रवींद्रनाथ ठाकुर : अमृत के पथ का यात्री

भारतीय परंपरा में आत्ममंथन के विमर्श की शुरूआत एक औरत ने की थी, जब उसने पूछा था, जिससे मैं अमृत नहीं होउंगी, उसे लेकर मैं क्या करूं ? मैत्रेयी के इस प्रश्न की जितनी चर्चा होती रही है, याज्ञवल्क्य द्वारा दिए गए उत्तर की उतनी नहीं. अपने उत्तर में उन्होंने निज की कामना के महत्व पर जोर दिया था. उन्होंने कहा था कि पति की कामना के कारण पति प्रिय नहीं होते, आत्म की कामना के कारण पति प्रिय लगते हैं. इसी क्रम में जाया, पुत्र, वित्त इत्यादि दूसरी कामनाओं का उल्लेख करते हुए वे यह भी कहते हैं :
न वा अरे ब्रह्मणः कामाय ब्रह्म प्रियं भवत्य
आत्मनस्तु कामाय ब्रह्म प्रियं भवति
( ब्रह्म की कामना से ब्रह्म प्रिय नहीं होते. अपनी ही कामना से ब्रह्म प्रिय होते हैं )
वैसे मैत्रेयी के प्रश्न में भी अमृत की कामना है, अहं शब्द है. इस प्रसंग में कहा जा सकता है कि अध्यात्म शब्द अधि और आत्म के जोड़ से बना है, यानी जो आत्म पर अवलंबित हो.
रवींद्रनाथ ठाकुर की आध्यात्मिकता की चर्चा करनी हो, तो वृहदारण्यकोपनिषद के इस विमर्श पर ध्यान देना आवश्यक है. उनकी कविताओं में यह विषय शुरू से ही झांकता रहा है, सोनार तरी काव्यग्रंथ में वैष्णवकविता  में वे कहते हैं : देवता को जो कुछ देता हूं, वही प्रियजन को देता हूं, प्रियजन को जो कुछ दे सकता हूं, वहीं देवता को अर्पित करता हूं. प्रेम और भक्ति का एक हो जाना – भक्ति, सूफी और बाउल की परंपरा से ही यह चला आया है. क्या रवींद्रनाथ को उसी की परिधि में पहचाना जा सकता है?
नैवेद्य काव्यग्रंथ में पहली बार उन्होंने अध्यात्म को पूरे ग्रंथ में अपना केंद्रीय विषय बनाया. इस संग्रह की कविताओं में तीन तत्व उभरकर सामने आते हैं : ईश्वर से प्रार्थना, देशभक्ति और मनुष्य की मंगल कामना. यहां हमें शताब्दी के संधिस्थल पर लिखे गए सॉनेटों में साए की तरह मंडराते युद्ध के बादल का निषेध दिखता है, पश्चिम की लोलूप सभ्यता के विपरीत भारत की परंपरा में निहित शांति के संदेश के प्रति निष्ठा दिखती है, आशा दिखती है कि वह भविष्य का रास्ता दिखाएगा. अनेक कविताओं में अपनी और राष्ट्र की दुर्बलता व उससे उबरने की जरूरत को रेखांकित किया गया है. बंगमाता से उनकी अपील है कि वह अपनी संतानों को पालतू न बना रखे, चित्त येथा भयशून्य कविता में वे सीमाओं और परिपाटियों को तोड़ने वाले एक उदात्त भारत की कल्पना करते हैं, बार-बार ईश्वर से वे प्रार्थना करते हैं कि उन्हें, उनके देश को शक्ति मिले.
एक बात इन कविताओं में शायद नहीं मिलती है. मुझे वे कांतासम्मित  नहीं लगती हैं. ईश्वर को वे तुम कहकर संबोधित करते हैं, लेकिन ऐसा लगता है कि वे सार्वजनिक मंच पर ईश्वर के सामने मांग पेश कर रहे हैं. यह वह दौर था, जब रवींद्रनाथ बंगभंग के विरुद्ध आंदोलन की पहली पांत में उतर पड़े थे, पुनरुत्थानवादी और अतिवादी रुझानों के साथ उनकी किसी हद तक निकटता भी देखने को मिली थी, लेकिन यह दौर जल्द ही खत्म होने वाला था. बंगभंग विरोधी आंदोलन समाप्त होने के बाद बंगाल में सांप्रदायिक दंगों का दौर आया, और रवींद्रनाथ ने स्पष्ट रूप से सांप्रदायिक, व साथ ही, अंधराष्ट्रवादी रुझानों को ठुकराया. राष्ट्रवादी ताकतों की ओर से उन पर लगातार हमले किए गए. अपनी पुस्तक, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal में सुमित सरकार कहते हैं : दंगों के बाद रवींद्रनाथ ने भारत की सबसे मौलिक समस्या को एक नए रूप में देखा. अब उनका आदर्श महान हिंदू अतीत की ओर लौटना नहीं रह गया था, जातिप्रथा के अंतर्गत हर समुदाय को एक कोने में स्थान देते हुए बहुलताओं को समाहित करने वाले आत्मनिर्भर समाज प्राप्त करना नहीं रह गया था. अब दीवारों को पूरी तरह से तोड़ना था, दकियानूस दीवारों को निर्णायक रूप से ठुकराते हुए व्यापक मानवतावाद के आधार पर भारत में एक महाजाति का निर्माण करना था. (पृष्ठ 85)
इस द्योतना की राजनीतिक अभिव्यक्ति हमें उनके महान उपन्यास गोरा में दिखती है. सच्चे भारत की खोज में गोरा की अक्लांत यात्रा, जहां अंत में सारे संभव उत्तर नदारद दिखते हैं, और उपन्यास के नायक को इस अनुत्तरित प्रश्न में अपनी मुक्ति दिखाई देती है : मैं कौन हूं ?
गोरा में रवींद्रनाथ को अपना प्रश्न मिल चुका होता है. अब उत्तर के लिए उनकी यात्रा शुरू होती है. और यह उत्तर आत्म अवलंबित होना है, जिसका विकास हमें उनके त्रिगीत पर्व – गीतांजलि, गीतिमाल्य और गीतालि की कविताओं में देखने को मिलती है.
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हमारा जानना दो तरह का है, ज्ञान के माध्यम से जानना और अनुभव से जानना. अनुभव शब्द के धातुगत अर्थ में अन्य-कुछ के अनुसार होना निहित है; केवल बाहर से संवाद नहीं, अपने अंदर ही एक विकास होना है. बाहर के पदार्थ से युक्त होकर किसी विशेष रंग, विशेष रस, विशेष रूप में अपने बोध को अनुभव कहते हैं. 
जिसे हम साहित्य, ललितकला कहते हैं, उसका लक्ष्य इस उपलब्धि का आनंद है, जो विषय के साथ विषयी के एक हो जाने में मिलता है. 
साहित्यतत्व, रवींद्रनाथ ठाकुर
शेक्सपीयर के दौर में सबसे बड़ी ऐतिहासिक घटना थी इंगलैंड के हाथो स्पेनिश आर्माडा की पराजय, जिसके साथ स्पेन के स्थान पर इंगलैंड एक विश्वसत्ता के रूप में उभरा. मार्के की बात है कि शेक्सपीयर की किसी भी रचना में हमें इस ऐतिहासिक घटना की झलक नहीं दिखाई देती है. साहित्य की ऐतिहासिकता सामाजिक-राजनीतिक ऐतिहासिकता की पर्यायवाची नहीं होती, हां कभी-कभी उसके समानांतर जरूर चलती है – अनेक विंदुओं पर दोनों मिलती भी हैं. रवींद्रनाथ के मूल्यांकन के संदर्भ में इस बात को याद रखना जरूरी है. उनके जीवन. उनकी रचनाओं में आत्म उपलब्थि, आत्ममंथन का ऐतिहासिक कारक अवश्य ही रहा है, यह वह दौर था, जब हिमालय और हिंद महासागर के बीच रहने वाले लोग अपनी पहचान को खोजने, उसे परिभाषित करने में लगे हुए थे. रवींद्रनाथ का आत्ममंथन इसी पृष्ठभूमि में घटित हो रहा था, लेकिन उसे केवल सामाजिक-राजनीतिक परिप्रेक्ष्य में देखना एक कविस्रष्टा के रूप में उनकी अद्वितीय भूमिका के साथ अन्याय होगा. इसीलिए मुझे नवजागरण के संदर्भ में, उसके दायरे में उन्हें देखने में संकोच होता है. रवींद्रनाथ सिर्फ अपने समय के कवि नहीं थे. वे समय के धरातल पर खड़े एक ऐसे कवि थे, जो समय की सीमाओं को लांघकर सर्वव्यापी का आभास, उसका स्वाद प्राप्त करने का प्रयास करता है. यह प्रयास विभिन्न मानसिकताओं को आकर्षित करता है, और वे सभी अपनी अपनी दृष्टि से उन्हें समझने, उन्हें परिभाषित करने लगते हैं. अंततः ऐसी परिभाषाएं अधूरी रह जाती हैं.
1926 में अपने मित्र व भक्त एडवार्ड थॉमसन की आलोचना से क्षुब्ध होकर रवींद्रनाथ ने विल्हेल्म रॉथेनश्टाइन को एक पत्र लिखा था. इस पत्र में वे कहते हैं :
एक ईसाई मिशनरी के रूप में उनकी शिक्षा उन्हें मेरी रचनाओं में प्रवाहित कुछ विचारों को समझने में असमर्थ बना देती है – उदाहरण के लिए जीवन-देवता का विचार, दैव का सीमित पक्ष जिसका व्यक्ति जीवन में एक अद्विदीय स्थान है, उसके विपरीत जो सर्वव्यापी है. मानवजाति के ईश्वर के रूप में ईसाइयत के ईश्वर की विशेष भूमिका है – हिंदूस्तान में हम अपने नित्य ध्यान के माध्यम से उसकी परम अभिव्यक्ति के अनुभव को पाने का प्रयास करते हैं और इस तरह निकट की संकीर्णता के बंधन से अपनी आत्मा को मुक्त करते हैं... 
वैसे पश्चिम के दूसरे रवींद्र भक्तों के विपरीत थॉमसन ने एक गंभीर आलोचनात्मक दृष्टि के साथ अपने प्रिय कवि को समझने की कोशिश की थी. लेकिन अपर की दृष्टि से रवींद्रनाथ का मूल्यांकन पश्चिम के दृष्टिकोण के लिए चरित्रात्मक रहा. 1913 में जब उन्हें नोबेल पुरस्कार प्रदान किया गया, तो उनकी प्रशस्ति में नोबेल समिति ने कहा था :
He has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West.
हालांकि उसी दौर में पहले विलियम बटलर येट्स व बाद में एज़रा पाउंड के मूल्यांकन में रवींद्रनाथ की कविताओं की गहराई में पैठने की कोशिश देखी जा सकती है. लेकिन कुल मिलाकर वे प्रशस्ति की सीमाओं को लांघने में सफल नहीं रहे हैं. दूसरी समस्या यह थी कि वे दोनों पश्चिम के उत्तर रोमांटिक पर्व के बौद्धिक रुझान के कवि थे. रवींद्रनाथ की भावनात्मक आत्मीय कविता में उन्हें अपना अपर देखने को मिला, जो आकर्षित करने वाला था, लेकिन अपर अपर बना रहा. और जिन कविताओं के लिए रवींद्रनाथ आज भी जाने जाते हैं, बार-बार आविष्कृत हो रहे हैं, वे कविताएं अभी लिखी नहीं गई थीं.
प्राच्य सांस्कृतिक परंपराओं में भाषातत्व की परिधि में अपनी पहचान के निरूपण, उसे परिभाषित करने की समस्या का व्यापक विवेचन किया गया है. अंतर्निहित सत्य को प्रकट रूप में लाना – इस संदर्भ में वाक्यपदीय में भर्तृहरि ने शब्द के तीन स्तरों, पश्यंती, मध्यमा और वैखरी का उल्लेख किया है (बाद में जिसके साथ परा को जोड़ा गया). इसी प्रकार जर्मन दर्शनशास्त्री हाइडेगर के साथ जापानी भाषाविद प्रोफेसर तेज़ुका तोमिओ के संवाद में हमें भाषा के जापानी प्रतिशब्द के बारे में जानने को मिलता है. भाषा को जापानी में क्या कहते हैं? हाइडेगर के इस प्रश्न के जवाब में प्रोफेसर तेज़ुका कहते हैं, कोतो बा. बा का अर्थ है नव पल्लव, और कोतो का अर्थ है शांत के आह्वान से उद्भुत परम आनंद. इस आनंद का पल्लव, उसकी अभिव्यक्ति है भाषा.
लगभग सत्तर वर्ष की उम्र में अपने मित्र दर्शनशास्त्री सुरेंद्रनाथ दासगुप्त को पत्र के रूप में लिखी गई एक कविता में रवींद्रनाथ कहते हैं
चिरप्रश्नेर वेदीसम्मुखे चिरनिर्वाक रहे
                  विराट निरुत्तर.
ताहारि परश पाए जबे मन नम्रललाटे वहे
                  आपन श्रेष्ठ वर.
(चिरप्रश्न की वेदी के सम्मुख विराट निरुत्तर सदा निर्वाक रहता है. मन को जब उसका स्पर्श मिलता है, वह इस वरदान को मस्तक झुकाकर नम्रता के साथ ग्रहण करता है)
उस अनिर्वचनीय के आभास के साथ निकट की संकीर्णता के बंधन से अपनी आत्मा को मुक्त करना और भर्तृहरि द्वारा निरुपित परा व पश्यंती के सत्य को कविता की वैखरी में अभिव्यक्त करना – कवि के रूप में रवींद्रनाथ की यह साधना उनके त्रिगीत पर्व – गीतांजलि, गीतिमाल्य और गीतालि की कविताओं मे ईश्वर के साथ द्विपक्षीय संवाद के रूप में सामने आता है.

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कौन है वह अज्ञात ? जिस पथ पर वह चलना चाहता है, चलता नहीं है; जो बात वह कहना चाहता है, कहता नहीं है; सब जिससे तृप्त हो जाते हैं, वह नहीं होता है. - नैवेद्य की कविताओं में अपने एजेंडे के बारे में आश्वस्त रवींद्रनाथ उसके बाद रचित अपने काव्यग्रंथ उत्सर्ग की एक कविता में पूछते हैं. क्या वह प्रियतमा है ? ईश्वर है ? या कवि स्वयं ? इसी ग्रंथ की एक दूसरी कविता में वे कहते हैं, कस्तुरी मृग की तरह अपने ही सुगंध से मतवाला मैं वन-वन में भटकता हूं. त्रिगीत पर्व की कविताओं के आत्ममंथन से पहले आश्वस्त होने से मुक्ति एक आवश्यक शर्त थी. और तभी गीतांजलि की पहली कविता में उनका नया स्वर फूट पड़ता है, कवि कहते हैं : अपने चरणों की धूल में मेरा मस्तक नत कर दो. मेरे जीवन में अपनी इच्छा पूर्ण करो –
तोमारि इच्छा करो हे पूर्ण 
आमार जीवन-माझे.
कवि की यह एक नई आत्म उपलब्धि है : अनजाना पहचाना बन जाता है, दूर निकट; विपदा में उसे रक्षा नहीं, भय से मुक्ति चाहिए – और चौथी कविता में एक समूचा नया कार्यक्रम सामने आता है... वह विकसित, निर्मल, उज्ज्वल, सुंदर, जाग्रत, उद्यत, निर्भय, मंगल, निरलस निःसंशय होना चाहता है, सबके साथ युक्त होना चाहता है, हर बंधन से मुक्त होना चाहता है, वह चाहता है कि उसके सकल कर्म में दिव्य का शांत छंद संचारित हो....
उपलब्धि का आनंद, जो विषय के साथ विषयी के एक हो जाने  में मिलता है – क्या वह यहां देखने को मिलता है ? नैवेद्य की कविताओं की तरह कवि यहां विषयी नहीं विषय है, वह विषयी को संबोधित कर रहा है. लेकिन अगर वह कवि है, तो क्या विषयी नहीं है ? इस द्योतना की विडंबना से मुक्ति मिलन में है, और नैवेद्य की कविताएं अगर स्थिति के प्रतीक हैं, तो त्रिगीत पर्व में हमें एक प्रक्रिया देखने को मिलती है – मिलन की प्रक्रिया, संशय और यंत्रणा से निपटते हुए उससे उबरने की प्रक्रिया, यहां मैं है, तुम है, लेकिन मैं के अंधकार के उत्स से विच्छुरित होता है प्रकाश, और वह तुम का प्रकाश है. गीतांजलि, गीतिमाल्य और गीतालि की कविताएं इस प्रक्रिया के विवर्तन की कविताएं हैं.
तीन ग्रंथों की लगभग 400 कविताओं में व्यक्त इस प्रक्रिया को पूरी तरह से दर्शाना यहां संभव नहीं होगा, लेकिन कुछ विशिष्टताओं की ओर ध्यान आकर्षित करने की कोशिश की जाएगी. इन कविताओं में हमें एक क्रमागत विकास देखने को मिलता है, लेकिन हर ऐतिहासिक विकास की तरह वह सरल नहीं है, एक पड़ाव तक पहुंचने के बाद फिर से वे पीछे मुड़कर देखते हैं, जिस संशय से मुक्ति का आनंद अभी व्यक्त हुआ था, वह फिर से लौट आता है, लेकिन बनी रहती है अपने आप को कुरेदते रहने की एक निरंतर प्रक्रिया.
इतिहासकार रणजित गुहा ने अपनी पुस्तक कविर नाम ओ सर्वनाम  में मूलतः विशाल सर्वव्यापी सत्ता (महाआमि) की ओर क्षुद्र सत्ता (आमि) की यात्रा के रूप में इसकी व्याख्या की है. इस यात्रा के आरंभ में एक दूरी है, क्षुद्र सत्ता अपनी क्षुद्रता के बारे में सचेत है, आकाश में बादल छाए हुए हैं और वह एकाकी द्वार के बाहर बैठा हुआ है (गीतांजलि 16), दीप है शिखा नहीं है, विरह की अग्नि से वह उसे प्रज्वलित करना चाहता है (17), और फिर अगली ही कविता में उसे आभास मिलता है कि वह सर्वव्यापी सत्ता सावन की काली रात में सबकी नज़र चुराकर छिपे कदमों के साथ आ रहा है – आविर्भूत हो रहा है. लेकिन कुछ ही कविताओं के बाद (39) में वे कहते हैं, जो गान गाने के लिए वे आए हैं, आज भी उसे गा नहीं पाए हैं – वे सिर्फ सुर साध रहे हैं, सिर्फ गाने की चाह है...
गीतांजलि की कविताओं में ही आशा का स्वर प्रस्फुटित होने लगता है – अपने सिंहासन से तुम उतर आए हो, मेरे निर्जन घर के द्वार पर आकर ठहरे हो (56), क्या तुमने उसके पदचाप नहीं सुने, वह आता है, आता है, आता है (62), लेकिन जब भी वे दीप जलाने की कोशिश करते हैं, वह बुझ जाता है. कवि कहते हैं, मेरे जीवन में तुम्हारा आसन गहरे अंधकार में है (72).
और इस प्रक्रिया में से एक नई चेतना उभरती है, जिसकी अभिव्यक्ति गीतांजलि से पहले नहीं देखी गई थी. क्षुद्र सत्ता की सार्थकता अगर सर्वव्यापी सत्ता से मिलन में है, तो सर्वव्यापी सत्ता भी क्षुद्र सत्ता के बिना अधूरी है. त्रिभुवनेश्वर, अगर मैं न होता, तो तुम्हारा प्रेम मिथ्या होता. (121)
कवि के बारे में शायद सबसे महत्वपूर्ण पुस्तक, आधुनिकता ओ रवीन्द्रनाथ  में लेखक अबु सईद अय्युब कहते हैं कि खेया और बलाका के बीच 1902 से 1914 की अवधि में लिखी गई इन कविताओं में केवल मैं और तुम का संवाद दिखता है, सामाजिक सरोकार नहीं है. कम से कम गीतांजलि की तीन कविताओं के बारे में यह बात नहीं कही जा सकती है (108-110). पहली कविता में वे इतिहास के अनुभव पर आधारित एक उदात्त भारत की कल्पना करते हैं, उस महामानव के सागर तट पर अपने चित्त का जागरण चाहते हैं. दूसरी कविता में वे कहते हैं, तुम्हारे चरण सबसे नीचे, सर्व हारा के बीच हैं, वहां तक मेरा चित्त उतर नहीं पाता है. और तीसरी कविता में देश को चेतावनी देते हुए वे कहते हैं, सदियों से तुमने जिनका अपमान किया है, अपमान सहते हुए उन सबके बराबर होना पड़ेगा.
गीतांजलि का अंत आते आते कवि की आश्वस्तता लौट आती है. जो पूजा संपन्न नहीं हुई, वह खो नहीं गई है. जो फूल खिलने से पहले झर गया, जो नदी मरुस्थल में सूख गया, वह भी खो नहीं गया है. (147)
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यह जो अहं (आमित्व) नाम की चीज़ है, इसी के ज़रिये बाकी जगत से मैं अलग हूं... मैं ही मैं हूं, इस संक्षिप्त ज्ञान के तीक्ष्ण खड़्ग से यह कण जैसा मैं (आमि) ने बाकी ब्रह्मांण्ड को अपने आपसे सदा के लिए विच्छिन्न कर रखा है, सारी सृष्टि (निखिल चराचर) को मैं (आमि) और मैं-नहीं (आमि-ना) में बांट रखा है  - कवि के इस वक्तव्य को उद्धृत करते हुए शंख घोष कहते हैं कि इस विच्छिन्नता की वेदना ही रवीन्द्रनाथ की प्रधानतम वेदना है. यह विश्वआमि, या आमि-ना अनायास ही तुम बन जाता है और उसके साथ संवाद कवि के लिए एक नांदनिक आस्वाद ले आता है. गीतांजलि की कविताएं अगर प्रस्तावना हैं, गीतालि की कविताएं मुहाने तक पहुंचना, तो गीतिमाल्य की कविताओं को किसी हद तक संक्रांति की कविताओं के रूप में देखा जा सकता है. यहां विच्छिन्नता की वेदना विशेष रूप से स्पष्ट है. पहली कविता में कवि कहते हैं, रात्रि जहां दिन के तट से आकर मिलती है, उस मुहाने के किनारे तुमसे मेरी मुलाकात हुई. हमें पता है कि पौ फटने से पहले उषा का यह मुहूर्त सबसे अंधेरा होता है. आनंद यहां पथ चाहने में ही है (7), लेकिन कांटे के जंगल में फूल खिलने के बावजूद नींद की खुमार बाकी है, आंखें अभी खुली नहीं हैं (18). जल्द ही एक नया स्वर सुनने को मिलेगा, कवि कहेगा, तुमने मुझे अशेष बनाया, ऐसी ही तुम्हारी लीला है (23).
कुछ उपचार या रूपक इन कविताओं में बार-बार आते हैं. घर और बाहर, पथ पर निकल पड़ना, घर में प्रतीक्षा और तुम का आना, रात्रि, अंधकार, और कालवैशाखी की धरती बंगाल में बार-बार तूफ़ान या झंझावात (झड़). शंख घोष झंझावात से जुड़ी तीन ग्रंथों की तीन कविताओं की एक अत्यंत रोचक तुलना प्रस्तुत करते हैं. गीतांजलि की कविता (20-आजि झड़ेर राते तोमार अभिसार) में तुम कवि के पास आ रहा है, कवि उसका बाट जोह रहा है, द्वार खोलकर बार-बार देख रहा है. गीतिमाल्य की कविता ( 67-जे राते मोर दुआरगुलि भाङलो झड़े) में झंझावात में द्वार टूट चुका है, तुम आ चुका है, कवि को पता नहीं चला. सुबह उठकर वह देखता है, उसके घर की शुन्यता में तुम खड़ा है. गीतालि की कविता (33-जेते जेते एकला पथे निबेछे मोर बाति) में तुम नहीं आता है, कवि का मैं खुद पथ पर निकल पड़ा है, झंझावात उसका साथी है. कवि विषय से विषयी बनता जा रहा है.
क्या कवि को उत्तर मिलता है ? गीतालि की कविता (65) में वे कहते हैं, मेघ ने कहा ‘चलता हूं चलता हूं‘, रात ने कहा ‘चलूं‘. सागर ने कहा, ‘तट मिल गया है, मैं अब नहीं रह गया है‘. कवि कहते हैं (99), विश्वजन के चरणों के नीचे धूल से सनी धरती स्वर्गभूमि है. सबको साथ लेकर सबके बीच तुम छिपा है, वही मेरा तुम है.
अवश्य ही इन तीन ग्रंथों की कविताएं रवीन्द्रनाथ के कवि व्यक्तित्व को समझने के लिए बीजमंत्र जैसी हैं. लेकिन इनकी आंशिक आलोचना के ज़रिये उनके कवि व्यक्तित्व को समझने का प्रयास सिर्फ अधूरा ही नहीं, दुःसाहस है. ऐसा कोई इरादा भी नहीं रहा है. गीतालि की अंतिम कविताएं जिस दौर में लिखी जा रही थीं, उसी समय बलाका की पहली कविताएं लिखी गईं. इस संग्रह की चौथी कविता में कवि कहते हैं, तुम्हारा शंख धूल में लोट रहा है, इसे कैसे सहूं. सामाजिक सरोकार लौट आता है, यह पर्व आसान नहीं है, इसका प्रस्फुटन हमें कई संग्रहों के बाद परिशेष की कविताओं में देखने को मिलता है. बलाका की 37वीं कविता में कवि पूछते हैं : मृत्यु के अंतर तक पहुंचकर अगर अमृत न मिले, दुख से जूझने के बाद भी सत्य अगर न मिले,...अपनी असह्य लज्जा में अगर अहंकार न टूटे...फिर किस आश्वासन की खातिर प्रभात के प्रकाश की ओर यात्रा होगी ? बलाका के पर्व में कवि को इस प्रश्न का उत्तर नहीं मिलता है, अमृत के पथ पर यात्रा जारी रहती है, और उनकी कविता का वह परिणत पर्व सामने आता है, जिसने बंगला व भारत के काव्य को आधुनिकता और उससे परे तक पहुंचाया है.

( प्रियंकर पालीवाल द्वारा संपादित कोलकाता की कविता पत्रिका अक्षर के जुलाई-दिसंबर अंक में प्रकाशित)

Bliss of Affirmation

- Ujjwal Bhattacharya

It is now time to conclude this series. There were quite a few remarks, most of them were made with appreciation, my thanks are due to them. None of them was really negative, but one could see a certain trace of disappointment in some of them: they found some points interesting, yet so much was missing. It could not be otherwise.

It has often been said that Tagore was ahead of his time, a claim, that can be made about a number of reformer personalities of the 19th century. For India, this was a time, when the society came into direct contact with modernity, had to develop a strategy to transform itself and confront the alien interference.

And Tagore family embraced modernity like only a few of that time. His grandfather Dwarakanath Tagore was one of the early Indian entrepreneurs. He was addressed as prince by Queen Victoria. But the family had to pay a big price for competing with the British, and all their property was lost except Zamindaris. His father Devendranath Tagore was a reformer and a stalwart of Brahmo Samaj, which was founded by Raja Rammohan Roy. Though the family was discriminated on religious grounds, it remained a part of the elite in Bengal. Devendranath often took his youngest son Rabindranath with him to Himalayan hill stations, and taught him, among other things, the Upanishadic thought. These thoughts and the beauty of nature left a lasting impact on the poet.

Of course, the genius that Tagore was, makes it difficult to find out his motivations. But beyond that, the family background and the time he lived in might have played an important role. There were two elements of devotion from the very beginning, the God and the Nation. And his entire pursuit was to develop a perception of both. His biography, it seems to me, was a process of unfolding of such a perception. There is another interesting aspect: his striving to correlate his self with that which was beyond, to combine the limited with the unlimited. Hence the refusal to accept the boundaries of Nation, of Gender, class and ultimately also of theological orders.

At one point he differs from the dominant trait of Upanishadic thought: He did not negate this life, its earthliness. Consequently he was involved in the discourse of national struggle, and yet, deeply rooted in the universalism of Upanishads, he could not accept the blatant glorification of nation. He could not accept the orthodox attitude of rejecting the science that came from the west, but his notion was not characterised by the western perception of knowledge as an instrument of domination.

His conflict with Gandhi came basically from a rejection of objectification of the people, who were thrown into non cooperation movement at the call of the leaders, instead of creating an alternative consciousness of the people against the colonial power. He gave a great importance to education, and perhaps one can say that Viswa Bharati was his Taj Mahal dedicated to India.

Perhaps no other Indian writer has written such an amount of fiction, that deals with Gender discourse. His women are not burnt, killed or raped. He tried to present the agony of their life in the so called normalcy. In this way, he took up the case of their emancipation (instead of welfare) at a time, when it was not in the social and political agenda of the mainstream. This attitude was not based on a theoretical understanding, it was his perception of the human being, human society, and the self, which is a part of that. He did not try to discipline the woman like Gandhi (who thought that women are themselves to be blamed, if they are raped), rather we see that his women dare revolting against the conventions of family and patriarchal society.

A few words about the poems written in the last 10-15 years of his life. After the phase of devotional poems he declared in Balaka that his poetic journey would now usher to unknown horizon. It will be a journey full of turbulence. Instead of that we find a romantic interlude in the poems of Purabi, Mohua and Beethika, though they are free of the sentimentality that one often finds in the romantic poems of his pre-devotional phase. But after that, with the poems of the collection Parishesh he takes up the social and political issues. In his famous poem Prashna (Question), he laments that he has turned back the messengers of God with futile politeness, who preached love and forgiveness. That is the dilemma of the social man, but what about the God? Does he forgive and love those, who dealt brutally with such messengers? Another development of this phase was the use of the form of prose-poems, which found its climax in the collection Punascha (Postscript).

In 1937, Tagore was seriously ill and he was unconscious for a few days. It was facing the death, which would be now his main theme. He knew that his time was coming to end and he started contemplating about his life, about his place in his environment, in the universe. Prantk (Marginal) was the first collection, then came Senjuti and Nabajatak. With another romantic interlude of Sanai, it was continued through his last collections: Rogshajyay (At the Sick Bed), Arogya (Convalescence), Janmadine (On Birthday) and Shesh Lekha (Last Writings), which was to be published after his death. I would like to sum up this series with his last poem (from Himself a True Poem, Hiren Mukherjee), which he dictated a week before his death.

You have covered the course of your creation

With the nets of varied beguilement,

O Lady Guile.

With expert hands you have spread the trap of fake beliefs

In the life of the simple.

You have stigmatized greatness with this deception,

You left for him no secret night.

The path that your star

Shows him

Is indeed his heart’s own way.

It is ever clear,

With spontaneous faith he keeps it

Ever so bright.

Even if he looks twisted, in his heart he is straight,

This is his glory.

Though men call him cheated,

He receives the Truth

In the heart of his heart washed clear with its own light;

Nothing can cheat him, He goes carrying the last reward,

To add to his own collection.

Only he who has withstood with care your guile

Can receive from your hands

The inexhaustible right to peace.

Seeking God in Pursuit of Self

- Ujjwal Bhattacharya

“To realize his cosmic manifestation and thus free our soul from its bondage of the limitedness of the immediate,” as Tagore wrote in his letter to William Rothenstein. The above statement played a central role in his works, and particularly in his three collections of devotional poems, Geetanjali, Geetimalya and Geetali. (The English collection Geetanjali is not identical with the Bengali one. 52 poems out of 103 in the English text were selected from the Bengali volume; others were taken from earlier works. For the sake of convenience, poems quoted here have been taken from his English text of Geetanjali and other collections, though they differ radically from the original poems very often.)
In a song Tagore wrote:
My heart sings at the wonder of my place
in this world of light and life;
at the feel in my pulse of the rhythm of creation
cadenced by the swing of endless time.
Let us compare it with the definition of Language in Japanese, as it was presented in a discourse between the German philosopher Heidegger and the Japanese professor Tezuka Tomio:
Heidegger: What is the Japanese word for “language”?
Tomio: (after further hesitation) It is “Koto ba.”
Heidegger: And what does that say?
Tomio: ba means leaves, including and especially the leaves of a blossom-petals. Think of cherry-blossoms or plum blossoms.
Heidegger: And what does Koto say?
Tomio: This is the question most difficult to answer. But it is easier now to attempt an answer because we have ventured to explain Iki: the pure delight of the beckoning stillness. The breath of stillness that makes this beckoning delight come into its own is the reign under which that delight is made to come. But Koto always also names that which in the event gives delight, itself, that which uniquely in each unrepeatable moment comes to radiance in the fullness of its grace.
Expression of the pure delight of the beckoning stillness - we find a similar explanation in Bhartrihari’s (450-510 A.D.) Vakyapadiya, where he distinguishes three levels of language or Shabda: Pashyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari. Vaikhari is the manifested form of the language, Madhyama is the intermediate stage, and below that is the innermost stage of Pashyanti, which is the level of direct intuition. The manifested language is in Metaphor, is in the framework of Space and Time, whereas the level of ultimate intuition is beyond all that. Prof. Ranajit Guha, in his recent treatise in Bengali Kabir Nam O Sarbanam, observes that Nietzsche has also points out that Language is the illusion of metaphors, hence, unable to express the Truth. The bondage of the limitedness of the immediate is the reason of Tagore’s yearning for the ultimate truth; poetry becomes the evidence of the dilemma of his pursuit.
In one of his last poems (27 July, 1941), Tagore writes:
The sun of the first day
Put the question
To the new manifestation of life-
Who are you?
There was no answer.
Years passed by.
The last sun of the last day
Uttered the question
on the shore of the western sea
In the hush of evening-
Who are you?
No answer came again.
The poet tries to create a framework of discourse with the god to realize and overcome this dilemma. It is a gradual process that goes through Geetanjali, over Geetimalya, and ultimately to Geetali. In the second poem of Geetanjali he says:
My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.
And two poems later:
Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it. Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield but to my own strength. Let me not cave in.
The poet is not sure of him. In a letter to his son Rathindranath, he complains of severe pain, and a creeping depression. He feels that he has not been able to fulfil the promises he made, also to himself. In the poem 39 of Geetanjali he says:
The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument. The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set; only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
Already in the poems of Geetanjali, we see that the frustration starts making place for realization. Poem 18 is an example:
In the deep shadows of the rainy July,
with secret steps, thou walkest, silent as
night, eluding all watchers.
…
Oh my only friend, my best beloved,
the gates are open in my house-
do not pass by like a dream.
This was the period during which there was a Tagore-mania in countries like Germany, and yet the poet was suffering from melancholy. But the recovery came and found its expression in poems. Geetimalya was published in 1914, four years after Geetanjali. On 7 October, 1914, he wrote in a letter:
My period of darkness is over once again. It has been a time of great trial to me, and I believe it was absolutely necessary for my emancipation. I am that I am being lifted from the sphere where I was before…
(Letters to a Friend, ed. C. F. Andrews, London, 1928, pp 47)
And this new realization finds its expression in the poems of Geetimalya:
This is my delight, thus to wait and watch at the wayside where shadow chases light and the rain comes in the wake of the summer.
…
From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door, and I know that of a sudden the happy moment will arrive when I shall see.
(Geetimalya 7)
The Union with Über-Ich is present here:
He it is, the innermost one, who awakens my being with his deep hidden touches.
(Geetimalya 12)
The life is a process, and there is sense of astonishment in the voice of the poet:
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
(Geetimalya 23)
In the last book of his Song-Trilogy, Geetali, we see the sublimation of this idea. The God is in his heart, but he has not found him yet. He has to be awakened:
The night is dark and your slumber is deep in the hush of my being.
Wake, O Pain of Love, for I know not how to open the door, and I stand outside.
(Geetali 50)
The poet is aware of the process, which leads to the dilution of his ego:
The Cloud said to me, “I vanish”; the Night said, “I plunge into the fiery dawn.”
The Pain said, “I remain in deep silence as his footprint.”
“I die into the fulness,” said my life to me.
(Geetali 65)
And ultimately he realizes that the source of the light is hidden in the darkness:
YOURS is the light that breaks forth from the dark, and the good that sprouts from the cleft heart of strife.
Yours is the house that opens upon the world, and the love that calls to the battlefield.
(Geetali 99)
A process that started in his early youth comes to an end. Though Tagore still wrote devotional songs, he never published a book of devotional poems again.

The Other in the Other Sex

- Ujjwal Bhattacharya

It is no wonder that women inspired Rabindranath from his early youth, and in a sonnet in one of his earlier works, Manasi, he proclaims that Woman is not only a creature of God, it is the man who conceived her out of his imagination. Yet it is far from Simone de Beauvoir’s contention that One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

It is mainly in his prose, that he engaged himself in Gender discourse. The tension between the sexual identity of the woman and her social role has always been in the centre of his attention in this regard. Whether in Gora (Sucorita, Lalita) or The Home and the world or Ghare Baire (Bimala) or Four Chapters or Char Adhyay (Ela ), we find this conflict in one or another form.

One can safely say that the Gender Discourse was hardly present in the poems of his devotional trilogy and also in Balaka, which was published just after that. Things changed with Palataka (Fugitive), which came just after Balaka. The first poem of this collection is not about women, and yet quite interesting in the discussion of his Gender Discourse. It narrates the story of a domesticated dog and his playmate, a pet deer:

One afternoon, when the light, like a tune from strings, thrilled forth from the Amlak leaves, and the air seemed in pain with the riot of perfumes, the deer began to run like a meteor that knew not its destination. Bounds of life and death grew dim to her and lost all dread of the unknown.

My dog ran up to me whinning, questioning me with his piteous eyes which seemed to say, ‘I do not understand.’

But who does ever understand?

The comparison with an earlier poem comes immediately to mind, written already in the last decades of the 19th century, Dui Pakhi (Two Birds). The wild bird speaks of the delight of flight but the bird in cage is captured in his domesticated world. But the possibility of flight to his women character was provided very soon. Tagore wrote his story Streer Patra (Letter of the Wife) around 1918. Later he said that in this story he supported the women’s cause for the first time. It is the metamorphosis of a housewife to her own self, which she describes in a letter to her husband, after she has left her.

Unfortunately, most of the poems of the collection Palataka have not been translated into English. The third poem of the collection Mukti (Freedom) is the narrative of a housewife, who is going to die. Here is an effort to translate a few lines of this poem. Looking back at her own life, she says:

For twenty two years

I knew I was captive in your family.

But I was not sad at that,

My heart was senseless, would have remained so had I lived yet longer.

….

Death calls me in his nuptial chamber,

He is my suitor, not the master,

He will never neglect me.

…

Sweet is the world, sweet I am the woman,

Sweet is the death, my suitor forever,

Open, open the door,

Onward to new shores away from these futile twenty two years.

The next two poems Phanki (Cheating) and Mayer Samman ( The Honour of the Mother) deals with men’s problems to come into terms with women’ psyche. Ultimately in the fifth poem we see the gradual development of a woman into a rebel. The main protagonist of the poem Nishkriti (Solution), Manjulika, is a young widow, who was married to a much older man, who dies his natural death. Manjulika comes back to her parental family. The patriarch father is an English educated, orthodox Brahmin. Manjulika and her mother lives under his tyranny until the mother dies. Manjulika has to run the household now, which she does without complaining. Hardly a year passed, the father decides to marry again. He goes to marry in a distant district in east Bengal. When he comes Manjulika is no more there. She has left the house with her suitor, to start a new life somewhere else. The patriarch is totally helpless in his rage.

There are more poems on women, the woman with dark complexion, i. e., ugly, the young girl of childhood, who writes a letter, and this letter with her address is lost, and so on. The poet tries to find out the woman, the other from the other world, with her manifold facets.

The poet was over 60 now. His sage like appearance with long white beard fascinated

everyone including many young ladies. A few years ago I had the chance to have a long talk with his famous biographer Prashanto Pal in Shantiniketan. He was convinced that Tagore never had extra marital relations after the death of his wife and lived the life of an asket. We take his word for that. Nevertheless, he was accompanied by many young ladies in the following years. He mixed with them and distributed compliments gracefully in his letters and poems, creating an impression of proximity, and yet maintaining distance. It was a case of celibacy based on the perception of Joy as A Thing of Beauty. And Beauty had its own strict parameters. Perhaps that is the reason that he did not have to “test” it, sleeping with naked young ladies. There was appreciation of beauty, but not an involvement, that creates a world of Two.

An exception was Victoria Ocampo. She was an intellectual lady from an aristrocratic Argentinian family. In 1924, Tagore was invited to the centennial of Peru’s independence. During the passage from France to South America, he fell ill, and had to break his journey in Buenos Aires. Mrs. Ocampo was a great admirer of the poet and Gitanjali moved her deeply. He requested Tagore and his secretary Elmhirst to be her guest in a villa, which they accepted. Here developed a relation between the poet, who was 63 now, and Victoria, who was 34. Many years later, Tagore wrote in 1939, “…Those unforgettable days, and her tender and compassionate care have been enshrined in my poems; they may well be among the best I have written.” Victoria said later that their relation had no physical aspects, which might be true, but it seems that she would not have been too indifferent to such a possibility. We don’t exactly know the details of this relation, but an armchair seemed to have played an important role in it. Tagore used this piece of furniture in the villa, and Victoria insisted that he takes it with him back home. On 5th January, 1925, on his way to Italy, Tagore wrote to Victoria in a letter:

“…under a grey sky my days are repeated in rhymes that are monotonous, like a perpetual telling of beads, I pass most part of my day and a great part of my night deeply buried in your armchair which, at last, has explained to me the lyrical meaning of the poem of Baudlaire that I read with you. I had hoped that I should be able to do some writing while crossing the interval between two shores – but the wind veered and my manuscript book lies idle, its virgin papers looking like the sandy beach of a distant island unexplored.”

In her response, Victoria wrote:

“…I hope that you may understand through the same piece of furniture what the lyrical meaning of my devotion is! “

The poem of Baudelaire in question is Invitation to the Voyage. Here are the first lines:

My child, my sister,

Think of the rapture

Of living together there!

Of loving at will,

Of loving till death,

In the land that is like you!

…

Gleaming furniture,

Polished by the years,

Will ornament our bedroom;

The next major collection of Tagore was Purabi. He dedicated it to Bijaya, the Bengali translation of Victoria. Some critics say that the Intellectual, romantic female protagonist of his next novel Shesher Kabita (The Last Poem), Labanya, has traces of Victoria or Bijaya. It is the story of a romantic unconsummated love.

I agree with those critics, who say that the best romantic poems of Tagore came in the years to follow. In his collections Purabi, Mohua, Beethika and Sanai.

Dilemma of Interregnum

- Ujjwal Bhattacharya

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

- Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History

In the previous article (Seeking God in Pursuit of Self), moments from Tagore’s devotional trilogy were presented in juxtaposition. My intention was to detect his process of self-realization. Such a process has been acknowledged by many scholars, including Sukumar Sen, Abu Sayid Ayyub, Shankha Ghosh and Ranajit Guha. Nevertheless, it was not uniform. Without difficulty, we can find two poems, written on the same day, showing great discord; in one, he rejoices as he proclaims unity with his creator, and in the other falls into despair and doubt. It can be said that literature, in its sublime form, must be revealing, but not a revelation. Let the crisis face the Indian writer – demanded Bishnu Dey in 1961. Tagore’s devotional trilogy (Geetanjali, Geetimalya and Geetali) completed a cycle of crisis. His introspection no longer searched for unity as an abstract universal truth. Instead, he tried to see its manifestation in the life of the millions; in their beauty, frailty, and joy, but also in their sorrow, brutal exploitation and resistance.

Some poems of his new collection Balaka were written simultaneously with the later poems of Geetali. A certain distinction in his tone gradually became apparent. “We are going forward now, who will dare stop us” – he declares in the third poem of Balaka. Two poems later:

The Boatman is out crossing the wild sea at night.

The mast is aching because of its full sails filled with the violent wind.

Stung with the night’s fang the sky falls upon the sea, poisoned with black fear.

But at the end there is hope:

It will be long before the day breaks and he knocks at the door.

The drums will not be beaten and none will know.

Only light shall fill the house, blessed shall be the dust, and the heart glad.

All doubts shall vanish in silence when the Boatman comes to the shore.

Apropos Boatman. In one of his early poems, The Golden Boat, he wrote that the boat of eternal time takes away our harvest, leaving us behind at the shore. Contrarily, in Balaka, he pays tribute to the Moghul king Shahjahan: “You are greater than your creation/That’s why the chariot of your life/Leaves all your deeds behind/Time and again.” The subject is celebrated, in opposition to its creation. The themes broaden, sometimes at the cost of poetic temper. Gone are the days of the trilogy’s crystallized rhyme; he is in search of a new metaphor: it took nearly ten months to write poems 11 to 35 of Balaka. It is important to note their opposing directions, for example:

#12

Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.

…

Take, oh take – has now become my cry

#18

I leave this prison of decay.

I care not to haunt the mouldy stillness, for I go in search of everlasting youth; I throw away all that is not one with my life nor as light as my laughter.

#27

My king was unknown to me, therefore when he claimed his tribute I was bold to think I would hide myself leaving my debts unpaid.

I fled and fled behind my day’s work and my night’s dreams.

Poem #35, written in Srinagar, ends:

I am voice with voices,

I am song with songs,

I am life with lives,

I am radiating light

Exploding the darkness.

The quotation at the beginning of the article is not intended to explain this phase of Tagore’s writing with Benjamin’s thesis. Nevertheless, we see the contradictory forces in Angelus Novus; in Tagore’s writing they are centrifugal and centripetal, shrinking and expanding, creating the illusion of a pendulum. They are particularly evident in this phase of poems in Balaka, some of which we have quoted above. Poem 36, sometimes itself titled Balaka, which was also written in Srinagar, is longer and reflects on the flight of a flock of birds. In the concluding lines:

For me the flight of these birds has rent a veil of stillness, and reveals an immense flutter in this deep silence.

I see these hills and forests fly across time to the unknown, and darkness thrill into fire as the stars wing by.

I feel in my own being the rush of the sea-crossing bird, cleaving a way beyond the limits of life and death, while the migrant world cries with a myriad voices, ‘Not here, but somewhere else, in the bosom of the faraway.’

And in poem 37 there is a clarion call:

Do you hear the tumult of death afar?

The call midst the fire-floods and poisonous clouds.

The Captain’s call to the steersman to turn the ship to an unnamed shore,

For that time is over – the stagnant time in the port –

…

There is a wail of parting that rises to the sky,

And there is the Captain’s voice in the dark:

‘Come, sailors, for the time in the harbour is over!’

The last lines hint at the colonial space and time in which he wrote:

If the deathless dwell not in the heart of death,

If glad wisdom bloom not bursting the sheath of sorrow

If sin do not die of its own revealment,

If pride break not under its load of decorations,

Then whence comes the hope that drives men from their homes, like stars rushing to their death?

Shall the martyrs’ blood and mothers’ tears be lost in the dust of the earth, without earning heaven with their price?

And when man breaks his mortal bounds, is the boundless not revealed at that moment?

(The poet’s painting by Shubnum Gill)

Rabindranath Tagore – The Poet Misunderstood

For a long time the evaluation of Tagore was centred on the question,
whether and to which extent his work and ideas can be called
progressive. This was, and sometimes is, the imperative of the left in
particular. With a zeal to appropriate the greatest Indian literary
figure of our time, Tagore’s appreciation of the Soviet Union was
cited in abundance, it was claimed that in his later works he showed
an increased awareness of the social problems and the downtrodden
masses, and as the last and most important evidence, his lines from
the poem Oikatan were presented:

My verse, I know,
Has travelled diverse ways, but not everywhere.
And I strain to hear, that poet’s voice,
Who shares the peasant’s life,
And has earned true kinship,
Who touches the earth…

Yes, the notion of progress is a linear one, it is a sequence of
getting ever better, and Tagore was ever better in this sense. On the
other hand, we have the perception of his western admirers, who, - in
an utter confusion of the years between the two world wars – believed
to have found the mystic voice of deliverance in the works of this
divine, sage-look poet Gurudev. In 1912, we saw such an extatic phase
in Britain, in the early twenties in Germany. It did not last long.
Thanks god, or whatever, that it didn’t.

And then, we have the perception of the Nobel committee, which said in
its laudatory remarks:

He has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a
part of the literature of the West.

Was it the reason to decorate him with Nobel prize? A sheer
misunderstanding? In any case, looking at the list of Nobel Laureates
in literature till 1913, one can safely say that Rabindranath was the
first stalwart, with the exception of Kippling perhaps, whose works
are still admired in his language, as well as, in translation.

Universal is the word, that comes to mind, when one thinks about
Tagore. And yet, Universalism is a concept, which is deeply rooted in
western historicism, based on Enlightenment. Was Tagore’s Universalism
embedded in Enlightenment? Among his western admirers, Edward Thompson
made perhaps the most serious effort to make a critical appraisal of
the poet’s work. And Tagore thoroughly disapproved his interpretation.
Without going into the merits of Thompson’s work, let us have a look
at Tagore’s arguments. In a private letter to William Rothenstein, he
wrote about Thompson:

…being a Christian Missionary, his training makes him incapable of
understanding some of the ideas that run all through my writings –
like that of Jeevan-Devata, the limited aspect of divinity which has
its unique place in the individual life, in contrast to that which
belongs to the universe. The God of Christianity has his special
recognition as the God of humanity – in Hinduism in our everyday
meditation we try to realize his cosmic manifestation and thus free
our soul from its bondage of the limitedness of the immediate…

There is a sense of disappointment in Tagore’s words. Does it not make
clear that he is not of the opinion that never the twain shall meet.
But he puts his fingers on difference, and even celebrates it perhaps.
And this was in 1926. Tagore had already made a long political
journey, which was amply reflected in his literary works. Perhaps the
earliest important political statement was made in a sonnet written on
the last day of the 19th century. It begins with the lines:

The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood-red clouds of the
West and the whirlwind of hatred.
The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of
greed, is dancing to the clash of steel and the howling verses of
vengeance.
…
The morning waits behind the patient dark of the East,
Meek and silent
…
Keep watch, India.
Bring your offerings of worship for that sacred sunrise.
…
Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul.
…

Then came 1905 – for the first, and the last time in his life Tagore
took to the streets to join the movement against the partition of
Bengal, there was even a short phase of flirtation with extremist and
revivalist trends, but things changed after the religious riots broke
out. Sumit Sarkar writes, “,,,the riots led Rabindranath the pose the
most general problem before India in a new way. The ideal is no longer
a return to the glorious Hindu past, to the self sustaining samaj
unifying diversities by giving each community its particular niche in
the functional specialisation of the caste system. What is demanded
now is a wholesale breaking down of walls, a decisive rejection of
sectarian barriers and the building of a Mahajati in India on the
basis of a broad humanism.” (The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, p.p. 85)

The Political found its expression in his immortal novel Gora, in the
tireless wandering of the protagonist devoted to the Discovery of
India, acknowledging and yet negating himself, till the crisis unfolds
in the last pages in the true form of an anticlimax. Who am I? Gora
doesn’t know, and he is relieved!

Rabindranath has found his question in Gora, all he needs is the
answer. And for that, he has to come clear with his God. He does it in
the poems of Geetimalya, Geetanjali and Geetali. In between he has to
receive Nobel prize, start his ambitious project Viswa Bharati, care
for national and international recognition and utterly distaste it.

- Ujjwal Bhattacharya