Sajal Dey
Department of Russian Studies, the English and Foreign Languages University, Shillong Campus, Umshing-Mawkynroh, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. Email: sajaldey07@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.22
Abstract
Two Tagores, two visionaries; one as a poet-educationist, another as a revolutionary-politician, both from colonial India, then reeling under the British yoke, visited Russia at about the same time. While the elder Tagore, Nobel-laureate Rabindranath, was moved by the huge scale of development, mainly on the educational front, — the younger and the more rebellious one, Soumyendranath, studied deeply, paused, and raised questions, debated and disputed the gap between the so-called socialist theory and practice in Soviet Russia. Rabindranath wanted to visit post-revolution Russia for quite some time. After a few futile attempts his desire was ultimately fulfilled in 1930. What he primarily wanted to see was the all-embracing spread of education in the Soviet system and its results. His Russiar Chithi, or Letters from Russia bears testimony to his impression of the new ‘awakened’ Russia. In the very first line of his first letter from Moscow he writes, “In Russia at last! Whichever way I look, I am filled with wonder.” In spite of a few adverse comments that he made later on, this feeling of ‘wonder’ about Russia lasted throughout the collection. Soumyendranath, grandson of Rabindranath’s elder brother Dwijendranath, was one of the pioneers of communist movement in India. After a short period of romance with Gandhism that failed to answer some of the basic questions he had in his mind, Soumyendranath was attracted to socialism. He went to Russia in 1927, took lessons of communism from Bukharin himself, got admitted in the Lenin course at the Marx-Engels Institute, and also learned Russian language very well. A formidable intellectual, Soumyendranath never faltered to express his opinion even in Stalinist Russia. He debated with Bukharin, disputed Gorky’s opinion regarding proletarian literature, and opposed the Kuusinen Thesis in the sixth world congress of Comintern held in 1928. Shortly after that he went away, but came back to Russia in 1930 along with Rabindranath. His travelogue Jatri or The Wayfarer, among other things, carries his impression of Russia.
In this paper a comparative study of these two outlooks of the two Tagores has been undertaken, showing how these two great minds differed, as far as Russia was concerned, as evident from the travelogues and books they wrote and other related materials. Their personal relationship as well as literary and ideological influences on each other is one of the pivotal points of investigation. The important thing kept in view was that, both of them in their own way represented the country they belonged to, and their lifelong mission was emancipation of their homeland and its people, again in their own distinctive ways.
Keywords: Russian revolution, socialism, Tagores, Rabindranath, Soumyendranath
