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The Home And The World: Rabindranath Tagore
International Seminar on 'The Home And The World: Rabindranath Tagore'
14-16 November, 2011
Rabindranath Tagore’s novel by the name and many of his other writings, particularly his essays and plays, engage with the interrelationship of the home and the world. The term home was perhaps more of a connotation for Tagore. He laid greater emphasis on concepts like ‘atmosphere’, ‘associations’, and especially, ‘milieu’. This last can be construed as the defining constituent of the individual, rather than mere geographical location. Milieu was also a growing idea being formed through a variety of ethnic and cultural participations. In 1921, when Tagore was dissenting from Gandhi’s idea of noncooperation, he also wrote to the educationist and philosopher Brajendranath Seal against the idea of ‘fragmenting of education’ that he considered particularly inappropriate at a time when ‘the different peoples of the world are coming within each other’s purview’. Attempting to ‘block their vision with a screen of partisanship is to flout God’s purpose’. Significantly, he did not envision a colourless cosmopolitanism. ‘To sacrifice the diverse forms of goodness on the altar of mere necessity is not good. But for which form am I particularly responsible? Questions of this kind churn constantly in my mind when I feel weary.’ His idea of the home is clearly conveyed in this complaint against his latest biography, by Edward Thompson, which he felt had ‘firmly detached me from my atmosphere’. ‘But a cutout is an incomplete picture of a man, who is not a mere individual but relates to his milieu; and this relationship is far reaching and ill-defined.’ His own mental climate had been formed by a mingling of ‘Vaishnava literature and the Upanishads’, as his father’s had been by the Upanishads and Hafiz. He never advocated returning to a pristine culture; in fact he strongly refuted the possibility of such a return in the career of nations/civilizations, not least because he disbelieved in the historical existence of such pristine cultures. But what were to be the grounds of an honest interaction of cultures?
The theme is still relevant in mapping and gauging the growth and potential of many of our dominant ideas of culture and polity, both because Tagore was in a sense the autobiographer of the times in which these ideas generally acquired an outline and a substance, and because such issues as the identity and rights of immigrant/ migrant/stateless communities, and the changing perceptions of the home and the world, seem fated to have a persistent and pervasive presence in the coming decades.
The seminar on the ‘Home and the World’, aims to extend beyond the mere explication of Tagore or the identification of his solutions regarding the issues of belonging and dispossession. This seminar is an invitation to open a conversation with Tagore on this theme having a significant bearing on our times. This conversation with Tagore will open itself, as it naturally should to other voices speaking of the effects of the forces of history on the homes of peoples, and how due to these forces, many of them have come to be deprived of their homes, and in effect confronted with a world order that is ambivalent as to their right to live in it with dignity and respect.
Tagore’s Home and Tagore’s World
In a sense Tagore is the embodiment of the spirit of his own country/home, representing almost the whole of its culture – starting from the Upanishads, and the first principles of the thought of Buddha, and continuing through the medieval Bhakti tradition, particularly Kabir, the other Indian languages, and the aspirations born of the cultural and ideological contact with Europe in the 19th century. During the Indian national movement, Tagore argued against the idea of fixative nationalism, and the principle of non-cooperation. Mindless opposition to progressive Western ideas, and blind reliance on tradition would smother the tradition that was being extolled. Tagore welcomed secular knowledge along with an interlocution of traditions, and it was anathema to him that Western science should be rejected because it ‘belongs to the West’. His idea of India’s supreme achievement ‒ even when it was being denied its political freedom ‒ was not the mere fact of self-rule, but its role in facilitating through becoming an ideal, the cooperation and harmony between nations. He felt that ‘the true India is an idea and not a mere geographical fact’: ‘The idea of India is against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people from others, and which inevitably leads to ceaseless conflicts. Therefore my one prayer is: let India stand for the cooperation of all peoples of the world. The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness, the spirit of acceptance in the consciousness of unity.’ His debate with Gandhi delineates his differences, and his underlying affinity with him over the nature of the ‘home’ of a community. We could preferably focus on some key themes regarding Tagore’s ideas of identity and community.
The Gandhi-Tagore debate becomes especially significant in the conflicting interpretations being advanced of the quintessence of ‘Indian civilization’, in support of political claims. Even while speaking of Tagore’s opposition to nationalism, his universalism ought not to be confused with mere cosmopolitanism. His was more a faith in the harmony of influences and traditions. He spoke of the ‘web of unity’ in Indian culture, ‘which binds all of us’ without our ‘knowing or not knowing it’, and the ‘truth of which was not contingent on our knowledge and acknowledgement of it’. In 1915, drawing an outline of his own identity, he emphasised on retaining the distinctiveness of traditions in building bridges between cultures. ‘One who makes himself an outsider can never make his outsider his own, it never happens that the world agrees to partake the hospitality of a home that has been disowned by its owner; the position that it is only through giving up one’s own foothold that one can occupy the vast space of the universe can never be an honourable one.’ Gandhi was to take an identical position in his later debate with Tagore. Does this indicate that the aspiration of a home is a basic to humans? What is the role of this aspiration in the efforts to forge political communities?
Tagore pointed out that nations are normally apprehensive that any kind of ‘hesitancy’ on the part of a constituent community results in the dissipation of national strength, and that it was this apprehension which lay at the heart of Russia’s desire to homogenise Finland, and England’s designs on Ireland. He felt that the same spirit was motivating the Hindus in their efforts to somehow achieve ‘national unity’ by convincing Muslims that their interests lay in a united India. He stated that the Muslims were rightly doubtful of this, and stable integration lay not in assimilation, but in the acceptance of the differences that lay between communities. ‘Now the problem world wide is not that of unity by dissolving differences – but how to meet while preserving differences. This task is difficult – because, therein no laxity is permissible, therein each other will have to leave each others space’. What has been the position of the Indian national state on this principle? In what measure is its position a natural growth, or an aberration, regarding the founding imagination of the Indian nation? Can the ideas represented in Tagore help in the enlargement of the conscience of the Indian nation towards people who find themselves largely un-accommodated in the ‘noble mansion of free India’?
The discussion of Tagore’s views on the subject will increase in scope and depth if it invites thinkers who are in broad sympathy, like Isaiah Berlin; and also those who take up counter positions such as Hannah Arendt, whose causal linkage of the decline of the nation state – the times in which she saw this happening closely followed upon the times in which Tagore had lived – with the dilution of the rights of man supports her advocacy of a resilient nation state.
Tagore strove to articulate an abiding intellectual justification to the cause of a harmonious world order. He conceived, and expressed through intellectual argument, the idea of a reality transcending a strictly empirical verification, the ‘Eternal Spirit of human unity’, which inspires humans towards ‘disinterested works, in science and philosophy, in literature and arts, in service and worship’. He indicated at the unknown power of the ideals of that ‘Universal Spirit’ at whose ‘call we hasten to dedicate our lives to the cause of truth and beauty, to unrewarded service of others, in spite of our lack of faith in the positive reality of the ideal values’. He was also critical of any idea or tradition which ‘does not have its individuality, but only universality.’ The founding of Tagore’s own institution of Santiniketan was an endeavour to awaken a sensibility that recognizes the fact that the abiding beauty of the universe consists of the diversity of human thought and that, as Tagore said, ‘in God’s world the tyranny of the sole best is not tolerated’. At the same time, he pointed out world trends that were proving to be invasive and brusque factors in the dismantling of the traditional structures which organised and maintained homes and families.
Is the reaching beyond civilisational divisions essentially a defensive reflex? Does it overlook the incommensurability of civilizations and cultures? Does not today’s world demonstrate that in spite of global villages, cultural values/ mores are essentially indestructible? Tagore does not offer simplistic solutions to these. His observations are subtle and indicative, rather than being closed and tutorial. What were the nuances in his, and in the other literary voices of his age who reached out to the ideal of human unity? These and similar issues could be examined in the backdrop of a somewhat startling point made by Arendt, regarding the unique and the universal: ‘The danger is that a global, universally interrelated civilization may produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the conditions of savages.’
Changing Perceptions of Home and the World
Perceptions of the home and the world have changed under the impact of a combination of forces. Hobsbawm has called the ‘uprooting of peoples’ as ‘perhaps the most important single phenomenon of the nineteenth century’. ‘Uprooting still meant, not the mild form of homesickness which was to become the characteristic psychological disease of the nineteenth century (reflected in innumerable sentimental songs), but the acute, killing mal de pays or mal de coeur which had been first clinically described by doctors among the old Swiss mercenaries in foreign lands. The conscription of the Revolutionary Wars revealed it, notably among the Bretons. The pull of the remote northern forests was so strong, that it could lead an Estonian servant-girl to leave her excellent employers the Kugelgens in Saxony, where she was free, and return home to serfdom.’ Colonialism introduced large-scale migration in Asia and Africa. The psychological connotations of forcible immigration because of the slave trade and of indentured labour are still being assessed in African and Afro-American, and Asian communities.
Where are the ‘home’ and the ‘world’ today? The changes affecting humanity on a global scale have invaded the home, changing the meaning of the term. Not only have the values of familial relations changed, they have transformed psyches and thereby created a homelessness within the home. Is the nature of this transformation within the home related to the nature of its cause, and therefore, is it a consequence more of deficit than of plenty? Is optional migration better fortified against emotional/cultural displacement?
What have been the nuances of the experience of statelessness? What is the relationship of a stateless people to its aspiration for a homeland? Is the state created by an erstwhile stateless people characterised by a degree of inclusivity, or is it continuously a prisoner of earlier memories of statelessness, and thereby additionally vigilant against racial ‘dilution’ and therefore so much more intolerant?
The continuing denial of homes to peoples is not only unjust, it also carries possibilities of, the start of conflict where it has as yet not occurred, and the intensification where it already exists. We could explore the predicament of communities such as the Palestinians, the Tibetans, the Romany people in Europe, and the Kashmiri Refugees.
It may be a distinct future possibility particularly in the continents of Africa and Asia, that communities may be compelled by changing environmental conditions to leave their traditional homes and move to other lands in search of homes. This may result in demographic as well as economic crowding. What are the possible protocols that will need to be evolved to facilitate the sharing of space and resources in the areas of resettlement, to avoid the danger of mass confrontation? Will this need the involvement of the international community, and will such further protocols be necessary to govern this involvement, so that apprehensions of interference can be adequately allayed?
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