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Mainstream, VOL XLIX, No 20, May 7, 2011

Inheritor of Tagore and Gandhi

Saturday 14 May 2011

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The following piece appeared in Mainstream (June 20, 1964) highlighting the influence of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi on Jawaharlal Nehru’s thoughts and ideas.

K.R.

The phenomenon of India producing two such mighty men as Tagore and Gandhi in the course of a single generation has been a source of puzzlement to many.
Jawaharlal Nehru had always been fascinated by these two towering personalities, both by their contrast and by what they had in common. For him it had been part of his quest in the discovery of India.

He found his own answer in what he called the richness of India’s age-long cultural genius which can throw up in the same generation two such master types, typical of her every way, yet, representing different aspects of her many-sided personality.

Voice of Protest

JAWAHARLAL met Gandhiji for the first time in 1916 and Tagore he met several years after. But it was probably in 1919, after the disaster of Jallianwalabagh, that he heard for the first time the Two Voices which were to exert so deep an influence in the growth and development of his Indian personality. It will be remembered Jawaharlal came on the public scene of India in the real sense when he accompanied C.R. Das as an aide to Amritsar to enquire into the shooting.

While thus preoccupied the voice of Tagore reached him in a letter written to the Viceroy, resigning his Knighhood. “The time has come,” wrote Tagore, “when the badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand short of all special distinction by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so-called insig-nificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.”

Returning to the Viceroy his Kaiser-i-Hind medal more than a year later, Gandhi wrote: “I can retain neither respect nor affection for a Government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality.”

Both these letters registered a moral protest in words of great dignity and passion. But while Tagore’s protest was followed by a more vigorous pursuit of his work for the rehabili-tation of India’s cultural self-respect and the economic well-being of her villages, Gandhiji launched the non-cooperation movement.

Visit to Santiniketan

JAWAHARLAL paid his first visit to Santiniketan in the wake of the special session of the Congress held in Calcutta in September 1920. The special session had adopted Gandhiji’s programme of non-cooperation. Jawaharlal was all for the pro-gramme and so was C.F. Andrews who was then holding charge of Santiniketan in the absence of Tagore then on tour in Europe and the United States of America. Reports had reached the Poet of how the abode of peace had become a hot-bed of political unrest.

Tagore’s genius was fundamentally creative in character. It was impossible for him to accept what he called the “passion for rejection” as an ideal. So we find him writing to Andrews in one of his letters from abroad: “I find our countrymen are furiously excited about non-cooperation. It will grow into something like our Swadeshi movement in Bengal. Such an emotional outbreak should have been taken advantage of in starting independent organisations all over India for serving our country. Let Mahatma Gandhi be the true leader in this; let him send his call for positive service, ask for homage in sacrifice, which has its end in love and creation. I shall be willing to sit at his feet and do his bidding if he commands me to cooperate with my countrymen in service and love. I refuse to waste my manhood in lighting fires of anger and spreading it from house to house.”

Such sanity of counsel was not exactly calculated to enhance the Poet’s popularity with his country-men at that time. Jawaharlal was no exception. Recalling his first visit to Santiniketan—he accompanied Gandhiji on an invitation from Andrews—he said: “Greatly attracted as I was to Tagore, I still felt a little irritated that he should criticise some of the aspects of the new movement that Gandhiji had started. It seemed to me then that Gandhi having thrown the challenge to British Imperialism, it was every Indian’s duty to join the army of libeation. Basically, I still think so in the context of things as they were in that year. But the more I have heard what Tagore wrote then, the more I have appreciated it and felt in tune with it. Tagore’s article ‘The Call of Truth’, and Gandhiji’s reply in his weekly Young India which he called ‘The Great Sentinel’ was wonderful reading then and, I should say, even now. They represent two aspects of the truth—neither of which could be ignored.”

Memorable Visit

“IN later years,” Jawaharlal continues, “my attraction to Tagore grew. I felt a great deal of kinship with his thought and with his general outlook on life. I visited him at Santiniketan on several occasions, during the intervals of my life outside prison.”

One such memorable visit was early in 1934 when he went to Santiniketan with his wife Kamala, “From Calcutta,” he writes in his Auto-biography, “we went to Santiniketan to pay a visit to the poet Rabindranath Tagore. It was always a joy to meet him and having come so near, one did not wish to miss him. I had been to Santi-niketan twice before. It was Kamala’s first visit, and she had come specially to see the place as we were thinking of sending our daughter there.”

Later, by way of saying why he sent Indira to Santiniketan, Jawaharlal wrote, I “sent my daughter Indira to Santiniketan hoping that she would imbibe something of the atmosphere of the place and, more particularly, profit by the presence and contact with Gurudev.”

The Poet who admired Jawaharlal for his passionate sincerity and intellectual integrity, his national outlook and international sympathies, held a public reception to welcome the couple.

Earthquake Controversy

SOON after their meeting there was another of those public controversies in which Tagore and Gandhi appeared to revel from time to time. This was provoked by the tragic earthquake that rocked Bihar early in 1934. Gandhi was at the time campaigning against untouchability in South India. He described the calamity as divine wrath—against the sin of untouchability. “A man like me cannot but believe,” he said in a public statement, “that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins.”

Tagore was shocked to see Gandhi resort to a typically priestly trick of invoking the bogey of sin to strike horror in the minds of a multitude of people already steeped in superstition. He gave vent to his sorrow and disappointment in a public statement in which he took Gandhi to task for arbitrarily interpreting cosmic pheno-mena to suit his ethical ends. Obdurate in his fads as much as in his faith in higher things, Gandhi reiterated: “To me the earthquake was no caprice of God... With me the connexion between cosmic phenomena and human behaviour is living faith....”

It is interesting to recall how Jawaharlal reacted to this controversy. “During my tour in earthquake areas or just before going there,” he writes in his Autobiography, “I read with a great shock Gandhiji’s statement to the effect that the earthquake had been a punishment for the sin of untouchability. That was a staggering remark and I welcomed and wholly agreed with Rabin-dranath Tagore’s answer to it. Anything more opposed to the scientific outlook it would be difficult to imagine.”

Kamala Nehru died the following year. The solemn occasion called for a commemoration service conducted by Tagore himself at the prayer hall of Santiniketan. In the course of paying a moving tribute to Kamala’s memory Tagore hailed her consort as the leader of a new era. The end of 1935 saw Jawaharlal as the President of the Golden Jubilee Session of the Congress at Lucknow. Tagore, who was associated with the Congress since its inception, celebrated the event by sending Nehru a message of felicitation.

When in 1936 Jawaharlal organised a National Council of Civil Liberties Union the name that occurred uppermost to his mind, as the prospec-tive President of this body, was that of Rabindra-nath Tagore. Towards the end of the year Jawaharlal visited Tagore, once again, this time at Sriniketan, the headquarters of the Rural Reconstruction Institute. There is a photograph of the two of them seated in a sunny verandah—the younger man intent, seriously thoughtful with his chin cupped in his hand, and the old Poet quietly smiling with his eyes half closed—a picture of poise and wisdom. The entire ensemble of this picture bespeaks of a silence which is the outcome of understanding.

It was probably these times of perfect concord that Jawaharlal had in mind when he said: “From an intellectual appreciation of his ideas and his outlook on life, an emotional bond had grown up between us.”

Knowing that Jawaharlal shared his ideas of inter-cultural fellowship, when in 1937 Viswa-bharati came to have a new building for its department of Sino-Indian studies, Tagore could not think of any person better suited to perform the opening of the Hall than Jawaharlal. Other engagements intervened, and Jawaharlal had to inaugurate the China Bhawan in absentia as it were—with his daughter Indira especially deputed to convey his message of felicitation at the function.

Subhas Bose

THE two following years, 1938 and 1939, bristled with controversies for Bengal, and Tagore could hardly remain a silent spectator. Besides, he had genuine love and admiration for the courage and self-sacrifice of Subhas Bose whose leadership, he felt, Bengal needed at that hour—with all the prestige that the Presidentship of the Congress conferred on him. What happened between Haripura and Tripuri is now familiar history. What is not generally known, however, is the efforts Tagore had made to bridge the differences and bring about an understanding.

On January 31, 1939, Jawaharlal performed the opening of the Hindi Bhavana, the Depart-ment of Hindi Studies at Santiniketan in the presence of Tagore and C.F. Andrews. At the Poet’s request he extended his visit by three more days. “I remember particularly when he sent for me in the late thirties and expressed his great concern at the political trends, more especially in Bengal,” Jawaharlal recalled in later years. What he does not mention, however, is that Tagore went to the extent of arranging a confrontation between Subhas and Jawaharlal in his presence.

Jawaharlal says: “That was probably my last visit to him, as soon after, I was imprisoned again.” There was another meeting, however this time in the Jorasanko house in Calcutta on the eve of Jawaharlal’s departure for China on August 20, 1939.

Tagore’s Death

IT was in Dehra Dun jail that the news of Tagore’s death on August 7, 1941 reached Jawaharlal. Recalling the impact that the melancholy event had on him, Jawaharlal wrote 20 years after: “I felt particularly desolate at the passing away of a man who had come to mean so much to me as to the vast numbers of others.... It was war time when Rabindranath died; the Second World War was in full swing. Just before he died his last great essay came out—Crisis in Civilisation in which he laid bare the agony of his heart and saw how deeply wounded he had been by the course of events and by the treatment accorded to India.”

In a letter written to Krishna Kripalani on August 27, 1941, when the hurt of bereavement was still fresh, Jawaharlal said: “How long ago it seems! People must die some time or other and Gurudev could not have lived much longer. And yet his death came as a grievous shock to me and the thought that I would never see his beautiful face and hear his gentle voice again oppressed me terribly. Ever since I came to prison this thought had haunted me. I wanted to see him once again so much. Not that I had anything special to say to him and certainly I had no desire to trouble him in any way. Perahps the premonition that I was not fated to see him again itself added to this yearing.

“However, all that is over and, instead of sorrow let us rather congratulate ourselves that we were privileged to come in contact with this great and magnificent person. Perhaps it is as well that he died when he ws still pouring out song and poem and poetry. What amazing creative vitality he had! I could have hated to see him fade away gradually. He died as he should in the fullest of his glory.”

These last remarks could as appropriately be applied to Gandhi as to Jawaharlal himself. And this brings us back to where we started from—that is the phenomenon of Tagore and Gandhi appearing on the Indian scene together and contributing their share of the best spiritual gifts that they had towards the fashioning of an inheritor like Jawaharlal by their contrast as much as by what they had an common.

Tapasya and Ananda

DURING his last visit to Santiniketan in December 1945, Gandhi made a remarkable confession: “I started with a disposition to detect a conflict between Gurudev and myself, but ended with the glorious discovery that there was none.” For Tagore, the conflict was resolved long ago and perhaps did not exist ever. In a letter to Mirabehn, written early in 1929, Tagore said: “Human life has its two aspects—one is the discipline of truth and the other is the fullness of expression.

“Mahatmaji is born with the pure fire of truth—his nature is one with it.
“Being a poet my mission is to inspire life’s fullness of expression—the richness of mind, the illumination of life, the consciousness of the joy in creative effort. According to the Upanishads the reconciliation between tapasya and ananda is at the root of creation. And Mahatmaji is a prophet of tapasya and I am the poet of ananda.”

Perhaps it remained for Jawaharlal who felt the impact of what he called the richness of India’s age-long cultural genius so powerfully and with so much perception, to reconcile in his own life and work of his maturer years he so-called conflicting and in fact complementary principles of tapasya and ananda.

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