IP_ Tagore Issue - Final.indd - high commission of india mauritius

Tagore’s Swadeshi SamajDebates on NationalismBIKASH CHAKRAVARTYThe author of India’s national anthem was outspoken in hisviews on nationalism. Nationalism and nation-states seemedto him a great menace, a ‘geographical monster’.It is now well known thatafter his initial involvementin the Swadeshi movementcentering round the partition ofBengal in 1905, Rabindranathgradually moved away fromthe mainstream of nationalistpolitics around 1907. However,the fallacious notion thatdisillusionment with thecontemporary political situationled the poet to seek escapeand retreat at Santiniketan from1907 onwards falls in the faceof facts. Never before had thepoet written so much on publicissues – issues concerning theviolent passion of patriotism,the illegitimacy of nationalism,disengagement of the politicalfrom the social and the moral,and the celebration of truth andatmashakti (literally meaning,‘the power within oneself’) – ashe did in this period.This period includes the incisivelectures the poet delivered inJapan and America in 1916-17on the cult of nationalism,later collected in a book calledNationalism (1917:97), inwhich he questioned all formsof western nationalism; fornationalism and nation-statesseemed to him a great menace,a ‘geographical monster’. Theauthor of India’s national anthemwas now outspoken in his views.He did not want his country tobe caught in a situation wherethe idea of nation-state wouldsupersede that of Indian societyand civilization. He said: “Ourreal problem in India is notpolitical. It is social. This is acondition not only prevailing inIndia, but among all nations. Ido not believe in an exclusivepolitical interest” (Nationalism inIndia, 1916).The genesis of these ideas goback to 1901 when Tagore wrotetwo consecutive articles (bothpublished in Bangadarshan) onthe idea of nation: “Nation ki”Tagore and Priyanath Sen(Rabindra-Rachanabali 3:515-19), or ‘What is nationalism?’,drawing largely on the Frenchthinker, Ernest Renan (1823-1892), and the second on theIndian Society, “BharatbarshiyaSamaj”. Tagore concludes in theformer that language, materialinterests, religious unity orgeographical boundary – noneof these have been an essentialcondition for the making of thewestern nation. For Tagore,nation is a mental construct.In the other, he differentiatesbetween the idea of nation inthe West and the idea of societyin Indian history. To quote him:“What we have to understandis that society or communityreigns supreme in India. In othercountries, nations have protectedthemselves from variousrevolutions for survival. In ourcountry society has survivedcountless convulsions from timeimmemorial” (Tr; Rabindra-Rachanabali 3:522)Three years later Tagoredeveloped these ideas morefully in a seminal paper called“Swadeshi Samaj” (1904), or the‘Self-sufficient Society’. Here, webegin to recognize that Tagoreraises very important issues – atonce social, political and moral.Tagore says that in the historyof the western civilization, lifeof the people has always beencontrolled by the state power, asin ancient Greece and Rome andalso in the modern Europeansocieties. But in the Orient, inChina and India, for example,society and not state, has beenthe determining agency.Secondly, Tagore emphaticallyasserts that the locus of Indiancivilization must be soughtin her villages. The village inancient India was not merelya place where people lived.It was also the centre of thebasic values of Indian culture.It achieved almost a totalself-reliance in all its basicneeds – health, food, education,recreation and creativity. Thevillage in India could thusfunction independently, withoutany help from the state. This isthe village we have lost.Thirdly, Tagore argues that thegenius of the Indian civilizationembedded in the community lifeof the village lies in ‘its abilityto harmonize the disparate’. Heexplained it in great detail in‘Bharatbarshe ltihaser Dhara’,INDIA PERSPECTIVES VOL 24 NO. 2/2010 76 INDIA PERSPECTIVES VOL 24 NO. 2/2010 77