In light of the recent controversy generated around Rabindranath Tagore, Agenda brings to its readers an essay written by Chandan Mitra on May 9, 2010, which analyses the philosopher-poet’s unique idea of Indian nationhood

Rabindranath Tagore wasn’t being conceited when he addressed a poem to his unborn reader who, he surmised, would be reading it with some curiosity 100 years hence. “May my ode to spring resound, even if fleetingly, when springtime embraces you; may your heart flutter with the music of bees and sound of rustling leaves, a hundred years from today (Aaji hotey shatabarsha pare).”

Gurudev’s faith in the future, in which he believed he would retain a role, was not misplaced. Nearly 70 years after his death, in the age of the Internet and instant entertainment, Tagore’s relatively languid literary and musical appeal may have ebbed, but his vision, his convictions have triumphed more resoundingly than we often acknowledge.

Defining of the Indian identity was the mission closest to Tagore’s heart. It remained a running theme of his thoughts and expressions, understandably so for India was in ferment throughout his creative decades and Indian nationality had not acquired the certitude it has now. Tagore’s India was assimilative, cosmopolitan, compassionate, liberal and quintessentially secular, not in a denominational sense but philosophically. This is most comprehensively expounded in his classic poem Bharat Tirtha (Indian Pilgrimage), which merits detailed quotation:

Hey mor chitta, punya tirthey jaagorey dheerey,

Ei Bharater mahamanaber sagarateerey,

Hethay danraye du bahu baraye nami nara-debatarey,

Udaar chhandey, paramanandey bandan kori tanrey...

Keho nahi jaaney, kaar ahbaney kato manusher dhara

Durbar srotey elo kotha hotey, samudra holo hara,

Hethay Arya, hethay anarya, hethay Dravid, Cheen —

Saka, Hun dal, Pathan Mughal, ek dehe holo leen

Paschim aaji khuliachhey dwar, setha hotey sabey aane upahaar

Debe aar nibe, melabey milibey, jaabe na phirey,

Ei Bharater mahamanaber sagarateerey...

Esho hey Arya esho anarya, Hindu-Muslaman —

Esho esho aaj tumi Ingraj, esho esho Khristan,

Esho Brahman suchi kori mon dharo haat sabakar

Esho hey patit karo apaneet sabo apamanbhaar

The fundamental belief underlying this definition of Indian-ness is its assimilative nature. It is also a statement of India’s unparalleled capacity to absorb external elements and emerge stronger in consequence. Tagore is concerned not merely with outside people and cultures contributing to India’s evolution (Debey aar nibey, melabey milibey, jaabey na phirey — they will give and take, introduce novelty, combine, but won’t go back). He is equally emphatic about internal rectification: (Come O Brahmin purify your mind and hold everybody’s hand, Come Ye Fallen casting aside the burden of past humiliation).

In the process of this assimilation, the constant infusion of new blood and the purification of the self, Rabindranath believed, the Maha Manav would be created on the shores of the global pilgrimage called India. Shades of Zarathustra or NietzscheIJ Not quite, for Tagore’s Maha Manav is not about the individual, it is about collective nationhood. It is not aggressive nationalism that borders on jingoism in the Western sense; it is uniquely Indian seeking to absorb humanity in totality for the creation of the Ideal Human, not Superman.

Rabindranath’s contemporary relevance is not confined to his ideological pursuit of defining the Ideal Human or the creation of the Universal Indian. Towards this goal he emphasises equally on righting the wrongs within. In a poem expressing thoughts that go way ahead of dominant norms of the time, he writes:

Hey mor durbhaga desh,

jaader korechho apaman

Apamaney hotey hobey

tahader sabar saman

Manusher adikarey banchita

korechho jaarey

Samukhe danraye rekhe tobu

koley daao naai sthan

Apamaney hotey hobey

tahader sabar saman

Dekhitey paao na tumi mritydoot

danrayechhe dware

Abhishaap aanki dilo tomar jatir ahankarey sabarey jadi na dako, ekhono soriya thako

Apanerey bendhe rakho choudikey jaraye abhimaan,

Mrityu-majhey habey tabey chitabhasmey sabar saman

Written in the early 20th Century, this is possibly the strongest critique of untouchability, chastising the so-called ritually superior castes of the fate that awaits them for practicing inhuman forms of social apartheid. Tagore concludes by warning those still encapsulated in notions of caste superiority that someday they will have to be level with those who they shunned — that day being on the cremation pyre.

Apart from his powerful message of social equality, Tagore was ahead of his times in being non-judgmental. In Abhisar, a moving poetic narrative of a Bodhisattva tale, he drives home this point forcefully with reference to the story of a sanyasi and a dancing girl, Basavdatta. In their first encounter, the ailing Sanyasi Upagupta declines her invitation to be cared for at her home. But years later, when she is rejected by the townspeople and suffering from small pox, the sanyasi reaches out and takes charge of nursing her back to health, ignoring social taboos. (Aaji rajanite esechhe samay, esechhi Basavdatta — Tonight, Basavdatta, the time has finally come for me to be with you).

But it is not only the social reformist in Tagore that makes him relevant even today. He was acutely conscious of the need to generate pride in the nation’s history and instill courage to bolster national character. In this endeavour, it was not only the anti-imperialist struggle that occupied his mind-space but also the valour of the battles fought against forces of oppression.

Rabindranath has been accused by critics of being “soft” on the British by not applying his evocative abilities to spur people into the freedom struggle. Arguably he was critical of radicalism of all varieties and to that extent, refused to endorse the “extremist” trend that dominated popular thinking in Bengal in his times. His strongest indictment of this political tendency was in the novel Ghare-Baire, later made into a characteristically brilliant film by Satyajit Ray. Some would find the characterisation of the radical Nikhilesh as an unprincipled activist — who flirts with the wife of the very friend who shelters him, and eventually leaves with the family’s fortune — a trifle too sweeping. But family values were deeply engrained in Rabindranath’s thinking although he did not hesitate to weave stories around prevailing realities, for example, Charulata — yet another Ray classic.

The search for the Indian identity, though, remained central to Tagore’s concerns. Perhaps the most complex novel to explore this theme was Gora, the adopted child of a Brahmin family who turns ultra-orthodox only to realise the reality of his birth and the futility of orthodoxy.

To revert to the theme of Tagore empowering emerging Indian nationalism by reconstructing tales of past valour, his thoughtful reflections on Shivaji Utsav bear recalling. Regretting that much of India, especially Bengal, did not respond to Chhatrapati’s rousing cry, Tagore writes: “We didn’t hear your call then, but today we will follow your orders with our heads bowed. Voice will match voice, heart will match heart, as we chant your mantra. Our strength is your mantra ‘India will be one dharma-rajya’.”

In a similar vein, Rabindranath penned the powerful saga of Sikh leader Banda Bahadur’s stoic sacrifice of his son with his own kirpan rather than allow conversion to Islam. A remarkable narrative on the rise of the Khalsa Panth, Tagore graphically etched the undaunted courage of Sikh soldiers as they faced the organised might of the Mughal army and finally succumbed. Eulogising Sikh bravery in defeat, he wrote “Porey gelo karakari, aagey keba pran karibek daan tari lagi taratari (A race ensued to determine who would be first to give up his life to defend faith).” Such was the death defying courage of the Sikhs that the Mughal victor emerged vanquished in people’s eyes.

That Tagore returned his Knighthood in the wake of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is well known. What is not so well known to readers outside Bengal is the raw nationalism that flowed from his pen in the aftermath. For the first (perhaps only) time, the poet appears to implicitly endorse non-violence by way of retaliation, saying “Today, with a false gesture of reverence I have to return from my doorstep those Messengers of God who came to this merciless world preaching forgiveness and love, telling us to abjure hatred.” He concludes with throbbing pathos: “My voice is choked, my flute has lost its strains, it’s like the inside of a prison on a moonless night. You have submerged my world under the burden of nightmares. That’s why I tearfully ask — have you forgiven, have you loved, those that poisoned the environ you created, those that stamped out the light of your lampIJ” This is perhaps the most fitting reply to those contemporaries who accused him of being a pacifist to the point of tacitly accepting British rule.

Bondage of any kind was anathema to Tagore’s fundamental belief, profoundly expressed in his oft-quoted Prarthana: “Where the mind is without fear and the head held high, where knowledge is free, where walls around the home have not divided the world in a thousand small pieces... Wake India to such a heaven.”

Incidentally, the last line of this short poem links back to Bharat Tirtha and the concept of the Indian Maha Manav — Tagore’s unrelenting pursuit.

This is the pursuit that led Rabindranath to create the idyllic environment for absorbing knowledge: Santiniketan. He was convinced that Project Maha Manav would not be accomplished without renunciation of Western materialism.

Equally, Tagore internalised the quintessential Vedic concept of communion with nature and the necessary balance of man and the environment. Whatever fate Visva-Bharati may have subsequently met, the body of ideas that resulted in its conceptualisation and actualisation are central to the understanding of Tagore’s contemporary relevance. In that sense, he was not only India’s first modern environmentalist but also the leading proponent of the karmic value of philosophy. For him, philosophy and knowledge were meaningless unless practiced in real life — a notion that has gained wide acceptability today with IITs and IIMs emphasising value-based education, much of which derives from Vedic principles.

Finally, though, it must be said with a tinge of regret that Rabindranath Tagore’s intellectual vastness did not find adequate resonance outside Bengal. The rest of India takes pride in his being the first Indian to have been bestowed with the Nobel Prize for literature, but his universalism is not fully appreciated. Ironic, for despite being passionate about his Bengali origin, Rabindranath argued with equal passion the need to reach out to the rest of India and the world. To that end, he even invoked Mother Goddess Bengal. Urging Bengalis to renounce the cosy comfort of the Mother’s gentle care and move out to make their destiny, he goes on to indict the Mother saying: “You have kept seven crore children (undivided Bengal’s population in Tagore’s time) O charming Mother, as mere Bengalis, not made them men!”

It is Rabindranath’s unparalleled ability to transcend the local, regional, national and international, project a universal world view, a philosophy for thought and action, that makes him the closest an Indian has come to being the Maha Manav he himself had conceptualised. He is not only the giver of our National Anthem but also the philosopher-poet who left behind a national aspiration, which will inspire years after the tributes and extravaganzas of anniversaries are long gone.