The Project of Tagore

Biswajit Ray

Tagore made an effort to resurrect the ‘eternal love’ as focused in the

medieval Bengali literature from oblivion. His project rejected those who
questioned the 'utility' of such texts from either religious or nation-statist
angle. The debate he initiated quite early in his literal)) career continued in
the dialogues of his novels such as Gora and Char Adhyay.

Nineteenth Century Bengal witnessed a major change in the sphere of production and
appreciation of the literary texts. Printing technology which was considered an
agent of dissemination of knowledge and formulation of power captured the
mind and
imagination of the Bengali bhadraloks or 'gentlefolks'. They took major initiatives
in the process of making of a modern literature in colonized Bengal. They not only
experimented with the modern literary genres but also edited and published the pre-
modern manuscripts of different types of poetry in book form to propose and
legitimize a beautiful genealogical tree of Bengali literature, in the best tradition of
comparative philology framework prevalent at that time. Therefore, locating and
editing of the pre-modern manuscripts became an important intellectual exercise in 19th
century Bengal.

The orientalist Sahibs and the nationalist babus engaged themselves in this
practice for different reasons. Rabindranath Tagore and Srishehandra Majumdar
(1860-1908) edited a book of poems, named Padaratnabali and it was published
in 1885 when Tagore was only 24. Srishehandra had an interesting family
background. Balaramdas, a famous Vaisnava poet of the 17th century, was his
forefather. In a letter to Srishehandra, Bankimchandra – the senior author
highly respected by Tagore, wrote, "I got Padaratnabali. But who
deserves appreciation? Should I appreciate the poets or the collectors?”-
Modern
collectors, compilers and editors were trying to make a bridge between the
pre and post print-capital era. Pracin Kabyasangraha, edited by Akshay
Chandra Sarkar (1846- I 9 I 7) and Saradacharan Mitra (1848 -1917) was a
very popular compilation of pre-modern lyrics in the 19th century before,
the publication of Padaratnabali. Srishchandra and Rabindranath also made
an effort to supplement this anthology by popularizing pre-colonial
padavali among the 19th century readers. But were these two worlds - pre-
modern and modern -- identical'? The obvious answer is no. A collector first
judges and selects front the past compositions and then creates a volume for
the readers of his time. Taste of a modern book reader is different from that
of a premodern listener who enjoyed the performance of padavali in a
collective gathering, formally called 'arena'). In fact, after the demise of the
Hindu saint-reformer revered in eastern India Lord Chaitanya (1486-1534),
with the beginning of the festival of kheturi (which perhaps began in 1580
or a little earlier, convened on the first full-moon day of Gaura Purnima to
celebrate the appearance day of Lord Chaitanya, especially after the
biographical poetic treatises - Chaitanya Mangala and Chaitanya
Chandrodaya were composed in 1572), the norm for the performance of
kirtana (the sung devotional poetry) was standardized. In a Pala-kirtana,
a performer should ideally present padas of different moods in an asar one
after another, and this poetic festivity was greatly appreciated by people of
Bengal. In fact, in these Pala-kirtana with performed poetry recitals, we
could see the beginning of compilation of the padas. In pre-colonial Bengal
there existed some such texts such as padamrta-madhuri, ksanadagita-
cintamani, padamrta-samudra, padakalpataru, which were all a
compendium of padas but obviously not in a printed form. The compiler
and editor Tagore appears at this time with a definite project.

According to Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay (1873-1932), one of the

authoritative biographers of Tagore, before editing padaratnabali, Rabindranath
consulted some of these pre-colonial manuscripts. While the collector tried to
satisfy the modern consumer of the book, the printed volume contained
mainly those padas which have literary value and importance from the
perspective of researchers. It is not surprising, therefore, that
Bankimchandra would write to Srishchandra that the poets and the texts
selected and included in their padavali were praiseworthy. And yet, he
criticized the notion of love as expressed in the padavali in his essays.
According to him, this kind of love demoralized the institutions like family
and society. In 1872, Bisabrksa (literally, 'the Poison-Tree'; see Bankim
Rachanabali, Vols i & ii; Kolkata: Sahitya Sangsad), a novel written by
Bankimchandra, was serialized in the journal — Bangadars'an. In this novel,
Debendra, the debauch, dresses himself up as Haridasi Vaisnavi and enters into
the inner court -yard (andarmahal) of a bhadralok family to gratify his lust.
Bisabrksa is a social novel through which Bankim conveys a moral message
on family which is a very important unit of an ideal nation state. At the end of
the novel the omnipresent narrator writes, 'I finished Biasabrksa with a hope
that fruits of nectar would be harvested in our families." For
Bankimchandra, poems that glorify this kind of parakiya pranav (extra-
marital love affair] were harmful for family, society and state. Bankimchandra
evaluated love poems by taking a position that idolized an ideal state system.
On the contrary the literary critic in Rabindranath assigned a high value to the
notion of love and critized the role of the nation state that often shuts down the
choice and will of the individual for the sake of the nation. In his project, in his
own interest in literary historiography, Tagore re- read traditional Vaisnavism
by the logic of Romanticism. Tagore was thus not only a collector pre-colinial
Bengali poems, particularly vaisnava-padavali, he reconstructed and recreated
generations of these poets. This recreated and reconstructed world of Tagore's
padavali was imagined by a complex a complex thought process, and was in
contrast with that of Bankimchandra as these had emerged under the umbrella
of a colonized state.

In his book Criticism and Truth (Tr. 1987; The Athlone Pr., London), Roland
Barthes makes a critical distinction between the literary criticism and the,
science of literature. According to him, literary criticism is a discourse
which openly adopts the intention of giving a particular meaning to the work.
Bankimchandra, like some other enlightened author-scholars of his time, also
deployed the logic of certainty/particularity in analyzing the origin and
development of literary forms as well as in writing the story of the past.
For him, writing the history of literature and locating the history of a race are two
interrelated related moves — outcome of a quasi-Western project of creating
history for the colonized people.

The educated Bengali babus imagined history as a recital or d description of things

as they were or have been, in a continued orderly narrative of principal
facts and circumstances. Linearity, progressivity and causality are features
that define this kind of history. Bankimchandra, in his essay Vidyapati 0
Jayadev, by using these perceptions about history writes, "Everything is
resultant of rules. Literature is also a resultant of rules. From particular
reasons, following particular rules originate particular results." Bankim
took the difficult task of finding out those particular conditions and rules
which according to him shaped the past and produced the 'present' in 19th
century Bengal. These causally connected elements were marked and
decoded by Bankimchandra in a monolithic narrative that began with a
glorious description of the past moment, and ended with a wretched picture
of the present. Bankimchandra stated elaborately the causes which were
responsible for the present wretchedness of a colonised race. In his well-
known novel Anandamath, he described this in his own allegorical
statement by comparing ma ja chilen (`Mother as she was') and ma ja
haiyachen (`Mother as she has become'). Behind this formulation, one
could find the deterministic and well structured models of analysing
society that were used before Bankim by Henry Thomas Buckle (1821 -
1862) and Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893). Buckle's History of Civilization in
England was published in 1857 and Taine's Histoire de la literature
anglaise came out in 1863. Both of them emphasized upon the conditions
based on climatic, racial and such other factors in analyzing the nature of
civilization and culture. Bankimchandra followed their models in describing the
origin, growth and regression of Bengaliness. He writes:
"Indians finally settled down to such a land, the climate of which
eroded the natural vigour of them. Here, the Aryan prowess lost its
lustre; Aryan fiery nature became submissive to tender indolence and
developed fondness for domestic bliss. Imitating, this unambitious,
idle, unenterprising domestic being a peculiar lyrical poetry (Padavali)
was created. Keeping all other types of literature far behind, this lyrical
verse (Padavali), reflecting the character of the nation, became so
important as to be equated with national literature of the country. ” (In
translation).
In this argument Bankimchandra conferred a particular analytical framework
that devalued the pre-colonial Vaisnava-Padavali for celebrating unenterprising
idleness that according to him robbed a race of its past glory. Just as Max
Weber (1864-1920) in 'On Protestant Ethic , ' had identified Protes tan t
morality as favorable to Capital ( Essays in Economic Sociology.
Princeton University Press. 1999), or as E.P. Thomson (1924-1993) had
pointed at the positive relationship between punctuality and industrial
capital. Bankimchandra used the same logic of reasoning based on
causality to show that there was a negative relation between unenterprising
idleness and progress. This argument. Being a core one, was reflected in
different ways in different writings of Bankimchandra.

In Mrnalini (1869)., the third Bengali novel written by Bankimchandra, one

can find a tussle between personal love and love for the lost mother-land.
Mrnalini, the heroine of the novel, expressed her love pangs through Padavali
like love songs written by the author himself. But Hemachandra, the
protagonist of the novel, as warned by the Sanyasi ('the ascetic), turns a deaf
ear to her appeal. Bankimchandra's hilarious episodes of Kamalakanta
(recall that Sudipta Kabiraj had defined ‘Kamalakanta's Papers' as secret
biography of Bankimchandra in his seminal work The Unhappy
Consciousness 1995: OUP. USA) had even transformed the meanings of a
Vaisnava love-song into the song of patriotism. For instance. "O my friend.
when I remember you / I gaze at Vrndavana”- these words of love-sick Radha
reinterpreted by Kamalakanta to mean a completely different thing. The lines
belong to the category of bipralambha srngar (literally 'agony of separation'. according
to the rasa theory) where in the biraha-dasa - when separated, a lover feels and
expresses his/her despondence in exile in a certain manner. She would refuse to
participate in regular family and social life at that time. Kamalakanta unpacked the
meaning of this song in another way. For him this is a song of someone whose country
is in ruin, and hence the call is to remove all hindrances in favor of positive activism
necessary for the building of a strong nation. As the past glory of the motherland has
faded into oblivion, the singer, agonized by the fact would jump into action to rebuild
the country. Bankimchandra in his novel Anandamath (1882) has presented this very
logic beneath the sense of history. Here, he criticised Vaisnavadharma as preached
by Chaitanyadeva, as one of the Santans (patriots) would say: "Visnu of
Chaitanyadeva is all love but God is not only love but he is also an eternal
embodiment of power.” This theory of eternal power was used by Bankimchandra
to inspire the people of his country. In fact, in Bankirn's Krisnacharitra (1886).
a critical biography of Krishna, he marked the love stories of gopijanaballava
krsna as amorous and ahistorical. Bankirn's Krsna was a man of action and
an epitome of power.
Thus, instead of songs of despondent detachment Bankimchandra preferred the
songs of action and the most (in) famous one he wrote himself . The song
vandemataram was the war cry of the Santans of the Anandaniath who criticised
Chaitanya's bhaktivad as half religion and therefore, possessing a partial truth, In
the first stanza of vandemataram the gloriousimage of motherland was depicted
and this stanza was followed by others which expressed plan of actions that
became problematic in a state like India where people of different races lived
together. By using this logic one could say Bankimchandra's reading of
padavali and his recreation of padavali though were naturally endowed with
patriotic spirit, had its limitations, Rabindranath started his journey of re-
reading padavali from these limits of history.

Before Tagore's efforts to resurrect the eternal love from oblivion, the
guiding principle that shaped Bankimchandra's arguments for analyzing and
recreating padavali was, in a sense, utilitarian. In a literary manifesto,
titled Bangalar nabya lekhakdiger prati nibedan (`An appeal to the young
writers of Bengal'), published in the Prachar he wrote: "An author should
either write for the sake of the betterment of his country or should hold
pen for the culminating beauty”. It was the notion of progress rather than
creation of beauty that got priority in Bankim's imagination. Valisnava
padavali was rejected and recreated by him according to the twin logic
based on utility and progress. It is ironical that, in pre-colonial Bengal. also,
a sect such as the Vaisnavas used the logic of utility and progress in their
own manner. But Bankimchandra reinterpreted that as an urge to ensure that
progress of what he called the 'Nation-State’ and the progress referred to in
the Vaishnava performances, would both make an appeal to the performers
and spectators alike, as for them singing and listening of padas would be
regarded as a great religious practice that lead them towards the eternal
bliss. Tagore rejected both - religious and nation-statist logic of utility - in re-
reading and restructuring padavali, and in drawing essence from these
medieval poets in his own project of poetry where the poems and songs of
Puja and those belonging to the Prema parva got enmeshed, and were difficult
to distinguish.

In his preface to the Bhanusingha Thakurer Padavali Rabindranath

confessed about his guise as Bhanusingha where he was trying to write in the
pattern of medieval Maithili poet — Vidyapati who had merged the Sakta and
the Vaisnava traditions. He said: "Bhanusingha has no intimacy with the mind of
the Vaisnavas." Though in his boyhood fancy, Tagore had tried to play with the
readers' reactions by imitating the language and diction of padavali poets written
in brajabulli in his look-alike medieval-style manuscript of Bhanusingha
Thakurer Padavali, later he gave up that guise as he thought it meaningless. After
the death of Kadambari Devi, Tagore published this manuscript in book form, but
did not present it as a collection of older padas. For him these were the modern
lyrics imagined upon the feelings of an individual where love and sublimity
would merge. Almost similar emotion was being expressed in the Poem
Vaisnava-kabita of his own anthology — Sonar Tari (1894). Should a
Vaisnava sing only for the heaven (Baikuntha)? Tagore put this question
before a Vaispava poet, and his own answer was in the negative. Rabindranath
thus reduced the sectarian practice of love and opened up its space to the human
individuals.

To extend his own project, and to keep asking the relevant questions, Tagore not only
refuse the utilitarian Vaisnavas, but also questioned the hardcore nationalists who
dethroned the goddess of love from the heart of the people. Rabindranath started a
debate in his major novel Char Adhvay (1934) when he restructured Bankim's
Mrnalini. In Mrnalini, the individual’s love was sacrificed at the altar of the lost
country. But in Char Adhvay, as Tagore wrote to Bramhabandhab Upadhyay, he
considered the love affair of Ela and Atin were more important than what he showed
as the violent nationalism laden with dare-devil incidents. It was true that after the
passing phase of the Banga-bhanga movement in (1905 onwards) which arose to unite
the two Bengals against the British idea of separation, Tagore was very critical about
the blind de-humanized nationalist politics and expressed his counter arguments in
novels like Gora (1910), Ghare Baire (1916) and Char Adhvay (1934).

But long before, in his book of poems Manasi (1890), Tagore had
problematized the utilitarian standpoint of the Bengali bhadraloks who were
eager to banish the love-bards for the sake of progressive discipline. In his
introduction to this book of poems, Tagore wrote, "[Here in this book] An
artist came and joined the poet,” Critics generally regard Manasi as the first
mature book of poems of Tagore. Most poems of this book were written in
Gajipur, a city of Western India, and it was fancied by Tagore that Western India
was a favourable subject of Romantic Imagination from his childhood. In Mirnasr,
Tagore mostly compiled his love poems, with romantic themes such as beauty,
journey, and nostalgia. One could refer to only two of them — Meghdut and Ekal 0
Sekal. In Meghdut, Tagore reread Kalidasa's famous Dutakabva. Before the birth
of Tagore, the orientalists had rediscove red this Sanskrit Kavya and translated it
into Western languages. In Bengal, Pandit Iswarchandra Vidyasagar edited and
published an authentic edition of this great work of Kalidasa. In his poem
Meghdut Tagore imagined a universal plane located beyond the worldly time and
space. This poem ends with the description of that universal plane- it is dark and
situated beyond the worldly hills and rivers. In Kalidas' Meghdut we can get the
story of a yaksa who was exiled, for not-d oi n g hi s w o r k, b y h i s m a s t e r i n
t h e R a m g i r i h i l l s w h e r e during the pangs of his separation from his
beloved, he sent a cloud as his messenger to Ujjayani. Ramgiri, Ujjayani all
these geographical names and places were meaningless to Tagore. He imagined
plane where the lila of milan and biraha was located, and was being felt by each
and every individual soul, was not imagined as a geographical entity as it cross
all known limits. Contrast this with the utilitarian nationalists who rejects love
poems for the sake of the progress of their country -- marked by a geographical
boundary where clock time is being used for the measurement and performance of
duty. For example, in the 19th century Bengal, the British rulers were making
categorical attempts to define the geographical boundary of their ruled states and
clock time was being introduced in the work place. The historian Sumit Sarkar
(1999:Writing Social History .: OUP London) elaborated and analyzed this to
show how Hindu babus who were initiated in the western education system
and were interested in new economic policy, gradually got accustomed to the
new time as dictated by clocks. Nationalists, like the rulers of their colony,
also used the same categories of time and space for the perceiving and
imagining of their mother land. This was constantly questioned by Tagore.

The sectarian Vaisnavas, on the other hand, think of a religious time and place.
The eternal lila of the God and his consorts are replayed in places like
Baikuntha, Vrndayana etc, and relayed in their poetic treatises. Rupa
Goswami, a great disciple of Chaitanya, and one of the makers of Gauria-
Vaisnava-dars'ana, wrote in his book Pritisandarva about Braja being a
place where time did not move (na hi yatrapi samaya). Tagore was not
talking about this kind of eternity either. In his poem Ekal Sekal (in the
anthology — Manasi), Tagore described a day of rainy season that inspired
the lyrical I (the narrator of the poem) to imagine the days and nights of
Radha. But he sublimated the lady from the boundary of Vaisnavism and
sectarianism by placing her in the heart of humanity by stating that her
Vrindavana still remained in the heart of humanity (ajo ache Vrndavana
manaber mane). In his own texts, Tagore did not favour the suppression of
the individual's emotion of love for the sake of fighting for the cause of a
particular nation state but on the contrary, he valued it for the sake of
humanity and human values. For him, humanity is not a vague categorical
collectivity. He wrote, later in an essay collected in his book Religion of Man
(1930), that "I have my conviction that in religion also in the arts, that which
is common to a group is not important. Indeed, very often it is a contagion of
mutual imitation." In fact, in his philosophical argument in Religion of Man,
Tagore used previous symptoms in full manifestation.

Tagore's project could be seen in another poem titled Deser Unnati (literally,
'Progress of the Motherland') in Manasi again, where he referred to anti-love
cry of the ‘so called’ patriots in a jocular manner. A typical character, in
another poem of Manasi, where Tagore called him Bangabir, lamented:
Birybal Bangalat-
Kemane balo tikibe ar
Premer gane kareche tar durdasar ses
(`As the love songs were spread through Bengal,
the land became a wretched one').

Tagore's philosophy of love was a reaction to this kind of repressiveness that

refused to register the individual's natural feelings and unnaturally curbed
him to be a patriot who must fight, and fight to create a geographical
territory. After the First World War, Tagore had vehemently opposed the
philosophy of nationalism that was based on the interest and progress of a
particular nation and which often clashed with the interest of other nation
states. As an alternative, he proposed the concept of 'Universal Man' ( Visva-
Manava) and 'Religion of Man' (Manava-Dharma), both of which were
modeled on the individual's love. Tagore had no faith in religious/statist
institutions as they "represented an artificial average, with its standard of
truth at its static minimum." But that is another story that needs to be told
elsewhere.

*
The author is a writer and columnist. He has published articles and books in
the area of cultural studies, nineteenth century studies, language politics. His
books include."Ghatipurus'(a narrative on micro history in Bengali), 'Yata
Bashi Jane Tato Beshi Mane' (a collection of Academic papers on 18th
Century Studies in Bengali), He is Working on a book on the language policy
and philosophy of Tagore.