Rabindranath Tagore and the humanistic impulse

Rabindranath Tagore (1861- 1941) was without a doubt one of the greatest Indian writers and artistes of the twentieth century. His indubitable talents moved in different directions. He distinguished himself as a poet, lyricist, novelist, short story writer, playwright, painter, musician, educator and social thinker. He was the author of some sixty collections of poetry and a large number of prose works including novels, short stories, essays and plays. He was a talented musician who composed over two- thousand songs.

As a painter he held exhibitions in New York, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, and Birmingham. In 1901 he founded the Shantiniketan which later developed into the international educational institute called vishva-bharti. His range of achievements in so many different fields of human endeavour is simply astonishing. One important thread that united all these diverse and challenging activities was his deep attachment to humanism. Indeed, it is this aspect that I propose to explore in this column.

The term humanism carries a plurality of meanings that seeks to underline the centrality of human beings, their thoughts and actions, their freedom and sense of agency. However, this term has spread throughout the world largely as a European concept that has been given universal validity.

The important point about Tagore’s humanism is that it focuses on the fact that humanism is not one thing but many, and that we need to pluralize this concept. In recent times, the term humanism has taken on the character of a smear-word in academic polemic in the west; it has been reduced to a reactionary ideology. This is largely due to the impact of such newer modes of inquiry such as post-structuralism and post-modernism. It seems to me that the writings of Rabindranath Tagore enable us to explore some of the criticisms leveled against humanism more productively.

There are three central charges brought against humanism by western critics. These merit close consideration. First, humanism is seen as a form of ideology that serves to de-contextualise some of the ideas and values associated with the Renaissance in Europe, and to freeze them into universality. It is thought of as a way of dissolving heterogeneity and reducing difference to subservient otherness. Sartre went so far as to proclaim that, ‘humanism is the counterpart of racism; it is a practice of exclusion.’

However, careful study of the writings of Tagore will surely have the opposite effect; it will display the shaping of other cultural worlds, other forms of being-in-the-world, other values and other belief systems. This will have the beneficial effect of enlarging the discursive field of traditional European humanism and counterposing alternative paradigms of human excellence.

Second, humanism as generally understood in western discourse places at the centre of interest the sovereign individual- the individual who is self-present, the originator of action and meaning, the privileged location of human values and civilisational achievements.

However, the notion of the self that finds articulation in Tagore’s writings presents a different picture. He was interested not in the sovereign individual but the individual in relationality, individual as a part of a collectivity, as an adjunct of a larger reality. This has great implications for the kind of humanism advocated by Tagore.

Third, it has often been remarked by critics such as Foucault that humanism should be understood not as a free-floating, timeless entity but as a human creation that bears the distinct imprint of specific discursive formations .

This idea bears directly on the way we should approach Rabindranath Tagore’s humanism. It grew out of a specific historical and cultural milieu and it bears the imprint of that milieu. Therefore, far from being a free-floating and timeless idea, the humanism that guided Tagore was firmly anchored to the culture and intellectual traditions that nourished him

A distinct feature of Tagore’s humanism is that it is undeniably poetic. What I mean by this is that it emerges from emotional experiences, zones of feeling, artistic pursuits. For example, he was deeply influenced by the Upanishads in his thinking. However, while the Upanishads laid out their understandings of self and reality and humanistic thinking in abstract and speculative terms, Tagore expounded his notion of humanism through poetry, art and music.

The speculative and abstract concepts formulated in the Upanishads are converted into images, poetry, and narratives. It is in this sense that I refer to Tagore’s brand of humanism as poetic humanism. One can state that his humanism is poetic in two senses. First, the basic formulation of it is poetic. Second, it finds expression largely, though not solely, in poetic utterances and contexts of expression and understanding.

I wish to explore the nature and distinctiveness of Rabindranath’s poetic humanism in terms of six important categories of analysis. The first is the way it finds expression in his literary works. Let us consider one of the most well-known poems by Tagore from his work the Gitanjali (Song Offering).

Where the mind is and the head is held high

Where knowledge is free; where the world has not been broken up

Into fragments by narrow domestic walls

Where words come out from the depths of truth

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary

Desert sand of dead habit

Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening

Thought and action

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father let my country awake

The poem which is in the form of a prayer, a plea, a hope, carries within it Tagore’s deepest humanistic impulses. The ideal person projected in the poem is one that carries within himself or herself the humanism that Tagore longed for.

When we examine the content of the poem and the tropes that give it emotional power and resonance, we realize that they grow out of his deep familiarity with Upanishads, Buddhist thought, the Indian poetic tradition as well as his acquaintance with western social thinking. This blending of the East and West was an integral part of his poetic humanism.

Let us consider another passage. This one, too, manifests the power of the kind of humanism that Rabindranath Tagore was keen to promote, although the angle of vision here is different from the earlier poem.

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom does thou

worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors still shut?

Open thy eyes and see thy God is not before thee

He is where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is

breaking stones

He is with them in sun and shower and the garment is covered with dust.

Humanism

What we find in this passage is again an aspect of Tagore’s humanism; he equates divine awe with day to day life and calls attention to the need for deep empathy with ordinary people leading ordinary lives.

And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless

Under cover of night;

And justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused,

No hope of redress

I see young men working themselves into a frenzy,

In agony dashing their heads against stone to no avail

My voice is choked today; I have no music in my flute;

Black moonless night

Has imprisoned my world, plunged it into nightmare. And this is why.

With tears in my eyes, I ask;

Those who have poisoned your air, those who have extinguished your light,

Can it be that you have forgiven them? can it be that you love them?

Commitment

In this poem, we see another facet of Tagore’s humanism; his deep commitment to social justice and his abhorrence of violence.

Once again it is not the bare propositional content of the poem but the way it comes to life in the imagery that commands our attention. These passages of poetry, then, exemplify different aspects of Tagore’s humanism.

The second category is nationalism. Tagore’s approach to nationalism is deeply reflective of his humanism. Tagore was unflinchingly committed to Indian society and culture; he was intimately attached to its religious and intellectual traditions. He was a patriot; the national anthem of India (jana gana mana adhinayaka) was one of his compositions.

At the same time, however he was distressed by the rise of nationalism whether it was in India or Japan and saw its harmful consequences. His critique of nationalism is vitally connected to his humanism. As the struggle for freedom from the British gathered momentum in India, most leaders in the country were persuaded that there had to be a strong nationalism and nationalist sentiments guiding the people. However, Tagore saw things differently.

Value

Rabindranath Tagore had deep reservations about the value and impact of nationalism and he was not afraid to say so in public much to the chagrin of certain Indian leaders. He admired Mahatma Gandhi greatly. In fact the appellation of Mahatma (the great soul) was given by him. At the same time it was Gandhi who gave Tagore the title gurudev ( teacher god).However, Tagore disagreed with Gandhi’s emphasis in nationalism.

It was his considered judgment that ideas of nationalism and its product nation-state were antithetical to India’s cultural legacy. He drew a distinction between civilisation-guided governments and state-guided governments; he preferred the former over the latter. Tagore made this clear in numerous pronouncements.

‘Before the nation came to rule over (under British colonial rule) we had other governments which were foreign, and these, like all governments, had some elements of machine in them. But the difference between them and the government by the nation is like the difference between the handloom and the powerloom.

In the products of the hand loom the magic of mad’s living fingers find its expression, and its hum harmonises with the music of life. But the power loom is relentlessly lifeless and accurate and monotonous in its production.’ this is not to suggest that Tagore was unaware of the fact that earlier governments did nor have some of the clear advantages modern governments had. However, it is important to bear in mind that they were not nation-guided and that, ‘their texture was loosely woven, leaving gaps through which our own life sent its threads ad imposed its designs.’

Tagore saw nationalism and the nation-state as imposing a kind of harmful uniformity, diluting the vigour of difference and exercising a mechanical and deadening influence. He rejected the ‘dead rhythms of wheels and counter-wheels’ and ‘mutual protection, based on a conspiracy of fear.’ instead, Tagore fondly turns his gaze towards traditional India which valued ‘adjustment f races, to acknowledge the real differences between them, and yet seek some basis of unity.’ It was his conviction that the power of this tradition permeated the social and not the political level.

Tagore loved India; and it was this love that persuaded him to turn his back on nationalism. Ashis Nandy, perhaps the foremost public intellectual of contemporary India, made the following observation. ‘The author of India’s national anthem, one who had so deeply influenced Indian nationalism through his poetry, songs and active political participation, was outspoken in his views. Years earlier, he had spoken of nationalism as a ‘Bhougolik apadevata’, a geographical demon, and Shantiniketan, his alternative university, as a temple dedicated to exorcize the demon.’ He was opposed to the idea of nationalism in general and he characterised it as a ‘great menace.’

Nationalism

When we examine Tagore’s writings on nationalism we see that he advanced two models of social advancement. They are the social- religious model and the national- state model. He favoured the former over the latter because he felt that it was more conducive to the creative growth of the people and was in conformity wit the deeper cultural springs of the country. He saw the latter model as promoting territorialism and exclusivism and aggression that resulted in the unleashing of harmful forces.

As he once remarked, ‘the organized selfishness of nationalism is the path of suicide.’ An important issue for him was ‘not how to unite by wiping out all differences but how to unite with all differences intact.’ The social-religious model that he advocated, in his mind, served to promote this end.

Rabindranath Tagore’s antipathy to nationalism is closely related to his humanism. He believed that nationalism tended to encourage territorialism, exclusivism, aggression, mechanical uniformity, rule by coercion – all of which were antithetical to his humanistic values. He was for creativity, spontaneity, the recognition of difference, empathy for others; these were vital stands in the kind of humanism that he adhered to and advocated. Nationalism, as he understood it, was hostile to the cultivation of these virtues.

The third important category is education. Tagore gained international acclaim not only as a writer and artist but also as an innovative educator. The seat of learning that was generally referred to as the Shantiniketan was emblematic of his imaginative and novel approach to education. Amartya Sen – the other Bengali who won a Nobel Prize – studied at the Shantiniketan and he tells us how it had a profound impact on his life.

Similarly, the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray proclaimed that his experience at the Shantiniketan transformed his life. Tagore’s approach to education is deeply reflective of the power of his humanism. The educational experiment promoted by Tagore sought to empower students, arouse their natural curiosity, expose them to many world cultures, encourage respect for the wellsprings of traditional culture, introduce art, music, theatre and dance to all aspects of education. As a child, Tagore hated schooling; he was a drop-out.

He found the atmosphere in schools stifling and one that impeded creativity; his experiments in education were partly driven by his unhappy childhood experiences. He disliked intensely rote learning and the treatment of students as passive vessels of information and knowledge. His works of literature – novels, short stories, plays – focus on the need to challenges the past and dead conventions and to be alert to a range of newer possibilities. His attitude to rote learning and traditional education are illustrated in an allegorical story titled The Parrot’s Training.

The school that Rabindranath Tagore established was in many respects very unconventional and innovative. Many of the classes were held in the open, forging an important link with nature. The arts were a central part of the curriculum and well-known writers and artists regularly visited the school. The content of the curriculum and the art of teaching were marked by Socratic questionings.

As Tagore said, ‘the mind will receive impressions…by full freedom given for inquiry and experience and at the same time will be stimulated to think for itself…..our mind does not gain true freedom by acquiring materials for knowledge and possessing other people’s ideas but by forming its own standards of judgment and producing its own thoughts.’ Tagore’s attitude to education and his approach to humanism, then, share many features in common.

Educational program

As I stated earlier, the arts played a central role in Tagore’s educational program. The eminent American philosopher Martha Nussbaum astutely makes the following assertion. ‘let me focus here, on Tagore’s use of the arts, since his school was the school of an artist, and one that gave music, theatre, poetry, painting and dance all a central role from the very start of a child’s enrollment…..for him, the primary role played by the arts was the cultivation of sympathy, and he noted that this role for education – perhaps one of its most important roles – had been systematically ignored and severely repressed by standard models of education. The arts, in his view, promote both inner self-cultivation and responsiveness to others.

The two typically develop in tandem, since one can hardly cherish in another what one has not explored in oneself.’ This attitude to arts and its centrality in education connects very nicely with his deep humanism. Empathy, imagination, creativity, respect for others, avoidance of dogma and narrowness of outlook are defining features of his poetic humanism.

The fourth important category related to Tagore’s poetic humanism is the concept of cultural modernity. Tagore wanted India to be a modern country and march forward with the times. He disagreed with some of what he thought were Gandhi’s backward-looking ideas and projects. At the same time he refused to be swept away by forces of modernity. He was keen to establish a balance between the forces of modernity and the forces of traditional culture.

Hence his emphasis on cultural modernity. If we pause to examine its body of creative writings we would see how he laboured t bring about this reconciliation between tradition and modernity. His novels such as Home and the World (Ghare Baire), Four Chapters (Char Adhyay) and Gora admirably illustrate this point. He refused to see tradition and modernity as self-contained units and polar opposites. He was persuaded that tradition and modernity can be mutually constitutive and this idea fed into his form of humanism.

Tagore believed that modernity signifies not only cognitively apprehended categories such as rationality and science but also values such as secularism and progress. Tagore rejected the idea that modernisation has to be understood as a neo-evolutionary narrative which upheld a universal path towards social growth. He repudiated the notion that there was only one royal road to modernisation and progress, and that indeed was the one traversed by Europeans. However, Tagore on the basis of his experiences in, and hopes for, India sought to think of modernisation in alternate ways; there was not one, but many, paths to modernity.

When we examine Tagore’s creative works of literary as well his discursive writings we begin to realise that he entertained a distinct concept of cultural modernity. He believed that it is vitally important that we seen to understand and analyse modernity in cultural terms. For him culture inflects modernity and modernity inflects culture.

As societies evolve it is important that they absorb newer influences and adapt to newer circumstances. Material forces play a crucial role in social change. At the same time, Tagore was fully aware of the dangers of too great an emphasis on material possessions. S he once remarked, ‘while making use of material possessions, man has to be careful to protect himself from their tyranny. If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by the shrinkage of the soul.’ Rabindranath Tagore’s attitude to cultural modernity grows out of his deeply-held poetic humanism.

The fifth category that I wish to focus on is cosmopolitanism or world citizenship. Tagore was deeply rooted in the Indian soil and he was a citizen of the world. There is no contradiction, as he saw, between these two propositions. He was keen to draw on all the important Indian traditions Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim. At the same time he wished to be inspired by the beneficial aspects of European thinking. This desire was closely related to his program on education. As Nussbaum accurately said, ‘Tagore’s school developed strategies to make students global citizens, able to think responsibly about the future of the humanity as a whole.’

University

She went on to assert that, ‘visva-bharati, the university founded by Tagore to extend his plan of liberal arts education to the university level, took the idea of world citizenship yet further, thinking of education as aspiring to a nuanced interdisciplinary type of global citizenship and understanding.’ The need to recognise the new globality that was emerging was of great interest to Tagore.

He invoked the images of races of the world standing face to face, ‘suddenly the walls that separated the different races are seen to have given way, and we find ourselves standing face to face,’ The kind of cosmopolitanism that Tagore advocated was not one of pallid uniformity. Instead, he wanted it to be one that grew out of native roots. Hence his deep emphasis on children’s education.

The distinguished British philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who admired Tagore’s work greatly, made the following pertinent observation.’ Tagore stood fast on the narrow causeway, and did not betray his vision of the difficult truth. He condemned romantic over-attachment to the past, what he called the tying of India to the past ‘like a sacrificial goat tethered to a post., and he accused men who displayed it – they seemed to him reactionary – of not knowing what true political freedom was, pointing out that it is from English thinkers and English books that the very notion of political liberty was derived.’ Berlin then goes on to make the important point tat ‘against cosmopolitanism he maintained that the English stood on their feet, and so must Indians.’ Tagore promoted his distinctive view of cosmopolitanism which is inseparably linked to his guiding idea of poetic humanism.

The sixth category that I wish to invoke is that of freedom. He conceived of freedom in its manifold complexity. For him, as it was for Berlin, freedom was both negative and positive. Negative freedom was the escape from bondage while positive freedom was reaching out towards creativity and greater achievements. Tagore understood freedom in political, social, cultural, metaphysical, artistic terms.

For example statements such as the following make clear the relationships between politics and freedom. ‘Those people who have got their political freedom are not necessarily free, they are merely powerful. The passion which are unbridled in them are creating huge organisations of slavery in the disguise of freedom.’ Similarly, discussing the ill-effects of nationalism, he said that, ‘not merely the subject races, but you who live under the delusion that you are free, are every day sacrificing your freedom and humanity to this fetish of nationalism…..it s no consolation to us to know that the weakening of humanity from which the present age is suffering is not limited to the subject races, and that the ravages are even more radical because insidious and voluntary in people's who are hypnotised into believing that they are free.’ Statements such as these reflect Tagore’s attitude to freedom on political terms.

He was also interested in the metaphysical aspects of freedom. In his poetry, especially nature poetry, one observes how he is straining to reach a higher freedom, unconstrained by worldly bonds and signifying a unity with the ultimate reality. Tagore’s nature poetry bears the weight of this desire. Freedom was for him a creative force and humanism finds its fullest expression in freedom. As Tagore once said, ‘our mind does not gain true freedom by acquiring materials for knowledge and possessing other people’s ideas but by forming its own standard of judgment and producing its own thoughts.’ so the independence of outlook is an important strand in the fabric of Tagore’s humanism.

In the final analysis Tagore’s humanism constitutes a complex blending of cognition, experience, intuition and poetry. He was after truth – a poetic truth.

This quest for a poetic truth ties in nicely with his poetic humanism. The Nobel prize-winning economist and philosopher and fellow Bengali Amartya Sen remarked that Tagore’s epistemology, which he did not develop systematically, appears to be searching for a pathway of reasoning that was in subsequent years find elegant articulation in the work of the Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam. Putnam, in Many Faces of Realism, argued that truth depends on conceptual schemes and it is nonetheless real truth. Tagore’s desire was to couple this with the power of poetry and intuition.

Attention

What I have sought to do in this article is briefly to call attention to the salience of what I term the poetic humanism of Rabindranath Tagore. As we saw earlier, he pursued a plurality of interests with distinction and all these diverse activities are united by the guiding hand of poetic humanism. My intention was to explore this poetic humanism in terms of six categories – literature, nationalism, education, cultural modernity, cosmopolitanism and freedom. Although for purposes of analytic convenience, I divided them into six categories, they are by no means self-contained and watertight; there is constant interaction among them.