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| Sunday, 9 February 2003 |
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Returning to Tagore's Gora-2 : Discovering the true face of India Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake
For Gora his confrontation with reality begins with his journey to the heartland of Bengal which brings him face to face not merely with British justice in the form of the Magistrate Brownlow but also the vast mass of his own people. Here Gora discovers a society quite different to the polite and cultured circles of Calcutta in which he had been nurtured. There are not only Hindus but also Mohammedans in these vast expanses of the countryside but they are alike steeped in superstition and indolence partly as a result of the fatalistic world outlook of their inheritance and partly their subjugation to both feudal and colonial rule. This is how Tagore puts it: "How divided, how narrow, how weak was this vast expanse of rural India - how supinely unconscious of its own powers, how ignorant and indifferent as to its own welfare! What gulfs of social separation yawned between villages only a few miles apart. What a host of self-imposed imaginary obstacles prevented them from taking their place in the grand commerce of the world. The most trivial things looked so big to them, the least of their traditions seemed so unbreakable." Here is a writer who is not overawed by the whole panoply of tradition. Tagore recognises the need for the people to mobilise themselves to surmount the trivialities of tradition but what is truly amazing is his concern for the 'grand commerce of the world. For Tagore was no narrow conventionalist. He knew that one day sooner rather than later India would have to take her place on the international stage but how was that to be accomplished if the people lay supine and leaderless? socialist consciousness Who then is to lead the people if the people are themselves incapable of leading themselves. By this time Lenin had formulated his famous thesis that the working class was only capable of a trade union consciousness and that it would be bourgeois intellectuals who had transcended their class who would be able to take socialist consciousness to the working class. In India, however, Mahatma Gandhi (surely a bourgeois intellectual of a kind) had forsaken his western dress for a loin cloth and was busy taking his message of non-violence, self-abnegation and gramraj among the vast impoverished masses. What Tagore sees through Gora, Gandhi too would surely have seen and this is at the heart of the problem of emancipation in an oppressed country. The point is that it is only bourgeois intellectuals who have transcended their class who are capable of the kind of moral anger which Gora feels at the backwardness and the supine nature of the peasantry. For example a fire occurs in one of the villages in which he is staying and he is astounded at the people's helplessness. There was no source of drinking water nearby and the women were accustomed to walking great distances to bring the necessary water. Even the relatively well-off had never dreamt of digging a tank. There had been fires before but since everybody had accepted them as visitations of Fate the people merely went about weeping and wailing much to the disgust of Gora. process of self-discovery This then is the problem of the urban intellectual who seeks to lead the people out of the trough of their backwardness. The people will either not be led since they will put everything down to Fate or take to the kind of anarchist violence as in the village of Ghosepara whose injustices brings Gora into confrontation with the Magistrate. But either way for Gora his expedition which takes him ultimately to jail is both a moral excursion and a process of self-discovery. Returning to Calcutta from prison Gora is confronted by another aspect of Hindu society which has a profound effect on him. By this time the situation in Paresh Babu's household has reached ahead following Lolita's escapade with Binaya and their marriage becomes inevitable. As Sucharitha has been particularly close to Lolita her presence in the house also becomes untenable and she plans to leave. The situation is compounded when during the absence of his wife and daughters at the Brownlow residence Paresh Babu gives refuge to Sucharitha's widowed aunt Harimohini who comes into occupation of an untenanted portion of the house. Harimohini is a devoted Hindu and her refusal to use the water used by the rest of the house since it has been drawn by a low-caste servant and her practice of idol worship (central to Hinduism but anathema to the Brahmo Samaj) brings her into conflict with Paresh's wife, Borda Sundari, a vain woman who considers herself a pillar of the Brahmo Samaj. The upshot of all this is that Sucharitha moves into a different house with Harimohini. undesirable By this time Gora becomes increasingly attracted to Sucharitha who under the influence of her aunt has herself become a Hindu and considers Gora to be her guru. Harimohini, however, resents this relationship between two young people which she sees as undesirable partly because of her traditional upbringing and partly because she plans to give her niece in marriage to one of her widowed brothers-in-law. This narrow-minded attitude of Harimohini makes Gora realise sharply how burdensome the dead weight of tradition can be. transformations What Tagore here examines is the conflict between tradition and modernity and the crisis into which religion itself is plunged as a result of the transformations effected by colonial rule. Central to the novel is also the question of identity. Characters change their religions. Sucharitha becomes a Hindu, Lolita leaves the Barhmo Samaj to marry Binaya and although Binaya remains a Hindu the marriage takes place without the practice of idol worship, a vital blow for secularism. But the biggest surprise is the mental revolution which Gora undergoes and this is the denouncement of the novel. For Gora is neither an Indian nor a Hindu. His father is an Irishman who had been killed during the Mutiny and his mother had died giving birth to him. Krishnadayal, the man whom Gora had hitherto considered his father, had given refuge to the pregnant Irish woman and he and his wife Anandamoyi adopt the orphan. However, Krishnadayal becomes increasingly disturbed by Gora's acute Hindu ways and fearing that he is on his death bed breaks the secret of his birth to Gora. The most poignant moment of the novel perhaps is this when looking at the faces of the two people whom he had considered his parents Gora realises that he is an alien while with a shock he recognises that his closest relation perhaps is the English doctor who now enters the room to attend to the sick man. Colonial rule then effects enormous changes in societies which it takes into its relentless grip. It tears them asunder from their traditions, uproots them from their past and throws them into the whirlpool and melting pot of change. Such an uprooting is necessary if societies are to progress but they also pay a price for in the process of that uprooting much that is worthwhile and lasting in tradition is also thrown away. final epiphany India perhaps more than any other ex-colonial society was able to successfully face up to this challenge and this was in no small measure due to intellectuals such as Tagore. He is absolutely clear-sighted on the need to jettison the dead weight of the old ways but not the essence of the Indian tradition. Tradition and modernity are blended in the form of Paresh Babu who although a Brahmo is also outside the Brahmo Samaj and therefore the outmoded structures of society and is ostracised by the Brahmo Samaj for allowing his daughter Lolita to marry a Hindu. It is this clear-sightedness this ability to focus on the past and the present at the same time and draw the best from both worlds, which gives its particular ring to Gora's final epiphany when he thus addresses Paresh Babu and asks him to become his guru: Paresh Babu, so long I have been trying to realise India with my whole life - I was finding obstacles at every turn - and day and night I have been trying always to make these obstacles objects of devotion. And in order to make that devotion firm in its foundations I have not been able to do any other work - that was my one and only task. For that reason every time I came face to face with the real India I have turned back in fear shaping an India with my unchanging and uncritical thought I have all the time been struggling against everything around me in my efforts to preserve my faith whole and entire in that impregnable fortress. Today in a single moment that fortress of my own creation has vanished like a dream, and I, having got absolute freedom, suddenly find myself standing in the midst of a vast truth. All that is good or evil in India, all her joys and sorrows, all her wisdom and follies, have come in their fullness close to my heart. Now I have truly the right to serve her, for the real field of labour is spread out before me, it is not a creation of my own imagination it is the actual field of welfare for the three hundred millions of India's children.' |
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