Dr Chhanda Chatterjee
Rabindranath Tagore’s claim to fame rests mainly on his achievements as a litterateur and an educationist. But when it came to dealing with practical politics he could sometimes surpass hardcore politicians in the soundness of his judgement. Politics was never his forte and he normally kept himself confined to the work of his Ashram in Shantiniketan (situated in the Birbhum district of present day West Bengal), founded by him in 1901.
Here away from the sound and fury of Calcutta he wanted to develop his alternative system of education for young minds as a challenge to the lifeless and bookish system imposed on the country by the colonial government. Rabindranath wanted young minds to grow in the lap of nature, responding to all the changes in the moods of the nature throughout all the six seasons. His ideal was the Vedic tapovana where the learner could share the life of his teacher and contemplate on the truths of the world in peace. In 1913 Tagore was awarded the Nobel for his book of poems–Gitanjali. He was thus invested with an international stature and received invitations from all over the world to present his views of the happenings home and abroad.
It was now his great duty to carry his country’s message to the world. The country was yet to attain its Independence. But Tagore did not get daunted. The onset of the First World War gave him an opportunity to carry the message of peace and harmony evolved in the Vedic forest by the Aryan Rishis and point out the drawbacks of aggressive nationalism. The western world was trying to subject the great inventions of science and technology for destructive purpose. He disparaged aimless and selfish consumption and tried to draw attention to the ideals of ancient Indian sages based on social harmony.
Tagore evinced rare political wisdom as early as 1933 by reading into the anomalies of the Communal Award of 1932 and the way Gandhi’s Poona Pact had further exacerbated its diabolical implications for Bengal. Since the Lucknow Pact of 1916 the Indian National Congress had started a policy of appeasement to the Muslims, even in provinces where they were in a minority, to prevent them from looking up to the colonial government for the solution of all their problems. This prompted the British Government to come up with more concessions to the Muslims in the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919 and thereafter in the Communal Award of 1932. By the time of the Round Table Conferences in London started ,the British refused to accept the Congress claims to represent all Indians and confronted Gandhi with multiple communal interests like those of the Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians and even the Scheduled Castes. The Communal Award tried to seal this division of the Scheduled Castes from the Hindus. Gandhi was determined to prevent it at any cost and in September 1932 he started a fast unto death from the Yaravada jail. Tagore was in full sympathy with Gandhi’s opposition to the splitting up of the Hindu constituency and he ignored his own ill health to visit Gandhi in Poona to express his solidarity with the cause. However, the compromise that Gandhi worked out with Ambedkar, with which Gandhi could keep the Scheduled Castes within the Hindu fold, spelt some terrible implications for the Hindu minority in Bengal.
The Macdonald Award or the Communal Award of 1932 had allotted only 80 of the total number of 250 seats in the Bengal Legislative Assembly to the Hindus, while the Muslims were given 119 and the remaining 51 were distributed largely among people of the European interests. This meant only 32% of the total seats for the Hindus although they formed 43.3% of the total population. Gandhi’s compromise made a serious dent into the Hindu quota and 30 of the Hindu seats had to be reserved for the Scheduled Castes reducing Hindu representation to a mere 20%.
Gandhi’s settlement scandalised educated and politically conscious public opinion all over the province and Gandhi was found to have sacrificed Bengal at the altar of the all-India calculations of the Congress High Command. Ramanand Chatterjee, the Editor of the Modern Review and a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore marveled at the favours shown to the Muslims in spite of their being the minority community in the province and compared their ‘minority’ status to that of caste status.
Aga Khan’s demand for a communal electorate in the Round Table Conference on behalf of the Muslim League was ridiculed by the Modern Review as a bakhsheesh or reward for having desisted from the national movement for freedom! Muslim League enthusiasm for splitting up the Hindu vote into ‘caste’ Hindu and Scheduled Caste votes was attributed to their desire to disintegrate the Hindus even further. The uplift work of reformers of the Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj and the Theosophical Society was trying improve the status of the depressed classes and their permanent relegation to Scheduled Caste status might act as a stigma for them.
Feelings ran high inside the Indian National Congress when Madan Mohan Malaviya, Aney and Moonje decided to break away from the High Command and form the Congress Nationalist Party. Bidhan Chandra Roy in the Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee could sense the danger affecting his flock and desperately pleaded with the High Command to allow an anti-Award agitation. A meeting of eminent people, presided over by Deva Prasad Sarvadhikari, the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, was held in the Town Hall of Calcutta on September 4, 1932 to condemn the attempt ‘to deepen the foundations of communalism and extend the principle in new directions contrary to all democratic ideas.’
Tagore, who had earlier sent a cable to the Prime Minister to accept Mahatma Gandhi’s proposals without delay as he was seriously concerned about the Mahatma’s health, did not take much time to realise that ‘it was a mistake from the point of view of our country’s permanent interest.’ This was particularly so as there was no responsible person to represent the province and representatives from other provinces were, at best apathetic, if not actively rejoicing at Bengal’s misfortune. In a press statement of July 24, 1933, sent through Nripendra Nath Sarkar, Member, Council of State, he declared : Justice has certainly been sacrificed in the case of Bengal. Such an injustice will continue to cause mischief for all parties concerned, keeping alive the spirit of communal conflict in our province in an intense form and making peaceful government of the country perpetually difficult.
Soon after on July 28, 1933 he shot off a letter to Gandhi telling him point- blank that if Gandhi’s settlement was accepted without modification, ‘it will be a source of perpetual communal jealousy leading to constant disturbance of peace and a fatal break in the spirit of mutual co-operation in our province.’
Although a poet and an idealist, Tagore had a very strong sense of political reality and could understand that Gandhi, in his eagerness for a ‘speedy cutting of knots’, had inflicted a ‘serious injury on the social and political life in Bengal.’ Many attempts were made thereafter to come to an understanding with the Muslims through the unity conference in Allahabad and the Congress President Rajendra Prasad’s direct negotiations with Jinnah. Even Jinnah agreed that Gandhi’s Poona arrangement was unfair to the Bengali Hindus.
The Hindu Mahasabha tried to look into the complaints of the aggrieved Bengalis when the Congress failed. They held an All-India Anti-Communal Award Conference in Delhi on February 23, 1935 and discussed various plans of agitating against the Award. Finally on April 22, 1936 Radhakumud Mukherjee, the Vice-President of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, suggested that the Hindu minority of Bengal should approach the Marquis of Zetland, the Secretary of State and seek a revision of the Communal Award by His Majesty’s Order in Council in terms of Section 398(4) of the Government of India Act and three persons were to be sent to England for that purpose. This was followed up by circulating letters seeking signatures for sending a representation to the crown. They tried to draw the attention of the crown as to how the Hindu minority in Bengal, instead of being conceded the usual weightage due to all minorities, has been deprived of even their nominal strength in the total population and has been reduced to a permanent statutory minority in the Legislature. They mentioned the Lucknow Pact of 1916 as a point of reference in their argument for a just and a mutually agreed upon basis of settlement between the two major communities in the country till it was replaced by any fresh agreement. They based their claims on their enormously superior contributions to the ‘intellectual, cultural, political and professional and the communal life of the province’ as well as to its revenues far in excess of their population strength.
The memorial was signed by 126 eminent men from all walks of life like District Magistrates, Editors of newspapers, representatives of the Hindus and chairmen of municipalities. Rabindranath Tagore was the first to sign this document probably to atone for his earlier misinformed support to Gandhi. Tagore’s close association with the Hindu Sabha grew day by day through men like Radha Kumud Mukherjee, Ramananda Chatterjee, Acharya Brajendra Nath Seal, Nil Ratan Sarkar and U N Brahmachari.
When in July 1941 K M Munshi, former Minister from Bombay, conceived an outfit like Akhand Hindusthan to mobilise public opinion against the partition of India as portended in the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution of 1940, he could think only of Rabindranath Tagore as the President of his proposed organisation. It is a matter of regret that Tagore did not survive long after this plan. He left for his heavenly abode in August 1941. But even in his last days he could sense which way the political forces were pulling. He did not have to see his favourite haunt, Silaidaha on the river Padma, which had inspired the best of his writings, pass away to the other side of the barbed fence following the partition of Bengal. But the dark clouds of danger hovering on the province did not escape his sixth sense. The practical statesman in this respect transcended the self effacing poet in Tagore. He displayed the rare wisdom to be able to read the writing on the wall, which many in the today’s political spectrum would be too short-sighted to discern.
(The writer is a Professor, Department of History, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan)
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