In an essay titled Rashtraniti o Dharmaniti (1902) (State Law and Religious Law), Rabindranath Tagore levels a satirical criticism against the colonial British attitude towards the “Mild Hindu[s]”. He refers to two incidents, the one which immediately serves the context for the essay took place in Allahabad in 1901. A peace-loving Hindu named Someshwar Das objected to the forceful relocation of some of the flower pots of his residence by a British tenant who had rented a part of his house. This act of Someshwar was looked upon as audacious by the colonial judge and he was sentenced to imprisonment for it. When the English language daily, The Pioneer, tried to justify the punishment meted out to Someshwar by the colonial court, Tagore launched his broadside.
The second incident had taken place in the same year in Bombay when a British officer thrashed his Brahmin clerk with shoes. By judging both the incidents as trivial, the court pandered to the coloniser’s reckless humiliation of the “law-abiding” Hindu subjects. Tagore considers the Hindu as ‘’jati’’ or race here and concludes that it is quite ironical that the colonial judges should consider any humiliation of the Hindu race, who without any rebellion tamely obeys the colonial law, as trivial, whereas those who are intolerant and use their own laws in complete disregard to the law of the land, should remain unscathed by the colonial system. The British Government in India makes the tiger and the cow drink water at the same place not by subduing the tiger but by disarming the cow by breaking its horns. Later in the same essay, he repudiates the practice of privileging political convenience over religious ethics in the governance of the country: “Dharma ke Jodi akarmonyo boliya thelia rakhite aarombho kori tobe kiser opor nirbhor koribo?’’ (If we put aside religion as ineffectual then what should we base our governance on?)
Shivaji’s Faith in Dharma & Rule
Rabindranath ends his essay on a heroic note, reminding the readers how governance and religious devotion had achieved an exemplary conflation in the Hindu King Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The ‘Mild Hindus’ who felt outraged by the highhandedness of the British Government would feel emboldened to remember with what valour and astute statesmanship Shivaji Maharaj had laid the foundation of a Hindu nation, beside which the prestige of the British Government turns into insignificance. The likes of Someshwar and the Maratha Brahmin could redeem their self-esteem by the thought of being heir to the spirit of sovereignty Shivaji had established.
Following Balgangadhar Tilak’s patriotic celebration of Shivaji Utsav in Maharashtra, Sakharam Ganesh Deuskar wanted to have a reprise of it to stimulate nationalist movement in Bengal. At the instance of Deuskar, Rabindranath composed his famous poem “Shivaji Utsav” that was read in the Bengal chapter of the festival, presided over by Surendranath Bandyopadhyay on September 16 , 1904. The value that Rabindranath placed on this composition becomes clear when in a letter to his poet friend, Dinesh Chandra Sen, he drew attention to his new composition with the avowed expectation of an intellectual response.
In Shivaji Utsav, Rabindranath stresses the importance of history (itibritta) in the Indian context and foregrounds the spiritual inheritance of a heroic yet liberal ideology that our ancient forebears embraced. The personality of Shivaji evolved from utter insignificance to that of a messiah of Hindu revival amidst a decadent Mughal culture. His iron resolve to unite the fragmented and dissident Indian provinces under one religious dispensation (ekdharmarajya pӓshē khanda chhinna bikkhipta bharat/ bendhe dibo aami) explains the all-encompassing and tolerant nature of Hindu nationalism. What Shivaji could do to bring about the end of a political era that spanned from Sultan Mahmud to Aurangze, can be repeated if his spirit can descend from our ancestral abode to drive the British colonial rulers away.
In fact, by historical legacy, Rabindranath believed in a kinetic kinship of our spirit with that of our forefathers. We should not bear an inert relationship with the heroic feats of our ancestors: our minds should draw energy from the robust spirits of our forebears. A historiography that stresses on a dynamic relationship of the present with the robust Hindu cultural past of India becomes the subject of several of Rabindranath’s essays published in the journal, Bangadarshan from 1901 to 1906. Of these, the essays titled Bharatbarshiya Samaj (The Society of Bharatbarsha) and Bharatbarsher Itihas (The History of Bharatbarsha), convey a strong message about the poet’s convictions about the concept of an Indian nation. Interestingly enough, the essay Bharatbarshiya Samaj was originally published as Hindutva in the Shravan, 1308 Bangabda (Aug 1901, according to the Gregorian calendar) issue of the Bangadarshan. If the Hindu society revives itself with the energy that permeates into its interstices from its classical past, we would consider all forms of bondage and suffering as trifling, maintains Rabindranath. If it is possible at all to conceive of anything called a Hindu nation, it will take shape when every individual becomes prepared to sacrifice his/her self-interest for the sake of a broader national goal.
In the past, when Hindu society was alive and bubbling with energy, its every discrete unit considered the interest of the whole social edifice as its own. The king was a part of the social order who was entitled to preserve and govern it – the Brahmin was entrusted with the task of providing eternal security to the pure and virtuous principles on which the society was founded – all their thoughts, education and wisdom were part of the social capital. If like a lifeforce, we can instill in our hearts this well-meaning dynamic spirit of our forefathers and make it useful in all sectors of the social order, we will be able to revive the great Hindu civilisation once again. It is our duty to provide education, health, food and wealth to the society…we should not allow any commercial interest to tarnish the sacred spirit of these actions, rather they should only be considered as acts of virtue intended for the welfare of the society.
This is “yagna”, the rites of action through which we connect with Brahma. To be always awake to this eternal truth is what is known as “Hindutva”. Our ability to be rid of all self-interest and find the whole human civilisation emerge from one superior Brahma is “Hindutva”.
We can make two important observations about Rabindranath’s approach to the history of Hindu civilisation. Firstly, he is critical about the materialist dross (“commercial interest”) that had made Hindu society and culture moribund in the nineteenth century. In several essays, including The Religion of an Artist (1936), he celebrates the contribution of Raja Rammohan Roy to the restoration of the Hindu Bengalee culture from dead habits; and secondly, his concepts of Hindutva and Brahmoism were not mutually exclusive. The overlap between them in Rabindranath’s thought was inspired by a familial heritage also triggered by the insipid condition the true spirit of Hinduism suffered at that time.
What according to Rabindranath Shivaji envisaged as a singular religious state (ekdharmarajya) was a nation unified by the pursuit of truth and governed by virtuous and ethical means. Sanatani Hindu culture promoted this truthful passage under its inclusive umbrella. If the structural principle of a nation lies in the degree of unification possible of myriad and diverse racial and cultural entities, the Hindu civilisation is magnificent for the extraordinary number of diversity it binds. Let me render my translation from Bengali of the original passage that occurs in “Bharatbarshiyo Samaj”: There is not a single race which has not found a place in the amazingly great society that Hindu civilisation has built. The Jat and Rajput clans of the ancient race of the Shakas; mixed-race Nepali, Assamese, Rajbanshi; Dravid, Telegu, Nayar – all of them despite differences in language, caste, religion and custom live together by maintaining a delicate balance inside the behemoth Hindu society. In order to accommodate such diverse people in its fold, Hindu civilisation has deprived itself in many ways, but has not left any of its members out – people belonging to higher or lower classes, of the same or different castes are all bound closely, given a religious shelter and by guiding them on the proper path of action are protected from slackening and depravity.
The unity that Rabindranath underlines in this passage is the cohesive power of the magnanimous Hindu society which is a melting pot for races, several of which are extremely distant from the seminal Aryan dispensation to which we trace the main branch of Hindu lineage. After many wars and bloodshed, the European civilisation had organised themselves into nations who descended from a common racial phenotype while the Hindu civilisation after several conflicts with external forces had organised itself into a societal union of several races which were originally distinct from each other.
Here Rabindranath cited the nineteenth century French historian Ernest Renan’s interrogation of the contemporary Western concept of the nation. No forms of union, be it of race, language, religion or geographical oneness can legitimately pass as a nationalist construct. Similarly, it is difficult to be certain about the origins of Hindutva. Different races, languages, religions and communities possessing contrastive customs and cultures have become part of the vast Hindu social order. This ancient Hindu social order had been down the ages the pivot that secured the people of India from depravity and sustained generations after generations through the religious values of selfless welfare and virtuous action. The dynamic agency of each age had made the lifeforce of our forefathers more meaningful and active.
Dynamics of the Hindu society is such that it often resolved within its ever-accommodating structure all forms of conflicts and steered clear of all narrowness. It is because of this that, Rabindranath observes, India had never completely lost sight of the need of reformation: In the earliest dawn of her civilisation there appeared amidst the fiercest conflict of races and factions and creeds, the genius of Ramachandra and Krishna introducing a new epoch of unification and tolerance and allaying the endless struggle of antagonism. India has ever since accepted them as the Divine will incarnate, because in their life and teachings her innermost truth has taken an immortal shape. (Translated by Sisir K Das).
This is how Rabindranath introduces the spirit of Hindu society to an American lawyer named Myron H. Phelps in a letter written on January 4, 1909. The “truth” referred to in the passage is not only of spiritual value but also of social significance. Unlike the Western world that boasted of an organised social body but lacked in spiritual energy, the civilisation in India sustained itself and maintained its lively course by virtue of an entropic alignment between the body and the soul, based on the patterns established by the incarnate instances of Rama and Krishna.
Almost in the same vein, Rabindranath upheld the ethos of Hinduism in his lecture on nationalism (“Nationalism in India”) delivered in America in 1917. In order to shield Hindu social structure from the burbs of criticism levelled against it by the West, Rabindranath logically explains the genesis of casteism in Indian society: …India tolerated differences of races from the first, and that spirit of toleration has acted all through her history.
Her caste system is the outcome of this spirit of toleration. For India has all along been trying experiments in evolving a social unity within which all the different peoples could be held together, while fully enjoying the freedom of maintaining their own differences. The tie has been as loose as possible, yet as close as the circumstances permitted. This has produced something like a United States of a social federation, whose common name is Hinduism.
The spiritual energy that empowers the cohesion in Hindu society is characterized as the “higher moral power” with which a person overcomes “his brute instinct [that] leads him to fight with others in the sole pursuit of his self- interest.” There is an obvious parallelism here between Rabindranath’s observation of human psychology and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic explanation of drives. In fact, Rabindranath had been speaking about this cohesive spiritual energy inherent in Hinduism for a long time. Earlier, in a conference organised by Chaitanya Library in Kolkata’s Minerva Theatre on 7 Shravan 1311 Bangabda (Aug 1904), he defined the socio-territorial integrity of Bharatbarsha as one in which the Hindus, the Buddhists, the Muslims and the Christians will not live in conflict with each other, but will coexist in a state of peaceful balance. This balance will not be non-Hindu, but will be especially Hindu in character. This was the spirit that informed Shivaji’s conception of ekdharmarajya, a spirit that will bolster the courage of the “Mild Hindus” and strengthen their sinews against avatars of colonisations that might recur in forms of case studies adduced at the beginning of this essay.
The spiritual energy in Hindu social life has been so fervent that the brute instincts of selfish designs in its long historical tradition remained always under control. Rabindranath calls this spiritual energy the “spirit of toleration” that gave Hinduism the character of a “social federation”. However, his belief in the moral nature of Hindu society does not remain unalloyed by anxieties of uncivil excesses that the society has suffered time and again in the form of zamindari exploitation of poor tenants and casteist hatred inflicted on people of the lower strata. Repudiating the evil act of Bengal’s division on communal lines in 1905, Rabindranath wrote his famous poem “Bharat Tirtha” (1910). The clarion call for an inclusive social federation was voiced forth once more. Such a place where humanity is worshipped irrespective of differences of caste and creed cannot be but a pilgrimage of the sacred shrine of Bharat Mata: “mayer obhishekē eso eso twara, mongol ghat hoi ni je bhora” (Run fast to Mother’s coronation, and fill the sacred vessel with holy water). The reference to a Mother goddess – perhaps the same who in our national anthem is worshipped as “Bharat Bhagya Vidhata” (the arbiter of Bharat’s destiny) – and the article of worship (“mongal ghat”) conjure the vision of a Hindu holy ritual.
Ramachandra Guha in his Introduction to the Penguin edition of Rabindranath’s Nationalism points to the evils of casteist and zamindari excesses by referring to the concern that Rabindranath expresses in his 1908 essay entitled “East and West in Greater India”. In his attempt to boost Hindu self-esteem the poet engages in a critically constructive exposition of the Hindu social history. But at every point in the developing discourse of his auto-critiques, he firmly attests the distinctive nature that the Hindu social order always enjoyed by virtue of the spiritual energy that it was guided by. This is why it has not ever succumbed to the depredations that were hurled upon it time and again. The foundational principles of love and cooperation that bind the Hindu society together continued to sustain and revive its life force for thousands of years. And it is this life force that can save the western world from conflicts and war and instil in them a sense of self-definition. For example, in his tour of Europe at the end of the First World War, Rabindranath disseminated the noble principles of Hinduism to the world. In an article entitled “Tagore in Sofia”, published in The Mainstream, on Saturday, August 7, 1976, the Bulgarian critic and author Vladimir Svintila reminisces over his youthful memories of Rabindranath’s visit to the Bulgarian capital in 1926. In answer to the European audience’s several questions on the future of the world and nations’ right to self-determination, Vladimir remembers that Rabindranath’s “answers were short, well-reasoned and inspired confidence. He quoted old Hindu sentences and his favourite Hindu philosophers and poets, inspired courage and bolstered up the spirits.”
For Rabindranath the Hindu social history is the history of a lineage that we could convincingly call the Indian heritage. It is not the story of the lusty orgies in Nabob’s palaces nor is it the prurient accounts of the Mughal emperor’s drunken parties. Our poet laments that the heritage of our ancient temples remain enveloped in the darkness of such hedonistic excesses while the ornate minarets of the paramours who sated the concupiscence of the sultans climb to kiss the stars. In Bharatbarsher Itihas, Rabindranath sadly mentions that the history of India from the invasion of Sultan Mahmud to the imperial arrogance of Lord Curzon is an unpleasant mist that shrouds our vision of India instead of making it bright and clear. It throws light on such spots of history that the true idea of India remains a nebula. He decries such accounts that passed on as history in the school books and did not help us relate to the three-thousand-year-old history of our classical roots. It is time to set that history right and translate our thoughts into the structural edifices of the nation.
