Tagore- the free thought absolutist

"The anarchy of mere emptiness never tempts me." - Rabindranath Tagore

Behind such illuminating words of wisdom were countless years of absolute immersion in exploring the self and the world. How do we define terms like 'devotion', 'immersion' or even 'committed'? These epithets may only fall short to capture the aura and stature of Rabindranath Tagore. This essay doesn't envisage being another of those glorious life-histories of this great man, rather it is an attempt to sincerely decode the message Tagore left behind for all of us. This attempt might seem laughable given the sheer magnitude of his literary output, not to speak of my unfamiliarity with the Bengali language, in which he authored a number of brilliant books. However, even a cursory reading of a few speeches that he delivered can offer a window into his thought-process. This investigation I believe is of utmost importance, and I also request readers to personally pore over Tagore's speeches and books for it is plain and simple imperative for our times. Let me explain why, in fact, let Tagore himself do the answering- 'I am frightened at an abstraction which is ready to ignore living reality'. 

 Nowadays there is a rather sinister campaign- that doesn't have any name or form but has become fashionable in India- to try and attach labels to leaders, and appropriate them for political messaging. As long as it is confined to the level of political discourse, this shouldn't be a matter of concern. However, thanks to the rancour of social media, such attitudes have gained significant traction. The idea is to make a historical figure either large than life or decisively cancel him/her from public imagination. The portrayal of figures like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar have suffered from such propaganda. The root of the problem is that a large number of individuals from either side of the political spectrum are unwilling to understand and unpeel the layers that go into the making of any personality. In fact, as we shall discover, this personality-centred approach is antithetical to Tagore's firm belief in 'reason' and 'dialogue'. His primary concern was the liberation of the human mind from all constraints, so that it could operate with freedom and exercise its power of reasoning. This brief essay will try to capture a few ideas of Tagore, and also elucidate on their relevance in today's context. 

With Tagore, the difficulty is that one doesn't know where to start from. His ideas on religion, nationalism, Western culture, history, philosophy, human psychology are all extremely compelling, and each deserve a detailed exposition. However, it is best to begin with his ideas on nationalism, as they have attracted a lot of popular and scholarly attention. Thus, this essay will deal largely with his views on nationalism and the concomitant theme of free thinking. 

It is true that Tagore was vehemently critical about the concept of a nation, and his arguments are indeed very persuasive. The existence of a nation, in his view, woefully impeded the free exercise of man's thinking abilities. For him, the nation as an entity only restrained freedoms, making one think on the lines of a limited geographical entity. Moreover, a nation could ignite hatred towards other human beings, as territorial nationality consolidates itself as a vital parameter based on which people can be 'otherised'. He suggested that an individual was born to think, but when in a crowd, he doesn't think at all, submitting willingly to its force. He argued that training a whole people in such narrow ideas was sure to lead to 'moral degeneracy' and 'intellectual blindness'. Tagore is also known for his brilliant illustrations and in one of his lectures, he offered a captivating analogy. While discussing the issue of humans being overconscious of their national identity, he took the example of a guard made to police a house, and becoming so conscious of his responsibility that he prevented any stranger from coming close to the house, leave alone entering it. Thus, Tagore argued that over-consciousness of any kind is detrimental to a human being's progress. 

How do we interpret Tagore's strong indictment of nationalism? At least I do not comprehend it as being a complete dismissal of the construct of a nation. Let's try to understand what exactly is implied with nation, unshackling ourselves from the perverse territorial determinism that cripples our understanding of this concept. For this, let's look no further than that towering national figure and contemporary of Tagore, Dr. Ambedkar told us- "Nationality is a corporate sentiment of oneness. It is a consciousness of kind and a longing not to belong to any other group." In this definition, Tagore would object to the second bit, but if we reflect on what is implied by a 'corporate sentiment of oneness' and consider it in isolation, Tagore's ideas do contain a degree of similarity. Here's an extract from a speech of his that can help us get an inkling of the nuance in his argument: 

India has ever nourished faith in the truth of the Spiritual Man, for whose realization she has made in the past innumerable experiments, sacrifices and penances, some verging on the grotesque and the abnormal. But the fact is she has never ceased in her attempt to find it, even though at the tremendous cost of losing material success. Therefore I feel that the true India is an idea, and not a mere geographical fact. I have come into touch with this idea in far-away places of Europe, and my loyalty was drawn to it in persons who belonged to countries different from mine. India will be victorious when this idea wins the victory—the idea of ‘Purusham mahantam adityavamam tamasah parastat’— ‘The Infinite Personality, whose Light reveals itself through the obstruction of Darkness.’ Our fight is against this Darkness. Our object is the revealment of the Light of this Infinite Personality of Man. This is not to be achieved in single individuals, but in one grand harmony of all human races. The darkness of egoism which will have to be destroyed is the egoism of the Nation. The idea of India is against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others, which inevitably leads to ceaseless conflicts. Therefore my own prayer is, let India stand for the co-operation of all peoples of the world . .

This clearly brings to light Tagore's ideas on India as a nation. Tagore was in Ramachandra Guha's words 'the most widely travelled Indian in the early 20th century'. He had been to a number of countries, and absorbed the best traditions in every place he went. He firmly believed that the West had a lot of valuable tools to offer to India, and if we couch ourselves in shells and seek to solely promote only the nation's self interest, we are essentially losing out on a lot of useful inputs that can be derived from there. The thrust of his argument was that it is futile to be isolated from the world, in fact it is a definite sign of weakness in one's belief in the nation's ideals.  

If we trace the context in which he articulated most of his observations on nationhood, they usually came in the backdrop of some political development. For instance he delivered speeches in 1911 and 1921, in the peak of the Swadeshi movement as well as the non-cooperation movement. On both occasions, he was disillusioned with the methods of those who rose against the British. He didn't believe that abandoning British goods or not cooperating with officials will help India in the long run. Rather keeping an open mind for knowledge from diverse sources was of utmost importance. In his own words, "Until an Indian can give up his fear, self-interest, luxury, quest for the best and highest in service of the Motherland, our demanding from the government will be empty begging and aggravate both incapacity and humiliation." 

When one hears that Tagore was opposed to national movements like the Non Cooperation movement, they might raise eyebrows over his allegiance to his land. But this is where Tagore set himself on a different course. He maintained ideological differences with Mahatma Gandhi (as did contemporaries Ambedkar and Savarkar, who also charted a different course from the Congress) with whom he regularly clashed on issues like modern science, role of tradition, social reform etc. He was principally in support of all these agitations, and even provided funds for the Swadeshi movement. He also renounced his knighthood after the barbaric Jallianwala Bagh massacre. In his speeches he heavily criticised British imperialism, and unequivocally denounced all its excesses in India. He definitely was no apologist for British rule, but he also did not subscribe to any form of chauvinism, even if it sought to mobilise his own fellow countrymen. For him the world existed without barriers and to that extent, nationhood was a particularly limiting construct.

Amiya Kumar Bagchi has pointed out two ways in which Tagore distinguished himself from poets of the Enlightenment tradition-

Firstly, he believed that a complete human being could only emerge upon connecting with other human beings, and this cannot be achieved if one is only concerned with self-interest. Secondly, he argued that in order to be fully human, it was imperative to live in harmony with nature, rather than dominate it. The unity of everything around us needed to appreciated. Tagore was vastly well read in Hindu scriptures, and he applied such knowledge to critique the materialism of the west. Tagore's was a balanced approach to life, perfectly synthesising traditions rather than indulging in simplistic rhetoric.

The sum and substance of what Tagore seeks to convey through his writings on nationhood and even otherwise is that we should have agency to chart our path and express ourselves as individuals, rather than getting swayed by any overarching affiliations. In this sense, in contemporary parlance, Tagore can be considered as a free thought absolutist. As Amartya Sen also observes- 'It is in the sovereignty of reasoning - fearless reasoning in freedom, that we can find Rabindranath Tagore's lasting voice.'

It is hard for me to pontificate on the relevance of Tagore's ideas in today's world, as I believe this is an exercise that can only be pursued at an individual level. The fact that two sovereign nations' national anthems are his own compositions is enough to gauge his endurance relevance. Consider the following to be my ruminations on Tagore's ideas and its potential to enrich this volatile world. We live in an age when a battle of narratives is upon us, reflecting the uncertainties that plague the globe. These issues extend from geopolitics to religion and to climate change, all that threaten to rupture the fabrics that have kept the world intact. I think Tagore's message for us living in such tumultuous times would be to value our thought power. Remaining 'neutral' or 'apolitical' is definitely convenient and should not be encouraged, but it is equally convenient to affiliate oneself to any group for self-congratulatory purposes. It has indeed become fashionable nowadays to brag about the authority or 'connections' that one has, and being connected with important people or ideas is certainly imperative. The problem arises when we do so with self-congratulatory or simply political ambitions. So, it is essential to take a reasoned position on issues, and always apply ourselves rather than getting sucked by the powerful tide of 'group think'. 

Should we use Tagore to delegitimise the dominant (now even more so than in the 1920s) construct of the nation state? That, I believe will be a gross misrepresentation of Tagore's motives. While literature can be produced to problematise the construct of nation as it exists today, our focus should rather be on providing viable solutions for pressing issues rather than bringing it down to the level of rhetoric and mobilising forces that can possibly tear apart our society. Tagore had a vision- and a spiritual one at that- to liberate the minds of fellow Indians from all forms of limitation and help equip them with the power of reasoning. As we all know, he was a steadfast proponent of imparting basic education to all, and even set up the Shanti Niketan for this very purpose. So before making any incisive comment about our society or even nation, we all have to ask ourselves- what is our ultimate vision? This is the question that Tagore has left me with, I beseech you to find out yours.  

References- 

1. Sen, Amartya, 'The Argumentative Indian'. London: Penguin Books (2005)
2. Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. “Rabindranath Tagore and the Human Condition.” Economic and Political Weekly 49, no. 12 (2014): 38–46.
3. Guha, Ramachandra. 'Makers of Modern India'. New Delhi: Penguin Viking (2010)
4. Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna. 'The Book of Indian Essays'. Delhi: Black Kite (2020)