Open Texture of Nationalism: Tagore as Nationalist

Gangeya Mukherji, Mahamati Prannath Mahavidyalaya, Mau–Chitrakoot, India

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Abstract

“The attempt to evaluate the relationship of Tagore with the phenomenon of nationalism is hardly uncomplicated and defeats easy categorisation, naturally drawing attention as it must, to the porosity of the concept of nationalism. Although it is the received wisdom in many quarters that Tagore unlike Gandhi was opposed to nationalism, a close analysis may reveal why in his obituary of Tagore Gandhi chose to say: ‘In the death of Rabindranath Tagore, we have not only lost the greatest poet of the age, but an ardent nationalist who was also a humanitarian’.  Was there a nationalist hidden in Tagore which appealed to Gandhi’s nationalism? This paper will try to examine Tagore’s nationalism and his different understanding of the constituents of the nation – culture, language, history, idea of nationhood, memory, non violence – which led him to occasionally take stances that appeared to strike at the roots of the conventional notion of nation, exploring in parallel the extent to which the category of nationalism can be stretched without becoming something of its opposite. Waismann’s idea of open texture, more generally used in the philosophy of language, indicates that notwithstanding definitions there still remain possibilities of a definition being inadequate, although being different from vagueness insofar as the definition may be fairly accurate. This paper on the nation of Tagore will look at the open texture of nationalism.”

[Keywords: Tagore, Gandhi, Waismann, open texture; nationalism]

The attempt to evaluate the relationship of Gandhi and Tagore with the phenomenon of nationalism is hardly uncomplicated and defeats easy categorisation, naturally drawing attention as it must, to the porosity of the concept of nationalism. Although it is the received wisdom in many quarters that Tagore unlike Gandhi was opposed to nationalism, a close analysis may reveal why Gandhi chose to call him ‘an ardent nationalist’. In his obituary of Tagore Gandhi said:

In the death of Rabindranath Tagore, we have not only lost the greatest poet of the age, but an ardent nationalist who was also a humanitarian. There was hardly any public activity on which he has not left the impress of his powerful personality. In Santiniketan and Sriniketan, he has left a legacy to the whole nation, indeed to the whole world. May the noble soul rest in peace and may those in charge at Santiniketan prove worthy of the responsibility resting on their shoulders.[i]

Equating Tagore with nationalism and Santiniketan at the same time may sound intriguing. If anything, Santiniketan is located in the tradition of viewing humanity as transcending cartographical divisions. Tagore was ever vigilant against ‘nationalistic prejudices’ that were ‘sedulously cultivated in our school-books, and also by the patriots who wish the boys to be proud of the exploits of their own country by running down other countries’.[ii] Thus most schools distorted children’s sympathy and made them ‘incapable of understanding alien peoples with different languages and cultures’.

In India, as a response to the Macaulayan policy of acculturation, a genuine effort was initiated to create an alternative system of education which was not chauvinistic, but was premised on the complementarities of cultures. It was believed that to privilege one single culture as supreme would in effect impede and asphyxiate the interchange of human values and cultures. While concluding his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Tagore alluded to the global character of Santiniketan with an invitation to the world, in the ‘name of the unity of men’, in the ‘name of love’, and ‘in the name of God’, to ‘join hands with us and not to leave this institution to us’, to ‘make it living and representative of the undivided humanity of the world’.[iii]

The undoubted astuteness of Gandhi and his propinquity with Tagore even as they argued their way through some of the crucial periods of the nationalist movement indicate to the soundness of Gandhi’s perception regarding Tagore. Was there a nationalist hidden in Tagore which appealed to Gandhi’s nationalism? Was Gandhi not a nationalist in the conventional sense and so appreciated Tagore’s similarly unconventional nationalism? Or is nationalism itself a complicated category which admits to nuances?

Waismann’s idea of open texture, more generally used in the philosophy of language, indicates that notwithstanding definition as applicable category, there still remain possibilities of a definition being inadequate, although remaining different from vagueness insofar as the definition may be fairly accurate in actual situations.[iv] This paper on the nation of Gandhi and Tagore will try to look at the open texture of nationalism.

Broadly defined nationalism is the assumption of an identity by a group of people primarily on the basis of territory, language, religion, and, culture. It is the political aspect of a categorization of history in the industrial age.[v] Although originating as most concepts, in intellectual circles, it gained its transformative power with its general acceptance. In the nineteenth century, which Walter Bagehot called the ‘century of nation building’; this concept became one of the most powerful forces influencing history, and caused the maps of the western world to be drawn and redrawn. The materialization of the idea of nationalism as the ‘nation-state’ was a complex process. Well into the 20^th century, a nation was defined by Stalin as, ‘… a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up, manifested in a community of culture.’[vi] Aspects of this historical evolution are contested in contrary formulations of the nation as a product of historical amnesia,[vii] or as an imagined community.[viii] The exclusionary element is predominant in nationalism: on one plane it ‘connotes a tendency to place a particularly excessive, exaggerated and exclusive emphasis on values, which leads to a vain and importunate overestimation of ones own nation and thus to a detraction of others’[ix]; on another, it denotes, as in Camille Julian’s searching for spiritual France even while dealing with periods thousands of years preceding the existence of his country, an ‘extreme case of the emotional and intellectual substitution of a nation for Mankind.’[x]

Although the extent to which the category of nationalism can be stretched – without its becoming something of its opposite – is debatable, it does contain quite a variety in itself; for instance, Hobsbawm has likened Mafias to national movements inasmuch as they were also points of convergence for diverse social tendencies, divergent social and personal aspirations, and focalised defence of social tradition against alien disruptive tendencies: ‘[Mafias] are to some extent, like national movements, of which perhaps they are a sort of embryo fluid.’[xi]

Tagore called nationalism ‘a great menace’, stating, that he was ‘not against one nation in particular, but against the general idea of all nations’.[xii] However his hostility to the nation is not monolithic and as intractable, in spite of similarities, as that of George Steiner, who said:

Nationalism is the venom of modern history. Nothing is more bestially absurd than the readiness of human beings to incinerate or slaughter one another in the name of nationhood and under the infantile spell of a flag. Citizenship is a bilateral arrangement that is, that always ought to be, subject to critical examination and, if need be, abrogation. No city of man is worth a major injustice, a major falsehood. The death of Socrates outweighs the survival of Athens. Nothing dignifies French history more surely than the willingness of French men to go to the brink of communal collapse, to weaken the bonds of nationhood drastically (as they in fact did) over the Dreyfuss case…Trees have roots, men have legs with which to leave after they have, in conscience, said no.[xiii]

Tagore did, on occasions more than one, say no. But his ‘no’ was never simplistic, neither did he leave, choosing to remain and face the storms of protest which broke, again, on occasions more than one.

Steiner interestingly conflates the nation and the state here. There are also obvious echoes of Lincoln who had at one stage contemplated emigrating if America became more intolerant to minority groups.[xiv] But for my present purpose I am drawn more to Socrates than to Steiner. Confronted by death, Socrates refused to leave Athens at the bidding of Crito. Acknowledging that the state had ‘injured’ him and given ‘an unjust sentence’, Socrates constructed a dialogue with the Laws before Crito to elaborate his reasons for not leaving. The laws tell him that he had been ‘the most constant resident’ of Athens, renouncing the choice to ‘go to a colony or any other city’ and ‘take his goods with him’. He had signed his covenant with the laws and leaving would amount to an unworthy transgression. Socrates prefers to ‘depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws but of men’. The voice urging him in this is he says is ‘murmuring in my ears, like the sound of a flute in the ears of a mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other’.[xv] Rather than individual secession from an unjust nation/ state, the principle of bearing witness becomes overriding in this case, also indicating in the process the other foundations of the nation state.

Similarly for Tagore, mere political freedom as understood in the modern West was of secondary importance, the concept being mostly understood there in a half baked sense, and substantially responsible for conflicts. In public perception it was to be had from the other, wrested even, and needed to be defended, for which vigilance and aggression became necessary; ‘political freedom does not give us freedom when our mind is not free’.[xvi] Tagore valued ‘Dharma’ as something highly superior to ‘political freedom’; ‘dharma’ being the inner strength of man independent of any outside agency. ‘Dharma’ was vastly different from religious norms, it was the essence of life; the life giving equanimity that finds expression in so much of his writings. Here he was one with Gandhi.

For Tagore the nation is an amoral, rather immoral category, which ‘will never heed the voice of truth and goodness.’[xvii] When he says that ‘in the reign of the nation the governed are pursued by suspicions’ his experience is primarily that of the repression of the colonial state; even though ‘it is not a question of the British government, but of government by the nation’, he nevertheless acknowledges: ‘our only intimate experience of the nation is the British nation’.[xviii] But, ‘[this] government by the nation is neither British nor any thing else; it is an applied science and therefore more or less similar in principles wherever it is used.’[xix] However thus far, the paradox of the nation and the no-nation remains unresolved. The paradox can be perhaps explicated by looking at what Amartya Sen called ‘Tagore’s dual attitude to Nationalism’, and recognising the open texture of nationalism as well:

Tagore’s ‘dual’ attitude to Nationalism – Supporting its emphasis on self respect but rejecting its patriotism – was not an easy one to get across, even in India. His criticism of Japan and of Britain were received with easy understanding in India, but when similar criticism were made of India and Indians, there were many attempts to see Rabindranath as a lukewarm Indian. But Tagore remained deeply committed to his Indianness, while rejecting both patriotism and the advocacy of cultural isolation.[xx]

Tagore’s combined stress: on the Indian classics and on Bengali as medium of instruction on the one hand; and on courses studying the culture and traditions of the West as well as of the Far, and the Middle East, evoke Sen’s comment: ‘Tagore attempted to reflect his dual emphasis, mentioned earlier, in the educational arrangements at Santiniketan.’ Perhaps this informed Gandhi’s statement about Tagore, nationalism, and Santiniketan.

Gandhi’s references to the ‘nation’ quite early in his writings, towards the end of the Hind Swaraj, that: ‘You English, who have come to India are not good specimens of the English nation, nor can we, almost half-Anglicised Indians, be considered good specimens of the real Indian nation. If the English nation were to know all you have done, it would oppose many of your actions’[xxi]; conveyed a spirit which was not antithetical to that of Tagore, who subsequently stated: ‘Each nation must be conscious of its mission, and we in India must realise that we cut a poor figure when we try to be political, simply because we have not yet been finally able to accomplish what was set before us by our providence’.[xxii] The nation that Tagore is severely critical of is the colonising, English nation. His comments on nationalism in India reflect more upon its impracticability – given the obnoxious caste system which occluded a common birthright and intermarriage, and race amalgamation[xxiii] – than on its absolute undesirability in principle. His statement that nationalism ‘is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India’s troubles,’ was unmistakably a recoil from the recent emulation of the spirit of European chauvinism by Indians, rather than from the feeling of Indianness:

India has never had a real sense of nationalism. Even though from childhood I had been taught that idolatry of the nation is almost better than reverence for God and humanity, I believe I have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.[xxiv]

Einstein, like Steiner a Jew, categorised as a trenchant critic of nationalism, once famously calling it the ‘measles of mankind’, nevertheless believed: ‘It is not enough for us to play a part as individuals in the cultural development of the human race, we must also tackle tasks which only nations as a whole can perform. Only so can the Jews regain social health.’[xxv] He despised national frontiers and armies, not national existence, the ‘life of peaceful nations’ was ‘civilised and just’.[xxvi] Palestine thus was ‘not primarily a place of refuge for the Jews of Eastern Europe but the embodiment of the reawakening corporate spirit of the whole Jewish nation’[xxvii]; the state of Israel he wished to embody three Jewish ideals: ‘the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence’.[xxviii] Likewise Tagore may have aspired, as Einstein did for Israel, for creating India as a social and spiritual centre, but nonetheless the centre did not negate the nation that was India. Gandhi and Tagore were both nationalists in this sense of the term although their different understanding of the constituents of the nation – culture, language, history, idea of nationhood, memory, non violence – led them to occasionally take stances that appeared to strike at the roots of the conventional notion of nation. For instance, nationalistic consciousness is frequently stapled with memories of racial injustice. Colonized nations sought to preserve the scars of tortures perpetrated by the colonizers, in the collective psyche of the nation, as spurs to sentiments of resistance / nationalism. Tagore had renounced his knighthood in protest against the massacre at Jalianwala Bagh. He however opposed the erection of a memorial for the victims, in a message sent to the first memorial meeting presided over by M.A. Jinnah on 13 April 1920. The message was read out by C.F. Andrews. This extract is relevant:

Let those who try to burden the minds of the future with stones, carrying the black memory of wrongs and their anger, but let us bequeath to the generations to come memorials of that only which we can revere ¾ let us be grateful to our fore-fathers, who have left us the image of our Buddha, who conquered self, preached forgiveness, and spread his love far and wide in time and space.[xxix]

Khilnani has mentioned the ‘anti-statism’ ‘that had animated the thinking of both Tagore and Gandhi’, and how the ‘state was a dispensable nuisance’ for them.[xxx] Tagore’s attitude to law and thus presumably the state was complex. Reacting to the assertion by students of the right to perform Saraswati Puja in the Ram Mohun Roy hostel of the Sadharan Samaj controlled City College in 1928, he upheld state intervention in disputes involving religious sensibilities: ‘If a particular religious community has charge of a certain college, then mere gentlemanliness dictates that the students of such a college should not wound the religious beliefs of that community. And if there be some amongst the former devoid of this quality, then it becomes a case for the external social force called law. It is the fear of this law that prevents any member of society from taking it on himself forcibly to discard the rights and privileges of any other members.’[xxxi] Such demands were tantamount to Hindu students attempting to worship Kali in the Aligarh College, an act ‘against the law’ which ‘no civilised society’ could allow; along with suffering ‘inward shame’ the ‘culprit’ would ‘be liable to the outward penalty prescribed by law’.[xxxii]  Mining the stratum of his ideas, we may feel that his ideas on the nation state are neither ahistorical, nor are they reducible to crude and absolutist assumptions. He was opposed to the modern commercial / capitalist / expansionist complex which had donned the mantle of the nation, rather than the geographical / racial units which came together on the basis of shared characteristics so that a viable national entity could be sustained. This conclusion seems logical if we look at his constant references to the special genius of a people and his sympathy for the emancipatory struggles of people across the world; and his sympathies for Asian nations like Japan and China, whom he exhorted to adhere to the spirit of reconciliation. Some critics, however, would doubtless deduce that Tagore indulged in criticism of Euro-centrism but feigned moderation because of his orthodoxy and hegemonism. His pragmatism is evident in his position on national armies: ‘I do not for a moment suggest that Japan should be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self-protection. But this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of self preservation’.[xxxiii] However, he went on to add: ‘The living man has his true protection in his spiritual ideals which have their vital connection with his life, and grow with his growth’.[xxxiv]

There is an altruistic core to the nationalistic idea in so far as it extends beyond the strictly individual, to identifying with a broader group and occasionally, even frequently it is therefore selflessness of a kind. But it becomes self-centred when rights of a group are demanded by individuals primarily because of the realisation that the benefits would thereof automatically flow to the individual. This constitutes chauvinistic, amoral nationalism. However the kernel of altruism in the idea of nationalism retains its significance between the ‘two great powerful and attractive fallacies’ as Isaiah Berlin called them, imperialistic advocacy of internationalism for the powerless; on the other hand the compulsive desire of the weak to ‘declare themselves bankrupt, and be struck off the roll, and lay down the burden of freedom and responsibility’.[xxxv] In a climate of shallow internationalism paralleled with militarism Tagore understood that: ‘Internationalism is a noble ideal, but it can be achieved only when each link in the chain, that is, every nation, is strong enough to bear the required tension.’[xxxvi] Of course he swayed neither towards sentimental traditionalism, nor towards vague cosmopolitanism. Berlin said this in his lecture at Tagore’s centennial conference in Delhi in 1961. But I am equally interested in his argument in the same city eleven years later, in the First Humayun Kabir Lecture of 1972, entitled “Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism”. Illustrating the many connotations of the concept, he had argued that there was howsoever paradoxical, a connection and a ‘traceable line of influence’ between Kant’s ideas and the ‘rise of nationalism’. Kant’s horror at such a connexion did not rule out the fact that romantic nationalism was but ‘two steps’ from ‘Kant’s impeccably enlightened rationalism’.[xxxvii] Berlin’s apology for Kant echoes the broad opinion surrounding Tagore’s apparently vexed relationship with the Swadeshi movement’s coercive character:

Ideas do at times, develop lives and powers of their own and, like Frankenstein’s monster, act in ways wholly unforeseen by their begetters, and, it may be, directed against their will, and turn on them to destroy them. Men, least of all thinkers, cannot be held responsible for the unintended and improbable consequences of their ideas…[xxxviii]

Critics, Ramachandra Guha being the latest among them, have somewhat over extended Tagore’s contrition over his role in the swadeshi movement, seeing some of his later essays as an auto-critique.[xxxix] But there is no consequential departure of ideas in these writings, such as Raja Praja, Samuha, Swadesh etc. In fact he reiterates in them that Indian society still continued to suffer the indignity accruing from the staple colonial attitudes of racial superiority, typically exemplified in the depictions of Indian life by writers like Kipling. That colonial rule was an artificial barrier to the normal development of the country, even if it was not the only one, was a fundamental idea in his writings, as it is in most such nationalist writings. Self rule may not in all such cases, and certainly not in Tagore, is an aspiration towards rule by the dominant native class, it is rather perceived as a step necessary for the upliftment of the entire country. Even the portion of his letter to Aurobindo Mohan Bose, that Guha cites as example is preceded by statements that reject the absolutist assumptions and modus operandi of the swadeshi movement, not the idea of nationalism itself. Responding to critiques of his article entitled “Deshhit”, Tagore clearly stated that he had nowhere said that ‘boycott should stop’, only that ‘unjust, untruthful and unrighteous methods’ would ultimately not be beneficial. Equating patriotism with God and thereby making it the supreme ideal would result in patriotism becoming ‘the blindest of superstitions, similar to the belief in omens about sneezing and lizards croaking, or the worship of goddesses to ward off cholera and skin diseases’.[xl] The primacy of patriotism disfigures the idea and deprives it of all redemptive value. Interestingly an article by Tagore’s renowned Santiniketan colleague Kshitimohon Sen, which instances the mutual regard of Tagore and the arch-nationalist Tilak, compares Tagore’s attitude towards his nation as praxis, rashtriya sadhana. It is like to the antlike approach of the ascetic towards true realization: the pipilikadrishti of munis. This signifies the quality of meticulous dedication in Tagore’s worshipful attitude towards his nation. Sen mentions that Tagore’s hand written manuscript containing his detailed, stepwise instructions regarding the fulfilment of duties towards the local community as well as the nation, which had been in the possession of his friends was unfortunately burnt by them because of the fear of police searches during the swadeshi period.[xli] This fact accomplishes two things: first, it dispels the notion of Tagore having at any point unconsciously subscribed to xenophobic nationalism; second that the imagined shift in his attitude indicated the unintended consequences of his ideas with regard to the excesses of the swadeshi movement. It both defines and defends his national sentiment, and effectively distances him from the pathology of nationalism. Tagore unlike Kant was still living during the nationalistic apotheosis in his nation and could thus respond to its positions and ideology. To mention yet another difference in the case of Tagore, the idea of ‘the autonomy of the will of a nation or a society’ had been already launched and he was in effect also refining these ideas. This essay by Berlin foregrounds the possibility of an inclusive, liberal, and democratic nationalism, as in Mazzini and Michelet. Berlin has stated that the nationalist consciousness was rooted in ‘the uniqueness of particular traditions, languages, customs – of occupation, over a long period, of a particular piece of soil on which intense collective feeling is concentrated.’[xlii]

It is undeniable that Indianness, embodying some unique qualities, was precious to Tagore, whether it is called love of homeland or local attachment. He ascribed at times very noble features to the sub continent, which it should be remembered became three nations.  For instance, he wrote in the Swadeshi Samaj (circa 1904) that the ‘realisation of the one in many, attaining unity in diversity – this is the inherent quality of Bharatvarsha’. This India never equated difference with animosity, did not deem aliens to be enemies. Because of this it aspires to accommodate everybody within a wide system, mindful of the importance of each in its assigned place: ‘Since India possesses this quality, we will never imagine any society to be our enemy and be fearful. With ever new conflicts we will aspire for the expansion of ourselves. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians will not die fighting each other in the case of India – here they will discover a harmony. This harmony will not be non Hindu; in fact it will be Hindu in its essential sense. The limbs and organs of this harmony may come also from alien countries; however its life and soul shall be Indian.’[xliii] This love for a homeland is considered to be ‘an ethical concept fundamental to all nationalism’.[xliv] It is significant that this love acquires a universal character in Tagore. It is of course evident that it does not allow any scope for chauvinism; overzealous patriots by trying to cite it for their benefit will inevitably cause the vandalism of the entire idea. But it still remains that Tagore cherished a regional-national sentiment, ‘conducive to nationalism of a defensive and intensive rather than of an aggressive and extensive nature’, an idea that ‘in regions of mixed nationality…may serve as a unifying element for rival nationalities and also as a check on the development of a conscious and too ardent nationalism.’[xlv]

It may be in this connection relevant to add that Gandhi, in stating that the earthquake in Bihar was a ‘divine chastisement’ for the sin of untouchability, may have invoked the category of moral nationalism inasmuch as the universal Godhead chooses not to extend benediction on military adventures, but to punish a people for its violation of human norms.[xlvi] This indicates at a societal conscience, and introduces the principle of the morality of the nation/ state. The origins of Gandhi’s concept of the ethical state can perhaps be directly traced to the Jain niti tradition, particularly the tenets pertaining to the moral duties and obligations of a ruler, in Laghavarhnniti composed for King Kumarpala in 12^th century Gujarat, by Hemchandra who like Gandhi belonged to the Modh Bania community of the Kathiawar region.[xlvii] This is more evident, in Gandhi’s fast against the decision of his country’s government to freeze Pakistan’s share of the common assets during the Kashmir war, which probably precipitated his assassination.

The confluence of Tagore and Gandhi, on the morality of the state and the ethics of nationalism, indicates as much as to the category of their nationalism, as to the open texture of nationalism itself.     

Notes

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities (ISSN 0975-2935), Vol 2, No 4, 2010, Special Issue on Rabindranath Tagore, edited by Amrit Sen, URL of the Issue:  http://rupkatha.com/v2n4.php, URL of the article: http://rupkatha.com/V2/n3/02OpenTexture.pdf