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

What were these mainupheavals of the time of Tagorethat made our world viewsstart to move? And whereis the concurrence with thecontribution of Tagore, thevalidity of which still surfacesmore and more? We can neitherbe exhaustive nor definitivehere but would like to providea glimpse of what could bea possible answer to thesequestions, attempted mainly inthe spirit of the joy of discovery.If the war of 1914-1918 is called“First World War”, it is becausenever before was there a warwhich had such a dimension.The ruptures and changes itprovoked on a sociologicaland anthropological levelwere unprecedented. On thenegative side, it certainly wasamong the forerunners of whattoday, a hundred years later,Tagore with Sigmund Freudwe call globalization, which isa different kind of ‘onslaught’.Like a volcano it has also ledto destruction on the surfaceof some deeply underlyingupheavals and ruptures. Atthe same time, irreparabledisruption took place in theprofoundness of all sections ofscience, soft or hard science,with philosophy being a vitallyaffected part. Let us namesome actors who brought ingreat changes earlier by wayof explanation: Darwin (1809-1882), Einstein (1879-1955),Marx (1818-1883), Freud (1856-1939), and the revolution theybrought about in each of theirfields turned everything upsidedown about a century ago.Then, the big voice of thundercame through the advent ofQuantum Physics. What beganthen was a series of questioningagainst what was believed to beknown. One could even see itas erasure of our normal day today logic, the logic of Aristotle,which is “the logic of Identity”!By then we already knew thatwhen the sun is rising in theeast and setting in the west, itdoes not mean it turns aroundus. From then on, everything,in fact all matters were no moretaken as what they appearedto be but it was believed thatthings had a double “identity”,‘particle’ as well as ‘wave’. The‘singular’ disappeared, and‘plural’ became the master.Here we could see a revolutionin our human knowledge. Ourperception of reality made aquantum jump. It obliged us torethink our manner of thinkingand acting, in short, to reviewour ‘Ethics’, and even more so– to finally invent an Ethic thatwas valid for all of us.It is here that RabindranathTagore plays his part. His partwas that of a forerunner, a roletoo rarely recognized. Amidsthis exchanges with the grandspirits of his time, certainly,there was that with Einstein,so we can see Tagore beingsomeone, like Dante (1265-1321) in his time, who wasperfectly informed about theadvance of science in his days.However, Einstein fought all hislife against Quantum Physicsbecause he could not admitthe dictate of the philosophicalimplications – thus the concretederiving from there – ofits findings. Tagore, on thecontrary, does not seem tomention anywhere about theshock of an encounter with thephilosophy of Quantum Physics.Nevertheless, if we go back tothe small list above, imaginingit to have been conceived byour “grand homme”, we willhave no problem whatsoeverto recognise him in eachpostulate’s new concept (e.g.the organic vision).Inhabitant of his time,advocating Unity andUniversality, underlining thepart of the Unconscious as wellas the Subconscious, Tagore didnot need to follow the phasesand vagaries of the constructionof the new science in order toherald great truth by which thebasic values of his own traditionhad nourished him all along:“We have in front of us the problemof one country; the Earth, wheredifferent races, like individuals,would have the faculty to freelybloom and at the same time showsolidarity to the federation. Whatmatters is to create a unity morepowerful, with broader views anddeeper feelings. …The scienceof meteorology knows the truthwhen it acknowledges that theINDIA PERSPECTIVES VOL 24 NO. 2/2010 124 INDIA PERSPECTIVES VOL 24 NO. 2/2010 125