In order to appreciate the significance of Tagore’s contribution to modern political thought, it is necessary to view the background of the ‘Indian Renaissance’ in its historic setting. And the transition of mediaeval to modern India, which resulted in that great cultural awakening now known as the ‘Indian Renaissance’ was effected by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Indeed, the day of Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s birth was the birthday of modern India. A new spirit was abroad, a new buoyancy of life symbolizing the streaks of a rosy dawn after the long mediaeval night which had enveloped India for centuries. The various forces which have contributed to the shaping of modern India originated in the mind of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. And Tagore not only constituted a historic link in the long chain of India’s cultural evolution, but was also the prophet of the Indian Renaissance heralded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
Indian nationalism was an aspect of the ‘Indian Renaissance’ movement. It is well to remember, however, that the nature of Indian nationalism, although influenced by European nationalism, is entirely different from European nationalism. Indian nationalism succeeded in welding the political unity of India, whereas European nationalism split up Europe into several nations based on ethnic considerations. If Swami Vivekananda could be regarded as the prophet of Indian nationalism in his philosophical (Vedantic) context, Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, who had spent much of his career at the Boston Museum, can be looked upon as the most articulate exponent of the aesthetic philosophy of Indian nationalism. And Tagore’s approach to Indian nationalism differed from that of his distinguished contemporaries, who had merely Indianised the concept of Mazzinian nationalism. Tagore’s greatness lies in the fact that he had infused the spirit of poetry into the Indian national movement. And in the final analysis, Tagore had universalized the concept of freedom. “Swatantra,” as Tagore interpreted it, was not a mere political secularity. It was a process which extended the frontiers of the mind. He was certainly opposed to the continuance of British rule in India. However, even in the heat of political controversies, he never lost his sense of perspective. In fact, he had relinquished his Knighthood in the wake of the Amritsar tragedy as a protest against the atrocities committed by the British Indian Government.
Tagore’s most precious gift to our country. But, Tagore was opposed to any form of ignorant and uninformed cultural chauvinism. Tagore, who had much in common with the artist-philosophers of Renaissance Humanism had warned the nation that “in this morning of the world’s awakening, if in only our own national striving there is no response to its universal aspiration, that will betoken the poverty of our spirit”.
Tagore had drawn the vital distinction between the Western Nation and the spirit of the West, in his celebrated lectures on “Nationalism”: “This reign of law in our present government in India (the British Government) has established order in this vast land inhabited by peoples different in their races and customs. It has made it possible for these peoples to come into closer touch with one another and cultivate a common aspiration”. The reference is to Macaulay’s Penal Code which had transformed the basis of Indian society, since it established the legal principle of equality for the first time. Indeed, the movements of liberal thought which developed in England during the course of one or two centuries were compressed into a few decades in an entirely different setting. The Indian Penal Code was drafted by Lord Macaulay (who, incidentally had pleaded for religious liberty in the House of Commons while speaking in the debate on the civil disabilities of the Jews) was a landmark in the evolution of democracy in India. Independent India’s secular outlook owes not a little to the legal system based on Macaulay’s Code. While Tagore had appealed to certain sections in the West to rid themselves of that narrow cultural provincialism which tacitly assumed that the history of Western civilization was also the history of civilization he made it clear that “the desire for a common bond of comradeship among the different races of India has been the work of the spirit of the West, not that of the Nation of the West”.
Mahatma Gandhi (incidentally, it was Tagore who had first hailed Gandhiji as the ‘Mahatma’), who was deeply influenced by Ruskin’s “Unto This Last” was opposed to the Western mode of industrialism. ‘Industrialism’ as Gandhi understood it was the ‘Curse of mankind’ and machinery constituted the ‘great sin’. And Tagore agreed with Gandhi upto a point. Tagore’s view was essentially that of an artist—“the product of the artist’s loom, the magic of man’s living fingers find its expression and its human harmonies with the music of life”. However, when Mahatma Gandhi began his nation-wide campaign to burn foreign cloth, Tagore had strongly opposed this proposal. With his characteristic dignity and the strength that flows from deep conviction, Tagore stated that in considering foreign, especially British-made cloth, as impure, economics was bundled out and a fictitious moral dictum dragged into its pace”. And Tagore was also against this “terrible habit of blindly obeying orders” and felt that “the clothes to be burnt really belong to those who most sorely need them”. And he cogently argued his case in these reflections: “In the West, a real anxiety and effort of their higher mind to rise superior to business considerations is beginning to be seen…I have seen…many in England…who have accepted persecution and contumely from their fellow-countrymen in their struggles to free other peoples from the oppression of their own Government in their struggles to free other peoples from the oppression of their own country’s pride of power. Some of them are amongst us here in India…Romain Rolland…is an outcast from his own people…I have watched the faces of European students all aglow with the hope of a united mankind, prepared manfully to bear all the blows, cheerfully to submit to all the insults, of the present age for the glory of the age to come. And are we alone to be content with telling the beads of negation, harping on others’ faults and proceeding with the erection of ‘Swaraj’ on a foundation of quarrelsomeness”.
Like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Tagore knew the value of English and could foresee its impact on Indian cultural life. Tagore, who was profoundly influenced by Keats and Shelley had felt that the impact of the English language on the mind of the Indian nation did not generate a process of cultural enslavement, but was the harbinger of a new era of creative consciousness. Western literary forms like the essay and the novel which became assimilated into the instrumental of our languages and the brilliant contributions to modern Science by some of our scientists are some of the outstanding features of the ‘Indian Renaissance’. Indeed, Tagore commented: “Gandhi Mahatma is making various efforts to make Hindi the language for the entire country. These efforts, however thriving today, may one day as well peter out”. And Tagore had hoped in his “Talks in China”, that “the awakening of the East” would “impart the conscious discovery of her own mind and universal meanings of our civilization, to re- derive its freedom from its past, to rescue it from the bondage of stagnation that produces impurities, to make it a great channel for communication between all human races”. Tagore was convinced that to realize the ideal of “Vishwabharati, which is similar to Whitman’s poetic ideal “of the marriage of continents, Climates, and Oceans”, in a world which has shrunk due to scientific advances we need a bridge of fundamental ideas and cultural values spanning civilizations through time and space. The impact of Indian philosophical thought on Western thinkers like Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, W. B. Yeats, A. E. and several others, and Western influence on our thinkers like Ram Mohan Roy, Tagore and Tilak and Tagore’s impact on Gandhi are some aspects of this cross- fertilization of culture leading on to an International exchange of ideas. In fact, Tagore stated that “Vishw-Bharathi acknowledges India’s obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India’s right to accept from others their best”.
Viewed in the perspective of cultural history, the British impact on India resulted in a phenomenon which is similar to the effect of the Westernizing policy of Peter the Great. And today, there is undoubtedly a need for a re- thinking of the philosophy of nationalism in its proper perspective. It is remarkable that Tagore had pioneered a new approach to nationalism, in tune with the Time-spirit. As the eminent historian of Nationalism, Prof. Hans Kohn wrote in his “A NEW LOOK AT NATIONALISM”: “None has spoken more strongly against the cult of one’s own nation or rather than Vladimir Solovyev in Russia or Rabin- dranath Tagore in India, both men deeply rooted in the spiritual tradition of their Community and yet wide open to the critical insights of the West”. And as pointed out by Prof. Hans Kohn, the possibility of a deeper cultural intercourse between India and the liberal West can arise only if we no longer allow “our thinking to be channelled into widely accepted stereotypes about nationalism and its relation to liberty”. “The time has arrived”, wrote C. E. Trevelyan in his “The Education of the People of India”, “when the ancient debt of civilization which Europe owes to Asia is about to be repaid; and the sciences created in the East and brought to maturity in the West are now by a final effort to overspread the world”. And this new dispensation which followed in the wake of Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s letter to Lord Amherst was not regarded by Tagore as an invasion of Western ideas, but as a step in the direction of intellectual dialogue of cultures and civilizations.
This essay is part of a series from the Indian Liberals archive, a project of the Centre for Civil Society. It is taken from The Indian Libertarian, with the essay originally titled ‘Tagore’s Humanistic Approach to Indian Nationalism’, published on 15 November 1962. The original version can be accessed here.