It is either a society of civilians, or of merchants, or of soldiers. Each of these are limited by their own business, and become encased in a hard crust of prejudice and superstition. So they develop into thorough-going civilians, or mere merchants, or blatant soldiers. We cannot find the man in them …
On the other hand, the decay and weakness of the Indian Samaj itself is also a bar to the rousing of the true British spirit, wherefore both are losers. It is our own fault, I repeat, that we meet only Burra Sahebs and not great Englishmen. And to this we owe all the sufferings and insults with which we have to put up. We have no remedy but to acknowledge our sin and get rid of it …
Neither tall talk nor violence, but only sacrifice and service are true tests of strength. Until the Indian can give up his fear, his self-interest, his luxury, in his quest for the best and the highest, in his service of the Motherland, our demanding from the Government will but be empty begging and will aggravate both our incapacity and our humiliation. When we shall have made our country our own by sacrifice and established our claim to it by applying our own powers for its reclamation, then we shall not need to stand abjectly and the Englishman need not lower himself. Then may we become colleagues and enter into mutual arrangement.
Until we can cast off our individual or Samajic folly; as long as we remain unable to grant to our own countrymen the full rights of man; as long as our zamindars [landlords] continue to look on their tenantry as part of their property, our men in power glory in keeping their subordinates under their heels, our higher castes think nothing of looking down on the lowest castes as worse than beasts; so long shall we not have the right or power to demand from the Englishman proper behaviour towards ourselves.
At every turn—in her religion, in her samaj [social arrangements], in her daily practice—does the Indian of to-day fail to do justice to herself. She does not purify her soul by sacrifice, and so on every side she suffers futility. She cannot meet the outsider on equal terms and so receives nothing of value from him. No cleverness or violence can deliver her from the sufferings and insults of which the Englishman is but the instrument. Only when she can meet him as his equal, will all reason for antagonism, and with it all conflict, disappear. Then will East and West unite in India—country with country, race with race, knowledge with knowledge, endeavour with endeavour. Then will the History of India come to an end, merged in the History of the World which will begin.
The Excesses of Nationalism
In the middle of the First World War, Tagore travelled to Japan and the United States. Everywhere, he warned his audiences against equating love of one’s nation with the celebration of military prowess. His lectures were published in a slim book, Nationalism, that is perhaps his most powerful and compelling piece of non-fiction. Remarkably, the note on Tagore in the official Nobel Prize website does not mention this book, thus confirming the popular belief that he should be known by his stories and poems alone. The excerpts presented below suggest otherwise.2
… The political civilization which has sprung up from the soil of Europe and is overrunning the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness. Before this political civilization came to its power and opened its hungry jaws wide enough to gulp down great continents of the earth, we had wars, pillages, changes of monarchy and consequent miseries, but never such a sight of fearful and hopeless voracity, such wholesale feeding of nation upon nation, such huge machines for turning great portions of the earth into mince-meat, never such terrible jealousies with all their ugly teeth and claws ready for tearing open each other’s vitals. This political civilization is scientific, not human. It is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism …
I must not hesitate to acknowledge where Europe is great, for great she is without doubt. We cannot help loving her
with all our heart and paying her the best homage of our admiration—the Europe who, in her literature and art, pours out an inexhaustible cascade of beauty and truth fertilizing all countries and all time; the Europe who, with a mind which is titanic in its untiring power, is sweeping the height and the depth of the universe, winning her homage of knowledge from the infinitely great and the infinitely small, applying all the resources of her great intellect and heart in healing the sick and alleviating those miseries of man which up till now we were contented to accept in a spirit of hopeless resignation; the Europe who is making the earth yield more fruit than seemed possible, coaxing and compelling the great forces of nature into man’s service. Such true greatness must have its motive power in spiritual strength. For only the spirit of man can defy all limitations, have faith in its ultimate success, throw its searchlight beyond the immediate and the apparent, gladly suffer martyrdom for ends which cannot be achieved in its lifetime and accept failure without acknowledging defeat. In the heart of Europe runs the purest stream of human love, of love of justice, of spirit of self-sacrifice for higher ideals. The Christian culture of centuries has sunk deep in her life’s core. In Europe we have seen noble minds who have ever stood up for the rights of man irrespective of colour and creed; who have braved calumny and insult from their own people in fighting for humanity’s cause and raising their voices against the mad orgies of militarism, against the rage of brutal retaliation or rapacity that sometimes takes possession of a whole people; who are always ready to make reparation for wrongs done in the past by their own nations … There are these knight-errants of modern Europe who have not lost their faith in the disinterested love of freedom, in the ideals which own no geographical boundaries or national self-seeking. These are there to prove that the fountainhead of the water of everlasting life has not run dry in Europe, and from thence she will have her rebirth time after time … Europe is supremely good in her beneficence where her face is turned to all humanity; and Europe is supremely evil in her maleficent aspect where her face is turned only upon her own interest, using all her power of greatness for ends which are against the infinite and eternal in Man …
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