Tagore’s Critique of Nationalism: A Reading of Four Chapters

Arunima Ray

India has never had a real sense of nationalism. Even though from childhood I had been
taught that the idolatry of Nation is almost better than reverence for God and humanity, I
believe I have outgrown that teaching, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will
gain truly their India by fighting against that education which teaches them that a country
is greater than the ideals of humanity. („Nationalism in India‟)

The above extract from his essay „Nationalism in India‟ succinctly tells us about Tagore‟s refusal
to make a fetish of the nation and the militant ideologies that happened to be a part and parcel of
it. Tagore, the visionary that he was, realized the flipside of making a god of the nation at a time
when emotions and sentiments for the country were running wild. He observed and critiqued the
elements of Hindu nationalism within the nationalist movement when it was making its headway
in Bengal. Rather forward and more far-seeing for his age, he became a controversial and a
misunderstood figure. Today, however, many of the earlier misconceptions about him have
cleared to restore his image as a modern and courageous thinker. In fact, it is only now that the
complexities and profundity of his ideas have been fully perceived.

Tagore was never into mainstream politics as Gandhi was, but he was nonetheless actively
involved into politics through his political writings. That is why Jawaharlal Nehru always
claimed to have two gurus, Gandhi and Tagore, both of whom transcended narrow regional
considerations to emerge as thinkers with universal vision. Today much of Tagore‟s thought is
even acclaimed as postmodern in its breadth and depth of vision, especially in its ability to think
the difference despite its basic engagement with universal unity. No wonder, he remains one of
the most influential thinkers as well as one of the most versatile literary figures of modern India.
His active political phase perhaps began with his critique of the brewing Hindu nationalism as
well as the extremist Swadeshi movement in the beginning of the twentieth century. To that
effect he came to write a number of essays expressing his critical views. This showed that he was
a dynamic man whose ideas had never been static or fixed. They have always changed and
evolved over a period of time in the pursuit of his vision of truth. From a Hindu nationalist
during his early years as one who actively participated in the Hindu mela started by the Tagore
family to instill the nationalist zeal into the minds of the people under colonial subjugation, he
grew to be a critic of it. Tagore‟s involvement in nationalism can thus be said to have two
distinct phases of development. The first phase was dominated by a strong nationalist feeling, a
phase that gradually culminated in what is known in history as the phase of Swadeshi movement.
The second phase can be described as the post-Swadeshi one when he grew critical and
revisionary of what had happened in the name of Swadeshi. In fact, the last decade of the
nineteenth century proved to be most eventful and significant for the poet in that it saw his
increasing participation in the affairs of the country. He rose to the occasion by writing a number
of essays and these early essays bear testimony to his ideas in favour of the nation, not
expressing any ill-will against it. For example, in Nation Ki („What is a Nation‟) and
Bharatbarshiya Samaj („Indian Society‟) both published in 1901, he celebrated the idea of nation
as „a vital spirit, a living entity‟, an ideal to be pursued for the common wellbeing of the people
as a whole. But he had at that stage the broad conception of nation as an entity „to unite people
together‟, and, as he has emphasized, „it is in this very strength to unite that civilization
manifests itself‟ („Indian Society‟, 40). If Europe did it through the „state power‟, India achieved
it through its „society‟, the „Hindu Society‟ (ibid 41), and he was all praise for the great
accommodative capability of that society. But his disillusionment did not take a long time to
come when he witnessed the excess made out of it. This paved the way for anti-nationalism for
him, entrenched further by the contemporary global events that led ultimately to the World War.
His essays written at that time unmistakably articulate his later critical views on this issue. One
can particularly mention essays written from 1905 onwards and published in collections such as
Atmashakti (1905), Bharatvarsa (1906), Rajapraja (1908), Swadesh (1908), Samaj (1908),
Parichay (1916), and so on. His first stark criticism and rejection of the extremist Swadeshi
nationalism that preached „boycott of foreign goods‟ and hence was also known as the Boycott
Movement came out in the essay called Sadupay („The Right Means‟)(1908). He denounced
there in clear terms the obsession of the leaders who refused to consider the ground realities of
the rural poor people both Hindu and Muslim and never flinched from adopting any violent
means to force „swadeshi‟ down their throats. Such was the stance taken by Tagore, the apostle
of Indian history and culture. Ashis Nandy rightly sums up Tagore‟s career and says that it was
an „intellectual and emotional journey from the Hindu nationalism of his youth and the
Brahmanic-liberal humanism of his adulthood to the more radical, anti-statist, almost Gandhian
social criticism of his last years. It was a journey made by one who had been a builder of modern
consciousness in India, one who ended up - against his own instincts, as we shall see - almost a
counter- modernist of the imperial West‟. (Nandy, 3-4)

His distrust of the Western concept of the nation, therefore, goes along with his distrust of the
Western civilization or for that matter Western modernity itself. He considered it „a great
menace‟ because it is „an organized power‟ for the purpose of „political and commercial
aggressiveness‟ making mechanical use of men. As against this, he projected India in terms of its
long enshrined values of humanity and spirituality based on the ideals of unity and toleration. As
he claims: „In spite of our great difficulty, however, India has done something. She has made an
adjustment of races, to acknowledge the real differences between them where these exist, and yet
seek for some basis of unity. This basis has come through our saints, like Nanak, Kabir,
Chaitanya and others preaching one God to all races of India‟ („Nationalism in India‟, 453 ). So
far as Tagore‟s fictional writings during this period are concerned, it is famously in his novels
like Gora (1909) and The Home and the World (1916) that he dealt with the issue of nationalism
in a more nuanced way. That it has remained a sustained engagement for him is proved by the
fact that he took it up again as late as 1934 in his novella Char Adhyay (Four Chapters). I will
read Char Adhyay (Four Chapters) to examine Tagore‟s ongoing critique of the Swadeshi
extremism in a bid to understand also the ideals of humanity as well as the values of spirituality
that he had always held so high.

Char Adhyay was published in 1934 and the Preface of the novel clearly said that Tagore‟s
inspiration is Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, a Vedantist turned a revolutionary nationalist. Known
as Tagore‟s political double, Upadhyay came to support militant nationalism and was gradually
deeply involved in it. The Preface describes Upadhyay‟s last visit to Tagore:

At the time I had not met him for a long time. I thought, having sensed my difference
with him on the method (pranali) of the nationalist movement, he had become hostile and
contemptuous towards me.
 … In those days of blinding madness, one day when I was sitting alone in a third floor
room at Jorasanko, suddenly came Upadhyay. In our conversation we recapitulated some
of the issues we had discussed earlier. After the chat he bid me goodbye and got up. He
went up to the door, turned towards me and stood. Then said, „Rabibabu, I have fallen
very low.‟ After this he did not wait any longer. I clearly understood that it was to say
these heart-rending words that he had come in the first place. But by then he had been
caught in the web of his actions (karmajal), there was no means of escape. That was my
last meeting and last words with him. (Quoted in Nandy, 21)

The Preface to Char Adhyay clearly tells us about Tagore‟s belief in the fact that the nation may
not necessarily be greater than human ideals and that such politics that Upadhyay has come to
resort to may be expedient, but not necessarily principled. But it also needs to be mentioned that
Tagore‟s reference to Upadhyay in the Preface points towards the fact that the extremist
movement did play a significant role and one which had to become the subject of central debate
in his novels. In fact, the three most important political novels that Tagore has written during his
writing career, has Upadhyay‟s presence in the anti-heroes that he has created. There is Sandip in
Ghare Baire (The Home and the World), Indranath in Char Adhyay and Gora‟s former self in
Gora. To counter them through dialogues, we have Nikhilesh, Atin and Gora‟s later self
respectively. In creating conflicting characters in the novels whose ideologies, ethics and
political beliefs are opposed to each other, Tagore also represents his own inner conflicts.
Upadhyay and Tagore were both born in 1861. Though the two had different political ideologies,
through regular contact with each other, they had shared their political beliefs. Upadhyay was a
Hindu Brahmin who converted to Christianity and he was at the forefront of unleashing
„terrorist‟ activities in Bengal and it is in his journal called Sandhya that the seeds of terrorist
activities were sown. However, Tagore‟s distrust towards the nationalist movement created quite
a stir amongst the people, so much so that Tagore later on removed the Preface from Char
Adhyay having reference to Upadhyay and called the book a love story between Ela and Atin.
Though the main aim of the novel is to explore the inner world of the extremists and the
degeneration of the inner self caused by deceitful political principles, Tagore could not tackle the
scathing criticism that came with the publication of the novel and mellowed down his approach
by declaring that the novel is a love story.
Char Adhyay is the story of a group of revolutionary „terrorists‟ of Bengal. The story revolves
around three main characters, Indranath, Ela and Atin. Indranath is the leader of the group. Ela
and Atin are in love with each other and Atin, the son of a zamindar has joined the movement for
his love for Ela. Indranath was a brilliant student who studied in Europe. He is reported to know
many languages. He is skilled in armed and unarmed combat. He had terrific career possibilities,
but due to contacts with a political suspect, his career was doomed forever. But Indranath was
not ready to put up with such injustice. He opened a school of his own but „in some fissure in the
depths of this little institution of his, there lodged a seed of secret purpose which spread its
underground ramifications, across prison yards, far and wide through the country‟ (Four
Chapters, 3) In his discussion of Four Chapters, Ashis Nandy rightly says that the most striking
characteristic of Indranath is his „dispassionate, fully scientific, ruthless commitment to what can
only be called instrumental rationality‟ (Nandy, 22). Indranath now is bent on taking his
„revenge‟ and determined to prove his greatness. He is aware of his charisma and his intellect
and uses both to attract and manipulate young people into his terrorist organization. But what
must be noted about Indranath is that more than love for his own country, his driving force is
self- love and self- aggrandizement. Indranath is convinced that he is a great man. As he says:

As a leader in a grand enterprise I‟m here because it becomes me; either victory or defeat
will be equally great. They tried to make me petty by closing the doors on every side. I
am determined to show them that I‟m great, even if that entails disaster at every step. You
can see for yourself, Kanai, how these followers have come round me at my call, recking
nothing of life and death. Why? Because I know how to call. That‟s what I want to make
clear to myself and to others: and after that I don‟t care what happens. (FC, 26)

Atin is considered an asset to the revolutionaries. But his difference with Indranath is to be
noted. If Indranath is clinical and ruthless in his approach, Atin has an emotional side to him.
Indranath trains him as a revolutionary, but that leaves him totally disillusioned. He realizes that
he too like Indranath was slowly losing his self and humanity. His only escape route was his love
for Ela. In a heart-rending scene, he tells Ela, how the lowly tasks that he was compelled to
perform degenerated him. Ela too can perceive his situation, but there is no turning back now.
Though both of them are fully in love with each other, yet Ela cannot marry him. She has vowed
to Indranath to remain celibate throughout her life and sacrifice herself for the country. Nor
would Indranath anyway allow a marriage to take place between the two, for his only reason for
keeping Ela in the group is to attract young men in the group. Ela is a beautiful young woman
and Indranath‟s strategy seems to have worked well in the regard. However, at one point, Ela
herself becomes a burden to the group and according to Indranath‟s plans her execution has to
happen at the hands of Atin. In the last chapter in a moving description Atin recounts his total
fall from grace now that he has to kill his beloved. Ela knows that the episode will end with her
execution at the hands of her lover and she is ready for it. But her readiness and acceptance of
death is not because she believes that she is laying down her life for her country, but because of
her love for Atin.

Char Adhyay , as the name goes, has four chapters. The four chapters are a series of scenes
which shift from one to the other. There is very little action in the novel and there is no clear
account of the work of the revolutionary group. The effects of colonialism are understood from
bits and pieces of information that is available from the various discussions of the characters. For
example we know that Kanai‟s tea stall is more than just an ordinary tea stall. It is the hub of the
activities of this terrorist group in question. Tagore has consciously kept colonialism and active
politics at the background. His motive rather is to expose the internal world of the political
extremists and he does that well. It is through dialogues between the different characters that we
get a view of the strife that bedevils the inner worlds of the characters. It is full of strife,
conflicts, doubt and hypocrisy. In having to deal with so many fronts, the characters lose their
selves completely. The first chapter itself gives us an idea of the way Indranath runs the group.
There is very little place for morality in his method of working. He is cut-throat and he sees his
actions as means to an end. Indranath represents the kind of politics of which Tagore was highly
distrustful. Ashis Nandy rightly says that the similarity between Tagore and Gandhi was that
both believed in a moral universe and one‟s political ideology should be guided by that. The
essence of this moral universe is that it endorses a harmonious plurality. But people like
Indranath considered morality a weakness and instead took pride in altogether giving it up. Atin
soon realizes the absolute hypocrisy involved in the kind of work that the revolutionaries were
taking part in and that instead of rising in moral stature they were falling very low every day. His
love for Ela was the main reason for joining the movement. But now a union between them is not
possible and the kind of work expected out of him makes him feel absolutely ignominious. Atin
is the son of a landlord and he feels he was capable of greater good. He accuses Ela for his
present plight. As he tells Ela:

You don‟t seem to realize how our wings have been clipped, my limbs shackled. I had the
responsibility, as well as the capacity, to take my own true place in my country‟s service.
You made me forget it .(FC, 45)

Hundreds of young men and women joined these groups without a clear idea of what they have
got themselves into. They blindly follow charismatic leaders like Indranath whose fiery speech
and ostensibly idealistic discourses attract them. They lose their sense of judgment and
independent thinking and most of the times veer away from truth. The work carried out by the
movement most of the times is shady and no upright man can support it. In very potent words
Atin describes the fate of the other group members who are nothing but mere puppets in
Indranath‟s hands. This is how he describes the relationship between Indranath and his followers:

Our supreme Counsellor decreed that our whole duty was to take hold of a thick rope and
keep pulling with closed eyes. Thousands of boys caught hold of the ropes. Some were
crushed under the wheels, others crippled for life. Then came the order to turn back. The
car began its return journey. But the broken homes did not become whole, and the
cripples were swept out of the way on to the dust heaps. Independent thinking was
knocked on the head from the very start and the boys came strutting up, ready and proud
to be moulded into puppets. When they all began to dance to the same tune, at the wire
pulling of the Master, they were struck with admiration at their own performance. (FC,
47)

The final chapter brings up many important questions. It shows Atin going to Ela‟s house at
Indranath‟s instance to kill her. In this chapter Atin reminisces the journey of his life and his
rebirth into the new Atin. It is with his birthday party that Ela had celebrated three years ago that
he was initiated into the group. Ela had given him a bouquet of tuberoses and gave him his first
kiss. As Atin says, „That was the moment of Atin‟s new birth, ushered by those shy flowers. And
little by little all Mr. Atindra‟s gravity, learning and logic were drowned in profound self-
forgetfulness‟ (FC, 99). Ela herself by now is not only disillusioned about this revolutionary
group for which she has vowed to remain celibate, she feels ashamed at bringing about this
predicament on Atin. She is even ready to offer herself in marriage to Atin, but now it is too late.
Atin informs her that the very „brothers‟ whom she loves a lot and anoints every brother‟s
birthday with sandlewood paste, think she needs to die. The police will come to arrest her at
dawn and the organization feels that she may reveal important information under torture.
Indranath has given Atin the task to execute her. Atin tells Ela that he has come to claim the last
kiss from his beloved. Ela grants Atin his last kiss and is willing to die at his hands. She even
denies anesthesia. To die in full consciousness at the hands of her lover not only makes her death
meaningful but also gives it an erotic feel. She entreats him to kill her and says:

Kill me, Ontu, kill me with your own hands. I couldn‟t wish for a happier end…Don‟t
have any qualms, Ela continued. Am I not yours, wholly yours even in death? Take me.
Don‟t let their unclean hands touch my body, for this body belongs to you .(FC, 104)

Atin‟s final degradation is complete after killing Ela. Nandy sums it up well in the following
words:

For Atin this is the final revelation that he has fallen from his own distinctive svadharma
(code of conduct) and svabhava (individual specificity). He recognizes that Ela is willing
to be sacrificed not because she accepts the meaning given to it by Indranath‟s modern
nationalism but because of a privatized meaning, derived from her relationship with Atin.
(Nandy, 23)

Char Adhyay is Tagore‟s thirteenth and the last novel. Though in the face of public criticism
Tagore mellowed down his approach by dropping the Preface and calling it a love story, yet the
dilemma and pain that the characters undergo are enough to tell us that ruthless violence leads to
the loss of one‟s self. Atin‟s failure to be as clinical, ruthless and amoral in his attitude as
Indranath and the hopelessness that seems to have enveloped his life is a clear indication of the
dismal future of this terrorist organization. Atin is a lover and a poet and hence possesses an
emotional and sensitive side in him and Indranath‟s efforts at transforming him fills him up with
lament and a sense of degradation. Atin‟s life as a revolutionary as represented in the novel is
nothing but lament and grief. Yet to disown Indranath and move out of the whole thing is not
possible for him. But it is clear that the group has no future and it is moving towards a total
failure as well as moral degradation. Where the leadership is power-greedy, not much good can
come from the followers even when they are committed. Sandip in Ghare Baire and Indranath
in Char Adhyay are both similar in that respect. Their activity only glaringly shows the
contradictions they are involved in due to their distorted use of political morality. All their ideas
of nation, nationalism and violence that they use for the attainment of freedom are borrowed
from western modernity that as Tagore has time and again pointed out runs counter to the Indian
context. Hence most of these people „in an Oedipal twist, (…) are themselves to their target, the
colonial authorities…. Ultimately, the followers of Sandip and Indranath get caught in the same
trap. Politics, they discover, can be liberating, but it also masks a form of self-deception that
helps hide less obvious bondage (Nandy, 48).

The most important question that Tagore seems to have brought up in Char Adhyay and two
other political novels, Ghare Baire and Gora that he has written over a period of twenty five
years of his life is the question of politics and morality. Char Adhyay which is obviously an
extension of Ghare Baire in its representation of Indranath/Atin/Ela and of
Nikhilesh/Sandip/Bimala relationships respectively moves a step further. Unlike Sandip whose
vulnerability lay in his dilemma which often creeps into his mind, Indranath is free of any such
doubts. The violence he indulges is sanitized as well as mechanized. Atin, now totally trapped,
gives Ela a glimpse of what goes in the name of revolutionary activity from the inside:
„Meanness, unfaithfulness, mutual mistrust, secret machination, plotting for leadership - sooner
or later these will drag them into the mud at the bottom‟ (FC,77). He goes on to narrate how the
band members robbed a weak and helpless old widow of everything that she had. Manmatha, one
of the band members, knew her well and it is he who led the others to her house and killed her
immediately without an ounce of resentment perhaps, for it was done for the „greater good „of
the country. With resentment written large on his face, Atin says:

For the purpose of what we call the country‟s need - the need for murdering our own
souls! - that widow‟s money passed through my hands to headquarters. Part of that
money helped to break my recent fast. I end my career branded a thief- receiver and user
of stolen money. (FC, 102)
Talking of violence, Frantz Fanon once said, „National liberation, national reawakening,
restoration of the nation to the people or Commonwealth, whatever the name used, whatever the
latest expression, decolonization is always a violent event‟ (Fanon, 1). If for Fanon subjectivity
and self-worth can be recovered by the use of violence which is necessary, for Tagore, the
culture of violence only leads to loss of self-worth. He was pained at this mode of resistance that
was being adopted by the Nationalist extremists, a mode which he thinks is aping the West.
Tagore was always critical of European modernity that gave rise to aggressive nationalism as
well as colonialism. In his essay „Nationalism in India‟ he says:

Nationalism is a great menace. It is the particular thing which for years has been at the
bottom of India‟s troubles. And inasmuch as we have been ruled and dominated by a
nation that is strictly political in its attitude, we have tried to develop within ourselves,
despite our inheritance from the past, a belief in our eventual political destiny. (458)

In the same essay Tagore also mentions that he is against „the general idea of all nations‟ (458)
because it conceives „the aspect of a whole people as an organized power‟ which „drains man‟s
energy from his higher nature where he is self- sacrificing and creative‟(458). Tagore envisioned
a society based on plurality and brotherhood. Hindu Nationalism had divisive effects.
Innumerable instances of the victimization of the Muslims, the lower castes and the poor are
there to show the detrimental effects of blindly following such an ideology. Tagore envisioned a
great Nation, a Mahajati, based on a view of cultural plurality. Indian reality is the reality of
many cultures, many religions and many languages. In order for India to survive as a Mahajati,
these divisions have to be recognized. The unity of Indianness must evolve from below and from
all these diversities, not the other way around from above by a suppression of them by a
hegemonic culture. Having said so, one cannot deny that nationalist movement was an effective
measure for decolonization. Decolonization is „a history-making process‟, said Fanon, and the
Nationalist movement in India in both moderate and extremist forms did help us attain
independence. In this context while defining decolonization Fanon said:

Decolonization, therefore, implies the urgent need to thoroughly challenge the colonial
situation. Its definition can, if we want to describe it accurately, be summed up in the
well-known words: “The last shall be first.”…In its bare reality, decolonization reeks of
red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives. For the last can be first only after a murderous
 and decisive confrontation between the two protagonists. This determination to have the
last move up to the front, to have them chamber up (too quickly, say some) the famous
echelons of an organized society, can only succeed by restoring to every means,
including, of course, violence. (Fanon, 3)

Tagore, too, throughout his life actively critiqued colonialism. He has written innumerable songs
for the country and had given up his knighthood in protest against the Jallianwala Bagh
massacre. But he did all this in his own way and violence was something which he could not
support. However, the last part of his life was spent in great dilemma, for neither could he ignore
the process of decolonization nor could he accept it totally. What hurt him more was the fact that
his own countrymen followed the West in inculcating aggressiveness and aggrandizement rather
imbibe India‟s own cultural values. He had great distrust of leaders like Indranath in whose
hands the country would perhaps be going. They incarnate not only political authority but
unmitigated patriarchy at the same time. In fact, this happens to be not only a general
apprehension but a veritable phenomenon as evinced in recent history all over the world. Fanon
too has expressed the same fear in his book The Wretched of the Earth, where he says that after
attaining independence and self-determination, the nation should be run in the interests of the
people and not taken over by a class of these people. That he has warned will lead to neo-
colonialism. But where Tagore and his radicalism stand out as distinct is in his portrayal of the
relationships between them and women. In his novels, it is only the women who can counter
them and at whose hands they face defeat. In this sense, Char Adhyay also registers Tagore‟s
intervention on the gender question. In Ghare Baire, Sandip loses his battle to Bimala. In Char
Adhyay, Indranath loses his battle to Ela. Indranath with his charisma and charm could introduce
Ela into the group, make use of her, but could not take over her mind. Atin, however, cannot free
himself. Helpless and full of remorse, he kills Ela. Ela, however, dies not for the higher ideal of
sacrifice for the country that they tried to infuse into her, but solely for her love for Atin. At her
death Ela frees herself. For Tagore nothing should supersede the love or ideal of humanity, not
even that of the nation. It would be tantamount to killing the soul of the country for its life. He
has it as the crux of his message through what Atin describes as his cruelest agony:
This agony is indeed Tagore‟s own agony in the face of what was taking shape in those early
decades of the last century in Bengal. Atin laments that he hadn‟t time in this life to reveal this
truth. But there is no doubt whatsoever that Tagore could do it in the clearest possible terms
through the very fictional figure of Atin himself.

Works cited

Das, Sisir Kumar. Ed. The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Vol. 2. New Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 1996

Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans.

Nandy, Ashis. The Illegitimacy of Nationalism. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994

Tagore, Rabindranath. Four Chapters

Tagore, Rabindranath. „Nationalism in India‟ in Sisir Kumar Das (ed.) The English Writings of
Rabindranath Tagore, Vol. 2

Tagore, Rabindranath. „Bharatbarshiya Samaj‟ („Indian Society‟) and „Sadupay‟ („The Right
Means‟) in Rabindra-Rachanabali, Vol. 13. Kolkata: Govt. of West Bengal, 1990