The Hungry Stones By Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

A Study Guide

Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings ...© 2012

Type of Work and Publication Year

......."The Hungry Stones" is a short story centering on a seemingly supernatural experience. Macmillan published it in New York City in 1916 as the title piece in a collection of Tagore's stories. 

Setting

.......The action takes place in the late nineteenth century on a passenger train in eastern India and at a train station as the main characters await another train bound for Calcutta (now called Kolkata). 

Characters

First Narrator: Unidentified person who begins the story. Theosophist: Traveling companion of the first narrator. Second Narrator: Man who tells the first narrator and the theosophist a ghostly tale. He identifies himself as Srijut. Englishman: Acquaintance of the second narrator. Characters in the Second Narrator's Story: (1) second narrator; (2) Mehir Ali, an insane Man; (3) Karim Khan, an officer worker; (4) servants. 

Structure and Point of View

.......“The Hungry Stones” is frame tale. In such a story, there are two narrators. The first narrator presents a scene with characters. The second narrator—who is one of the characters introduced by the first narrator—then tells a story.  .......“The Hungry Stones” begins when the first narrator says that he and a companion are returning to Calcutta on a train. One of the passengers is a strange man who intrigues the first narrator and his companion with the depth of his knowledge about the world. To complete the trip to Calcutta, the three passengers must change trains at a stop on the route. While they await the next train in a station, the strange man tells the other two men a story. He thus becomes the second narrator. After the train for Calcutta arrives, the second narrator walks off and the first narrator takes over to complete the story. .......The story thus resembles a framed picture or painting. The first narrator is the frame, and the second narrator is the picture or painting. Both narrators present their stories in first-person point of view. .  Atmosphere

.......The atmosphere of the second narrator's story is bizarre, mysterious, and otherworldly.

Plot Summary

.......While returning to Calcutta from a religious pilgrimage, the narrator and his friend meet a strange man on the train. He can converse intelligently on any subject—even the most

trivial—quoting from science and poetry. So deep is his knowledge that the narrator's friend, a theosophist, thinks the man receives inspiration from the supernatural, the occult, or an astral body. The narrator's friend begins taking notes, and the man seems pleased. .......After getting off at a junction at 10 p.m. to change trains, the travelers learn that the next train will be considerably late. The narrator prepares to take a nap, but the strange man begins to tell a story. The narrator, already under the spell of the man, decides to stay up and hear it. The story follows. (The strange man will be referred to as the second narrator; he tells his story in first-person point of view.) .......One day, after quitting his job at Junagarh over a disagreement on administrative policy, the second narrator begins work as a collector of cotton duties at Barich, a pleasant locale. There, the Susta River "chatters over stony ways and babbles on the pebbles," flowing in from the woods below hills. One hundred fifty steps up from the river is a marble palace. There are no houses near it. The cotton market is some distance away. .......About two hundred fifty years before, the Emperor Mahmud Shah II built the palace “for his pleasure and luxury,” the second narrator says. Its fountains spurted rose water, and in its rooms young Persian girls would sing and splash their feet in the waters of the reservoirs. Now, however, only tax collectors stay there. Karim Kahn, an old clerk in the second narrator's office, warns him never to stay at the palace.  .......“Pass the day there if you like,” the clerk says, “but never stay the night.” .......Even thieves keep away from the place.  .......Despite the warning, the second narrator decides to lodge there. When he returns from work at the end of the day, he finds the solitude of the place almost unbearable. After a week, he begins to feel as if the palace is alive and is “slowly and imperceptibly digesting me." He first notices this feeling one summer evening toward sunset when he is seated on the steps gazing at the scene before him. The Susta River is low, and he can see the pebbles at the bottom glistening. As the sun drops behind the hills and the landscape darkens, he hears a sound on the steps behind him. When he rises and looks around, no one is there. As he sits down again, he hears a rush of footsteps and thinks he sees maidens coming down the steps. Although he knows that no one is there but him, he clearly hears the maidens running by him on their way to the river. .......“As they were invisible to me, so I was, as it were, invisible to them." .......It is as if they are on the other side of a curtain. Then a strong wind ripples the waters and sweeps away the ghostly presence of the maidens.  .......In the morning, he looks upon the experience as a “queer fantasy,” he says, and goes to work. However, when he returns, he has a feeling that the maidens are there again. As he enters, he senses a rush of beings leaving the palace through windows and doors and corridors. But he sees no one, although a faint scent of perfume seems to be in the air. Standing in a hall between rows of pillars, he then hears the splash of fountain water, the notes of a guitar, the jingling and tinkling of ornaments and chandelier pendants, the ringing of bells sounding the hours, and the singing of birds. Suddenly, this strange world becomes reality and his workday world at the cotton market an illusion. Or so it seems.  .......After supper, he goes to bed in a small room. Through a window, he can see a star peering down and falls asleep. He awakens later as moonlight is stealing into the room. Although he sees no one, he feels a woman pushing him. She waves a hand for him to follow her, and he does her bidding, envisioning her in his mind as a girl with a veil on her face. She stops before a blue screen and points to a negro eunuch on the other side. He sits dozing with

a sword on his lap. The girl lifts the screen, and the the second narrator sees part of a room with a Persian carpet. From a bed, the feet of a woman in pajamas reach to the carpet. A tray of fruit, two cups, and a decanter await the arrival of a guest. When the second narrator enters this scene and attempts to step over the eunuch's outstretched legs, the eunuch awakens and the sword falls to the floor. Then the second narrator awakens to the early-morning sun.  .......Time passes. During the day, the second narrator goes to work, always tired from his strange experiences of the night before. But in the evening when he returns, he looks forward to these experiences. Repeatedly, he becomes a person from an earlier age who takes part in “unwritten history.” He might be wearing an English coat, breeches, and red velvet cap in anticipation of a meeting with “the beloved one.” He might also wander about the palace to see what will happen to him next. .......Sometimes, while dressing himself as a royal prince, he would catch a glimpse of a Persian beauty in the mirror. But in a moment she would disappear. At such times, he would go to bed and fall asleep as a serpent entwined him.  .......One evening, he decides to go for a ride on his horse. But as he is about to put on his English coat and hat, a powerful wind enters and whirls them around. He hears laughter and abandons the idea of taking a ride. The next day, he decides never again to wear the coat and hat. In the evening, he hears a woman crying out for him to rescue her by breaking through “these doors of hard illusion” and carry her away on a horse. .......He wonders who she is, where she came from. He envisions a Bedouin kidnapping her from her mother and taking her to a slave market, where a man buys her for his master's harem. The master, a great king, worships at her feet while the eunuch with the sword stands nearby.  .......When the second narrator awakens, he then decides that he cannot stay another night in the palace. So he packs his belongings and moves to his place of employment. In the evening, however, he ends up back at the palace and enters the dark silence. Two tear drops fall from above on his brow. The doors of the palace bang, and the hallways moan. Next to the bed he has been sleeping on, he perceives the presence of a woman lying on the carpet and tearing at her hair. She is sobbing. A storm rages through the night. The narrator wanders through the palace, wondering who it is who is sobbing with such intense grief and sorrow. When he is at work, Karim Khan tells him,

At one time countless unrequited passions and unsatisfied longings and lurid flames of wild blazing pleasure raged within that palace, and that the curse of all the heart-aches and blasted hopes had made its every stone thirsty and hungry, eager to swallow up like a famished ogress any living man who might chance to approach. Not one of those who lived there for three consecutive nights could escape these cruel jaws save Meher Ali, who had escaped at the cost of his reason.

He asks Karim whether there is anything he can do to break the spell of the palace on him. The old man says he knows a way, but first the second narrator must listen to the story of a young Persian girl who once lived in the palace. However, at the very moment that the second narrator is about to tell the first narrator and the theosophist what Karim said, the train to Calcutta arrives. While the travelers are picking up their bags, an Englishman looking out the window of a first-class car sees the second narrator approaching. He calls to him and invites him into his compartment. Because the two travelers must take a second-class car, they have no chance of hearing the rest of the story or finding out the identity of the second

narrator.  .......The first narrator tells the theosophist, "The man evidently took us for fools and imposed upon us out of fun. The story is pure fabrication from start to finish." The first narrator then tells the reader that the "discussion that followed ended in a lifelong rupture between my theosophist kinsman and myself."

Conflict

.......The main conflict in the fabricated story about the palace is the cotton dealer's desire to escape the spell of the palace while also desiring to experience its bizarre effects on him. In psychology, such a dilemma is called an approach-avoidance conflict. Everyone experiences this kind of conflict from time to time. For example, a person with an aching tooth may wish to undergo treatment that relieves his pain while also wishing to avoid treatment out of fear of a dentist's probing instruments.

Climax

.......The climax occurs when the first narrator tells the theosophist that the second narrator's story was a fabrication.

Theme

.......The human mind tends to accept the version of reality that appeals to it. In “The Hungry Stones,” Rabindranath Tagore centers on this thesis.  .......On the one hand, the cotton dealer (second narrator) deliberately presents a fantastic but false version of reality. On the other, the theosophist readily accepts the cotton dealer's version because it supports his philosophical views. A theosophist is one who believes he can attain knowledge of the divine and the supernatural through intuitive feelings. It makes sense to the theosophist that the cotton dealer hears and sees what is intangible.  .......When the theosophist's companion observes at the end of the story that the cotton dealer's story is “pure fabrication from start to finish,” the theosophist refuses to accept this view and ends his friendship with his companion.  .......Historians, philosophers, theologians, scientists and others seeking to present reality sometimes act like the theosophist in that they wittingly or unwittingly allow preconceptions and biases to affect their thinking.

Foreshadowing

.......The cry of the insane man, Meher Ali, foreshadows the ending, in which the first narrator tells the theosophist that the second narrator's tale is a fabrication. Ali shouts, "Stand back! Stand back!! All is false! All is false!"

Vocabulary

Abyssinian eunuch: Ethiopian eunuch. badshah: Title meaning great king. cess: Tax. chaprasi: Messenger boy in an office. ghazal: Form of poetry used to express love ghi (or ghee): Butter from which milk solids have been removed. It is used in cooking. 

eunuch: Castrated man who oversees a harem. henna: Flowering plant with the smell of roses. narghileh: Smoking device in which smoke in a tube cools while passing through water; water pipe. nizam: Title formerly used by rulers of Hyderabad, India. palanquin: Litter for transporting a passenger. It has a roof and usually four poles projecting horizontally, two in the front and two in the back. Using these poles, four bearers lift and carry the litter. paijamas: Pajamas puja: Hindu religious exercise or pilgrimage. Rs.: Plural abbreviation for rupees. A rupee is a monetary unit used in India and other countries. The abbreviation for a single rupee is Re. sarang: A type of Indian music for afternoon occasions. seraglio: Harem in the palace of a Muslim.  thousand and one Arabian Nights: Allusion to The Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian Nights), a collection of stories from Arabia, India, Persia, and Egypt. A legendary queen, Scheherezade, tells these entertaining stories, including "Aladdin's Lamp," "Sindbad the Sailor," and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." Vedas: Sacred writings of Hinduism.

Figures of Speech

.......Following are examples of figures of speech in "The Hungry Stones." For definitions of figures of speech, see Literary Terms.

Alliteration

No longer do snow-white feet step gracefully on the snowy marble. 

Methought I saw a bevy of joyous maidens coming down the steps to bathe in the Susta in that summer evening. 

I distinctly heard the maidens' gay and mirthful laugh, like the gurgle of a spring gushing forth in a hundred cascades

a sudden whirlwind, crested with the sands of the Susta

Anaphora

Not a sound was in the valley, in the river, or in the palace, to break the silence.

What endless dark and narrow passages, what long corridors, what silent and solemn audience-chambers and close secret cells I crossed!

many a caress and many a kiss and many a tender touch of hands

Hyperbole

a horse swift as lightning

Metaphor

As the sun sank behind the hill-tops a long dark curtain fell upon the stage of day. Comparison of darkness to a curtain and daytime to a stage

The feet of the fair swimmers tossed the tiny waves up in showers of pearl. Comparison of the water to showers of pearl

Onomatopoeia

the jingle of ornaments and the tinkle of anklets, the clang of bells tolling the hours, the rattle of my carriage, I could hear the gurgle of fountains 

Oxymoron

invisible mirage ,voiceless laughter, Simile, At first the solitude of the deserted palace weighed upon me like a nightmare. 

Comparison of the effect of solitude to a nightmare

I felt as if the whole house was like a living organism slowly and imperceptibly digesting me.  Comparison of the house to a living thing

Like fragrance wafted away by the wind [the maidens] were dispersed by a single breath of the spring. Comparison of the maidens to a fragrance

Study Questions and Writing Topics

In what ways in "The Hungry Stones" similar to short stories by Edgar Allan Poe?

What causes the rupture in the friendship between the first narrator and the theosophist?

What do you believe is the second narrator's opinion of, or attitude toward, the first narrator and the theosophist?

What is the religion of the second narrator?

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Kabuliwalah - Review

Geography

A. Cabuliwallahs are peddlers or fruit sellers from Kabul - a city in Afghanistan. Kabul is the capital city and has been destroyed many times due to civil wars. In the past Kabul's Khyber Pass, a mountain massage between Afghanistan and Pakistan, has been fought over by British, Persians and Russians alike.Even today, it is a main center of conflict regarding religious, political and military perspectives.

B. Tagore's story takes place in Calcutta. It is in eastern India in the state of West Bengal. The third largest city in India, it currently has a population of over 15 million. After you have read the story, list five or more elements unique to Indian culture which have been mentioned by Tagore.

Selected Vocabulary

Cabuliwallah is a pretty easy read, but you may want to remind yourself of the following definitions as you come across them in your reading.precariousAdjective: unsure, insecure

The precarious nature of their relationship could be seen by the gestures each one made towards the other.

impendingAdjective: imminent, soon to happenThe thunder and lightning were ominous signs of impending doom.

judiciousAdjective: wise, calculated

The Cabuliwallah had overcome the child's first terror by a judicious bribery of nuts and almonds, and the two were now great friends.composureNoun: calmness, levelheadednessNancy showed great composure during a stressful period in her life.euphemism

Noun: A word or phrase which substitutes a more pleasant expression in place of a more offensive one.

"Friendly fire" is simply a euphemism which means army members have accidentally killed one of their own soldiers.formidableAdjective: daunting or imposing in sizeTo my dismay, my opponent had a formidable amount of support for his campaign.imploreVerb: beg

At this point Mini's mother would intervene, imploring me to "beware of that man."fetteredAdjective: bound by chains or restraints

The beggar displayed his fettered hands to the village as they laughed cruelly at him.pervade

Verb: to permeate or be present throughout; to fill or spread throughThe smoke from the fire pervaded the air and all you could see was a blanket of grey.

Review

Kabuliwala left his home country in quest of employment in India. While in India, he identifies his daughter with Mini as she was of the same age when he left Kabul. Though he was not in touch with his daughter, her memories didn't fade away from his mind. The sight of Mini reminded him of her and he showed his affection to her as he would have to his daughter. Later he went to prison for a murder, which colloquially, Pathan call "in-laws" where they are fed, have a place to live and cared for, he lost contact with Mini, but her memories of sitting and gossiping with her lingered on. On his release, he went to see Mini, who he never thought wouldn't come out to chat with him – she didn't. Her parents were reluctant to let a murderer see their daughter. However, on the plea of Kabuliwala, later on gave in. Kabuliwalllah brought in a piece of paper, nuts, almond and raisins for Mini believing that time has stopped and she was still little girl like his daughter in far off country. The sight of Mini, in bridal clothes kindled in him the memories of his daughter, who he never thought would grow up like Mini, brought tears in his eyes. Her dad identified himself with Rehaman, as a father and showed his feelings by giving him a banknote, so that he could go back to his country and see his little daughter whose finger prints he was carrying with him all the time. Emotions spin the plot of this story- tender loving feelings embodied in this story. This story is a manifestation of parental love. Though physically separated, the memories sustain our love for our children. Only we need a spark to light up those memories. Such was the case with Mini who woke up the affection in Kabuliwala, for his long forgotten daughter in a far away land. thus it’s like this.

Comprehension Questions

After you read the story, try to answer the following questions to see if you stand what you've just read.

1. What does Mini, the author's daughter, have the tendency to often do? How do her parents feel about this?

2. Why is Mini frightened of the Cabuliwallah fruit seller?

3. What does the author do when he sees Mini with the Cabuliwallah's gifts? What does the Cabuliwallah do in return?

4. How does the Cabuliwallah overcome Mini's fears of him?

5. What is the double meaning which the author conveys in "father-in-law's house"?

6. Why is Rahmun arrested?

7. How does the situation change the joke the Cabuliwallah and Mini had shared?

8. Who appears on the night of Mini's wedding? How has he changed?

9. What has Rahmun carried with him for many years? How does this change Mini's father's feelings?

10. What new meaning does Mini and Rahmun's old joke have?

11. What happens when Mini's father gives money to Rahmun? How does he think this will affect the festivities?

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Now that you understand the story quite well, it's time for you to put your noggin to good use. Consider these questions and answer them using your critical thinking skills. Look for examples in the text to back up your argument or opinion.

1. Analyze the relationship between Mini and Rahmun. What do they do with each other? How do they feel towards one another? Explain your answer with examples.

2. Predict what Rahmun and Mini's relationship would have been like if Rahmun had never gone to jail. How would both of their lives be different if they never separated?

3. Why does Rahmun develop a special friendship with young Mini? Do you think this is a good reason? Why or why not?

4. What underlying themes are in the story? What theme is highlighted by the change in Mini, according to Rahmun, by the end of the story?

5. What techniques does Tagore use to characterize Rahmun? Which of Rahmun's behaviors show that he loves his only daughter very much?

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Book Review

Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore ed. Sukanta Chaudhuri, Oxford, Pp:322, ISBN: 123-456-7890

Rabindranath Tagore wrote almost 100 short stories. He was the first Bengali writer to elevate the short story to a serious art-form. Tagore easily intermingled stark realism and poetic idealism in his stories which reflected the contemporary life in rural and urban Bengal. Many of the stories portray conflicts or tensions between the new and the old, cruelty and sensitivity, solitude and crowd, male and female.

Rabindranath wrote most of his short stories in the 1890s. They were published in several periodicals, most notably, Sadhana where 36 of his stories appeared. Literary magazines played a critical role in the development of Bengali literature throughout the 19th and the first few decades of the 20th century. Rabindranath directed and edited Sadhana and published many of his best known stories, including Kabuliwala (kaabulioYaalaa) and Hungry Stone (kShudhita paashhaaN), in the pages of this remarkable periodical. Later, during 1914-1917, several of his great stories like The Wife's Letter (strIr patra) and Woman Unknown (aparichitaa) appeared in the monthly magazine Sabuj Patra.

Some of Rabindranath's short stories received strong criticism when they first appeared. The non-Bengali readers had to rely on translations, many of which were of poor quality. Thus, his genius as a short story writer was not recognized for years. Mary Lago in her work

Imperfect Encounter searched for the reasons for these unsatisfactory translations. C. F. Andrews managed Tagore's relations with the English publishers rather badly, interposing himself between the author and potential competent translators, and turning off several of them in the process. Andrews had rather limited literary sensibilities but enjoyed a great deal of Tagore's confidence. He contributed a number of unsuccessful translations; some of them done in collaboration with the author. He also insisted on modifying and westernizing the stories to suit western taste.

Rabindranath himself weakened some of his powerful stories in translation by leaving out details of Indian life that he thought would be too foreign to non-Indian readers. Edward Thompson was an English poet and critic having long association with Rabindranath and a number of other luminaries of Bengali culture such as the philosopher Brojendranath Seal, the artist Abanindranath Tagore, and Prasanta Mahalanobis, the scientist. Thompson wrote in Tagore's obituary in 1941: "More and more he toned down or omitted whatever seemed to him characteristically Indian, which very often was what was gripping and powerful. He despaired too much of ever persuading our people to be interested in what was strange to them. His work will one day have to be retranslated and properly edited. I am sure that then there will be a revival of his reputation."

About a decade ago W. Radice's Selected Short Stories with an excellent introduction was published. It focussed only on Tagore's stories written in the 1890s. This followed his remarkable translations of Tagore's Selected Poems. These works indeed helped revive Tagore's reputation outside India.

The elegantly produced recent publication, also titled Selected Short Stories, is edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri. Sankha Ghosh, the noted scholar and writer, is the advisory editor who helped select the stories. This work attempts to capture the whole range of Rabindranath's short stories by selecting 26 of them, starting from The Ghat's Story (ghaaTer kathaa), written in his early 20's and beautifully translated by Supriya Chaudhuri, to The Laboratory (lyaabareTari), a remarkable story written in the last year of his life and The Story of a Mussalmani (musalamaanir galpa), first published years after his death. It may be mentioned that 6 of these stories, The Exercise-Book (khaataa), A Single Night (ekaraatri), The Living and the Dead (jIbita o mR^ita), Kabuliwala (kaabilioYaalaa), Grandfather (Thaakuradaa), and Hungry Stone (kShudhita paashhaaN), are also to be found in Radice's selection.

This volume is the first in a series called The Oxford Tagore Translations, a major project undertaken by the Oxford University Press in collaboration with Viswa-Bharati. The future volumes will include Selected Poems, Tagore's writings on Literature and Language, and writings for children.

A distinguished panel of translators has managed to convey the delicate beauty of the original. Many of the stories reflect Tagore's rural experiences, his love of nature, and his deep insight into human relationships. It is indeed a pleasure to come across such uniform and high quality of translations of these treasures of Bengali literature. In most of these stories, universal themes transcend regional and cultural barriers.

The introduction by Tapobrata Ghosh provides an excellent overview, background and the context of the stories. The notes at the end of the book, also prepared by Tapobrata Ghosh, are short and to the point. These notes provide keys to Bengali culture and customs.

Finally, reproductions of appropriate sketches and paintings by Tagore himself and by his nephew, the famous artist Gaganendranath Tagore, have helped set the mood and greatly enhanced the artistic quality of the production.

In summary, editor Sukanta Chaudhuri and the entire panel of translators must be congratulated for an excellent effort. Tagore's creations were obscured and partly forgotten for so long mainly due to inadequate translations of his writings. We hope that the future volumes of the Oxford Tagore Translations series will maintain the high standards set in this volume and will re-introduce to the world the multi-faceted genius of Tagore, perhaps the greatest Indian writer ever.

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Home and the World - Novel

Bimala-heroine of the home and the world is perhaps the most lively character of the story. She is the centre of action as well as attraction of the novel,kept alive on the delicate thread of love,amid the fire nd fury of politics.bimala is also the queen of this love.so engaging yet so tense,and psychologically so intricate.yet so interesting.Presented as the wife of a aristocratic family.She is drawn as no paragon of beauty,but plain wife,married to conservative Rajah family.

Indeed,Bimala was no woman of beauty.In her own admission she had a dark complexion and lacked physical beauty.Yet,she was fortunate enough to get married into a Rajah's house,and that was possible only of some good astrological signs in her.It was perdicted that she would turn out to be an ideal wife.She was fortunate enough to get a loving husband who was devoted,but not authoritarian. she could have from him not merely sincere love but ernest help to make herself a cultivated.advanced modern women.Tagore  has drawn no flat character in his heroine BIMALA.She is a round character that changes with transition of events and situations.That change in Bimala occured with the arrival of Sandip,friend of Nikhil,in awake of SWADESHI movement.he appeared to her as a hero of the swadeshi and spelled her at first instance.She was overwhemled,hypnotised,as revealed in her own expression.Bimala was fascinated by Sandip's external glamour and show ,and never truly loved him.She returned to Nikhil,the dear centre of her love and life when learned the truth of Sandip.

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Review of Rabindranath Tagore: The Home and the World by George Lukács

Published in Mukto-Mona on February 13, 2007

The article was first Published  in the Berlin periodical, Die rote Fahne, in 1922; This article is forwarded to MM by Abul Kalam from Dhaka, Bangladesh

Tagore’s enormous celebrity among Germany’s ‘intellectual elite’ is one of the cultural scandals occurring with ever greater intensity again and again — a typical sign of the total cultural dissolution facing this ‘intellectual elite’. For such celebrity indicates the complete loss of the old ability to distinguish between the genuine article and the fake.

Tagore himself is — as imaginative writer and as thinker — a wholly insignificant figure. His creative powers are non-existent; his characters pale stereotypes; his stories threadbare and uninteresting; and his sensibility is meagre, insubstantial. He survives by stirring scraps of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita into his works amid the sluggish flow of his own tediousness — and because the contemporary German reader’s instinct has become so unsure that he can no longer recognise the difference between the text and quotations. As a result these scanty leftovers from Indian philosophy do not annihilate the unworthy material which frames them; on the contrary, they give it an esoteric sanction of profundity and of wisdom from afar. That is not surprising. When Germany’s educated public is accommodating itself more and more to intellectual substitutes, when it is incapable of grasping the difference between Spangler and classical philosophy, between Ewers and Hoffmann or Poe and so forth, how is it to perceive this difference in the far remoter world of India? Tagore is the Indian Frenssen,[1] whom he faintly recalls in his unctuous tediousness, although his creative powers even fall short of Frenssen. All the same, his great success has some significance as a symptom of the German mentality today.

A possible response to this sharp rejection of Tagore is to invoke an international fame (or rather, fame in Britain). The English bourgeoisie has reasons of its own for rewarding Mr. Tagore with fame and riches (the Nobel Prize): it is repaying its intellectual agent in the struggle against the Indian freedom movement. For Britain, therefore, the scraps of ‘wisdom’ from ancient India, the doctrine of total acquiescence and of the wickedness of violence — only, of course, when it relates to the freedom movement — have a very concrete and palpable meaning. The greater Tagore’s fame and authority, the more effectively his pamphlet can combat the freedom struggle in his native country.

For a pamphlet — and one resorting to the lowest tools of libel — is what Tagore’s novel is, in spite of its tediousness and want of spirit. These libels seem all the more repugnant to the unprejudiced reader the more they are steeped in unctuous ‘wisdom’ and the more slyly Mr. Tagore attempts to conceal his impotent hatred of the Indian freedom fighters in a ‘profound’ philosophy of the ‘universally human’.

The intellectual conflict in the novel is concerned with the question of the use of violence. The author portrays the beginnings of the national movement: the struggle to boycott British goods, to squeeze them out of the Indian market and to replace them with native products. And Mr. Tagore broaches the weighty question: is the use of violence in this struggle morally admissible? The hypothesis is that India is an oppressed, enslaved country, yet Mr. Tagore shows no interest in this question. He is, after all, a philosopher, a moralist only concerned with the ‘eternal truths’. Let the British come to terms as they wish and in their own way with the damage done to their souls through their use of violence: Mr. Tagore’s task is to save the Indians spiritually and to protect their souls from the dangers posed by the violence, deceit etc. with which they are waging their struggle for freedom. He writes: “Men who die for the truth are immortal; and if a whole people dies for the truth it will achieve immortality in the history of mankind.’

This stance represents nothing less than the ideology of the eternal subjection of India. But Tagore’s attitude is even more blatantly manifest in the manner in which he shapes this demand in the action and the characters of his novel. The movement which he depicts is a romantic movement for intellectuals. It strongly reminds us — without taking the analogy

too far, since the social circumstances are entirely different — of such movements as the Carbonari in Italy and indeed, in certain aspects (particularly the psychological aspects), the Narodniks in Russia. Romantic Utopianism, ideological exaggeration and the crusading spirit are an essential part of all these movements. But this is only the starting point for Mr. Tagore’s libellous pamphlet. He turns this crusading romanticism, whose typical representatives were without question motivated by the purest idealism and self-sacrifice, into a life of adventure and crime. His hero, a minor Indian noble who advocates the current doctrine, is destroyed both inwardly and outwardly by the rapacious excesses of such a ‘patriotic’ criminal band. His home is destroyed. He himself falls in a battle that was sparked off by the unscrupulousness of the ‘patriots’. He himself is supposed, according to Mr. Tagore, to be by no means hostile to the national movement; on the contrary, he even wants to promote the nation’s industry. He experiments with native inventions — provided, though, that he does not pay for them. He gives shelter to the patriots’ leader, a contemptible caricature of Gandhi! But when the affair becomes too hot for him, he protects everybody afflicted by the violence of the ‘patriots’ with his own instruments of power and with those of the British police.

This propagandistic, demagogically one-sided stance renders the novel completely worthless from the artistic angle. The hero’s adversary is not a real adversary but a base adventurer who, for instance, when he wheedles a large sum of money out of the hero’s wife for national ends and talks her into theft, does not hand the money over to the national movement but feasts on the sight of the gleaming pieces of gold. No wonder the men and women whom he has led astray turn away from him in disgust the moment they see through him.

But Tagore’s creative powers do not even stretch to a decent pamphlet. He lacks the imagination even to calumniate convincingly and effectively, as Dostoyevsky, say, partly succeeded in doing in his counter-revolutionary novel ‘Possessed’. The ‘spiritual’ aspect of his story, separated from the nuggets of Indian wisdom with which it is tricked out, is a petty bourgeois yarn of the shoddiest kind. Ultimately it boils down to the ‘problem’ of the standing of the ‘man of the house’: how the wife of a ‘good and honest’ man is seduced by a romantic adventurer, but then sees through him and returns to her husband in remorse.

This brief sample will suffice to give an impression of the ‘great man’ whom German intellectuals have treated like a prophet. To rebut such totally dismissive criticism, of course, his admirers will point to his other, ‘more universal’ writings. In our view, however, the significance of an intellectual trend is evident precisely from what it can say about the most burning contemporary questions -if it presumes to point the way in an age of confusion. Indeed the value or worthlessness of a theory or outlook (and of those who proclaim it) is evident precisely from what it has to say to the people of that age in their sufferings and their strivings. It is difficult to assess wisdom ‘in itself’ in the vacuum of pure theory (and within the walls of an elegant salon). But it will reveal itself the moment that it comes out with the claim to act as men’s guide. Mr. Tagore has come out with that claim in this novel. As we noted, his ‘wisdom’ was put at the intellectual service of the British police. Is it necessary, therefore, to pay any closer attention to the residue of this ‘wisdom'?

1. Gustav Frenssen (1863-1945), a regional writer and parson of Holstein.

Review of Rabindranath Tagore: Ghare Baire [The Home and the World]  by Mohammad Quayum

Published in Mukto-Mona on February 13, 2007

Ghare Baire [The Home and the World] (1915) Author: Tagore, Rabindranath. Domain: Literature. Genre: Novel. Country: India, South Asia.

Set against the backdrop of the swadeshi (home rule) movement in Bengal, following its sudden and arbitrary partition by the then British viceroy in India, Lord Curzon, in 1905, The Home and the World was originally published in Bengali (as Ghare Baire) in 1915. Later, it was translated and published in English by the author’s nephew, Surendranath Tagore (with active cooperation from the author himself), in 1919. The Bengali original was published two years after the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and the same year in which he received a knighthood from King George V of England – an accolade he came to renounce in 1919 in protest against the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in Punjab, by the notorious General Dyer. It is perhaps the best known of Tagore’s novels outside Bengal, and received a lot of attention in Europe, particularly following the publication of its English translation, mainly due to the wide readership Tagore had gained in the wake of his Nobel award. The controversial nature of the subject matter, in which Tagore takes the opportunity to launch his fiercest attack yet against the ideology of nationalism, contrary to its rising popularity both in India and the West, was also a reason it drew much attention, mostly in the form of reprobation and scorn, from readers both in and outside Bengal. A third reason for the novel’s reputation is the successful movie made of it, in 1984, by another gifted scion of Bengal, and a student of Tagore’s university, Visva-Bharati, Satyajit Ray.

Upon its publication, the novel was praised by Tagore’s friends William Rothenstein and W.B. Yeats, and a friend of Einstein’s advised him in an upbeat tone, “You must read [it] – the finest novel I’ve read for a long time” (italics in original). Hermann Hesse, reviewing it, spoke of its “purity and grandeur”, and Bertolt Brecht observed in his diary, “A wonderful book, strong and gentle.” However, E.M. Forster and George Lukács did not find much positive in the novel. In a condescending tone, Forster dismissed the book as a “tragedy… about nothing”; “a ‘roman à trios’ with all the hackneyed situations from which novelists are trying to emancipate themselves in the West.” Lukács proved more vitriolic; he condemned the novel as a “libellous pamphlet” and “petty bourgeoisie yarn of the shoddiest kind.” He added that Tagore was but an “intellectual agent [of the empire, acting] against the Indian freedom movement” in the novel – a view that a Russian scholar of Tagore, Alexander P. Danielschuk, later spurned as an example of vulgar Marxism.

Tagore never had a political temperament and found politics wasteful and morally debilitating; it is politics, he said, “which in every country has lowered the standard of morality, [and] given rise to a perpetual contest of lies and deception, cruelties and hypocrisies.” A poet, he sought to keep his mind above politics. However his destiny determined otherwise: “I have been chosen by destiny to ply my boat there where the current is against me”; “Politics is wholly against my nature; and yet, belonging to an unfortunate country, born to an abnormal situation, we find it so difficult to avoid their [sic] outbursts.” When the swadeshi movement broke out in Bengal, in the wake of its partition in 1905,

Tagore soon found himself at its vortex: writing songs, giving speeches, and taking part in mass rallies. He also set up a match factory, a local bank, and a weaving centre as his way of giving leadership to the movement. Ironically, he even set the movement’s theme song, Bande Mataram, or “Hail to thee Mother”, to music himself. The song was composed by another Bengali writer, Bankim Chatterjee, and is used as a potent fetish by the manipulative Sandip in the novel.

Swadeshi literally means “of our own country”. It was a nationalist movement meant to boycott British goods and buy homemade products, so that the British would suffer economically for their dark designs of divide and rule policy, while the local industries grew, with less competition from imported goods. But what was conceived as a non-violent non-cooperation movement soon turned violent and ugly, owing to the heavy handed policies of the government, and wilful meddling by self-seeking and sinister bhadroloks. Tagore felt mortified by many of the nationalist leaders behaving like terrorists and traumatising innocent people for their indifference to the cause, and impassioned youths turning to the cult of the bomb to liberate their homeland from the foreign yoke. Thus, especially after Khudiram Bose, a radical youth who is still widely regarded as a hero in the annals of Bengal, hurled a bomb in 1908, killing two innocent British civilians, Tagore decided not to participate in the movement any more, nor associate with a nationalist uprising again, in spite of the recurrent charges of pusillanimity and insincerity by his detractors. His response came, instead, in the form of The Home and the World, seven years later.

The novel deals with the experiences of three characters during the volatile period of swadeshi: Nikhil (whose name means “free”), a benevolent, enlightened and progressive zamindar (landlord); his childhood friend and a voluble, selfish but charismatic nationalist leader, Sandip; and Nikhil’s wife, Bimala (“pristine”), who is happy at the outset in her traditional role as a zamindar’s wife but who, encouraged by her husband, steps out of home to better acquaint herself with the world and find a new identity for the Indian woman. At the sight of Sandip, she emotionally trips, vacillates between him and her husband, until she returns home bruised and humiliated but with a more mature understanding of both the home/self and the world. The narrative is structured in the form of diary entries written by the three characters. This technique allows the reader to see the events in multiple perspectives, and comprehend their relative effects on the mind of these characters, but the psychological probing in these extended diary monologues also slows down the novel’s progress, making it somewhat repetitive and static, with fewer real incidents and dramatic actions featuring in the narrative. This method of telling also gives rise to long, confessional/descriptive passages, often effusive, sentimental and strung on a high moral key, which might sound false and tedious to the western ear but which was an integral part of the Bengali style, particularly for Tagore who was at once a poet, philosopher and novelist. As his biographer, Krishna Kripalani has aptly pointed out, “Tagore was no Tolstoy or Balzac… [a myriad-minded writer] the poet, the singer and the teacher constantly meddled with the novelist.”

The novel has a certain allegorical quality in that Nikhil and Sandip seem to represent two opposing visions for the nation – with Bimala, torn between the two, not knowing for sure what should be her guiding principle – signifying Bengal tottering between the two possibilities. Nikhil’s vision is one of enlightened humanitarian and global perspective, based on a true equality and harmony of individuals and nations. On the other hand, Sandip’s radical, parochial and belligerent nationalism, which cultivates an intense sense of patriotism

in individuals, threatenes to replace their moral sensibility with national bigotry and blind fanaticism. Seen from this perspective, Nikhil’s death at the end of the novel, just when Bimala is turning the corner and returning to her senses after a prolonged infatuation with Sandip and his views, also signals Tagore’s pessimism about the future of Bengal. In the absence of truly benevolent leaders like Nikhil, she would be mutilated, divided in two (currently Bangladesh and West Bengal), with millions of her children paying with their lives to meet the apocalyptic wishes of self-seeking, immoral, power-hungry politicians, determined to carve out her body on religious communal lines. By extension, it also shows Tagore’s despondent thoughts about the future of humanity at large, who, forgetting their human potential for truth, equality, fellowship and justice, would espouse a vision that would lock them in a binary of self and other. The consequences of such thinking, Tagore warns, is a recurrent logic of greed, selfishness, violence, hatred and war – a dark prediction also made in an earlier poem, “The Sunset of the Century,” written on the last day of the nineteenth century:

The hungry self of the Nation shall burst in a violence of fury from its shameless feeding. For it has made the world its food. And licking it, crunching it and swallowing it in big morsels, It swells and swellsTill in the midst of its unholy feast descends the sudden shaft of heaven piercing its heart of grossness.

The embodiment of ideas by the characters is a weakness in the novel, but perhaps a necessary compromise by the writer. It makes the characters flat and one-dimensional: Nikhil, who has too much of Tagore in him, is emblematic of all good; and Sandip, who is Nikhil’s polar opposite, is all unscrupulousness and evil. Neither of these characters seems to change in the course of the narrative. Nikhil remains calm, gentle, understanding, forgiving, liberal, rational and altruistic throughout the novel, while Sandip is selfish, manipulative, irrational, oppressive, and tyrannical. Nikhil is so tranquil that he does not lose his poise even when his wife flirts with his friend in his own house, in front of his very eyes. His logic is: “Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible, then the next best gain is perfect losing” (24). This is extraordinary indeed considering that, in the Indian patriarchal system, men take their wives for granted, hardly allowing any complex emotions to occur in their relationships with women, especially in marriage.

Nikhil loves Bimala wholeheartedly, but Bimala must appraise that on her own and reciprocate his love voluntarily. If she decides otherwise, it will be devastating for Nikhil, but he must allow her free choice, especially since he loves her: in love there is no place for tyranny. He hopes that Bimala’s sexual and ideological obsession with Sandip is a passing phase in her process of maturing and coming to grips with the larger world; the spell will break soon and she will return to her senses again. Meanwhile he should wait and not lose faith. If she considers otherwise, that is of course his fate. Nikhil argues:

The passage from the narrow to the larger world is stormy. When she is familiar with this freedom, then I shall know where my place is. If I discover that I do not fit in with the arrangement of the outer world, then I shall not quarrel with my fate, but silently take my leave… Use force? But for what? Can force prevail against Truth? (45)

This is no doubt Tagore’s way of dismantling the age-old role model of Sita – the all-sacrificing and faithful wife of Rama. In the epic Ramayana, Sita clings to her husband in spite of the latter’s dishonourable behaviour toward her by repeatedly questioning her integrity and innocence, whilst he accuses her of having lost her chastity with Ravana, notwithstanding her several agniparikshas to prove her righteousness. Discarding this ideal of complete submission, Tagore instead presents an alternative model for Indian women, the empowering ideal of Durga, the warrior goddess and embodiment of Shakti (the primal feminine power, indispensable to creation). Although Durga, the wife of Shiva, is calm, domestic and restrained, most importantly she is strong, courageous and independent. Thus, throughout the novel, Bimala is associated with Durga, Kali and Shakti, instead of Sita or Savitri (another model of feminine virtue and devotion in the Mahabharata). By allowing Bimala freedom of choice, Tagore has highlighted the potential of Indian women and their right to emancipation.

Nikhil’s honesty, altruism and idealism is, however, matched by his friend’s cunning, cupidity and flagrant narcissism. Nikhil appears divine, while Sandip is diabolic; Nikhil is endowed with all the traits of a sattvic as described in the Bhagavad Gita: his dominant element is light and therefore he is wise, intelligent, progressive and pure, while Sandip is a rajasik, a personality framed with fire and therefore greedy, violent and destructive. His philosophy is as simple as it can be for a Machiavellian: “There is not the time for nice scruples. We must be unswervingly, unreasoningly brutal. We must sin” (39), he admonishes Nikhil, and adds matter-of-factly, “Every man has a natural right to possess, and therefore greed is natural…. What my mind covets, my surrounding must supply” (45). Elsewhere he argues, “We are the flesh-eaters of the world; we have teeth and nails; we pursue and grab and tear. We are not satisfied with chewing in the evening the cud of grass we have eaten in the morning…. In that case we shall steal or rob, for we must live” (47). This sounds like the morality of Swift’s Yahoos, but it is also the morality of the modern materialist-capitalist West that Sandip essentially emulates, vis-à-vis Nikhil’s home grown Indian wisdom mediated by the wholesome and humane values of the Judaeo-Christian civilization.

Indeed, Sandip is so recklessly selfish and unscrupulous that he does not hesitate to woo his friend’s wife while living under his roof, or to incite her to rob her own husband. He provokes the youths of Nikhil’s village to calculated violence against their poor, innocent neighbours just so as to terrorise them into accepting his viewpoint, and arouses Nikhil’s subjects into a bloody religious riot, of which Nikhil himself becomes a deadly victim at the end, thus paying with his life for the benevolence done to a friend who seems every bit a scoundrel. Anita Desai is right in pointing out that in his vanity, arrogance, greed and nihilism, Sandip “resembles nothing so much as the conventional blackguard of the Indian stage or the Bombay cinema, stroking his handlebar moustache as he gloats over a bag of gold and a cowering maiden.”

This reductive approach of Tagore in creating “a simple box of figures – not more than a Punch and Judy showman uses for his own little drama,” as his friend Rothenstein incisively pointed out (though ironically meaning this as a tribute to the writer), is certainly an artistic blemish in the work. Tagore has no doubt failed to achieve creative detachment in The Home and the World, owing to his overwhelming sympathy for Nikhil’s liberal, global ideology against Sandip’s commercial-capitalistic-nationalistic worldview, which he completely rejects. Perhaps this artistic compromise was made deliberately by the writer, considering the

significance of his message. After all, Tagore was working against the mainstream ideas of Indian and world politics. Therefore he had to keep his characters simple and one-dimensional, so that his statement would emerge firmly and clearly. Besides, this four-square approach of pitting good against evil can be seen as a part of the Indian imagination, as we see in the struggles between the sons of Pandavas and the sons of Kauravas in the Mahabharata, or Rama and Ravana in the Ramayana, or the mythical stories of Lakhsmi and Alakhsmi, Durga and Mahesa and Kali and Raktabija (or those ever predictable Bollywood movies that Desai mentions). As R.K. Narayan has put it succinctly, the underlying objective of every Indian story is to create a “distinction between good and evil” and show that “goodness triumphs in the end… if not immediately, at least in a thousand years; if not in this world, at least in other worlds.” Despite Tagore’s apparent cynicism in the novel, that hope that eventually everything will come out right is also somehow expressed by the writer, since he never lost hope in the infinitude of the human soul and the Upanishadic idea of human being’s divine inheritance.

Tagore and Nikhil share the view that we are all part and parcel of a self-luminous Brahman, that we are various strings of the universal supreme self; that what is in the macrocosm is also in the microcosm; that, like the petals of a rose, we are all attached to the stem of humanity by the bond of love. Thus, it is incumbent upon humankind to work towards a global society, built upon the principles of inclusivity, equality and mutuality of all human beings, instead of indulging in the ideal of nationalism, which cultivates parochialism, binarism and xenophobia, trapping people in a logic of egoism, exclusivism and ignoble triumphalism. In his “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech”, Tagore advocates how India’s and the world’s sole objective should be to attain global unity and shun the politics of nationalism, which violates man’s inherent bond by generating hatred between nations and locking each in a separate geographical cage:

I do not think that it is the spirit of India to reject anything, reject any race, reject any culture. The spirit of India has always proclaimed the ideal of unity…. Now, when in the present time of political unrest the children of the same great India cry for rejection of the West I feel hurt…. We must discover the most profound unity, the spiritual unity between the different races. We must go deeper down to the spirit of man and find out the great bond of unity, which is to be found in all human races…. Man is not to fight with other human races, other human individuals, but his work is to bring about reconciliation and Peace and restore the bonds of friendship and love.

Nikhil expresses a similar global sentiment throughout the novel and this comes to a head in an altercation that he has with Sandip. Sandip arbitrarily equates god with nation, while Nikhil establishes how it is imperative to bring together the entire human community to find god, and how the cult of nationalism, through a cultivation of national egoism and chauvinism, only thwarts that purpose:

[Sandip] “I truly believe my country to be my God. I worship Humanity. God manifests Himself in man and in his country.” [Nikhil] “If that is what you really believe, there should be no difference for you between man and man, and so between country and country.” [Sandip] “Quite true. But my powers are limited, so my worship of Humanity is continued in the worship of my country.”

[Nikhil] “I have nothing against your worship as such, but how is it you propose to conduct your worship of God by hating other countries in which He is equally manifest?” (37)

Nikhil’s teacher Chandranath Babu, who acts as Nikhil’s moral guide and a wellspring for many of his ideas, is even more pointed in his articulation of the Tagoresque global vision, when he explains to his pupil:

I tell you, Nikhil, man’s history has to be built by the united effort of all the races in the world, and therefore this selling of conscience for political reasons – this making a fetish of one’s country won’t do…. Here, in this land of India, amid the mocking laughter of Satan piercing the sky, may the feeling for this truth become real! What a terrible epidemic of sin has been brought into our country from foreign lands. (224-25)

Induced by such a noble, sublime, and enlightened outlook, Nikhil acts as a true humanitarian in the novel. A zamindar, he never indulges in his office or wealth, but rather as a benevolent patriarch he offers his utmost services to uplift the condition of his people. He believes in the value of education and has been instrumental in educating many of his subjects, some even accessing the facilities in Calcutta owing to the generous scholarships provided by him. This is his way of building the country; he believes that India can come out of its social and cultural doldrums by reactivating the minds of its people, and by redeeming itself from its decadent moral and religious values. It is with this idea that he urges his wife to get modern education from an English tutor he has appointed for her, Miss Gilby. Bimala, in order to imaginatively comprehend the world and establish a healthy interactive relationship between home/self/country and the world, ought to step beyond the borders of her cultural tradition and dismantle her previously monolithic sensibility with a more vibrant, symbiotic and synergic mode of thought.

August at heart, Nikhil knows no racial, religious, class or sexual prejudice. When Miss Gilby is humiliated by Sandip’s men, who have been indoctrinated into nationalist lunacy, it is Nikhil who extends his love and support to her. To him, Miss Gilby is another flesh-and-blood human being like himself, not just a European to be perceived through a mist of abstraction, or an enemy of Bengal, simply because she happens to be an English woman. The same applies to Panchu, a downtrodden villager insulted and humiliated by the neighbouring zamindar, and evicted by him for not heeding the call of swadeshi, who is saved by Nikhil’s humanitarian intervention and offer of protection. Swadeshi is supposed to liberate these people from the shackles of British oppression but has somehow, ironically, become repressive of the same defenceless mass. The Muslims are also looked upon with ire because they refuse to share Sandip’s enthusiasm, which they see basically as a Hindu agenda, counteractive to their cause. Thus, when Sandip engages in wicked plots against them, to make them to submit to his purpose, considering them as religious minorities not strong enough to withstand his pressures, Nikhil steps in on their behalf knowing that as his subjects they deserve his protection, and that, as individuals, they have the same right to a choice as Sandip and his followers.

Nikhil loves his country as much as, if not more than, Sandip, but he will not allow his love for the country to overtake his conscience. “I am willing,” he says, “to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as god is to bring curse upon it” (29). Sandip, on the other hand, believes that “country’s

needs must be made into a god” (122), and one ought to set “aside conscience [by] putting the country in its place” (165). This reckless deification of the nation and his belief that any action, no matter how heinous or unscrupulous, is justifiable if undertaken for the nation’s sake, eventually turns him into a frightful terrorist and appalling criminal. He does not mind using intrigue or violence to accomplish his mission, even if it means harm to his own followers. As long as the mission is accomplished, the end justifies his means. Thus, when Bimala is innocently intoxicated by his nationalist call, he adroitly persuades her to give all her jewellery to him to finance the movement, and steal money belonging to Bara Rani (Bimala’s elder sister-in-law and a widow who Nikhil loves as his own sister) from the family safe. He also uses Amulya, an impassioned but idealistic youth (emblematic of the many adolescents who were influenced by the movement), exploitatively. When Mirjan, a Muslim boatman, refuses to stop carrying foreign goods, as it will take away his livelihood, Sandip arranges to sink his boat in midstream. Instead of showing any compunction for his hideous deed, he advises his followers:

If they go to law, we must retaliate by burning down their granaries! What startles you, Amulya?... You must remember, this is war. If you are afraid of causing suffering, go in for love-making, you will never do for this work! (113)

Post-colonial critics such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Tom Nairn have pointed out how nationalism cultivates the sentiments of irrationality, prejudice and hatred in people, and Leela Gandhi has spoken of its attendant racism and loathing, and the alacrity with which citizens are willing to both kill and die for it. Frantz Fanon has explained that although the objective of nationalism is to create a horizontal relationship and fraternity within its people, in reality the nation never speaks of the hopes and aspirations of the entire “imagined community”, and hierarchy, factional hegemony, inequality and exploitation remain a daily occurrence in its body. In Sandip’s actions, Tagore has insightfully and shrewdly anticipated all these pitfalls of nationalism pointed out by later literary-cultural critics.

Tagore is not perhaps entirely historically accurate in his portrait of the swaraj. He has not, for example, incorporated in his narrative the extreme policies of brutality adopted by the Raj to crack the movement. Minto’s mischievous manifesto that “the strong hand carries more respect in India than even the recognition of British justice” led to widespread atrocities against the participants of the movement; university students were “harassed, persecuted and oppressed”, while those at lower levels were “flogged, fined and expelled.” Police were advised to beat up marchers with their long, metal-tipped lathis, and leaders who were found guilty were sentenced to “rigorous imprisonment”. After the Khudiram incident, the British reaction was predictably strident, declaring that “ten of them would be shot for every life sacrificed.” However, although the writer has advertently left out this side of the story, his portrait of Sandip seems typical of the activities of the New Party, the revolutionary wing of Congress, under the leadership of Bipin Chandra Pal, who led a group of radical youths and edited a popular journal called Bande Mataram, and of Aurobindo Ghosh’s younger brother, Barindra Kumar, who was the leader of a group of young terrorists who were inspired by Russian anarchist activities and apotheosised violence.

Tagore was so deeply frustrated by swadeshi turning into a terrorist movement that he would spurn even Gandhi’s swaraj in later years. He was not to participate in a nationalist movement again because he came to believe that radical nationalism, like religious

orthodoxy, breeds divisiveness and blind fanaticism: “Formalism in religion is like nationalism in politics: it breeds sectarian arrogance, mutual misunderstanding and a spirit of persecution”, he wrote in a letter to his friend C.F. Andrews. In another letter, he explained how nationalism, a cult of devil worship, was inherently destructive to the spirit of global unity and the creative bond of wholeness:

The nations love their own countries; and that national love has only given rise to hatred and suspicion of one another…. When we hear “Bande Mataram” from the house-tops, we shout to our neighbours: ‘You are not our brothers’…. Whatever may be its use for the present, it is like the house being set on fire simply for roasting the pig! Love of self, whether national or individual, can have no other destination except suicide.

If asked about the future of India under the colonial rule, Tagore’s unequivocal reply was, “Let us… set our house in order. Do not mind the waves in the sea, but mind the leaks in your vessel.” He believed in constructive social work and education as the principle ways for liberating India from political and cultural tyranny from within and outside, and not a blind revolution built upon the quicksand of mob psychology.

This anti-nationalitarian sentiment, conceived against a backdrop of a larger ideology of love, creation and global human fellowship, is what occupies Tagore’s The Home and the World. This is a message he pursues in several of his other works, including his lectures on Nationalism and his novel Four Chapters. It emphasizes the significance to the novel’s title: humanity ought to overcome all thorny hedges of exclusion and readjust its moral imagination. Love and fellowship, like commodities, do not have to stop at a geographical border, and in spite of the ostensible spatial demarcation between the home and the world, the two remain fundamentally united as integral aspects of one organic whole.

Mohammad Quayum, International Islamic University Malaysia. The article was published 22 April 2005, and available at : http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16758 ; This article is forwarded to MM by Prof. Asim K. Duttaroy [message # 27297], one of our regular member of MM.

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Questions

1)Write a note on the "cult of bande matram"and the response of the nikhil,bimla and sandeep to it?

2)What are the two kinds of Nationalism discussed in "The Home and The World"? Where does Tagore's sympathies lie?