IV

In this article we have so far perforce left untouched what is obviously most important about Rabindranath – the way he revolutionised art and literature in Bengal and thereby contributed to the development of Indian culture – and his other social activities. Our purpose was to use the available space for an assessment of the political Rabindranath. But let us, if only to get a sense of perspective in this concluding part, take a break here for a brief glance at some of those aspects and then come back to the main thread of our investigation.

Educationist and Social Reformer

In his own way the poet was also a most energetic activist. He travelled extensively in India (in some cases with his cultural troupe) and undertook more than ten foreign trips – harrowing journeys across land and sea – some of which (like the one in 1920-21 which extended over a year) were really world tours. In most of these the main purpose, apart from the ever-present eagerness to expand ties of friendship and cultural exchange with peoples near and far, was to raise funds for Visva Bharati and to convey, through lectures and other forms of intercourse, what he believed to be the timeless message from India.

He was a tireless traveller also across art forms. Drawing extensively on such varied sources as the Upanishads and the epics; Indian and Western classical music; the devotional-mystic music of Bengal; exponents of the bhakti cult such as Kabir, Dadu, Tulsi; Western art and literature; tribal arts and crafts of India and so on, he introduced new contents and styles in poetry and vocal music; stories and novels; dramas, ballets and operas; drawings (which evolved from his own manuscript corrections) and paintings (an area he ventured into when he was nearly 70); essays on all conceivable topics including popular science and nursery rhymes; and even briefly tried his hand in filmmaking.

The young Robi’s silent rebellion against the rigours of conventional schooling (he left school and remained the lone non-matriculate among the male members of a highly educated and accomplished family) metamorphosed into the small forest hermitage called Shantiniketan (Abode of Peace) which he set up in the boundless meadows of Birbhum district. In time it grew into Visva Bharati, a unique institution that allowed students wide scope for developing multiple facets of their personalities through vocational training, cultural performances, nature studies etc, rather than preparing them only for exams and careers. True to its name, the university sought to combine the best in Eastern (Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Persian etc) and Western (English, German, Italian, Russian and so on) cultures and learning. A companion project was “Sriniketan” at nearby Surul, an embodiment of Thakur’s vision of constructive rural work and empowerment of the socially underprivileged by acquainting them with modern techniques of agriculture, handicrafts and cottage industries. With this purpose in mind he sent his son Rathindranath not to the Inns of Court or Oxford or Cambridge, as was the general custom among the Bengali bhadralok, but to the University of Illinois (US) to study agriculture.

Rabindranath was relentless in fighting for recognition of mother tongues as the principal medium of expression and education. He was the first to deliver the President’s address in a Congress provincial conference (1908) and the convocation speech at Calcutta University (1937) in Bengali. At the same time, he readily recognised that, since English was “beyond the comprehension of the masses”, it was “imperative to organise an All India Movement to foster and spread the growth of a language which is potentially capable of being adopted as a common medium of communication between the different provinces. I say ‘communication’ and not ‘expression’... For literary expression can truly be achieved only in a language to which we are born.”[i]

Robi Thakur did not lead a social reform movement. But as noted earlier, he propagated (and also practised on a limited scale) a village reconstruction programme that had as its core planned integration of agriculture and village crafts – both reorganised on cooperative basis – with great emphasis on public health and education. He also wrote extensively and forcefully, with some inconsistencies and ambiguities though, against religious and racial bigotry, patriarchal domination and all kinds of prejudices and superstitions. His relatively modern, forward-looking viewpoint often brought him into debates with Gandhi. For example, when in 1934 the latter described a severe earthquake in Bihar as God’s punishment for the sin of untouchability, he openly criticised this unscientific approach, saying this was extremely harmful precisely because the masses were prone to accepting such falsehoods.

In personal life he moved away from both the puritanical brahmo church and the Hindu revivalist trend, arriving by 1912 at the concept of “Hindusamaj” – a huge inclusive society encompassing different religious faiths and races[ii] -- a well-meaning formulation that lent itself rather easily to appropriation by the Hindutva brigade of later decades.

When in 1910 Vaishyas and Kayasthas launched a movement for the right to wear the sacred thread – a right traditionally reserved only for the twice-born castes – he welcomed it in the hope that the rebellion against discriminatory social customs will gradually spread to other lower (backward in current usage) castes too. Later in 1925 he extended support to the birth control movement (even as most other eminent Indians including Gandhi opposed the same) on the ground that “it will save women from enforced and undesirable maternity” and reduce “the burden of over-population” in a poor country like India. Four years later he wrote Yogayog (Connections) – a novel that tells the story of an upright, freedom-loving wife who rebels but gets enslaved again by unwanted pregnancy.

On Nationalism and Imperialism

Rabindranath had always been a passionate crusader – yes, he fought in the name of manabdharma, the Religion of Man, the religion of universal peace and “grand Harmony of all human races” – against national chauvinism, imperialism and fascism. Proceeding from the premise that “The word nation does not occur in our language... our history, our religion, our society, our family do not recognise the supremacy of the cult of the nation”[iii] he used the word nationalism in a restricted sense to mean jingoism and xenophobia practised by the advanced capitalist nations then evolving into imperialism. In “The Sunset of the Century”, a poem written on the last day of the 19th century, he condemned nationalism as a source of imperialism and war:

“The last Sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the West and the whirlwind of hatred.

The naked passion of the self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and howling verses of vengeance.

The hungry self of the Nation shall burst into a violence of fury from its shameless feeding.

For it has made the world its food.

And licking it, crunching it and swallowing it in big morsels...”

When the hungry wolves actually started their big feast, the poet produced a keen and correct analysis of the origin of WW I in the essay Larayer Mul (Roots of the War, 1914, CW Vol. 13):

“The world is now under the reign of Vaishyas. Trade is no longer just trade; it is now tied in wedlock with the Empire....

Once the Vaishya had merchandise as his property, now man himself has become his property.... something absolutely unprecedented in world history is happening now – the rule of one country over another, where the two are located on two sides of the ocean.

Never before did the world witness such a colossal domination – by Europe over Asia and Africa.”

Referring to the late-comer among imperialist powers, Thakur writes,

“Now it is Germany which finds itself in an unenviable situation. Waking up later than others, it came running and panting to partake of the grand feast when it was almost over. It is very hungry and the smell of fish makes its mouth water, but little is left of the sumptuous meal but the bones. So, boiling in a rage, it says, ‘well, if there is no dish earmarked for me, I shall not wait to be invited. I will grab and gobble up by force whatsoever I can, from whomsoever I can’...

However, this theory – which Germany is propagating today and which has driven it, intoxicated, into the unjust war – has its roots not in the brains of German pundits but in the whole history of the present European civilisation.”

It is to be noted that these lines were written before Lenin or Hilferding came up with their treatises on imperialism, and at a time when neither Henri Barbusse nor Romain Roland – not to speak of anyone in India – was able to come anywhere near such socio-economic analysis of the imperialist war. In the same article he also predicted “an impending battle between the Vaishyas and the Shudras, between the capitalists and workers”, which actually flared up vehemently in Russia three years later.

In his lectures delivered in Japan and America a couple of years later (in 1916), he denounced “the pack of predatory creatures... fighting among themselves for the extension of the victims and their reserve forests...” He knew that his words of reproach would only invite a hostile reaction in these countries, but that did not deter him from speaking out his mind.

Rabindranath was sternly critical of the post-war Versailles Agreement signed at the behest of the victors and their shameless rhetoric on peace. In Batayaniker Patra (Observations From the Balcony, 1919, CW Vol. 13) he wrote that the rich and the powerful were trying to divide the earth among themselves; the peace they wanted was for sucking up the milk and honey to be found in the custody of the poor nations. But the division would not be equal, the greed and hunger of all of them would not be satisfied, and one day catastrophe would strike again. His message was clear: the seeds of another war for redistribution of the world’s resources were sown in the peace agreement itself. History stands witness that he was correct.

Even in the absence of a scientific theory on imperialism and ways to resist it, the poet’s views were thus strikingly free from the inhibitions of his class position that rendered his attitude to the British Raj in India notoriously ambivalent and reconciliatory. Such juxtaposition is graphically illustrated in the following statement issued in 1927, when the British government sent a big contingent of the Indian Army to China to ‘defend’ its settlements there. He accepted, however grudgingly, the legitimacy of arbitrary British rule in India but would not tolerate “India being used as a pawn” in imperialist expeditions elsewhere:

“...who gave the offence, may I ask? ... Why was Hong Kong wrested away from the Chinese people by force? ... It was the English who took up the original offensive and they should not now take shelter under the false cry of a defensive campaign. It is China that is really on the defensive.

“Let the English indulge in the free exercise of the arbitrary will within India, but let them... desist from the unholy exploitation of the helplessness of a people in order to rob other people of their heritage.”[iv]

Thakur’s great mistake, as Chittaranjan Das clearly and correctly pointed out in the Gaya Congress Conference (1922), was that he failed to distinguish between the aggressive, reactionary nationalism of imperialist countries and the progressive anti-imperialist nationalism of colonial/semi-colonial countries. However, the experience of World War II compelled him to have some second thoughts. “Come, young nations/proclaim the fight for freedom”, he wrote in poem number 111 in the collection Poems. There was no change, of course, in his basic position that “In small minds, patriotism dissociates itself from the higher ideas of humanity” and that he would never abandon the latter for the former.[v]

As is well known, for a period Robi Thakur was caught unawares in the political trap laid out by Mussolini, from which he wriggled out with the help of Romain Rolland. In addition to lack of sufficient information about the early activities and the fascist ideology of Mussolini, several other factors also played an important role here: the strong element of hero worship in Rabindranath (which prompted him to search and find individual “deshanayaka(s) in Surendranath Banerjee and Subhash Bose), a passionate search for some novel solution to the problems of humanity and the spell of Mussolini’s “magnetic personality”, as he called it. [ For details see Alex Aranson and Krishna Kripalini (ed.) Rolland and Tagore, Visva Bharati, 1945] However, once rid of the illusion, the poet was relentless in criticizing fascism.

A Call to Arms

The last decade of the septuagenarian poet’s life, which was marked by gathering war clouds and the eventual outbreak of WWII, saw the vishwa kobi (the world poet, as Bengalis love to call him) vigorously participating in the world peace movement with numerous statements, poems, speeches, essays and also by joining international forums like the League against Fascism and War (in which he was the president of the all India committee). He wrote the celebrated poem “Africa” in February 1937 following the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. During the Spanish civil war he wrote,

“Civilisation must be saved from being swamped by barbarism. At this hour of the supreme trial and suffering of the Spanish people, I appeal to the conscience of humanity. Help the People’s Front in Spain, help the Government of the people...”[vi]

His hatred for the fascists and their imperialist collaborators, who joined hands to sign the Munich agreement in September 1938, found poignant expression in the poem Prayaschitta or Atonement (poem number 110, Poems), and in a letter to Prof Lesney of Czechoslovakia: “My words have no power to stay the onslaught of the maniacs, [Read Hitler and Mussolini– A S] not even the power to arrest the desertion of those who erstwhile pretended to be the saviours of humanity [Read England and France – A S]. I can only remind those who are not yet fully demented that when men turn beasts they sooner or later tear each other...”[vii]

Probably the most direct call to arms was sounded in a couple of poems written, very significantly, on Christmas – an auspicious day of peace for Robi Thakur – in 1937, when he was bedridden with little chance of recovery. (see the shorter one in box)

BOX:

“All around the serpents hiss and spread their poisonous fumes,

Sweet words of peace will seem like hollow mockery.

Let me, before I take my leave,

Hail those who are getting ready in many homes

To battle with the demon.” [viii]

The Ray of Hope

Painfully aware that the epidemic of war and bloodshed was not conjectural, not the handiwork of some bad guys or rogue states, but had a systemic basis, Rabindranath naturally longed for a radical transformation of that basis itself. And the only place on earth where he saw any real possibility of such fundamental restructuring was revolutionary Russia. This will be evident from the letter he wrote to Amiya Chakravarty on 7 March 1935 (see box).

BOX:

“What we see today is a man-eater civilisation. It just cannot do without a group of victims who must feed it and carry it on their backs. Its wealth, its luxuries and even its culture rise high in the sky on the shoulders of the subaltern multitudes. And this explains why the symptoms of a class revolution have become so pronounced in Europe today....

“Unless and until the very foundation of this civilisation, which is so cruel to the weak, is changed, we cannot survive on the crumbs of bread thrown down from the dining tables of the rich...

“Such an attempt to transform the foundations of civilisation I had witnessed in Russia.... Shortcomings notwithstanding, the shape of the new era of humankind which I saw in that tapobhumi [auspicious space for prolonged meditation – A S] filled me with great joy and hope. Nowhere else in human history do I find such a durable basis for joy and optimism. I know that Russia has founded this new era on a colossal revolution, but that is a revolution against the most cruel, most powerful ripu [evil passion – A S] of man – a revolution that shows the road to the expiation of mountains of sin accumulated over the ages....

“When I ponder over the matter from the standpoint of whole humanity, the realisation that automatically dawns upon me is that new Russia is engaged in a sadhana [long, determined endeavour – A S] to extract a big, deadly splinter that has pierced through the ribs of human civilisation – a splinter called greed. A prayer spontaneously rises in one’s mind: may their sadhana be crowned with success.” [ix]

By the time Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, everything looked bleak but he would not “commit the sin of losing faith in man”, as he said in his last birthday speech (see the opening paragraphs of this article) and pinned all hope on the world’s first socialist state. The following report from the diary of his close companion P C Mahalanobis says it all:

“On the day of the operation, half an hour before he was placed on the operation table, he asked me, ‘tell me the news about Russia.’ When I said the war had taken a better turn, his face was beaming and he said: ‘will it not be? It must be. It has got to be better. They can do it. Only they will do it.’” [Footnote by PCM – ‘only they will do it’ in this context means ‘only the Russians will win victory’.]

Those were his last words to me. I am fortunate indeed to have seen in the light of his face his firm faith in the glory of man.”[x]

The poet lived no more, but the Red Army did live up to his expectation. On two more counts he was proved right before the decade ended. The British left India in “a waste of mud and filth” and “a new dawn” did “come from this horizon, from the East” – as he had predicted in his farewell speech – from his beloved China to be precise.

Humanism and Communism: Rabindranath Then and Now

Like all great artists’, Rabindranath’s works could not but reflect the conflicts and passions, agonies and ecstasies, realities and utopias of the historic milieu which produced him and on the further evolution of which he brought his influence to bear. It is but natural that even antagonistic class forces would seek and find, in the vast repository of his works, many ideas and precepts suitable to their respective class interests.

Unable to cross the barriers of his class standing, philosophical viewpoint and political outlook, Robi Thakur did not advocate or support movements for overthrowing colonialism and feudalism; in fact most of the times he opposed them. In this sense he did not consistently represent the spirit of the democratic revolution in India. However, within these limits – but at rare moments of truth even going beyond – the artist in him navigated from shore to shore, breaking and remoulding himself time and again, and scaling new heights in robust, progressive and lately even militant humanism along a circuitous, up and down track. His “Question” of 1931 found a clear answer in 1937 in the shape of a call to rise in arms against “the demon” and some of his noblest pieces were composed when he was terminally ill.

Thakur was an enlightened aristocrat who viewed peasants as pitiable, lovable ignoramuses deserving support for economic and cultural upliftment – and certainly not as locomotives of history. He always saw class struggle with suspicion, but respected the dignity and contribution of the working people as lamp stands suffering in perpetual darkness and holding aloft the lamp of civilisation (as he put it in Letter from Russia). In “They Work” (1941) he paid rich tributes to them as bearers of life and to productive labour as the only constant in a world where everything else changes: “On the ruins of hundreds of empires, they work on.”

With advancing years the poet longed to integrate with the toiling masses: “Let me be known as one of you and for you. Let this alone be my last connotation” (CW Vol. 3, p 548). He knew he failed to cross the class barriers to become one of them and boldly admitted this:

Aikatan (The Chorus)

[Excerpt]

“The peasant tills his field, the weaver works his loom, the fisherman casts his net – their varied work extends far and wide and the world moves on their support.

“I live in a small corner in the perpetual exile of prestige, seated by a narrow window on society’s high platform. Sometimes I have ventured near their homes but have lacked the courage to enter.

“Without a meeting of lives the store of songs can collect only false merchandise. So I accept blame and admit the incompleteness of my tunes....

“I wait for the message of the poet who is close to the soil, who shares the peasant’s life and becomes his kin through word and action.”

Thakur cautions the reader about the counterfeit that merely flaunts the badge of pretended sympathy for the poor, and then heartily welcomes the new poet who would be a genuine representative of the downtrodden:

“Come, poet of mute, obscure men, give voice to their hidden sorrow, fill with life and joy this dry, songless land, release the spring hidden in its heart....

“If you be their kin, let your renown make them known! I shall offer you salutations again and again.”[xi]

The warm invitation did not go unanswered. A good many authors in prose and verse who fitted the bill had already started work. After his departure, Sukanta Bhattacharya in one of his two poems on Rabindranath imagined the senior poet marching at the head of a red flag procession. Saroj Dutta (SD) in his article titled “Rabindranath” profusely praised his role as a publicist against imperialism. In a poem of the same name he drew attention to the timeless value of Robi Thakur’s poetry and sharply criticised the cynics who “seek to deny and cheat the very soil on which they stand” and ended his tribute by saying that the final assessment remains to be made, but “You must be defended – this much I have realised and I take this as my asset.”[xii]

In the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath, as the Indian ruling elite pays lip-service to his great literary heritage seeking to reduce him to a poet of ‘peace and harmony’ and the Nobel winning author of India’s national anthem, it is important to reclaim the legacy of this great internationalist and humanist. What Lenin had said about Leo Tolstoy holds no less true for Rabindranath: “in his legacy there is that which has not receded into the past but belongs to the future.” As the inherently dehumanising and barbaric nature of capitalism unfolds itself before the Indian people in ways that are increasingly more shocking and brutal whether through corporate plunder at home or neo-colonial occupation and imperialist wars right in our neighbourhood, Rabindranath, far from sounding outdated, resonates as powerfully today as he did a hundred years ago. In his own ways, Rabindranath mirrored the complexities and contradictions of India’s quest for modernity and freedom in the early 20th century while inspiring generations of fighters even as he himself often stayed aloof, questioning, criticising and at times outright opposing struggles and slogans emanating from within the freedom movement. Today, in the 21st century he continues to inspire the Indian people’s battle for progress and democracy, for defending and enriching the human essence in the face of the unending falsehoods and brutal predatory ravages of globalised capital.

[Concluded]

Foot note

i). Cited by Nepal Mazumdar in Rabindranath: koyekti rajnitik prasanga (Rabindranath: Certain Political Issues) Dey’s Publishing, Kolkata, 1999, pp 212 -- 14

ii). Atmaparichaya or Self-Identity, CW Vol. 13

iii). Prachya O Paschatya Savyata or Civilisation in the East and the West, CW Vol. 12, p 1060

iv). Cited by Nepal Mazumdar, op. Cit., p 44

v). Letter to Japanese poet Noguchi, September 1938, cited by K N Mukherjee in “Political Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore”, S Chand & Co Ltd, New Delhi, 1982, p 18

vi). cited by Ashis Sanyal in Rabindranath O Nationalism, M C Sarkar And Sons Pvt.ltd., Kolkata, 2004, p 79

vii). cited by Kedar Nath Mukherjee, op. cit., p 282

viii). CW Vol. 3, p 546

ix). Chithipatra, (Letters) Vol. 11 p 145-46

x). Prasanga Rabindranath (On Rabindranath) Mahalanobis Trust Parichalana Samity, Calcutta, 1985, p 73

xi). Translated by Amalendu Das Gupta under the title “The Poet of Man”. See “One Hundred and One Poems by Rabindranath Tagore”, Asia Publishing House, 1966

xii). These pieces were written in the pre-Naxalbari period. However, by that time SD had already started his powerful polemic against alien trends in the progressive cultural movement. Later in the wake of the statue-breaking campaign in Calcutta he wrote extremely critical articles on figures like Gandhi, Subhash, Vidyasagar and PC Roy but none on Robi Thakur.