When the time of Gandhi Jayanti comes a particular matter keeps haunting me. It rather fascinates me as there are two titans of renascent India involved in it. They both sought to guide the soul of the awakened nation when it was struggling hard to free itself from the shackles of the colonial yoke. They crossed swords- of course, in terms of ideas- when it came to define the path the nation should tread on while seeking to gain independence from the alien rule. The two giants are Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. They were both nationalists to their core, championing the soul of eternal India both in India and abroad, making the world aware of the effulgent essence of the timeless life-view that India as an entity personifies. Yet, they stand poles apart as far as their respective definition of Indian nationalism for the particular period of time is concerned.
While Tagore was averse to the Gandhian and, by its extension, the Congress’s view of nationalism, which, he thought, negated India’s quintessential global role in terms of its timeless spiritual ethos, Gandhi on his part was invincible in his view that India must shake off the colonial slavery before she could venture out to preach the emancipation of the soul to the world at large.
Tagore’s antipathy to what he called a hide-bound nationalism which tended to whip up baser passions like putting to flame foreign cloths and boycotting foreign goods as part of anti-colonial struggle is well-known. His stress was on moral regeneration of India’s society from the roots instead of the leaders of nationalist India indulging in sheer negativities.
He articulated his opposition to Gandhian mode of non-cooperation movement when the two giants met at Jorasanko, Tagore’s ancestral house, in September 1921. He told Gandhi in his face that it was immoral to take recourse to untruths to sustain the movement while citing the instance of the protagonists of Swadeshi asking the people to shun Western textiles on the belief that they were impure.
Gandhi was naturally touched to the quick as the poet continued to vent his antipathy to the spirit of the movement he was helming as the supreme leader of the struggling nation. Gandhi stated: "…a drowning man cannot save others. We must try to save ourselves. Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. It is health-giving, religious and thus humanitarian. India must learn to live before she can aspire to die for humanity. The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cat’s teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice."
Tagore was for the focus being trained on re-building the country from within, from the grass roots, restructuring villages, revitalising rural life through promotion of village cooperatives, working in silence, away from the glitz, collectively and patiently. In his view, this was what the real struggle against colonial rule signified, the most effective way to ready the country for freedom.
Tagore was dubbed as impractical. He was appealed against seeking to dabble in the rough and tumble of the political struggle, something which was supposed to be immeasurably far from his secluded, cloistered abode of contemplation and creativity. But he chose to stick to his guns, taking in his stride the shrill criticism he was made to suffer."One can hardly determine where the practical way lies by the yardstick of a short-lived excitement or largeness or smallness of the public gathering. We do not admit that the path that advocates work through silence and austerity is less practical than the one that prods people to excitement, to run headlong, without giving them space to breathe and to think for themselves of what lies ahead," he said. He was against Gandhi’s obsession with his spinning wheels, something which Gandhi deified as the true symbol of India’s inherent strength against the British-induced slavery to gigantic machines.
Seemingly hurt by Tagore criticizing him for exalting his spinning-wheel axiom to heavenly heights, dubbing it as a flight of sheer irrationalism, Gandhi wrote in his inimitable way: "…the poet lives in a magnificent world of his own creation-his world of ideas. I am a slave of somebody else’s creation-the spinning wheel. The poet makes his gopis dance to the tune of his flute. I wander after my beloved Sita-the charka, and seek to deliver her from the ten-headed monster from Japan, Manchester and Paris etc. The poet is an inventor, he creates, destroys, recreates. I am an explorer and having discovered a thing I must cling to it.
The poet presents the world with new and attractive things for day to day. I can merely show the hidden possibilities of old and even worn-out things. The world easily finds an honourable place for the magician who produces new and dazzling things. I have to struggle laboriously to find a corner of my own worn-out things…I may say in all humility that we complement each other’s activity."
