Dear Moderator,
I would appreciate it very much if you kindly post this one as an
alternative response to Lukács view on Tagore. Lukács view was branded
here as an example of vulger marxism by Danielschuk. a Russian Tagore
expert. This was written by Mohammad Quayum, International Islamic
University Malaysia
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16758
thanks for your attention.
Regards
Asim Dutta Roy
Ghare Baire [The Home and the World] (1915)
By Mohammad Quayum, International Islamic University Malaysia

Set against the backdrop of the swadeshi (home rule) movement in Bengal,
following its sudden and arbitrary partition by the then British viceroy
in India, Lord Curzon, in 1905, The Home and the World was originally
published in Bengali (as Ghare Baire) in 1915. Later, it was translated
and published in English by the author’s nephew, Surendranath Tagore (with
active cooperation from the author himself), in 1919. The Bengali original
was published two years after the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature and the same year in which he received a knighthood from King
George V of England – an accolade he came to renounce in 1919 in protest
against the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in Punjab, by the notorious
General Dyer. It is perhaps the best known of Tagore’s novels outside
Bengal, and received a lot of attention in Europe, particularly following
the publication of its English translation, mainly due to the wide
readership Tagore had gained in the wake of his Nobel award. The
controversial nature of the subject matter, in which Tagore takes the
opportunity to launch his fiercest attack yet against the ideology of
nationalism, contrary to its rising popularity both in India and the West,
was also a reason it drew much attention, mostly in the form of
reprobation and scorn, from readers both in and outside Bengal. A third
reason for the novel’s reputation is the successful movie made of it, in
1984, by another gifted scion of Bengal, and a student of Tagore’s
university, Visva-Bharati, Satyajit Ray.

Upon its publication, the novel was praised by Tagore’s friends William
Rothenstein and W.B. Yeats, and a friend of Einstein’s advised him in an
upbeat tone, “You must read [it] – the finest novel I’ve read for a long
time” (italics in original). Hermann Hesse, reviewing it, spoke of its
“purity and grandeur”, and Bertolt Brecht observed in his diary, “A
wonderful book, strong and gentle.” However, E.M. Forster and George
Lukács did not find much positive in the novel. In a condescending tone,
Forster dismissed the book as a “tragedy… about nothing”; “a ‘roman à
trios’ with all the hackneyed situations from which novelists are trying
to emancipate themselves in the West.” Lukács proved more vitriolic; he
condemned the novel as a “libellous pamphlet” and “petty bourgeoisie yarn
of the shoddiest kind.” He added that Tagore was but an “intellectual
agent [of the empire, acting] against the Indian freedom movement” in the
novel – a view that a Russian scholar of Tagore, Alexander P. Danielschuk,
later spurned as an example of vulgar Marxism.

Tagore never had a political temperament and found politics wasteful and
morally debilitating; it is politics, he said, “which in every country has
lowered the standard of morality, [and] given rise to a perpetual contest
of lies and deception, cruelties and hypocrisies.” A poet, he sought to
keep his mind above politics. However his destiny determined otherwise: “I
have been chosen by destiny to ply my boat there where the current is
against me”; “Politics is wholly against my nature; and yet, belonging to
an unfortunate country, born to an abnormal situation, we find it so
difficult to avoid their [sic] outbursts.” When the swadeshi movement
broke out in Bengal, in the wake of its partition in 1905, Tagore soon
found himself at its vortex: writing songs, giving speeches, and taking
part in mass rallies. He also set up a match factory, a local bank, and a
weaving centre as his way of giving leadership to the movement.
Ironically, he even set the movement’s theme song, Bande Mataram, or “Hail
to thee Mother”, to music himself. The song was composed by another
Bengali writer, Bankim Chatterjee, and is used as a potent fetish by the
manipulative Sandip in the novel.

Swadeshi literally means “of our own country”. It was a nationalist
movement meant to boycott British goods and buy homemade products, so that
the British would suffer economically for their dark designs of divide and
rule policy, while the local industries grew, with less competition from
imported goods. But what was conceived as a non-violent non-cooperation
movement soon turned violent and ugly, owing to the heavy handed policies
of the government, and wilful meddling by self-seeking and sinister
bhadroloks. Tagore felt mortified by many of the nationalist leaders
behaving like terrorists and traumatising innocent people for their
indifference to the cause, and impassioned youths turning to the cult of
the bomb to liberate their homeland from the foreign yoke. Thus,
especially after Khudiram Bose, a radical youth who is still widely
regarded as a hero in the annals of Bengal, hurled a bomb in 1908, killing
two innocent British civilians, Tagore decided not to participate in the
movement any more, nor associate with a nationalist uprising again, in
spite of the recurrent charges of pusillanimity and insincerity by his
detractors. His response came, instead, in the form of The Home and the
World, seven years later.

The novel deals with the experiences of three characters during the
volatile period of swadeshi: Nikhil (whose name means “free”), a
benevolent, enlightened and progressive zamindar (landlord); his childhood
friend and a voluble, selfish but charismatic nationalist leader, Sandip;
and Nikhil’s wife, Bimala (“pristine”), who is happy at the outset in her
traditional role as a zamindar’s wife but who, encouraged by her husband,
steps out of home to better acquaint herself with the world and find a new
identity for the Indian woman. At the sight of Sandip, she emotionally
trips, vacillates between him and her husband, until she returns home
bruised and humiliated but with a more mature understanding of both the
home/self and the world. The narrative is structured in the form of diary
entries written by the three characters. This technique allows the reader
to see the events in multiple perspectives, and comprehend their relative
effects on the mind of these characters, but the psychological probing in
these extended diary monologues also slows down the novel’s progress,
making it somewhat repetitive and static, with fewer real incidents and
dramatic actions featuring in the narrative. This method of telling also
gives rise to long, confessional/descriptive passages, often effusive,
sentimental and strung on a high moral key, which might sound false and
tedious to the western ear but which was an integral part of the Bengali
style, particularly for Tagore who was at once a poet, philosopher and
novelist. As his biographer, Krishna Kripalani has aptly pointed out,
“Tagore was no Tolstoy or Balzac… [a myriad-minded writer] the poet, the
singer and the teacher constantly meddled with the novelist.”

The novel has a certain allegorical quality in that Nikhil and Sandip seem
to represent two opposing visions for the nation – with Bimala, torn
between the two, not knowing for sure what should be her guiding principle
– signifying Bengal tottering between the two possibilities. Nikhil’s
vision is one of enlightened humanitarian and global perspective, based on
a true equality and harmony of individuals and nations. On the other hand,
Sandip’s radical, parochial and belligerent nationalism, which cultivates
an intense sense of patriotism in individuals, threatenes to replace their
moral sensibility with national bigotry and blind fanaticism. Seen from
this perspective, Nikhil’s death at the end of the novel, just when Bimala
is turning the corner and returning to her senses after a prolonged
infatuation with Sandip and his views, also signals Tagore’s pessimism
about the future of Bengal. In the absence of truly benevolent leaders
like Nikhil, she would be mutilated, divided in two (currently Bangladesh
and West Bengal), with millions of her children paying with their lives to
meet the apocalyptic wishes of self-seeking, immoral, power-hungry
politicians, determined to carve out her body on religious communal lines.
By extension, it also shows Tagore’s despondent thoughts about the future
of humanity at large, who, forgetting their human potential for truth,
equality, fellowship and justice, would espouse a vision that would lock
them in a binary of self and other. The consequences of such thinking,
Tagore warns, is a recurrent logic of greed, selfishness, violence, hatred
and war – a dark prediction also made in an earlier poem, “The Sunset of
the Century,” written on the last day of the nineteenth century:

The hungry self of the Nation shall burst in a violence of fury from its
shameless feeding.
For it has made the world its food.
And licking it, crunching it and swallowing it in big morsels,
It swells and swells
Till in the midst of its unholy feast descends the sudden shaft of heaven
piercing its heart of grossness.
The embodiment of ideas by the characters is a weakness in the novel, but
perhaps a necessary compromise by the writer. It makes the characters flat
and one-dimensional: Nikhil, who has too much of Tagore in him, is
emblematic of all good; and Sandip, who is Nikhil’s polar opposite, is all
unscrupulousness and evil. Neither of these characters seems to change in
the course of the narrative. Nikhil remains calm, gentle, understanding,
forgiving, liberal, rational and altruistic throughout the novel, while
Sandip is selfish, manipulative, irrational, oppressive, and tyrannical.
Nikhil is so tranquil that he does not lose his poise even when his wife
flirts with his friend in his own house, in front of his very eyes. His
logic is: “Perfect gain is the best of all; but if that is impossible,
then the next best gain is perfect losing” (24). This is extraordinary
indeed considering that, in the Indian patriarchal system, men take their
wives for granted, hardly allowing any complex emotions to occur in their
relationships with women, especially in marriage.

Nikhil loves Bimala wholeheartedly, but Bimala must appraise that on her
own and reciprocate his love voluntarily. If she decides otherwise, it
will be devastating for Nikhil, but he must allow her free choice,
especially since he loves her: in love there is no place for tyranny. He
hopes that Bimala’s sexual and ideological obsession with Sandip is a
passing phase in her process of maturing and coming to grips with the
larger world; the spell will break soon and she will return to her senses
again. Meanwhile he should wait and not lose faith. If she considers
otherwise, that is of course his fate. Nikhil argues:

The passage from the narrow to the larger world is stormy. When she is
familiar with this freedom, then I shall know where my place is. If I
discover that I do not fit in with the arrangement of the outer world,
then I shall not quarrel with my fate, but silently take my leave… Use
force? But for what? Can force prevail against Truth? (45)
This is no doubt Tagore’s way of dismantling the age-old role model of
Sita – the all-sacrificing and faithful wife of Rama. In the epic
Ramayana, Sita clings to her husband in spite of the latter’s
dishonourable behaviour toward her by repeatedly questioning her integrity
and innocence, whilst he accuses her of having lost her chastity with
Ravana, notwithstanding her several agniparikshas to prove her
righteousness. Discarding this ideal of complete submission, Tagore
instead presents an alternative model for Indian women, the empowering
ideal of Durga, the warrior goddess and embodiment of Shakti (the primal
feminine power, indispensable to creation). Although Durga, the wife of
Shiva, is calm, domestic and restrained, most importantly she is strong,
courageous and independent. Thus, throughout the novel, Bimala is
associated with Durga, Kali and Shakti, instead of Sita or Savitri
(another model of feminine virtue and devotion in the Mahabharata). By
allowing Bimala freedom of choice, Tagore has highlighted the potential of
Indian women and their right to emancipation.

Nikhil’s honesty, altruism and idealism is, however, matched by his
friend’s cunning, cupidity and flagrant narcissism. Nikhil appears divine,
while Sandip is diabolic; Nikhil is endowed with all the traits of a
sattvic as described in the Bhagavad Gita: his dominant element is light
and therefore he is wise, intelligent, progressive and pure, while Sandip
is a rajasik, a personality framed with fire and therefore greedy, violent
and destructive. His philosophy is as simple as it can be for a
Machiavellian: “There is not the time for nice scruples. We must be
unswervingly, unreasoningly brutal. We must sin” (39), he admonishes
Nikhil, and adds matter-of-factly, “Every man has a natural right to
possess, and therefore greed is natural…. What my mind covets, my
surrounding must supply” (45). Elsewhere he argues, “We are the
flesh-eaters of the world; we have teeth and nails; we pursue and grab and
tear. We are not satisfied with chewing in the evening the cud of grass we
have eaten in the morning…. In that case we shall steal or rob, for we
must live” (47). This sounds like the morality of Swift’s Yahoos, but it
is also the morality of the modern materialist-capitalist West that Sandip
essentially emulates, vis-à-vis Nikhil’s home grown Indian wisdom mediated
by the wholesome and humane values of the Judaeo-Christian civilization.

Indeed, Sandip is so recklessly selfish and unscrupulous that he does not
hesitate to woo his friend’s wife while living under his roof, or to
incite her to rob her own husband. He provokes the youths of Nikhil’s
village to calculated violence against their poor, innocent neighbours
just so as to terrorise them into accepting his viewpoint, and arouses
Nikhil’s subjects into a bloody religious riot, of which Nikhil himself
becomes a deadly victim at the end, thus paying with his life for the
benevolence done to a friend who seems every bit a scoundrel. Anita Desai
is right in pointing out that in his vanity, arrogance, greed and
nihilism, Sandip “resembles nothing so much as the conventional blackguard
of the Indian stage or the Bombay cinema, stroking his handlebar moustache
as he gloats over a bag of gold and a cowering maiden.”

This reductive approach of Tagore in creating “a simple box of figures –
not more than a Punch and Judy showman uses for his own little drama,” as
his friend Rothenstein incisively pointed out (though ironically meaning
this as a tribute to the writer), is certainly an artistic blemish in the
work. Tagore has no doubt failed to achieve creative detachment in The
Home and the World, owing to his overwhelming sympathy for Nikhil’s
liberal, global ideology against Sandip’s
commercial-capitalistic-nationalistic worldview, which he completely
rejects. Perhaps this artistic compromise was made deliberately by the
writer, considering the significance of his message. After all, Tagore was
working against the mainstream ideas of Indian and world politics.
Therefore he had to keep his characters simple and one-dimensional, so
that his statement would emerge firmly and clearly. Besides, this
four-square approach of pitting good against evil can be seen as a part of
the Indian imagination, as we see in the struggles between the sons of
Pandavas and the sons of Kauravas in the Mahabharata, or Rama and Ravana
in the Ramayana, or the mythical stories of Lakhsmi and Alakhsmi, Durga
and Mahesa and Kali and Raktabija (or those ever predictable Bollywood
movies that Desai mentions). As R.K. Narayan has put it succinctly, the
underlying objective of every Indian story is to create a “distinction
between good and evil” and show that “goodness triumphs in the end… if not
immediately, at least in a thousand years; if not in this world, at least
in other worlds.” Despite Tagore’s apparent cynicism in the novel, that
hope that eventually everything will come out right is also somehow
expressed by the writer, since he never lost hope in the infinitude of the
human soul and the Upanishadic idea of human being’s divine inheritance.

Tagore and Nikhil share the view that we are all part and parcel of a
self-luminous Brahman, that we are various strings of the universal
supreme self; that what is in the macrocosm is also in the microcosm;
that, like the petals of a rose, we are all attached to the stem of
humanity by the bond of love. Thus, it is incumbent upon humankind to work
towards a global society, built upon the principles of inclusivity,
equality and mutuality of all human beings, instead of indulging in the
ideal of nationalism, which cultivates parochialism, binarism and
xenophobia, trapping people in a logic of egoism, exclusivism and ignoble
triumphalism. In his “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech”, Tagore advocates how
India’s and the world’s sole objective should be to attain global unity
and shun the politics of nationalism, which violates man’s inherent bond
by generating hatred between nations and locking each in a separate
geographical cage:

I do not think that it is the spirit of India to reject anything, reject
any race, reject any culture. The spirit of India has always proclaimed
the ideal of unity…. Now, when in the present time of political unrest the
children of the same great India cry for rejection of the West I feel
hurt…. We must discover the most profound unity, the spiritual unity
between the different races. We must go deeper down to the spirit of man
and find out the great bond of unity, which is to be found in all human
races…. Man is not to fight with other human races, other human
individuals, but his work is to bring about reconciliation and Peace and
restore the bonds of friendship and love.
Nikhil expresses a similar global sentiment throughout the novel and this
comes to a head in an altercation that he has with Sandip. Sandip
arbitrarily equates god with nation, while Nikhil establishes how it is
imperative to bring together the entire human community to find god, and
how the cult of nationalism, through a cultivation of national egoism and
chauvinism, only thwarts that purpose:

[Sandip] “I truly believe my country to be my God. I worship Humanity. God
manifests Himself in man and in his country.”
[Nikhil] “If that is what you really believe, there should be no
difference for you between man and man, and so between country and country.”
[Sandip] “Quite true. But my powers are limited, so my worship of Humanity
is continued in the worship of my country.”
[Nikhil] “I have nothing against your worship as such, but how is it you
propose to conduct your worship of God by hating other countries in which
He is equally manifest?” (37)
Nikhil’s teacher Chandranath Babu, who acts as Nikhil’s moral guide and a
wellspring for many of his ideas, is even more pointed in his articulation
of the Tagoresque global vision, when he explains to his pupil:

I tell you, Nikhil, man’s history has to be built by the united effort of
all the races in the world, and therefore this selling of conscience for
political reasons – this making a fetish of one’s country won’t do…. Here,
in this land of India, amid the mocking laughter of Satan piercing the
sky, may the feeling for this truth become real! What a terrible epidemic
of sin has been brought into our country from foreign lands. (224-25)
Induced by such a noble, sublime, and enlightened outlook, Nikhil acts as
a true humanitarian in the novel. A zamindar, he never indulges in his
office or wealth, but rather as a benevolent patriarch he offers his
utmost services to uplift the condition of his people. He believes in the
value of education and has been instrumental in educating many of his
subjects, some even accessing the facilities in Calcutta owing to the
generous scholarships provided by him. This is his way of building the
country; he believes that India can come out of its social and cultural
doldrums by reactivating the minds of its people, and by redeeming itself
from its decadent moral and religious values. It is with this idea that he
urges his wife to get modern education from an English tutor he has
appointed for her, Miss Gilby. Bimala, in order to imaginatively
comprehend the world and establish a healthy interactive relationship
between home/self/country and the world, ought to step beyond the borders
of her cultural tradition and dismantle her previously monolithic
sensibility with a more vibrant, symbiotic and synergic mode of thought.

August at heart, Nikhil knows no racial, religious, class or sexual
prejudice. When Miss Gilby is humiliated by Sandip’s men, who have been
indoctrinated into nationalist lunacy, it is Nikhil who extends his love
and support to her. To him, Miss Gilby is another flesh-and-blood human
being like himself, not just a European to be perceived through a mist of
abstraction, or an enemy of Bengal, simply because she happens to be an
English woman. The same applies to Panchu, a downtrodden villager insulted
and humiliated by the neighbouring zamindar, and evicted by him for not
heeding the call of swadeshi, who is saved by Nikhil’s humanitarian
intervention and offer of protection. Swadeshi is supposed to liberate
these people from the shackles of British oppression but has somehow,
ironically, become repressive of the same defenceless mass. The Muslims
are also looked upon with ire because they refuse to share Sandip’s
enthusiasm, which they see basically as a Hindu agenda, counteractive to
their cause. Thus, when Sandip engages in wicked plots against them, to
make them to submit to his purpose, considering them as religious
minorities not strong enough to withstand his pressures, Nikhil steps in
on their behalf knowing that as his subjects they deserve his protection,
and that, as individuals, they have the same right to a choice as Sandip
and his followers.

Nikhil loves his country as much as, if not more than, Sandip, but he will
not allow his love for the country to overtake his conscience. “I am
willing,” he says, “to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for
Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as god
is to bring curse upon it” (29). Sandip, on the other hand, believes that
“country’s needs must be made into a god” (122), and one ought to set
“aside conscience [by] putting the country in its place” (165). This
reckless deification of the nation and his belief that any action, no
matter how heinous or unscrupulous, is justifiable if undertaken for the
nation’s sake, eventually turns him into a frightful terrorist and
appalling criminal. He does not mind using intrigue or violence to
accomplish his mission, even if it means harm to his own followers. As
long as the mission is accomplished, the end justifies his means. Thus,
when Bimala is innocently intoxicated by his nationalist call, he adroitly
persuades her to give all her jewellery to him to finance the movement,
and steal money belonging to Bara Rani (Bimala’s elder sister-in-law and a
widow who Nikhil loves as his own sister) from the family safe. He also
uses Amulya, an impassioned but idealistic youth (emblematic of the many
adolescents who were influenced by the movement), exploitatively. When
Mirjan, a Muslim boatman, refuses to stop carrying foreign goods, as it
will take away his livelihood, Sandip arranges to sink his boat in
midstream. Instead of showing any compunction for his hideous deed, he
advises his followers:

If they go to law, we must retaliate by burning down their granaries! What
startles you, Amulya?... You must remember, this is war. If you are afraid
of causing suffering, go in for love-making, you will never do for this
work! (113)
Post-colonial critics such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Tom
Nairn have pointed out how nationalism cultivates the sentiments of
irrationality, prejudice and hatred in people, and Leela Gandhi has spoken
of its attendant racism and loathing, and the alacrity with which citizens
are willing to both kill and die for it. Frantz Fanon has explained that
although the objective of nationalism is to create a horizontal
relationship and fraternity within its people, in reality the nation never
speaks of the hopes and aspirations of the entire “imagined community”,
and hierarchy, factional hegemony, inequality and exploitation remain a
daily occurrence in its body. In Sandip’s actions, Tagore has insightfully
and shrewdly anticipated all these pitfalls of nationalism pointed out by
later literary-cultural critics.

Tagore is not perhaps entirely historically accurate in his portrait of
the swaraj. He has not, for example, incorporated in his narrative the
extreme policies of brutality adopted by the Raj to crack the movement.
Minto’s mischievous manifesto that “the strong hand carries more respect
in India than even the recognition of British justice” led to widespread
atrocities against the participants of the movement; university students
were “harassed, persecuted and oppressed”, while those at lower levels
were “flogged, fined and expelled.” Police were advised to beat up
marchers with their long, metal-tipped lathis, and leaders who were found
guilty were sentenced to “rigorous imprisonment”. After the Khudiram
incident, the British reaction was predictably strident, declaring that
“ten of them would be shot for every life sacrificed.” However, although
the writer has advertently left out this side of the story, his portrait
of Sandip seems typical of the activities of the New Party, the
revolutionary wing of Congress, under the leadership of Bipin Chandra Pal,
who led a group of radical youths and edited a popular journal called
Bande Mataram, and of Aurobindo Ghosh’s younger brother, Barindra Kumar,
who was the leader of a group of young terrorists who were inspired by
Russian anarchist activities and apotheosised violence.

Tagore was so deeply frustrated by swadeshi turning into a terrorist
movement that he would spurn even Gandhi’s swaraj in later years. He was
not to participate in a nationalist movement again because he came to
believe that radical nationalism, like religious orthodoxy, breeds
divisiveness and blind fanaticism: “Formalism in religion is like
nationalism in politics: it breeds sectarian arrogance, mutual
misunderstanding and a spirit of persecution”, he wrote in a letter to his
friend C.F. Andrews. In another letter, he explained how nationalism, a
cult of devil worship, was inherently destructive to the spirit of global
unity and the creative bond of wholeness:

The nations love their own countries; and that national love has only
given rise to hatred and suspicion of one another…. When we hear “Bande
Mataram” from the house-tops, we shout to our neighbours: ‘You are not our
brothers’…. Whatever may be its use for the present, it is like the house
being set on fire simply for roasting the pig! Love of self, whether
national or individual, can have no other destination except suicide. If
asked about the future of India under the colonial rule, Tagore’s
unequivocal reply was, “Let us… set our house in order. Do not mind the
waves in the sea, but mind the leaks in your vessel.” He believed in
constructive social work and education as the principle ways for
liberating India from political and cultural tyranny from within and
outside, and not a blind revolution built upon the quicksand of mob
psychology.

This anti-nationalitarian sentiment, conceived against a backdrop of a
larger ideology of love, creation and global human fellowship, is what
occupies Tagore’s The Home and the World. This is a message he pursues in
several of his other works, including his lectures on Nationalism and his
novel Four Chapters. It emphasizes the significance to the novel’s title:
humanity ought to overcome all thorny hedges of exclusion and readjust its
moral imagination. Love and fellowship, like commodities, do not have to
stop at a geographical border, and in spite of the ostensible spatial
demarcation between the home and the world, the two remain fundamentally
united as integral aspects of one organic whole.


Mohammad Quayum, International Islamic University Malaysia
First published 22 April 2005


===================================
Dr. Asim K. Duttaroy
Professor,
Faculty of Medicine
University of Oslo