Gandhi and Tagore

is book brings together the political thought of Gandhi and Tagore to
examine the relationship between politics, truth and conscience. It explores
truth and conscience as viable public virtues, with regard to two exemplars
of ethical politics, addressing in turn the concerns of an evolving modern
Indian political community.
e comprehensive and textually argued discussion frames the subject of
the validity of ethical politics in inhospitable contexts, su as the fanatically
despotic state and energised nationalism. e book studies in nuanced detail
Tagore’s opposition to political violence in colonial Bengal, the scope of non-
violence and satyagraha as recommended by Gandhi to Jews in Nazi
Germany, his response to the complexity of protest against the Jallianwala
Bagh massacre and the differently constituted nationalism of Gandhi and
Tagore. It presents their famous debate in a new light, embedded within the
dynamics of cultural identification, political praxis and the capacity of a
community to imbibe the principles of ethical politics.
Comprehensive and perceptive in analysis, this book is a valuable
addition for solars and researers of political science, with specialisation
in Indian political thought, philosophy and history.

Gangeya Mukherji is Reader in English at Mahamati Prannath

Mahavidyalaya, Mau-Chitrakoot, Uar Pradesh, India.
 Gandhi and Tagore

Politics, truth and conscience

GANGEYA MUKHERJI
First published 2016
by Routledge
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© 2016 Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla

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ISBN: 978-1-138-94617-0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-67097-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
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 Dedicated to

Manas Mukul Das

Rama Charan Tripathi
Sibesh Chandra Bhaaarya
 Contents

Foreword by Peter Ronald deSouza

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. Cuspidal imaginings of political community in modern India:

Bankimandra and Vivekananda

2. Politics: truth and non-violence

3. Nationalism: ethics and responsibility

4. In argument: considerance of the political

Bibliography

Index
 Foreword

It is not oen that one gets the privilege and the pleasure of writing a
foreword for a book in the history of ideas. e privilege comes from being
given an early glimpse of the four conversations that Gangeya Mukherji has
staged of the intellectual life of early twentieth-century India. ese are first
that between Indian thinkers and social reformers primarily of Bengal and
the thought traditions of ancient India; second, internally between this
group of thinkers themselves on what they regard as the sources of the
problems that confront India and on the different ways that ea suggests
for the country to move forward; third, between these thinkers and their
contemporaries in the West, especially those in Europe, where the
formulation of the question itself is to be argued over (What does it require
to be modern? What should modernity look like in India?); and fourth,
between thinkers across the globe of the contemporary that Gangeya holds
can shed light during his elaboration of an idea that was first articulated in
an earlier historical period. For example, he believes Bernard Williams must
intrude in a conversation between Tagore and Gandhi on truth and politics
because he has something valuable to offer. And from the argument as it
develops intrude he must.
ese are the four conversations that take place concurrently in the book
as Gangeya has thinkers from the past speak to the future and also, in
reverse, thinkers from the present speak to the past. His discussion of the
ideas of Bankim, Vivekananda, Tagore and Gandhi and some others that
emerge in the book is fascinating not just because it illumines the concerns
of the period but also because it invites us to distinguish between concerns
that have only period relevance from those that are more perennial. As an
able interlocutor, Gangeya introduces their ideas on ethics and politics and
also interrogates them from several vantage points. In the process, he entices
the reader to enter a world of our recent past where some of India’s ‘public
intellectuals’ – to use a modern descriptor whi I feel is not out of place for
that period – articulated a dream of India’s post-colonial future. When in
my opening statement I had said it was a privilege to write this foreword, it
was for the privilege of this early glance was what I was referring to.
e pleasure, however, comes from a different direction. Gangeya’s work
that I have had the opportunity to read, over the last six years, has in these
years freed itself from what I would like to call an exegetical diffidence and
has evolved into one that I can best describe as exegetical expansiveness. His
idiom and conceptual vocabulary has come into its own. is, I believe, is
indicative of the maturation of his ideas. He does not now seek to include
every comment that he finds interesting – a problem that many of us
struggle with and few can overcome – but allows his judgement to decide
what to exclude and what to include in his analysis. As a consequence, the
text does not become overloaded. is is a tough call, and only those who
have developed their own social philosophy can display su confidence
especially when the interlocution is with deep thinkers su as Gandhi and
Tagore. As a result, the text shows a maturity of understanding that one
begins to admire and I daresay sometimes even envy. (I wish I had thought
of that connection!) In this book, one can see Gangeya’s deep and
continuous engagement with the antinomies of the human condition. While
his solarship, even in the past, was never in doubt, given the expanse of
his reading, this work places him in a select solarly circle that only those
who first strictly follow classical protocols of first mastering the text to be
discussed, then locating it in its social and intellectual context, then
identifying possible persons it can speak to, and finally elaborating
extensively on its concerns, are admied. In this book, Gangeya has earned
his place in that select circle. is is what gives me so mu pleasure.
Having offered my understanding of the large canvass of the book, let me
now engage with some of the ideas expressed in it. Since I have no intention
of presenting a synopsis of the apters – one has to savour ea section for
oneself – let me instead respond to three ideas from the book. e first is his
borrowing Hannah Arendt’s phrase ‘dark times’ to refer to a period when
the moral fabric of a society is under stress, and perhaps worse, under
threat. Gangeya believes that the time of Tagore and Gandhi was su a
dark time when they were called upon to defend the moral fabric of Indian
society. His adoption of this term to describe the period is aractive because
it not only connects with the anges taking place in Europe, during the
same period, but it also brings into the centre of our discussion the ethical
element in politics. He holds that a time when it is believed that there is a
basic contradiction between ‘politics’ and ‘truth’ is a period that portends ill
for the polity. He seems to suggest, ever so subtly, that in our own times the
belief in the public discourse is of the existence of su a contradiction. Does
he wish to warn us that we are entering a period of dark times? Rather than
view this as a warning, I would like to see it as an invitation to study the
ideas of the intellectual stalwarts of an earlier age who too struggled with
questions similar to the ones that we are struggling with but who responded
to them in creative ways. ey were always mindful of the need to align
their commitment to the ethical with their desire for social and political
transformation. In their vision of the future, ethics and politics were aligned.
Engaging with the ideas of this period would help us enormously in finding
ways to think through the problems of India today. is is the value of the
book.
is brings me to the second big idea that has preoccupied ea of these
four conversations and that constitutes a running theme in the book. It is the
place of ‘conscience’ in public life. Gangeya regards conscience as being
cultivated by knowledge and ethical practice. is is a dense and layered
statement and in opening it up, we would find a plethora of questions on the
nature of subjectivity. For example, when does one know that it is
conscience that speaks in ethical ways and when is it the aempt by the
subconscious to aempt a cover up, a process of rationalisation of action
that we are only too familiar with rather than the critical judgement that
Gangeya is hopeful for? In our times, this role of conscience needs to be
debated more than it has been by contemporary political theorists. I say this
not only because I see the value of conscience for what it is, as the moral
arbiter of action, but also because the dynamics of agents, and of social
agency, in our thinking about institutions, needs to be subjected to a more
consistent interrogation. By drawing aention to ‘conscience’, he has drawn
aention to the complex problem of the nature of su agency. For Gangeya,
if I read him correctly, pragmatism seems to have replaced ethical politics. I
see this observation again as an invitation to open up another complex
problem in our study of ethical politics. Perhaps a clue is available in
Gandhi’s views on ‘ashram observances’ where he argues, in the lile
booklet, that ashram rules must be strictly followed and must become a
habit and when that happens, ‘then and only then is one ready for public
life’. In true Buddhist dialectics, we must spend a lot of effort thinking about
the meaning of ‘then’. Gandhi seems to be saying that only when one has
developed the habit of following rules (moral or legal?), when they become
second nature and not burdens, then and only then will the conscience
emerge as a guide? is is an area of enquiry that is gestured to in the book.
e third large idea in these conversations is their thoughts regarding the
making of ‘political community’. is is the core of the book because
Gangeya, as a historian of ideas, tries to give us the different answers
propounded by Bankim, Vivekananda, Tagore and Gandhi on how to build
and sustain a political community and on what should be its nature. is
concern is at the centre of political debates in India today. ere are rumours
in 2015 that the current dispensation is seeking to restructure the secular and
plural political community that was built by the members of the constituent
assembly and move us towards a more muscular majoritarian polity. Be that
as it may, this book, Gandhi and Tagore: Politics, Truth and Conscience, is a
valuable contribution to the debate.
I want to end this foreword with a lament and a hope. e lament is of
our intellectual practices of inadequate interrogation by our academy of the
social and political thought of India, of the implicit assumption by modern
solars in the humanities and the social sciences that the thinkers of
modern India have lile illumination to offer our times and that if we wish
to understand our present it is beer to look across the oceans. is
borrowing of ideas is in itself not a problem as long as, following the
injunction of K. C. Bhaaarya, we subject them to critical scrutiny. But
we do not. We borrow uncritically and as a result, our minds ‘get enslaved’.
D. L. Sheth in his essays has shown the costs we have had to pay for this
uncritical borrowing of the idea of ‘development’ from the West. With deep
pathos, Tagore describes this condition, in his essay on the Eastern
University:
e training we get in our sools has the constant implication in it that it is not for us to produce
but to borrow. And we are casting about to borrow our educational plans from European
institutions. e trampled plants of Indian corn are dreaming of recouping their harvest from the
neighbouring wheat fields. To ange the figure, we forget that, for proficiency of walking, it is
beer to train the muscles of our own legs than to strut upon wooden ones of foreign make.1

Gangeya’s book is a step in the other direction. Because it is a text in the

history of ideas of early twentieth-century India and one developed through
four conversations, it stands without the burden of ‘struing around upon
wooden legs of foreign make’. My hope is that the solarly approa
adopted by this book, of mastery of text and of staging a conversation
between a thinker and a range of others, will be the direction taken by more
studies in the intellectual history of India. is way of returning, recovering
and reconstructing a world of ideas from our past (both recent and distant)
is, I believe, the best defence against an obscurantism that seeks to
appropriate our past to control the present. We desperately need su
defences in India today.
Peter Ronald deSouza
27 July 2015

Peter Ronald deSouza is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies and holds the Dr. S. Radhakrishnan Chair of the Rajya Sabha till
April 2017.

Note
1. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘An Eastern University’ in ed. Sisir Kumar Das, The English Writings of

Rabindranath Tagore (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2001), 3: 562.

 Preface

The present volume has emerged from a fellowship at the Indian Institute
of Advanced Study. e progression of this project on the political thought
of Gandhi and Tagore increasingly conveyed to me the necessity and
propriety of a modification in the earlier plan, and the focus in this book has
become thereby sharper on the relationship of politics with truth and
conscience in the political writings of Gandhi and Tagore. e oice of the
thematic itself might appear as anomalous, oxymoronic even, inasmu as
imagining the possibility of disabusing politics from power seems, not any
the less particularly in our age, more impossibly difficult. e political
community, manifestly, is lile disposed to value integrity of position along
with logicality of argument and fairness of method, and with political
shades now gradually acquiring a pervasive opacity, it is almost as if the
conditions that drew Hannah Arendt’s comment are once again forming on
the periphery of our collective political vision: ‘History knows many periods
of dark times in whi the public realm has been obscured and the world
become so dubious that people have ceased to ask any more of politics than
that it show due consideration for their vital interests and personal liberty.’1
On the plane of politics, however, it will not only bode ill for its very
concept, but also wholly limit the possibility of politics, if the equation
between politics and truth comes to be unqualifiedly accepted as having
been historically contradictory. Nevertheless, it might quite clearly be
discernible on the plane of philosophy that the division between politics and
truth is not equal.2 As to this, a resilient conscience in the political actors
might provide leverage to politics to approximate itself to the virtue of truth.
It may be appropriate to mention at this point that the virtue of conscience,
in the conceptual world of both Gandhi and Tagore, is united more with a
general human inclination to ethical purpose than overtly informed/formed
by a particular tradition of knowledge or ethics. rough a Western
epistemic analogy, this virtue can be perhaps described as something akin to
syndersis, as understood in terms of an instinctive and immediate
comprehension of first moral principles. Subsequent interpretations, in the
West, of this faculty of positive discrimination imbued it with authority
whi connected with ethical decisions. Hannah Arendt has indicated the
inherence and development of this faculty in Western conceptions.
‘Conscience, as we understand it in moral or legal maers, is always present
within us, just like consciousness. And this conscience is also supposed to
tell us what to do and what to repent; before it became the lumen naturale
or Kant’s practical reason, it was the voice of God.’3 Both Gandhi and Tagore
regarded conscience as primarily being an impulse that could be so naturally
potent as to become even an imposition on the mind of the individual and
an imperative on his actions. Hence, their confidence as to the demonstrable
rectitude of the untutored human mind, and in its latent and durable
ethicality even when faced with close situations, is strikingly illustrated in
one of Tagore’s short stories, Ramkanaier Nirbuddhita (The Folly of
4
Ramkanai). Conscience in their understanding would, however, not be
limited by this definition to an instinctual response only and was considered
to be further cultivatable by knowledge and ethical practice. e six ancient
sools of Hindu philosophy have broadly agreed that the conscience
(antahkarana) is an amalgamation of mind (man), intellect (buddhi),
consciousness (chitta) and ego (ahamkara). Motivated mainly by the soul
(atman), it is determined in its rea and power by the play of the three
aretypal human qualities (gunas) of goodness (sattva), passion (rajas) and
ignorance (tamas). Inherent thus in all humans, conscience is formed in
proportion to the quality of goodness in an individual and sustained in large
degrees through knowledge and reflection. Emmanuel Levinas perceives
conscience as a transcendent quality beyond the certitude of the self and a
facilitator of truth through its recognition of the finitude and frailty of the
cognitively located individual. ‘Conscience welcomes the Other. It is a
revelation of a resistance to my powers that does not counter them as a
greater force, but calls in question the naïve right of my powers, my glorious
spontaneity as a living being. Morality begins when freedom, instead of
being justified by itself, feels itself to be arbitrary and violent. e sear for
the intelligible and the manifestation of the critical essence of knowing, the
movement of a being ba to what precedes its condition, begin together.’5
is aptitude for cultivation provides for translation of conscience from an
operational discrimination in practical situations to a faculty for reasoning
and oice on the plane of concept and principle. ese twin aspects of
conscience may be thought for them to effectively cover, in the sphere of
politics, the gamut from philosophical understanding to individual action.
It is at the same time both reasonably evident and anowledged that
Gandhi as well as Tagore had a certain distrust of the practice of politics as
it obtained in the political class in India. Gandhi’s famous early dismissal of
English parliamentary democracy, the indiscriminate emulation of whi he
along with Tagore was highly critical of and its political officers is well
known: ‘they [Prime Ministers] have neither real honesty nor a living
conscience’. Tagore’s political writings are usually not as well accessed as his
literary oeuvre, but he was a serious political thinker and also a critic of the
prevailing political practices, as in this comment on Indian politics: ‘those
whom we call bhadra (genteel) have decided that politics is the division of
India’s throne’. But to present these two opinions as finally indicating their
binary opposition to the methodology of politics will be inaccurate and
preclude the nuance and detail of their consideration of politics. Associating
them with entirely unrealistic aspirations and judgements and therewith
describing them through the metaphor of wistfulness will constitute them as
political exotica. Unfortunately, su an impression is not wholly
uncommon in our academic discourse on polity. e lives of both Gandhi
and Tagore intersected the decades that witnessed massive political crimes
against humanity and whi were included in the definition of dark times as
given by Hannah Arendt. Any notion of the elision, in their political thought
of crucial ethical issues and moral oices, required in the political world of
those years, will categorise them at best as ineffectual and unconcerned
moral dreamers. In the case of Tagore particularly, the obscuring of his
insistent and informed interrogatory offered to the political community
might inadvertently depict him as a flaneur on the political landscape of his
times. Even their contemporary evaluators on occasions either
misunderstood or misrepresented their positions. In a recent study, Sean
Scalmer has described the deliberate construction of an abridged Gandhism
− as against Gandhi’s splendour and vastness of range conveyed in his
Collected Works − through censorship or reportage and in carefully wrien
official reports, including imputations of violence, for consumption in the
West during Gandhi’s own lifetime.6 Tagore was perceived by a sympathetic
biographer as a prisoner of his sensibilities.
Although the organisation of their political thought, the definiteness of its
position and the directness of its articulation distinguishes serious intent
from platitude, some solars have tended to aribute quaintness to the
metaphysical associations whi are otherwise intrinsic to their positions.
Gandhi had said on record, while explaining the reasons for writing an
autobiographical narrative, that his internationally known experiments in
the sphere of politics were of far less value to himself than his spiritual
experiments whi had to a great extent enabled his political experiments:
‘But I should certainly like to narrate my experiments in the spiritual field
whi are known only to myself, and from whi I have derived su power
as I possess for working in the political field.’7 e metaphysics inherent to
their politics reinforced their ethical positions, and they thus simultaneously
abstained from and transformed the purely political. Leszek Kolakowski has,
in another context, indicated at the complication of wholly dismissing
metaphysics from politics, particularly when evaluating issues relating to
political ethics.8 Affairs have nevertheless come to su a pass that,
notwithstanding the astonishing subtlety and hardness of their political
thought, Gandhi and Tagore have, in some sections of solarship, gradually
transformed to become more of a conscience than pathfinders in the world
of politics.
e present study seeks to explore the first principles of ethical politics as
conceived by Gandhi and Tagore and thereby contextually explores truth
and conscionableness as viable public virtues. For these two thinkers, the
citizen and member of political community were not different in ethical
quality from the apolitical individual. e affiliations of state and nation do
not necessarily compromise the ethical positions of the individual, and the
political thought of our two protagonists foregrounds the tradition of truth
telling, whi provides the plane of the reconciliation of politics with truth
and conscience. e reincarnation of tradition was, however, not
unproblematic for them, and the imagining of the values of responsibility
and participation on their part involved the aempt to redraw the
conversational parameters of the ancient sophisticated cultures of India to
enable a conversation between the different intellectual traditions of East
and West. is was perhaps sequential and also necessary to make this
redefining of identity sustainable on the philosophical as well as the
practical plane. Gandhi and Tagore prominently highlighted that whi had
begun to gather increasing aention since the last few decades of the
nineteenth century, the unethicality of expediency being allowed to deny
equal political energy to the abolition of gender and caste hieraries, as was
otherwise being directed to the aim of decolonising India politically. India is
currently engaged with working out issues of representation and
participation across diverse secular and religious classes/communities.
Sustained efforts are underway among communities to think through
innovative positions regarding identity and belonging. In the thinking of
concepts/ideas of future communities, the foundational thinking as of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century India regarding the modern Indian
community may be thought to acquire some relevance as new situations
keep currently unfolding. It is difficult to relegate the debates centred on the
defence of traditional political ethics in the early nineteenth century as mere
worship of an imaginary past. e major protagonists of the debates were
engaging with the Euro-centric claims of the superior morality of Western
social and political systems and in aempting to reject the unqualified
applicability of su claims were also opening the discourse to a future
examination of both traditional and modern social and political institutions.
Certain later Indian thinkers, in addition to those who completely rejected
traditional institutions as exploitative and immoral, focussed on both the
deleterious and the creative aspects of traditional Indian political thought in
their explorations of alternative conceptual resources. C. A. Bayly has drawn
aention to the significance of this early defence of tradition, highlighting
the roles of P. Raghavia, an official in the British administration, and Ram
Raz, an Indian judge in Bangalore, during the second and third decades of
the nineteenth century. It is relevant to refer to Bayly in detail with regard
to the implications of the debate and its reception in contemporary
solarship in the field of India studies.
One reason the patriotic political debates of the early nineteenth century have been overlooked by
historians is that politics has been rather narrowly defined. It is this that makes it possible for
writers su as Partha Chaerjee and Peter van de Veer (sic) to privilege religion in a narrow
sense in their accounts of early anti-colonial resistance. But cultural debates were equally
important. e rejection of British claims to hegemony in arts and sciences was a highly political
act, since the British ‘empire of opinion’ was explicitly legitimized in these terms. In this sense the
numerous aempts by Indian authorities of the early nineteenth century to protect Indian learning
both physically and intellectually from the ravages of the colonizers deserve aention.9

A discussion on Bankimandra Chaerjee and Vivekananda opens this

study. eir thinking comprises an early outsider intervention in the
discussion on the concept of national politics, involving mainly a sense of
ethics and responsibility. One can perceive, as reflected in these thinker-
activists, the trajectory of modern Indian thought from an early effort to
define Indian identity, whi involved a preoccupation with the glorification
of past epistemology and tradition, to a more pressing concern with the
operability of certain ethical principles in the present Indian political
community. Awareness of discriminatory arrangements in social and
knowledge structures and responsibility towards their eradication emerge as
crucial ethical qualities in their imagination of the political community in
modern India. Notably, both of them were among those who extended their
historical sense from the generally prevalent tendency to cra histories in
either Hindu or Islamic themes while responding to British pictures of
past/present Indian community. ere was no ambivalency in their
imagination of the religious community in modern India. Vivekananda’s
ceaseless aempts to instil the quality of religious tolerance and harmony in
the discourse of community, for instance, can be appreciated when the
potential of religious bierness in the context of culture conflict under
colonialism is recognised. A case in point is the anti-Christian riots in
Tinnevelly in 1857, whi were not of a aracter as can be immediately
described under the broad rubric of communalism, but could be, still
dangerously for the future, defined as being relatable with a single specific
issue that was possibly explicable as one of cultural resistance, a resentment
against what has been described with inevitable irony as the burial of
‘polluted outcasts in the sacred land and the procession of their biers along
royal streets’.10
e next two apters discuss the politics of Gandhi and Tagore as
conceived and practised on the plane of truth and conscience and by logical
extension that of non-violence. e discussion aempts to demonstrate the
validity of their politics in two theoretically inhospitable situations, in the
context of nationalism generally, and more specifically the position of
Tagore concerning the araction of political violence as retributive justice in
the arged atmosphere of colonial discrimination and racial humiliation in
India in the early twentieth century, and second, that of Gandhi on
satyagraha against the terrible persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany where
all possibilities of non-violence were believed to be verging on the
impossible, if not downright extinction. e discussion has tried to include
the conceivable aspects of the two situations and foregrounds how they
visualised politics and the political conscience, if one can deploy su a
terminology, in a perspective of eternity that renders unworkable any
justification for its yoking it with violence or destructive nationalism. I have
not here considered the idea of constructive nationalism to be a mere
terminological inexactitude and have argued that the nationalistic ethos of
the Indian freedom movement is largely a differently constructed
nationalism, at the same time remaining identifiable under the broad rubric
of nationalism. Gandhi and Tagore can be seen to endorse this variety of
nationalism.11 In positing this idea, one will have to negotiate certain serious
theoretical problems whi have been identified in the past and as for
instance have been appositely raised by Ashis Nandy. Nandy has argued
that Gandhi and Tagore had essentially imagined a post-nationalist India
aer decolonisation and that it was only the contemporary limitations of
vocabulary obtainable to them that cause what is to him a misreading of
their otherwise pronouncedly anti-nationalistic writings. ‘It is true that some
of their writings allow a casual reader to classify them as nationalists –
official India has already done so and got away with it – they both were at
best imperfect or bad nationalists. To call them nationalists is to vend a
local, vernacular version of territoriality, a patently ersatz nationalism.’12 e
present study anowledges the difficulties perhaps only too logically
associated and borne out as well in a few cases in twentieth-century India,
with the imagination of a variety of constructive nationalism, but
endeavours to extend itself beyond this constraint, insofar as it appreciates
the spirit of inclusivity that so prominently inhabits the nationalistic vision
in colonial India. From Bankimandra onwards, with the growth of the
ideal of modern India, the leading protagonists in this narrative tended to
transcribe nationalism in a sense that was opposed to the dominant
European variety, whi they anowledged as being primarily a destructive
force in the aracter of communities. e presidential address of C. R. Das
in 1922 at the Gaya Session of the Congress is illustrative in this regard. He
described the ideal nationalism as the expression of a nation’s identity, not
in opposition but in assistance, to the similar ‘self- expression and self-
realisation’ of other nations, clarifying that this concept of nationalism was
especially different from the variant of nationalism prevailing in Europe:
‘Nationalism in Europe is an aggressive nationalism, a selfish nationalism, a
commercial nationalism, of gain and loss.’13 National interests, he said, were
erroneously perceived as being intractably contrary among nations, and it
was therefore not realised that to inflict hurt on another nation was to hurt
humanity and ultimately therefore to hurt one’s own nation. ‘at is
European nationalism; that is not the nationalism of whi I am speaking to
you today. I contend that ea nationality constitutes a particular stream of
the great unity, but no nation can fulfil itself unless and until it becomes
itself and at the same time realises its identity with Humanity. e whole
problem of nationalism is therefore to find that stream and to face that
destiny.’14 He described the growth of Indian nationality in terms of an
amalgamation of forces, only apparently hostile, over the centuries. is
process moulded a common culture from binaries that included the Aryan
and the non-Aryan, the Brahmanic and the Buddhist, the Hindu and the
Islamic; and finally, English culture whi initially shoed the feeling of
Indianness, but then concluded the unification of the Indian spirit.
Underwriting political non-cooperation with the philosophy of swaraj and
sadhana, Das argued that non-cooperation could be explained on the plane
of ethics and spirituality as a withdrawal from elements injurious at once to
the good of a particular nation, and therefore humanity as well, and as
isolating from forces that were extraneous to one’s nature, ‘an isolation and
withdrawal whi is necessary in order to bring out from our hidden depths
the soul of the nation in all her glory’.15 For the present, without entering
into the problematic of extraneity and heterogeneity, it is perhaps possible to
speculate on the aspiration for a responsible national state that was in
evidence in the nationalistic discourse, with Gandhi and Tagore as its
exemplars, of the period under study.
An overview of their mutual argument over political praxis, most notably
reflected in non-cooperation, concludes the study. e manifest and
cultivable capacity of the majority of people to imbibe the principles of
ethical politics appears to be a major concern in the debate between them,
embedded significantly within the dynamics of cultural identification on the
part of communities. Gandhi, arguably one of the finest practitioners of
mass politics, appears with his political movements to pose at times a serious
puzzle to Tagore, who was frankly sceptical as to Gandhi’s understanding of
the human material he was dealing with in his politics. However, it should
not by this interrogation alone be presumed that the preparation of the
political participants was any less crucial for Gandhi as it was for Tagore. As
will be seen in the discussion, Tagore was disinclined to any dilution, in the
name of either mass suitability or mass concern, of content and style in the
sphere of literature and the arts. He believed that accessibility to the finest
literature encouraged the cultivation of sophisticated tastes and appreciation
in the wider reading public, and conversely, literary sensibilities were
impeded and devalued by accustomed exposure to superficial literature.
ere could not be separate categories of literature for the aristocracy and
the proletariat. His view of mass politics was both similar and different from
his position on ‘people’s’ literature, insofar as he disagreed with any kind of
ethical devaluation of political campaigns on the grounds of expediency
even while remaining sceptical of the restraint of communities during
inflammable political situations. He, therefore, disfavoured mass campaigns
su as swadeshi and the non-cooperation movement. Gandhi, agreeing
undeviatingly with the principles of ethics and preparation, effectively relied
on his intuitive grasp of public feeling, a grasp whi can be considered to
have been generally authenticated by events. Isaiah Berlin once described
the political behaviour of highly successful statesmen as analogous to artists
who understood their medium.16 Gandhi was, of course, mu more than a
statesman in the usual sense of the term. However, political artistry can,
with reasonable sustainability, be included in a description of his qualities,
and it might be possible to draw some explanation of his political
imaginativeness by his reasoning of his political decisions.
John Rawls had very cogently described his approa to understanding
political philosophy and its relevant texts. is excerpt can indicate a helpful
cartography of solarship: ‘We learn moral and political philosophy, and
indeed any other part of philosophy by studying the exemplars – those
noted figures who have made erished aempts – and we try to learn from
them, and if we are luy, to find a way to go beyond them. My task was to
explain Hobbes, Loe and Rousseau, or Hume, Leibniz and Kant as clearly
and forcefully as I could, always aending carefully to what they actually
said.’17 In this study, I have tried to bind all along the two main protagonists
of our story to their own texts and to the details of their positions during
some of the most difficult tests that confronted their political thought in
their lifetimes.

Notes
1. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1968), 11.
2. I am reminded in this context of Lucien Febvre’s initial comment to Fernand Braudel on his oice
of topic for resear: ‘Philip II and the Mediterranean, a good subject. But why not the
Mediterranean and Philip II? A mu larger subject. For between these two protagonists, Philip
and the middle sea, the division is not equal.’ Oswyn Murray, ‘Introduction’, in Fernand Braudel,
Memory and the Mediterranean, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), x.
3. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (San Diego: Harcourt Inc., 1978), 190.
4. Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali (125th anniversary edition), 15 vols. (Kolkata: Visva-
Bharati, 1986–1992 [1393–1398 Bengali Era]), 8: 504–507. e tragic story narrates humorously the
innate but unconscious ethicism of a simple villager Ramkani who, even though unwilling at one
level, feels compelled in his heart to truthfully write the will of his semi-conscious and dying elder
brother Guruaran who bequeaths his entire property to his wife, frustrating the hopes of
Ramkanai and his family regarding his son’s inheritance of the property. Ramkanai, the only
witness to the will, carefully hands it over to his widowed sister-in-law, admonishing her to
preserve it safely. His honesty is resented by his wife and son. e habitually ill-treated Ramkanai
is aerwards compelled to go to Benaras. Meanwhile, his son and wife conspire to forge a will and
allenge in court the claims of Guruaran’s widow, and Ramkanai is summoned ba home to
testify in support of his son. Astounded and stupefied by their action, he abstains for the next two
days from all food and drink, till the time he is required to present himself in court. Exceedingly
weak, and facing the circumlocutory interrogation of the opposing counsel, Ramkanai cuts him
short and addressing the judge, testifies that the will in favour of Guruaran’s widow is genuine
and wrien in Ramkanai’s own hand and also that the one pro- duced by his son is a forgery. His
son his sent to prison. Ramkanai returns home to lapse into a severe illness and dies shortly
aerwards, lamenting for his son and himself unlamented by his family and relatives.
5. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis
(Pisburgh, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 84.
6. Sean Scalmer, Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest (New Delhi:
Cambridge University Press, 2011).
7. M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad:
Navjivan Publishing House, 1988), vi.
8. Kolakowski is apparently engaging with the problematic of an overriding ideology in politics: ‘If
we reject the principle that the end justifies the means, we can only appeal to higher, politically
irrelevant moral criteria: and this, Trotsky says, amounts to believing in God.’ Leszek Kolakowski,
 ‘Leibniz and Job: e Metaphysics of Evil and the Experience of Evil’, in Leszek Kolakowski, Is

God Happy? Selected Essays (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 170.

9. C. A. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the

Making of Modern India, in The C. A. Bayly Omnibus (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), 70–
71.
10. Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia, 76–77.
11. I am, in this context, consciously avoiding discrimination between patriotism and nationalism.
Admiing of the subtle variations occasionally indicated in the usage of these two terms, it is still
possible to argue that, for the purposes of the present discussion, they are here not meaningfully
opposed to ea other. On another note, and with this caveat, my perception of the nationalism of
Gandhi and Tagore approximates to the position taken by Hilary Putnam in the symposium on
patriotism and cosmopolitanism initiated by Martha Nussbaum, where Putman argues for what
can be defined as a located openness: ‘In sum, we do not have to oose between patriotism and
universal reason; critical intelligence and loyalty to what is best in our traditions, including our
national and ethnic traditions, are interdependent.’ Hilary Putnam, ‘Must We Choose?’, in Martha
C. Nussbaum, Love of Country, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 97.
12. Ashis Nandy, Regimes of Narcissism, Regimes of Despair (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013),
16.
13. Congress Presidential Addresses, ed. A. M. Zaidi, 5 vols. (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied
Political Resear, 1986–1989), 2: 55–56.
14. Congress Presidential Addresses, 2: 56.
15. Congress Presidential Addresses, 2: 58.
16. Berlin describes many of their political courses, whi can be seemingly unexplainable on the
plain of theory, as proceeding from a combination of factors, including a leaping but accurate
empirical understanding of players and situations. ‘Judgement, skill, sense of timing, grasp of the
relation of means to results depend upon empirical factors, su as experience, observation, above
all on that “sense of reality” whi largely consists in semi-conscious integration of a large
number of apparently trivial or unnoticeable elements in the situation that between them from
some kind of paern whi of itself “suggests” – “invites” – the appropriate action. Su action is,
no doubt, a form of improvisation, but flowers only upon the soil of ri experience and
exceptional responsiveness to what is relevant in the situation – a gi without whi neither
artists nor scientists are able to aieve original results.’ Isaiah Berlin, ‘Realism in Politics’, in
 Isaiah Berlin, The Power of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2002), 139–140.
17. Samuel Freeman, Rawls (Delhi: Routledge, 2007), 7.
 Anowledgements

Manas Mukul Das has initiated and encouraged my engagement with this
area of study that continues to occupy my life so fruitfully. Rama Charan
Tripathi intervened at a crucial moment to enable me to pursue resear and
has since then unhesitatingly provided sustenance in difficult situations.
Sibesh Chandra Bhaaarya’s exactness in both widening my intellectual
horizon and restraining my enthusiastic conclusiveness has only been
mated with his invaluable guidance over conceptual terrain. e
dedication of this book refers to a erished relationship with these three
remarkable individuals and my deep sense of gratitude for their unstinting
vatsalya for me.
Peter Ronald deSouza made possible the writing of this book and invited
me to look more closely and then beyond my initial project. He presented
me with difficult questions and helped me to negotiate through them. e
sections on Gandhi’s position on Jew resistance in Nazi Germany and
Jallianwala Bagh were wrien in dialogue with him. It is not easy to
adequately convey the generosity and affection of his friendship. He has
been both a mentor and intellectual interlocutor and largely influenced my
intellectual cartography. I remain indebted to him.
I remember with undiminished pleasure the enlightening and delightful
conversations with Surabhi Sheth and D. L. Sheth, while savouring warm
hospitality in their homes in Shimla and Delhi. ey have helped the
understanding of the wider thematic of the book. I am grateful to them. e
book has been some time in gestation. Its argument has been presented in
papers before seminars in Shimla, Delhi, Visva Bharati, Coin, Varkala and
Allahabad. For comments and illuminating discussion, I am particularly
grateful to U. R. Ananthamurthy, Sudhir Chandra, Basudeb Chaerjee, Uma
Das Gupta, Rajmohun Gandhi, Gopal Guru, Sudipta Kaviraj, Ashis Nandy,
Kanana Natarajan, Bhalandra Nemade, Sari Nusseibeh, Sanjay
Palshikar, Manas Ray, Tapan Rayaudhuri, Sundar Sarukkai, Amiya P. Sen,
Chetan Singh, Tridip Suhrud and Vir Bharat Talwar. Harish Trivedi has been
ever generous with kind affection. Arindam Chakrabarti and Vrinda
Dalmiya are difficult and valued interlocutors and remain concerned and
supportive of my personal and intellectual well-being. I am grateful to them.
My special thanks to Upamanyu Basu, Murali Manohar Dwivedi, Arvind
Gupta, Pankaj Mishra, Surya Narain, Vijender Singh Rana, Debarshi Sen,
Ashok Sharma, Girija Shankar, Rajendra Singh, S. B. Singh, Shashank
akur and Diwakar Tripathi for their kindness and ample support over the
last many years and to Shashank Sinha and Shoma Choudhury at Routledge
for their support and undiminished courtesy while I delayed repeatedly over
the many timelines during the writing of this book. I remain grateful to
Susheela Vyas and Ram Narain Vyas for their simple and abiding affection
and to lile Kartikeya for sharing his ildhood with me.
My parents were concerned with the progress of the book, occasionally
even to the extent of camouflaging their indisposition in ensuring supportive
environment for my project. My gratitude towards them for everything in
life remains now blended with my preoccupation with their happiness and
prayers for their life and safety. I am thankful to Deepshikha and
Madhumita for lending their active support for realising these prayers.
Working on this project has, as always, been made possible with support
from Nandini and her taking all responsibility during my long absences
from home.
 I
Cuspidal imaginings of political
community in modern India
Bankimchandra and Vivekananda

The early imaginings of the political community in modern India are

perhaps beer understood within the relationship of politics with the values
of truth and conscience. e political imagination evolved as a part of
conceptional nationalism that envisaged the centrality of reform and the
reimagining of tradition and social arrangements. It is widely anowledged
that the most meaningful intellectual engagement in nineteenth-century
India related to the reform of the social, religious and political community.
We now live in an age of hardened positions regarding ideas and
concepts. Many of our ideas of protest and social/systemic ange are indeed
as they should be a maer of faith for us. But this has an unfortunate
complication of creating barriers in a conversation of ideas even while
guarding against any dilution in the ideological commitment, so mu so
that the baggage of historical/ideological contradistinctions threatens to
oke all rapproements. Monolithic doctrines generate opposition and
protest. And with the growing harshness of assertion, this may naturally
follow that intractable ideological dispute may find its manifestation in
violence. Needless to say this is happening. e question of the relevance of
the value of reconciliation in social ange may not be altogether irrelevant.
Reconciliation might ultimately serve as impost for situating of truth and
conscience at the centre of politics, meeting a crucial condition for non-
violent ange in human affairs. It is true that for many in the academy, the
Indian nationalist idea has been divested of nearly all regard, but analyses of
its workings may not entirely fail to reveal the glimmerings of truth and
conscionableness. Sudhir Chandra has seen a somewhat similar value in the
phenomenon of Indian nationalism: ‘Seeing through the magic of an idea or
ideology is important to knowing. But recognising the efficacy and glory of
the magic while it lasted, is no less important.’1 I do not thereupon intend,
however, to allude to any ephemerality or unreality regarding the concern
for justice and restitution that I find solidly reflected in a major trajectory of
Indian nationalism and the pragmatism of its politics.

Nationalism qua reform

Charles Griswold represents true reconciliation as being dependent on
truthful memory: ‘Without honest assessment of the past, no memory worth
having; without honest memory, no present worth living; without apology
for injuries done, no future worth hoping for.’2 For our present purpose,
reconciliation may be viewed as an aitudinal concept with regard to the
social world, or to ‘one’s own social world’. Looking at Hegel’s social
philosophy as a project of reconciliation, Miael Hardimon has examined
the question of social aitude. ‘Ones aitude towards one’s social world
may be implicit, expressed by the way in whi one relates to the central
institutions and practices of the society. “Relating to an institution” is a
maer of conducting oneself in a certain way with a certain frame of mind
with regard to that institution.’3 But the issue of adopting a particular
aitude is again imbued with different layers of consciousness and could
even sound amorphous, especially in cases where the aitude may be one of
unqualified acceptance of social arrangements and institutions. However, the
idea of relating to the political order is in Hardimon’s view comparatively
easy to depict within a political order, like that of Nazi Germany whi
forces answers to basic questions of compliancy, complacency and resistance
to an evidently evil regime: ‘How can I avoid complicity in its evil?’4
Reconciliation has also been taken to mean ‘resignation’, ‘submission’ or
‘consolation’. I have osen to use reconciliation not in these terms but have
rather seen it as both a process and a situation. As a process, reconciliation
seeks to overcome conflict, division and alienation, whereas the restoration
of harmony and equity is the state of reconciliation. It would be preferable
for the discussion to view it also as a form of protest and as a positive
concept that Hardimon finds best expressed in the German term versohnung
(conciliation), whi conveys transformative possibility in that it does not
presuppose a return to earlier circumstances in reconciling but rather
reconciling in transformation. Hardimon speculates on the foundational
aitudes of this transformation:
is, in turn, allows us to articulate further our understanding of the conditions the social world
must meet if it is to be a home. It seems natural to suggest that if the social world is to be a home,
there must be no class of people who are excluded from participating in its central arrangements.
We might try to convey this point by suggesting that, in assessing our relation to the social world,
the guiding question should not be, Can I be reconciled to the social world? but rather, Can we be
reconciled to the social world?5

In the early years of the Congress, the apex organisation of Indian

nationalism, there was a general anowledgement of the moral necessity of
merging social reform with nationalism. But it should not be imagined that
the imperativeness of su merging were unanimously accepted in the
policy planning sessions of the highest level. is indifference, manifested as
objection on grounds of expediency and practicability, persisted till the first
decade of the twentieth century in spite of the general and expressed feeling
among many of the intellectuals and leaders of the disprivileged groups that
the largely casteist nationalist movement had no commonality with the
crucial issues affecting their society. Jotirao Phule was writing in 1873 in
Gulamgiri (Slavery) of the great benefit of English rule in ending caste
oppression in India, and of his gradual disillusionment, as against his
boyhood enthusiasm, with nationalist exhortations directed at the unity of
all classes to free India from colonial subjection. Phule terms English rule as
a great social leveller and harbinger of opportunities for the shudras and
counsels them to avail of the avenues of advancement till English rule
lasted. He is rather caustic about mainstream nationalist politics as it
obtained till his time: ‘ank God that He helped the brave English to
subdue the rebellion of the bhat Nana [Saheb]. Otherwise those enlightened
brahmans who worship the phallus would surely have sentenced many
mahars for life for tuing their dhotis at one side or for having uered
Sanskrit shlokas in their kirtanas.’6 In the Congress session in 1886 at
Calcua, Dadabhai Naoroji, notwithstanding his stated awareness to its
necessity, flatly denied the propriety of the desire of delegates to admit
questions of social reform on the Congress platform, as they had met as a
political organisation to plead for political representation, and not to confer
on social reform, and criticism for ignoring social issues would be analogous
to ‘[blaming] the House of Commons for not discussing the abstruser
problems on mathematics or metaphysics’.7 Badruddin Tyabji, as president
in the Congress session at Madras in 1887, reiterated Naoroji’s position on
the grave objection of the delegacy to Congress not discussing the issues
related to social reform.8 e most detailed expositional refusal to the
persistent demand to prominently incorporate social reform issues in the
Congress proceedings came from W. C. Bonnerjee in his presidential address
in the Allahabad session in 1892. Bonnerjee informed the delegacy that this
issue had been ‘discussed threadbare’ in the inaugural Bombay session with
prominent social reformers including Mahadev Govind Ranade, and it was
decided not to ‘meddle’ with the question, leaving delegates, however, free
to confer informally on the topic in the Congress hall aer the formal
session. is position was adopted mainly because of the controversial
nature of the issue and the potential fractiousness that could accrue from
formal involvement of Congress sessions with the topic of social ange.
Bonnerjee pointedly mentioned the variety of concerns linked to this theme,
based on individual as well as community aitudes, ranging from women
education, ild marriage to widow remarriage. Significantly, he refuted the
argument that all political reform had to be preceded by social reform. is
position is of course deservedly open to analysis on the plane of political
philosophy; however, Bonnerjee here referred to the sustainability of the
linkage in the context of purely legal measures that the Congress had been
consistently proposing, su as the separation of judicial and executive
powers up to a level and amendments in laws relating to land and forests.
He asked suggestively: ‘I ask again, what have these to do with social
reforms? Are we not fit for them because our widows remain unmarried and
our girls are given in marriage earlier than in other countries? because our
wives and daughters do not drive about with us visiting our friends? because
we do not send our daughters to Oxford or Cambridge?’9 Bonnerjee did not
in this context raise the issue of the humiliation and exploitation of the
perpetually oppressed castes in India. But, as amply indicated by the
persistent presence of the issue of social reform even at the highest levels of
the political leadership, su questions were being earnestly discussed in the
political community. In a few years, the strongest criticism by a political
leader of caste oppression was presented by Gopal Krishna Gokhale in 1903
at the Dharwar Social Conference. Gokhale was scathingly critical of the
social arrangements that were responsible for su discrimination from the
standpoint of justice, humanity and ‘national self-interest’. He lamented that
the aitude of the educated youth towards the depressed classes as
particularly painful and that it was ‘monstrous’ that certain castes were
permanently debarred by social sanction from all opportunity to liberate
themselves from their degradation. ‘is is deeply revolting to our sense of
justice. I believe one has to put oneself mentally into their place to realise
how grievous this injustice is.’10 He mentioned the almost ready
endorsement for Gandhi’s movement in South Africa and restated what he
said had been his privilege to hear during a meeting in Bombay − a spee
by Ranade wherein Ranade had drawn comparisons with the treatment of
the depressed classes in India with the degradation of Indians in South
Africa. Gokhale rejected the analogy of caste as in India and class as in the
West, as caste in India was rigid and no movement was possible within its
scope: ‘A great writer has said that castes are eminently useful for the
preservation of society, but that they are uerly unsuited for purposes of
progress.’11 National interest, too, required that opportunities be made
available for realising the potential of every inhabitant of the country, and it
was to the detriment of the higher aspirations of the nation to keep the ‘low
castes’ at their present level of ignorance and incapacity. Gokhale now
toued on the issue of a larger section of Indians remaining unenthused
about what were the greater goals of national revival: ‘Can you not realize
that so far as the work of national elevation is concerned, the energy, whi
these classes might be expected to represent, is simply unavailable to us? I
understand that that great thinker and observer – Swami Vivekananda−held
this view very strongly.’12 He appealed to the university-educated young
men to join the movement for elevation of the disprivileged and hoped that
at least some of them would dedicate their lives to the noble endeavour of
educating and promoting the well-being of the ‘unhappy low castes’.
I propose to examine Bankimandra and Vivekananda, who stand as it
were outside the formal political community, as being among the early
contributors to the idea of ethical politics, whi at its best sought to
promote ideas of equal participation of the diverse religious communities,
castes and classes in Indian society, not through a hegemonical vision of
assimilation within a hierarical social structure but through a subtler and
aitudinal reconciliation. It is possible to see the trajectory of their thought
as assisting to conduce the harmonious coexistence of the diverse social
groups in India, who have still not come to terms with transactions of claim
and consideration whi had commenced under a colonial regime during the
early decades of the nineteenth century, as also an increasing recognition in
the writings of most of these thinkers that the said transactions were
motored by the awareness on the part of many social groups that particular
facets of the dominant culture of the land actively abeed and upheld their
degradation and exploitation. ey evidence an acute sensitivity to a central
problem with reincarnating traditions with contested histories, a problem
whi is captured in Jean Amery’s comment in a different historical context:
‘It will not do to claim national tradition for oneself where it was honorable
and deny it where, as dishonor incarnate, it cast a probably imaginary and
certainly defenseless opponent from the community of man.’13 It is in this
sense mainly that Bankim and Vivekananda can be construed as precursors
of the reconciliation of an injured dignity and threatened privilege. ey
reflect a natural respect for Indian traditions and evince a sense of pride in
their intellectual heritage. However, even when it is in large measure so that
the inclusivist philosophies of Indian origin inhabit and inspire their
thought, it is not India alone whi stimulates their intellect and fashions
their thought but also the ideas from the West that inform their sensibility. It
is as if that like some other Indian thinkers they seem to have had embarked
on a metaphorical journey, to discover their identity, across space and time.
is journey seems to have generated their responses to their historical
situation. e tussle with tradition underlies the writings of almost all the
thinkers of this period, and it is manifested in various shades. eir situation
is strikingly similar to what was later described by Nikos Kazantzakis in his
autobiographical novel Report to Greco.14
Nineteenth-century India has been said to be ‘a seed time ri in
possibilities’, when the first tentative steps were being taken to ‘induce
ange against tremendous odds’ and towards ‘imagining a nation whi
would be based on the willing union of diverse cultures’.15 Bankimandra
and Vivekananda examined their social institutions emerging from history,
not only to offer ideas of reform whi would facilitate social reconciliation
but also to speculate on their own position in the sema of history. In the
case of Vivekananda, this included an aempt to effect a plan of action for
implementing his ideas. eir response to their respective contemporary
situations also perhaps had a deeper psyological dimension and,
particularly in the case of Vivekananda, to a reconciling of their own
existence with the world they found themselves placed in. eir views are
variously germinative, speculative, socially engaged and polemical. When
seen as living on two different planes, the two men appear at times also very
dissimilar.

Bankimandra: the social conscience

In a discussion of Bankimandra’s vision of the modern political
community in India, it becomes of crucial importance to negotiate through
the more or less general impression in the academy that Bankimandra was
a Hindu revivalist who manifested reactionary prejudice against social
ange and hostility towards Muslims. Even a sympathetic solar of
Bankim, su as Sisir Kumar Das, while exonerating him from the arge of
being a Muslim baiter, has perceived him as being imprisoned within
fastidious prejudices in his regard for established social customs.16
Bankimandra is primarily known as one of the greatest novelists in
Bangla. But in the history of ideas, he is no less important as an acute
thinker in the realm of society and politics who offered subtle analysis of the
complex response of the Indian mind to the cross currents of politics and
culture in nineteenth-century India. A bibliographic reading of Indian
nationalism almost unfailingly turns to him as a significant resource
indicative of the aitudinal shades of the Indian mind towards the cleed
modernity of colonial India.17 e aspirations and anxieties that became
central to the Indian political community in its dual experience of colonial
rule, and what Tagore later described as the velocity of Western ideas,
substantially engaged Bankim’s aention, and this is directly as well as
tangentially evident in both his novels and essays. It is undeniable that he
was, on one plane, overly concerned at the withering away of many of the
salutary traditional aitudes and the inevitable tectonical shiing in the
social terrain of the country generally and Bengal particularly during this
potentially mutative period. And it has been agreed that his focus was on a
possible plane of reconciliation of social divisions: ‘Bankim Chandra aimed
at easing tensions in the community and looked for harmony.’18 His
concerns, therefore, clearly translated into an interrogation of the ethical
failure of Indian social systems in the twin frames of history and
contemporariness. Empathy and responsibility had been already considered
as defining social qualities in the early nineteenth century by thinkers su
as Rammohun Roy and Ishwarandra Vidyasagar, but these two qualities
became absolutely central in Bankim’s concept of human relationships that
evolved from the family to the entire world. Since the country was the
preceding unit in this matrix of relationship, and more practicable with
defined borders and cultural linkages, the principle of responsibility was
more cogently operable in the capacity of a citizen within the country.
Rael van Baumer has defined in this context Bankim’s concept of the
political community of the nation:
e object of political action was defined, and indeed, the completely foreign concept of political
action was brought within the fold of traditional Hindu dogma. At a laer period, Aurobindo was
to write in emotional terms of Bankimandra’s having given the mantra and converting the
whole nation in a day; but the fact cannot be denied that with Bankim’s doctrine of dharma, an
acceptable philosophical, religious, and psyological basis had been laid for the twentieth-century
nationalist movement.19

Among the predictable options open before the typical nationalist of a

colonised country are either the uninhibited embracement of the new ideas
of vitality and prowess or the equally unambiguous intellectual retirement
into the glorious traditions of the national past. Bankim opted for neither of
them. He was uncomfortable with the dubious features of the traditions of
his own country and sceptical of the promise of modernity extended by the
colonising West. He is, in this regard, in his element in his public
controversy with Reverend Hastie on his crude commentary of Hindu ritual.
Although the controversy popularly arouses interest for the sharpness of
Bankim’s language, the argument is more remarkable equally for its
organisation and clarity, as well as for the general fairness and restraint of
its tone. Aer admonishing Hastie in delightful satire for his substitution of
fact by claim, Bankim engaged with the issue in graceful prose. Hastie, he
said, had diverted the argument with his excessive advocacy not only of the
competence of European solarship in Sanskrit but also of the superior
comprehension of Sanskrit in Europe and America than in India: ‘No one
questions their solarship. I can assure him that men like Max Muller and
Goldstuer, Colebrook and Muir, Weber and Roth do not stand in need of a
ampion like Mr Hastie.’20 Bankim said further that it would be extremely
ungrateful on his part not to anowledge the selfless devotion of these
solars to Sanskrit and their immense contribution to spreading it in the
West. But it was simply ridiculous to comment on the general superiority of
their erudition and that too based on a very limited awareness of Indian
solarship in Sanskrit in the Indian languages.
e existence and the solarship of those who oose to write in their own vernacular, in
preference to Mr Hastie’s, remain to him and to those who think with him as things unknown. I
am also willing to confess that the native solars have wrien mu less than Europeans, and
that the intellectual culture of the mass of the readers whom they seek to instruct being inferior to
that of the highly educated class whom European writers address, the scientific value of their
writings is necessarily proportionately inferior. But the inference does not follow that native
solars are less at home in the language and literature of their own country than European
Sanskritists.21

Notwithstanding his demonstrated admiration for the knowledge systems

of modern Europe, he offered a robust epistemic allenge to its paroiality
in the reading of alternative paradigms and allenged the conscience of his
own countrymen regarding the inequality and injustice habitually suffered
by the disprivileged sections of their own nation. Bankim was witnessing
the very early days of nationalist politics and he was fairly distrustful of its
formality and sterile loquacity. He considered the political class as wholly
unconnected with the reality of Indian villages. is distrust of his was
completely in common with his two illustrious compatriots, Tagore and
Gandhi. He regarded a thoughtful political community as an essential
component of the responsible state. Bimanbehari Majumdar has viewed
Bankim’s national awareness as focussed in a sear for ethical politics:
‘According to Bankim, a good people is the foundation of a good
government. He seeks, therefore, to inculcate political capacity, political
habits, and political morality in the Bengali people. He did not believe in any
short cut to political power.’22
roughout his literary career, Bankim wrote exposé aer exposé on the
inequalities of gender and caste and a savage critique on the exploitation of
the peasantry. He, along with certain of his peers in the ronological
vicinity, represents the initial steps towards social reconciliation, through an
anowledgement of inequality, whi had been produced and reinforced
through aitudes and norms created by the dominant sections of society and
the creation of norms of social responsibility on the part of the privileged.
Especially in the context of community divisions, even his construction of
the aracter of Krishna in Krishna Charitra overturns many of the notions
whi constitute the contemporary idea of cultural Hindutva. e
formulation of his social critique is at many points oblique, and Hayden
White’s description of Alexis de Tocqueville’s style as in his study on the
ancien regime and the Fren revolution might be applicable to a certain
extent to Bankimandra’s thought and expression: ‘e point of view was
manifestly Liberal, but the tone was Conservative. e mood, though
ostensibly objective and impartial, was modulated from a Tragic acceptance
of the inevitable to an Ironic admonition of the devotees of the old order to
look to their best interests and to act accordingly.’23 Bankim understood
traditional Indian practices as a congeries of the inspirational and the banal.
He viewed the present partly as derelict of the original splendour of ancient
Indian civilisation, but it should nowhere be obscured that Bankim
conceives the historical traversing of the path of civilisation as having been
mediated through the aitudes of acceptance and relinquishment. is
coheres with one of the paerns of nationalist envisioning of the trajectory
of its nation’s past, as described by Seton-Watson: ‘e great community
held together by a splendid civilisation extending over a vast territory,
whi suffers eclipse (from social or cultural decay, internal discord, foreign
invasion or several of these together), and then seeks to reappear in a new
guise as a modern nation.’24
In Vedic literature, the mantras (verses), whi refer to the term Rashtra
in the modern context translated as nation, centre around the twin themes
of material consolidation for a unit of population and its invulnerability to
the aas of external enemies. In Sanskrit, the etymological root of the
term Rashtra is raj, whi associates essentially with the quality of being
resplendent. us, the mantras regarding the rashtra possibly refer variously
to a group or tribe and wish it to be vested with material endowments and
resplendency. e term rashtra is defined in the Sanskrit lexicon variously as
kingdom, realm, district, region, the people, nation and subjects. e
mantras in Vedic literature would probably refer to rashtra in the sense of a
people or a tribe.25 It perhaps needs to be clarified that in Sanskrit literature
the term mantra is applied to that category of shloka (the general Sanskrit
term for verse), the incantation of whi was believed to be bestowed with
divine power. All the shlokas in the Vedic corpus are referred to as mantras.
I have retained the established nomenclature in this regard.26 In the Rigveda,
the mantras referring to the nation generally constitute an appeal from the
public to a king and essentially wish for material well-being and prowess for
the king as leader and protector of the nation. is mantra, addressed to a
king to be, is representative of su references in the Rigveda: ‘[O King] we
have received you as the lord of the nation. You become a lord among us.
Stay constant and determined in the nation. May all the subjects like you.
May the nation never be separated from you.’27 e verses referring to
nation in the Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda have a similar concern with
prosperity and well-being. ey invoke the gods to bestow the nation with
denizens that are variously, according to their prescribed social order,
dutiful, productive, brave and, in the case of women, those that are beautiful
and fortunate; and well-endowed horses and kine; bountiful rains and
plentiful crops and herbs.28 ere are of course large swathes of social
groupage missing from the definition of the denizen. ose named are
without exception, Brahmins and Kshatriyas, and the other varnas (castes)
are not mentioned. Significantly, there is a single instance of the nation
being alluded to in the feminine form in the Rigveda.29 ere is a prominent
and somewhat exceptional instance of the identification of a nation with an
individual personality in the later and epic age of Sanskrit literature –
perhaps unsurprisingly so, given the fact of the tendency to venerate great
heroes in epics across civilisations. King Dashratha terms Rama as the
defining value of the Kosala nation, admonishing his queen Kaikeyi: ‘e
place [Ayodhya] where Rama was not king would cease to be a nation, the
forest where Rama resided would become a nation.’30
According to Rayaudhuri’s evaluation of Bankimandra’s role and
contribution as a writer, Bankim comes across as perhaps one of the earliest
examples of the public intellectual in modern India. Referring in this context
to Bankim’s introduction to Bangadarshan, the journal found by him,
Rayaudhuri has summed up Bankim’s concept of the obligations of
solar-citizen: ‘As a writer and an educated Bengali, he perceived one duty
as incumbent on the people of social class – instructing his countrymen
about the nation’s past aievements, current problems, and one’s duties to
the nation. Even his later philosophical writings were unmistakably
dedicated to the same task.’31 With his knowledge of the ancient texts,
Bankim could probably have situated himself in the tradition of the wakeful
purohitas (priests/intellectuals) – in a possible connotation of the term to
include within its rubric the intellectual counsellor to the king and society at
large and in this context in the sense of a modern interpreter of values −
who prayed in the Yajurveda for capacitating themselves for unceasing
intellectual vigilance regarding the ethical and cultural ethos of the nation,
as in this incantation during a sacrificial rite performed for the realisation of
the highest values of a Brahmin: ‘Prajapati who is the progenitor of food,
generated since genesis, Soma most resplendent in all herbs and liquids. May
those herbs be succulent and nourishing as honey for us; nourished on them,
may we the purohitas be ever vigilant in our nation.’32
Bankim’s critique of inequality and his nuanced analysis of the validity of
socio-legal constructions have the tendency to appear in the most
unexpected of places, with no ambiguity as to the point the author wishes to
make. Considering the structure of the critique, whi surrounds Bankim on
the count of excessive orthodoxy and even reactionism, it might be pertinent
to illustrate very briefly his major premises of social critique in a
representative text, keeping superfluous interpretation to a minimum and
leing the text speak for itself. In an essay entitled Bharatbarsher
Swadhinata o Paradhinota (‘India’s Autonomy and subjection’), Bankim
begins rather innocuously, with what can be a value-neutral statement:
‘Formerly, India was autonomous. Now, for hundreds of years, she has been
in subjection. Modern Indians consider this to be a great sorrow. We wish to
make a comparison between that ancient autonomy and this modern
subjection, and examine it in order to discern the sorrow and the happiness
of it.’ Bankim enquires into the real implication of autonomy and subjection
through a comparison to ‘discover whether or not there is more happiness in
modern India than there was in ancient India’. In a tone almost calculated to
be provocative, he anowledges that many will, because of his question,
become ‘enraged’ with him, as he who doubts that ‘autonomy is happiness’
is by the very fact ‘a heretic, a vile man, etc’. But Bankim is unrepentant:
‘We agree. But it is difficult to satisfactorily prove that autonomy is beer
than subjection.’ It is not so because India was earlier under a ‘tyrannical
rule’ under Muslims, because of the exploitative system present under
‘Hindu rule’. e kingdom whi is free from oppression by foreigners is
regarded as autonomous; conversely, even countries under home rule can be
said to be in subjection, as ‘England under the Normans, or India under
Aurangzeb’. Conversely, it could be correctly said that ‘North India,
subjugated by Kutubuddin, was foreign-ruled and in subjection, and that
India ruled by Akbar was home-ruled and autonomous’.33 Although
agreeing to the fact that ‘ancient India was home ruled and autonomous;
modern India is foreign ruled and in subjection’, Bankim does not concede
that foreign rule is necessarily pernicious because of its foreign aracter
and that indigenous rule is necessarily benign. Even in ancient India, rulers
were occasionally ‘cruel’, ‘greedy for wealth’ and ‘voluptuous’, who lived in
‘women’s apartments’ and ‘Ancient India used to suffer mu from all this.
In modern India, it is unlikely that whatever faults the distant king or queen
may have will bear fruit in India’. Bankim does not have kind words for
Prithviraj, a Hindutva icon: ‘Prithviraj, for his own pleasure, abducted
Jayaandra’s daughter, and because of it, bale flared up between them,
and they both suffered harm and loss of vigour. As a consequence, both fell
into the hands of the Muslims. ere is no likelihood, in modern India, of
any misfortune arising from the demands of the distant ruler’s pleasure.’34
Bankim anowledges that under British rule ‘the local people are bowed
down before them’ and that ‘the pleasure of the English is responsible for
any reduction of happiness of Indians’, but this statement of his only serves
to foreground the issue of caste oppression in India. ere may not have
been racial supremacy, ‘but there was a similar oppression of caste’.35 e
subsequent critique is strikingly similar in tone to that of Phule and bears
quotation in some detail:
It is not likely that there is something sweet in being oppressed by one’s own race, and something
bier only when oppressed by a different race. But we do not wish to make this reply. If anyone is
 fond of being oppressed by his own race we have no objection. Our only aim is to say that in the
place of the racial oppression in modern India, there was caste oppression in ancient India. From
the point of view of the majority of the people the two are equivalent.36

is essay problematises the colonial system as well, but mainly it is an

invitation to Indians to first look closely at the indigenous system of
hierary and discrimination that had been uninterruptedly in operation
over centuries. He wrote that the denial of opportunity to the educated
Indian elite under England was similar to caste oppression in ancient India,
only that the elite then were not the victims of oppression. It was
remarkably prescient, anticipating the demands for self-rule whi were to
follow and perhaps was indicating that the delinking of political autonomy
from social reform would not only not improve the lives of the disprivileged
sections of Indian society but would also be dishonest and vitiate the entire
political process in the future. e foregrounding of the structural
inadequacies of Indian society does not relegate the question of colonialism;
it refreshingly prioritises the discourse of social reform, in the concluding
section of his essay.
Many will retort angrily, are autonomy and subjection the same, then? Why do so many people in
the world sacrifice their lives for autonomy? To those we speak thus, we humbly submit that we
are not engaged in seeking the evolution to this question. We are a nation in subjection – we will
be in subjection for a long time − we do not need the answer to that question. Our inquiry was
only this: were the people of ancient India, by reason of its autonomy happier than the people of
modern India, or not? We have arrived at this conclusion, that in modern India the Brahmins and
Kshatriyas are depressed; and the Sudras, that is, the common people, are somewhat beer off.37

In fact, even the ill effects of colonialism are more intensely experienced
by the disprivileged. e peasants, whose cruel suffering is described in cruel
starkness by Bankim, have been named by him significantly as Hasim
Sheikh and Rama Kaibarta and Paran Mandal in his essay on agricultural
deprivation, Bangadesher Krishak (‘Bengal’s Peasants’). It ironically
contrasts the development under British rule with the cruel deprivation of
the peasants of Bengal and graphically describes the terrible conditions of
their lives. e Bengali babu and the colonial official might have profited
and do enjoy the fruits of science and urbanisation, but they had failed
completely to ameliorate the lives of the people of the country: ‘Whose
prosperity is the country’s prosperity? I see your prosperity and mine, but
are you and I the country?’38Muchiram Gurer Jibancharit (The Life of
Muchiram Gur) is a fable on the basic ineffectuality of the colonial
government ensnared by the ineptitude of its officials, who are well meaning
but ill informed and gullible, and a type of spineless, crass and amoral native
sycophant who can travel upwards in officialdom and society by feeding
literally on the fears of his own countrymen and figuratively on the
initiatory diffidence of his rulers.
Inexplicably, Bankim occasionally tended to glorify kingship in ancient
India, particularly when analysing Zamindari, whi he viewed as a
particular aribute of the so-called Muslim period. It is rather bizarre that he
sometimes made graphic descriptions of caste oppression, whi were by his
own admission implicit in the previously prevalent norms of jurisprudence,
in coexistence with references to ‘benevolent kings’, but it is also
incongruous to his overall critique and can only be understood in the
peculiar dynamics of colonial politics.39 It is unfortunate, because Bankim
otherwise has a flair for nuanced objective analysis on questions like legality
of customs, whi was a very important issue in nineteenth-century India. I
am consciously opting for the interpretation that his occasional laudatory
references to ‘benevolent Hindu Kings’ was cosmetic rather than
constitutive of his psye because had it been otherwise, the expose that he
presented of Indian society could hardly have had been possible. We shall
return to this aspect later, but I would like to mention here that in almost all
of his writings, Dharmashastras are not only not approved of, they are
hardly ever mentioned, and on the few occasions they do find mention, it is
in a pejorative sense. Similarly, in Samya (Equality), it is the inequality
among castes and more prominently between men and women, whi is
subjected to clinical analysis by Bankim:
ere is unnatural inequality between Brahmin and Sudra. e killing of a Brahmin is a grave sin,
the killing of a Sudra is a lesser sin; this is not according to natural law. Why is it forbidden to kill
a Brahmin and not to kill a Sudra? Why is only the Sudra the giver, and only the Brahmin the
 receiver? Why, instead of this, has there not come into being a law that he who has the capacity to
give should be the giver, and he who has need should be the receiver?40 (my translation)

Significantly, ild marriage and women’s education are enmeshed in

Bankim’s analysis; according to him, because of notions of ‘astity’ and
‘conduct’, there was a horror in the minds of the educated Bengali of
sending girls to sools, and even many of those who were not averse to the
idea found it difficult to send their daughter’s to colleges, howsoever mu
they may desire higher education for their sons: ‘Where are their colleges for
girls?’ e obvious solution lay for Bankim in either having ‘separate
sools for women’ or in educating girls in the college for men. e mere
mention of this option would inflame the residents of Bengal. ey have no
doubt whatever that girls being educated in men’s colleges will conduct
themselves like prostitutes. Most of the boys will similarly indulge in vices.
Even if these objections are not raised if the first option is followed, even
then women education is foredoomed in a flurry of questions regarding the
succour of ildren. ‘Bengali girls turn mothers and house wives at the age
of fourteen. Whatever sooling can be had by the thirteenth year is all that
is open to them. Or, even that is not possible – because in what way in even
her thirteenth year can the bride or a daughter of a good family, step out of
home with book in hand to study?’ (my translation).41 It is unfortunate that
the apter on women was among the three apters of Samya that Bankim
later ose to excise from the subsequent publication of his writings.
Contrary to general impression, although he withdrew Samya entirely from
publication, two of its apters were later incorporated in Bangadesher
Krishak. Even though the complete text of Samya is readily available, it has
regreably not been commensurately analysed in Bankim solarship.
Bankim himself retracted his original view of the position of women in his
later writing on the topic in Dharmatatva. at he was apprehensive of the
social divisiveness of some of his views is apparent, but it might be relevant
to also include in the focus his increasing introspectiveness on the theme of
individual praxis as social instrument, and according to one solarly
analysis: ‘It would be a mistake not to take into account Bankim Chandra’s
understanding of the ethics of equality in the light of a new kind of religious
humanism towards whi he was feeling his way aer 1876–1880.’42
In the last phase of his life, Bankim concentrated on formulating, through
the writing of religio-political treatises, a modern Hindu code of conduct,
whi he thought would outline the ethical life of a political community
besides conveying the ideals of a Hindu way of life. But even in this phase,
when novels su as Anandamath were wrien, he never supported any
kind of orthodoxy. Differentiating between European patriotism and the
ideal love of one’s country, Bankim presented in the Dharmatatva his
concept of harmony between universal love and love of country. e citizen
would be a citizen of the world, insofar as he will be commied to
accomplish the welfare of other societies along with that of his own country,
but he would naturally resist any other country harming his own to benefit
itself. Bankim described European patriotism as an ‘abominable sin’: ‘e
meaning of the European religion of Patriotism is that we should forcibly
seize other societies and bring them within our own. We should extend our
country, but we should do this by destroying all other societies. Under the
influence of this pernicious patriotism, the original people of America have
been wiped from the earth. May the Lord free India from su patriotism.’43
Many of these treatises, like Krishna Charitra and Dharmatatva
presenting a version of a Hindu world view, do not discard the progressive
elements of European positivism. Solars, although their number is not
considerable, have evaluated Bankim’s contribution beyond what they have
termed as his situational concern for the improvement of Hindu society.44 In
one of his last novels, Sitaram, the eponymous Hindu king establishes a
Hindu kingdom, but ultimately becomes a debau and destroys himself,
even as both the Hindu and Muslim preceptors in the novel, Chandraud
akur and Chand Shah Fakir, finally leave Sitaram’s realm for Kashi and
Mecca, respectively. Fakir tells akur that he ‘would not stay any longer in
a country whi has Hindus. is is the bier lesson given by Sitaram’ (my
translation).45 is sage counsel from Fakir had been blatantly disregarded
by Sitaram:
 My ild, you want to establish a Hindu Kingdom. But can you aieve that if you are ained to
customs. If you do not treat the Hindus and the Muslims equally you will not be able to protect
your Kingdom. What could be a haven of peace will turn into a hell. e same god has created the
Hindus and the Muslims. Both are his ildren. Don’t make any distinction between them. at is
a sin.46

Chand Shah Fakir, through the various editions of the novel, abides as a
critic of ‘Hindu fanaticism and an apostle of Hindu Muslim unity’.47 In
Durgeshnandini, Bankim created Ayesha, ‘one of the most memorable
aracters in the history of Bengali fiction’, describing her as ramani
kularatna (a jewel among women). Similarly, Usman who seeks to marry
Ayesha is one of Bankim’s finest aracters. In Gaurdas Babajir Bhikshar
Jhuli, the Vaishnav seer Gaurdas tells his disciple that ‘one who
discriminates between a Hindu and a Muslim is not a true worshipper of
Visnu’. It is worth mentioning that Bankim regarded himself a Vaishnav in
thought and deed. In 1873, Bankim wrote in a book review in Bangadarshan:
Bengal is not a land of Hindus alone. It is a land of the Hindus and the Musalmans. ey are now
hostile and unsympathetic to one another. But the unity between the two communities is essential
for the real progress of Bengal. at unity cannot be aieved so long as the upper class Muslims
consider themselves as foreigners, and Bangla not their language and decide to write only in Urdu
and Persian. e unity of language is the basis of national unity.48

Notwithstanding the inclusivist viewpoint contained in these lines, the

problematic of assimilation, however, remains unresolved. As with the
identification of the country with the Goddess Durga, the identification of
historical movements with primarily Hindu metaphors, however useful as a
mobilisational trope in nationalist politics, can hardly be considered as
philosophically pragmatic. Perhaps, the inbuilt contradiction in this
argument mirrors not only Bankim’s own dilemma but also the inherent
dilemma of the discourse of identity. At what point of the logic does identity
while fashioning itself begin to germinate within its own self, the seeds of
irrevocable difference? It is perhaps natural that Bankim did not envisage an
exclusively nationalistic programme, and as Clark has said: ‘It is doubtful
whether he ever conceived the possibility of one, or, for that maer, whether
he would have joined it if it had existed.’49
 When he was writing on polygamy apropos Vidyasagar, Bankim took on
for his times a startlingly unusual position with regard to the relation
between law and custom. Vidyasagar had called for the eradication of
polygamy, on among other grounds that it was against the Shastras.
Bankim’s riposte has been usually interpreted as a urlish rejoinder to a
dedicated social reformer. Part of the story regarding a mutual antagonism
between them is true. But it might be interesting to explore the point made
by Bankim as to whether law should be dictated by custom in a pluralistic
society, and to what extent do su codes really affect the practice of society
and if they did, what would be the ramification of accepting them as
sanctions to create new laws. According to Bankim, the precepts laid down
by Manu Smriti and other Dharmashastras were ‘never fully carried out by
any society’. ey were naturally contradictory and many of them had been
spontaneously abandoned. Nevertheless, these precepts were widely
believed to have had meticulous adherence in ancient India and that they
were only now being lost ‘through the influence of the times’. Bankim
commented that this belief was not sustainable and now, as in the past, the
Dharmashastric provisions were only partly followed. Moreover, even this
truncated operation of these provisions was the major reason for ‘India’s
decline’. Bankim believed that the invocation of the Shastras was singularly
inappropriate in an argument supporting modern legislation against
polygamy:
If a statute is to be drawn up, is it essential that this statute be sanctioned by the Shastras? Or if it
were contrary to the Shastras, would this be detrimental? … Another point is that in this province
half of the people are Hindu, and half are Muslim. If it is proper to enact legislation against
polygamy, then it is proper that this law should apply to both Hindu and Muslims. But if we say
that polygamy is contrary to the Hindu Shastras, on what grounds can it be made illegal to
Muslims.50

Although it may sound familiar to the contemporary demand for a uniform

civil code with its aendant political logic, the issue before Bankim was
quite different. He was essentially considering the foundations of a modern
political community and how therein tradition and modernity were to
reconcile with ea other. It is precisely when he is viewed as part of this
project that Bankim, along with his contradictions, appears relevant to the
problem of the modality of looking at the past in the imagining of our future
aspirations.

Vivekananda: the ethics of responsibility

Vivekananda represents as if the cusp of the Indian imagining of modern
India, signifying the trajectory of the nineteenth-century ideas of identity
and reform into the twentieth century, wherewith the debate on su ideas
acquires a different sharpness. Even if there may be no explicit relation in
his thought with the ideas of responsibility and community, this
interrelatedness constitutes a thematic unity in his statements and writings,
and this linkage is also manifested in his assessment of the possibility of the
emergence, in its historical context, of a liberated and liberal modern Indian
nation. e genealogy of his ideas can be traced in his historical situation as
well as in his philosophical inheritance: awareness both of nationalistic
passions and of the institutional and structural injustices that were also
implicated in the otherwise impressive cultural heritage of the country; the
colonial experience of the illiberality of government; transactions with
Western social thought; appreciation of the knowledge revolution in Europe;
perception of the resilience of Indian philosophical traditions and knowledge
systems and a sense of human dignity that was based in traditional Indian
conceptions; and extensive experience of the West. In the visualising of a
future India, his focus is predominantly on the individual as constituent of
larger communities and on the making of the ethical individual, whi in
the Indian context involves also the defining of a modern Indian identity
that is not limited by traditional conceptual constraints, although it is fully
conversant and identifiable with rejuvenated Indian thought.
It is somewhat of a truism that Vivekananda symbolises the high noon of
Hindu revival in modern India. However, his life illustrates more than one
dimension of the spiritual consciousness, and as Tapan Rayaudhuri has
clearly stated, Vivekananda ‘was more than anything else a mystic in the
quest of the ultimate reality within a specific Indian tradition’.51 But this
dimension of his mind is not usually accessible, as su experiences are
unavailable on a cognitive plane for most of us, and even the very possibility
of metaphysics might be rejectable as, in the words of Hume, ‘nothing but
sophistry and illusion’. Biographers of spiritual personalities have
occasionally recorded that the aspect of the mystic remains, for all practical
purposes, generally inscrutable.52 Vivekananda may generally be easily
understood as a reconciler and social reformer, in his imagining of India as a
people and a common culture, and in his intense idealism regarding the
rightful destiny of individuals and communities and the ethical oices that
confront communities in the realising of their imagined essential destiny.
Compared to Bankim, the case of Vivekananda is relatively uncomplicated,
although a perception of the doubtful secularity of his credentials follows
from the general idea of the interrelationship of religion and social reform.
However, spirituality has many more dimensions than is usually recognised,
and the life of Vivekananda is illustrative of a commonality of the
‘metaphysical’ and the ‘social’ consciousness.

Renunciation, society and politics

Born, as is well known, to a family of catholic sensibilities and taste – his
grandfather and father were affluent, cultured lawyers; his father
particularly was a connoisseur of classical music and polyglot with a facility
for Persian and Urdu – Vivekananda was occupied with metaphysics from
early life. e act of his renunciation, or sanyas, freeing him ritually from
caste conventions and particularly from the established norms regulating
commensality, was the outcome of religious yearning but at the same time,
did not entail the abdication of social responsibility. On the contrary,
Vivekananda considered sanyas as an appropriate condition for serving
equally the individual and the social conscience. It is worth mentioning in
this connection that on one plane the social consciousness is contained in
the religious consciousness, whi also seeks to eliminate social mores that
impede the realisation of bliss in the lives of the deprived and dispriviledged,
and the concept of seva (service) thus assumes supreme importance.
However, the religious consciousness per se realises the limitations of
regarding mere social upli as a source of bliss, and therefore it is not itself
limited by what is generally termed as the purely social consciousness. In
this connection, and without thereby forcing an analogy, it may be
worthwhile in understanding the history of the tradition of sanyas to take
note of Govind Chandra Pande’s discussion of both the early practice of
sanyas/mendicancy and the varied perceptions in India regarding
renunciation, both as a conformance with and deviancy from the concept of
the four ashrams of living. ‘When towards the close of the later Vedic period
Brahmanic values had undergone a great ange and some sections at least
within the Vedic circle were willing to consider seriously that apparently
pessimistic world picture whi the doctrine of Samsara entails, more
friendly and more fruitful communion with these Munis and Sramanas
appears to have taken place.’53 e vitality as well as the general
disruptiveness of Indian society by the sixth-century BC articulated a
spiritual quest and disillusionment, in turn leading to a flowering of an
earlier ascetic tradition. e nature of this flowering was, however, not
unmixed and unrelated to social reality. ‘In practice, the ranks of the
mendicants are filled not merely by ardent religious souls but in the main by
those whom despair and material life has driven into beggary.’54 is
indicates the complicacy of the social dimension of sanyas. e core of the
‘vows of renunciation’ across the different sects typifies the ascetic
endeavour in India. It is noteworthy that even with their absolute
indifference to worldly possessions in their own individual lives, the
renunciants were generally not hostile to the institution of property,
although not necessarily ignorant of the social costs of the different social
institutions. ‘ey sought to transcend, not disrupt social life. Indeed, having
abandoned secular society, they themselves entered a new society based on
spiritual relations.’55 Pande has further detailed the development of the
social dimensions of sanyas in his study of the life of Sankaraarya,
anowledging wherein that the act of renunciation entails a formal closing
of social linkages for the renunciant, he also at the same time delineates the
almost inevitable and continuing social associations of the renunciant. It is
interesting that the institutional beginnings of renunciation in India, as in
Greece, are almost consistently traceable to social recoil: ‘[e] concept of
sramanya, mauna or sannyasa is reminiscent of the Cynic concept of
apathia and the associated aitude of withdrawal and protest towards the

religious and public life of the Polis.’56 Traversing social and historical stages,
it was subsequently conceived by certain religious philosophies, in India and
elsewhere, as not simply a preparatory but a final way of living and was
even formalised with various codes: ‘Although the ideal of mendicancy
meant the renunciation of social life, this renunciation itself came to be
clearly converted into a social institution.’57The Bhagavadgita in its
eighteenth and final apter opens with enumerating the definitions of
sanyas and is especially critical of renunciation for the abandonment of
duty. It is relevant to note that in this it categorises as highest that category
of renunciation whi also entails the dispassionate fulfilment of duties: ‘But
he who performs a prescribed duty as a thing that ought to be done,
renouncing all aament and also the fruit − his relinquishment is regarded
as one of “goodness.” ’58
Renunciation appears generally as an individual-centric action that might
germinate in criticism of ‘society’ and even in social disenantment, but it
may not for that reason be construed also as containing naturally a critique
of particular social arrangements. is might possibly explain the absence,
in the renunciant, of a theoretical interrogation of the institution of property.
is aitude of sanyas towards property mirrors its aitude to the
institution of family as well.59Sanyas is not thereby generally indifferent to
social injustice. e Mahayana rather than the Hinayana viewpoint is
instructive in this connection. Compared to the Hinayana view of sanyas
being a complete individual striving for personal moksha or release from
existence in the temporal universe, the Mahayana illustrates the praxis of
the Boddhisatva who opts for repeated births and existence in society till all
of humanity is released from suffering. On this plane, sanyas instils
sensitivity for the suffering of others and karuna, or compassion, for the
other translates into action for alleviation of general suffering. It may be
possible to trace Vivekananda’s position on renunciation and his programme
of social action to this tradition. Occasionally, Vivekananda has been seen in
a certain kinship with the Buddha: ‘Vivekananda repeatedly points out that
the Buddha had preaed the “monastic vow” all over India. He had deeply
impressed on the mind of India that ideal of renunciation.’60
Even before the arrival of modernity, sanyas was, in addition to being an
act of faith, occasionally perceived in India as a symbol of social iconoclasm
for a Hindu and liberating, and the renunciant’s ‘unorthodoxy in religious
beliefs and behaviour was tolerated – or even revered, if it caught the
popular imagination’.61 Vivekananda considered sanyas as being essentially
non-sectarian: ‘A Sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of
independent thought, whi draws from all religions; his is a life of
realisation, not merely of theory or belief, mu less of dogma.’62
Furthermore, the hermitage was not envisioned as a retreat from the
intricacies of living and its responsibility towards society, but as an
instrument of cooperation, an institution to ‘make men’. In the closing years
of his life, Vivekananda continued to emphasise on what could be termed as
the social consciousness in the life of the monks: ‘ose of you who are
Sannyasins must try to do well to others for Sannyas means that.’63 e
monks were to love death, not as in a suicidal desire for martyrdom, but in
the effacing of the ‘self’: ‘It is right for you that you should serve your
millions of brothers rather than aggrandize this lile self. us you must die
a gradual death.’ e monk was visualised not as an individual engrossed in
esoteric thinking only, but one who also felt responsible ‘for the millions’
and yet was ‘strong and inflexible’, being removed from the pressures of
quotidian living.
In our country the old idea is, to sit in a cave and meditate and die. To go ahead of others in
salvation is wrong. One must learn sooner or later, that one cannot get salvation if one does not
try to seek the salvation of his brothers. You must try to combine in your life immense idealism
with immense practicality. You must be prepared to go into deep meditation now, and the next
moment you must be ready to go and cultivate the fields. You must be prepared to explain the
difficult intricacies of the Shastras now, and the next moment to go and sell the produce of the
 fields in the market. You must be prepared for all menial services, not only here, but elsewhere
also…. e true man is he who is strong as strength itself and yet possesses a woman’s heart.64

e hermitage of Vivekananda is consciously different from Anandamath;

in fact, it is difficult to say whether Vivekananda has on record said
anything about the book, but he perhaps never used the evocation of Vande
Mataram. His primary concern, as he put it, was man-making, and his
reasons for accepting the life of a monk to work for national regeneration
were embedded in his concept of politics and community in India. He once
said: ‘I am no politician or political agitator. I care only for the spirit−when
that is right everything will be righted by itself.’65 It was as if he desired to
stand outside the political class, while at the same time be a member of the
political community and assist in his own way for the general acceptance
and observance of ethical politics in the country. Perhaps, naturally for a
renunciant, ethics is intrinsically enjoined with religion. He perceived
defined national propensities in the exercise of ideas in different nations, and
politics was only one plane on whi concepts and ideas acquired
momentum. e English conceived of religion in terms of politics,
Americans expressed their religious aitude through social reform, and in
India religion was and would ever be the primary vehicle even of political
ideas.66 He saw it as trying to replace a ‘spiritual babone’ by a ‘political
babone’. His argued that ‘Political ideals, personages representing political
ideals, even social ideals, would have no power in India.’67 is statement
was partially accurate, especially of his times and for the following decades,
although subsequently men representing socio-political ideals did acquire
great power; it is another maer that even some among them acquired a
religious halo with time. e ideal religious preceptor would be for him one
who inspired perfect religious tolerance and in a way actuated a religious
politics capable of pluralistic and ethical aspirations. Personally, he
anowledged his master Ramakrishna Paramhansa as the embodiment of
absolute religious harmony. In an age of overriding political and cultural
acrimony, Vivekananda appears to be alert to the danger of religious and
social discord. Rather than initiate a homogenisation of faiths fraught with
danger, spiritual regeneration in India would mainly consist in the
reaffirmation of religious toleration. e West was beginning to manifest
intolerance: people in India lile knew ‘how mu of intolerance is yet
abroad’.68 His stated mission of Vedanta was aimed at the eradication of
su dissension and strife. He aspired to ‘make this [Ramakrishna] Math a
great centre of harmony’.69 In his famous leer to Sarfaraz Hussain, he
placed on record his ‘experience’ that it was the followers of Islam, and
‘Islam alone,’ who ‘approaed’ the equality of Advaita in ‘an appreciable
degree in the plane of practical workaday life’, whi was ‘yet to be
developed among the Hindus universally’.70
Vivekananda may be meaningfully regarded as a significant precursor in
the imagining of the Indian political community as primarily dependent on
a new vocabulary of entitlement and opportunity. e life of Vivekananda
reflected to a great extent, in the Indian context, the essentially moral
enquiry of the nineteenth-century Russian thinkers and writers into the
human condition that has been described so felicitously by Berlin:
eir approa seemed to me essentially moral: they were concerned most deeply with what was
responsible for injustice, oppression, falsity in human relations, imprisonment whether by stone
walls or conformism – unprotesting submission to man-made yokes – moral blindness, egoism,
cruelty, humiliation, servitude, poverty, helplessness, bier indignation, despair, on the part of so
many. In short, they were concerned with the nature of these experiences and their roots in the
human condition; the condition of Russia in the first place, but, by implication, of all mankind.
And conversely they wished to know what would bring about the exact opposite of this, a reign of
truth, love, honesty, justice, security, personal relations based on the possibility of human dignity,
decency, independence, freedom, spiritual fulfillment.71

Admiedly, for Vivekananda, colonial rule was to an extent responsible for

degradation and an impediment to material and spiritual progress, but he
was equally aware of the deleterious features of the Indian tradition. From
the early stages of his work, Vivekananda’s stated objective was, unlike the
doctrinaire and cultish aims of most religious missions, ‘to bring to the door
of the meanest, the poorest, the noble ideas that the human race has
developed both in and out of India, and let them think for themselves’.72
Significantly, the religious ideas of Vivekananda were extremely progressive
and totally against any privileging of ideas or positions. In this, they indicate
both theoretically and practically towards reconciling and egalitarianising
possibilities. is recommendation by Vivekananda to the renunciant is
relevant for the godmen of our times, as it was also commentary on the
existing practices of his times: ‘e Sannyasin should have nothing to do
with the ri, his duty is with the poor. e Sannyasin should treat the poor
with loving care and serve them joyfully with all his might. To pay respects
to the ri and hang on them for support has been the bane of all the
Sannyasin communities of our country.’73 Vivekananda was especially harsh
on the notions of caste superiority and sacerdotal institutions that
propagated the doctrine of adhikarvada, whi supposed a hierary of
eligibility along caste lines in higher knowledge, as being ‘pernicious to the
core’: ‘With all my respects for the Rishis of yore I cannot but denounce
their method in instructing the people.’74 Vivekananda translated
commitment to the deprived to the plane of religious duty, movingly calling
them daridra narayana, translatable as God the poor. e idea of being
conscientious to the deprivation of those who do not normally share our
class interests may have interesting theoretical possibilities in the context of
recent concerns regarding universal responsibility for the ‘other’, and how
any su responsibility generally operates within, and is limited by, elective
affinities or structural commonality of class, race, ability and gender.75 e
idea of the daridra narayana exceeds mere sense of obligation in the sense
of institutional arity and implies added and crucial responsibility on the
part of the benefactor for maintaining the dignity and respect of the
beneficiary. Vivekananda’s renunciation and sense of social responsibility
included both the denying of many prevalent notions of status and privilege
and of conversely prioritising the virtue of service to the deprived as being a
redemptive duty on the part of the enabled and the provisioned. General
benefit and protective discrimination were for him not mutually exclusive,
as in his argument that ‘a Brahmin is not so mu in need of education as a
Chandala. If the son of a Brahmin needs one teaer, that of a Chandala
needs ten’.76 is may be relatable to the oen fraught relationship between
justice and dignity in maers of institutional aid to the dispossessed and the
destitute, whether due to the general implication of a slur of inferiority on
the part of the recipient or due to an insensitive or callous even if efficient
system of distribution of aid, whi degrades people, for instance by
reducing starving humans to fighting for food thrown from trus as in
famine-strien Ethiopia. Avishai Margalit mentions this example in his
argument that ensuring welfare does not necessarily extend to ensuring
dignity and that a just society need not by that quality alone be a decent
society. A different level of ethical responsibility and another conception of
human life may be a condition for facilitating a merging of social
responsibility with the values of kindness and caring. ‘ere is a suspicion
that the just society may become mired in rigid calculations of what is just,
whi may replace gentleness and humane consideration in simple human
relations. e requirements that a just society should also be a decent one
means that it is not enough for goods to be distributed justly and efficiently
– the style of their distribution must also be taken into account.’77
In an increasingly secularising period of history, a purely religious
definition of the values of caring could soon become meaningless in modern
society. Vivekananda, in anowledging and analysing the limitations of
denominational self-definitions, also indicated at the constructive possibility
of pluralistic perceptions. During the building of the Ramakrishna Mission,
he continued to work for an accommodation of ‘a thousand minds’ in its
institutions. It was with his particular view of yoga and the Vedanta that he
welcomed Muslim boys in the institutions run by the Mission and suggested
making separate arrangements for them if necessary, yet told the brethren to
‘never tamper with their religion’.78 His stated aspiration for the Mission
was ‘to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas, nor the
Bible, nor the Koran; yet this has to be done by harmonising the Vedas, the
Bible and the Koran’.79
Vivekananda was neither a zealot nor a hegemonist. Although his
metaphysical vocabulary is predominantly Hindu and he spoke from within
a tradition, he employed effectively that tradition against oppression and
exploitation, and in maers of social reform, spoke of the advisability of first
identifying the ‘necessity underlying’ an uncivil custom and then by altering
the necessity thereby eradicating the custom. Rabindranath Tagore included
prominently Vivekananda in the tradition begun by Chaitanya, Nanak,
Dadu and Kabir of harmonising the varied communities of India and
particularly of building a bridge of ideals across the Hindu and the Muslim
aracter. Of his own times, Tagore remarked: ‘It is not as if India is inactive
[in this regard] now – Rammohun Roy, Swami Dayananda, Keshabandra
[Sen], Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Vivekananda, Shibnarayan Swami they
also have surrendered into India’s hands their life’s praxis to establish the
one in many, the great into the small’ (my translation).80 According to
Vivekananda, traditional concepts did not need final excision from
contemporary minds as they could even be re-envisioned to serve not only
as records of unfairness and inequity but also as conceptual spaces for the
institution of rapproement among historically embiered identities. His
criticism of Adhikarvada has been mentioned earlier. He viewed it not only
as a shortcoming but also as evidence of malintent on the part of the
proponents of the doctrine, since it privileged them directly as custodians of
knowledge: ‘ese advocates of Adhikarvada ignored the tremendous fact of
the infinite possibilities of the human soul.’81

e responsible nation
e lived experience of the nineteenth century gave to Vivekananda a
proximity to the unfolding of the national spirit, and it is undeniable that
mu of his activity was directed for a resurgent homeland. However, he is
powerfully relevant for advocating the values of a responsible nation. On
one plane, this advocacy consisted of alerting his countrymen, both to the
dangers of the ‘huge wave of nationalism’ that he had seen sweeping over
Europe during his travels in the Continent and to the ill effects of revanist
militarisation. ‘But who is to ultimately supply the funds? Consequently the
peasants have to put on taered rags−while in towns you will find soldiers
dressed in gorgeous uniforms. roughout Europe there is a craze for
soldiers − soldiers everywhere.’82 His vision of the future India was totally
non-militaristic and non-xenophobic: ‘No man, no nation, my son, can hate
others and live. India’s doom was sealed the very day they invented the
word Mlechchcha and stopped from communion with others.’83 On another
plane, he was sceptical and dismissive of conventional patriotism: ‘Everyone
wants me to come over to India. ey think we shall be able to do more if I
come. ey are mistaken my friend. e present enthusiasm is only a lile
patriotism, it means nothing.’84 Moreover, he never ceased reminding his
compatriots of the institutional and structural injustices that were also
implicated in the otherwise impressive cultural heritage of the country. A
sense of responsibility for deprivation in society and the undertaking of
restitutive acts, at both the individual and collective levels, were considered
by him to be crucial for the rectification of these injustices in the future
nation. In stating that he was ‘no metaphysician’ but as one who being poor,
loved the poor, he was indicating at an ethics of community.
So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been
educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them! I call those men who strut about in
their finery, having got all the money by grinding the poor, wretes, so long as they do not do
anything for those two hundred millions who are now no beer than hungry savages.85

A section of contemporary opinion has, on the contrary, typified these

statements as mere piousness or worse, ephemeral propaganda of the
ostensible impeccability of his social concerns to obscure the reality of his
elitism.86 During the Indian independence movement, the colonial
administration at one point initiated surveillance of the Ramakrishna
Mission and eventually took punitive measures including dissolution of the
organisation, when it transpired that revolutionaries in Bengal were
impressed with the life and thought of Vivekananda, and many of them
carried copies of his writings. Public representations in support of the
Mission ultimately averted its dissolution by the government. However, this
fact in itself does not adequately explain the British government’s hostility
to the Ramakrishna Mission. e government’s unfriendliness to the
Ramakrishna Mission can be aributed not so mu as to a substantive
perception on its part regarding Vivekananda’s aggressive nationalistic
inclinations and his appeal also among young political extremists, as
perhaps more to a residual antagonism of the government towards sadhus in
general. Sadhus were seen wishfully by the government as being overtly and
rather violently political and thereupon presented with unsavoury aracter
in police dossiers. ere was no doubt quite an enduring political activism in
certain monastic orders. In his interesting study of some su ‘subaltern’
monastic orders, William R. Pin dismisses British allegations regarding the
many moral failings of the sadhus. Although the sanyasis of the Mission
might not be typified under this rubric, they certainly would have received
part of the government’s general antipathy towards monks as a potentially
political group, markedly evident in governmental circles with the later rise
of Gandhian mass politics. Pin says that, for sadhus palpably involved
with political programmes, their ‘political actions were a function of their
religious and philosophical commitment’ rather than a personal and
ideological failing.87 It will be crucial to remember that Vivekananda’s
national sentiment was part of his spiritual-reformist ardour. Amiya Sen
illustratively observes a living commitment in Vivekananda’s remaining
steadfast towards apparently two inconsistent objectives: ‘An immensely
practical, this-worldly approa and the supra-worldly construct of pure
transcendence.’88 However, the discussion on sanyas and the social
consciousness, earlier in the study, has perhaps adequately indicated that in
the life of an extraordinary individual there need be no inconsistency
between spiritual pursuit and amelioration of others’ suffering. Differently,
Vivekananda has been described as an aggressive nationalist in studies su
as that by Bhupendranath Daa.89 Daa’s argument, outlined in the
opening two pages of his Foreword to his book, is however not substantiated
by references to recorded statements by Vivekananda, and most allusions to
his nationalistic intents and programmes in the book are through narrative
and largely uncorroborated accounts. Christopher Isherwood states –
‘However it is not at all surprising that [Vivekananda] has been mu
misunderstood; that parts of his message, taken out of context, have been
presented as a whole. Even some of his brother monks, at the time of the
founding of the Mission, were afraid that he was deviating from
Ramakrishna’s aims. And there have been some, in mu recent times, who
have claimed him as a socialist and a nationalist revolutionary. ey wish,
in all sincerity, to honour Vivekananda as a great Indian patriot, and they
are right as far as they go. But their statue of him would have to be a
headless torso; Vivekananda without Ramakrishna.’90 Vivekananda’s bier
protestations − whi are totally undenotive of any kind of violent
nationalism − against missionary propaganda are beer understood in the
frame of a larger, including European, disgust against the racist core of
colonial philosophy. is encapsulates a different nationalist idea. e
ethical interrogation by Kant of colonial pretensions and Herder’s astringent
critique of racist presumptions of European evangelism may indicate su a
frame. In his prominent text, discussing the militarist tendencies as
commonly pursued in realpolitik, Kant referred to the colonising of India in
refuting bluntly any claim of even a mistaken civilising mission in the
European marauding of lands across the Old and the New World. ‘In East
India (Hindustan), under the pretense of establishing economic
undertakings, they brought in foreign soldiers and used them to oppress the
natives, excited widespread wars among the various states, spread famine,
rebellion, perfidy, and the whole litany of evils whi afflict mankind.’91
Berlin refers in a similar context to Herder’s mordant portrayal of a cultural
situation: ‘“Why are you pouring water over my head?” asked a dying slave
of a Christian missionary. “So that you can go to heaven.” “I do not want to
go to a heaven where there are white men,” he replied, and turned on his
side and died.’92
It would involve a detailed discussion in comparing Vivekananda’s
imagination of India with some of the other colonial imaginings of
nationhood, but it might be suitably illustrative for our argument to refer
very briefly to some su concerns of reform and ange. In traditional
societies, su as in Africa, with a different social history than that of India,
and without a doctrine of established social exclusivity, anti-colonial writing
evidences an uncomplicated defence of traditional social structure apropos
the colonising administration. For instance, Aime Cesaire in his Discourse on
Colonialism defends unqualifiedly the traditional structures and practices of
colonised societies.
 Every day that passes, every denial of justice, every beating by the police, every demand of the
workers that is drowned in blood, every scandal that is hushed up, every punitive expedition,
every police van, every gendarme and every militiaman, brings home to us the value of our old
societies. ey were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few. ey were
societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist. ey were
democratic societies, always. ey were cooperative societies, fraternal societies. I make a
systematic defense of the societies destroyed by imperialism.93

It is quite needless to point out that Vivekananda hardly thought that all
traditional Indian social practices were salutary. e Tunisian philosopher
and analyser of colonialism, Albert Memmi, described the creation of what
he calls a ‘countermythology’, wherein the colonised turns to an
unapologetic defence of native traditions to salvage the image of his
country’s culture in his own eyes. is unnecessary, and erroneous,
glorification indicates as mu as to an innate inadequacy on the part of the
colonised subject as to reluctance on his part to constructively engage with
the issue of rediscovering his tradition. But it most certainly should not be
deduced that the distinguished thinker Cesaire can even remotely be
comprised in this category. In India, this perhaps happened most
uncomplicatedly to some of the young generation, whi had taken an
unalloyed pleasure in debunking traditional values before they became
excessively valiant in their ampioning of indigenous cultural values and
religious principles. Tagore had likened this tendency to a kind of
dipsomania. For Memmi, this certainly was a fact in the context of African
colonialism. He mentions the trend of reviving old myths initially as
resistance to effacement of native identity and progressively as perhaps a
fascination for the exoticism of tradition but with inaentiveness to the
perils of rationalising of the symbolic. is proceeds to the counter-
mythology that is now created by the coloniser. ‘Suddenly, exactly to the
reverse of the colonialist accusation, the colonized, his culture, his country,
everything that belongs to him, everything he represents, becomes perfectly
positive elements … everything is good, everything must be retained among
his customs and traditions, his actions and plans; even the anaronous or
disorderly, the immoral or mistaken. Everything is justified because
everything can be explained.’94 e savage fun that Vivekananda made, of
those who aspired to preserve unexceptionally all traditional customs and
rites in Bengal, is too well known to need further comment. However, the
tangible enlargement in the scope and the social possibility of the modern
religious consciousness becomes prominently noticeable with Vivekananda.
His admiration of tradition is simultaneously fused with incisive criticism of
a host of social practices. In his imagination of modern India, he is
comparable to the reformer modernist, Rammohun Roy. In spite of his
criticism of Roy’s approa to religion in maers of reform, Nivedita’s
account of a conversation with him at Nainital provides an indication of his
envisioning himself as continuing with Roy’s efforts for a modern Indian
consciousness. Speaking in detail of Roy, Vivekananda drew intellectual
kinship with him regarding Vedantism, patriotism and indiscriminative
feeling for Hindu Muslim alike. ‘In all these things he claimed himself to
have taken up the task that the breadth and foresight of Ram Mohan Roy
had mapped out.’95
Bernard Williams regards religious ethics as being intrinsically
problematic: ‘e trouble with religious morality comes not from morality’s
being inescapably pure, but from religion’s being incurably unintelligible.’96
But a renunciant like Vivekananda could naturally merge the religious and
the ethical, even perhaps on the most difficult plane, in sincerely adhering to
tradition while being critical of it to a degree that effectively has the
potential of recreating that tradition. He might have aieved this to an
admirable extent because of his independent exposing of revivalist
ambitions. He was acutely aware of the beginning of modern convergence of
orthodoxies that had already become noticeable in his time: ‘at recently in
Eastern Aryavarta, the different caste-people seem to develop a feeling of
united sympathy amidst themselves with a view to ameliorate their present
social condition − that, in the Mahraa country, the Brahmans have begun
to sing paeans in praise of the “Maratha” race − these, the lower castes
cannot yet believe to be the outcome of pure disinterestedness.’97
Vivekananda appreciated the generative impact of ideas borne on political
winds from abroad and was rather optimistic of the egalitarian aracter of
English rule:
 e days of exclusive privileges and exclusive claims are gone, gone for ever from the soil of India,
and it is one of the great blessings of the British Rule in India. Even to the Mohammedan Rule we
owe that great blessing, the destruction of exclusive privilege. at rule was, aer all, not all bad;
nothing is all bad and nothing is all good. e Mohammedan conquest of India came as a
salvation to the down-trodden, to the poor.98

He had presciently observed that conflict between nations derives from

within intra-national contentions and that countries divert the focus of their
communities from domestic disputes through issues of foreign policy.99 He
recognised and welcomed the beginnings of a convergence of civilisations
and the inevitable kniing of countries into a global community whi
would require more reflection and fewer belligerences on the part of nations
and also innovative protocols of international understanding.100 e ideas of
Vivekananda regarding the ethics of community and nation offer complex
and significant readings in contemporary contexts. Ideologies that are
fixative over manipulation and control of community aspirations and effort
will be tested through a difficult frame of ethics and decency in the political
thought of Bankim and Vivekananda.
To explore a discourse in ideational terms may be sometimes convenient,
but it is hardly ever an unproblematic endeavour. e ‘real’ idea on whi
the ‘real’ meaning of the discourse rests or is contained may become
severely contested. But I hope that the argument in process can indicate that
a discourse, whi has so far been largely suspected of subsumed meanings,
may convey very different implications for us if the merging of the apparent
and the evidential meanings is locatable with fairly reasonable consistency.
To do that would, I admit, mean accepting a different relationship of the
historical past and the historicised present than say as is contained in Marx’s
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. I am aware that viewed in that
logic this discourse may seem merely as the weighing of the tradition of all
the dead generations, ‘like a nightmare on the brain of the living’.101 Bankim
and Vivekananda would then not be seen as proponents of ange but rather
as protagonists from an epo whi, even when presented with an
opportunity of revolutionary ange, resurrected ‘the old ronology, the old
names, the old edicts, whi had long become a subject of antiquarian
erudition, and the old minions of the law, who had long since decayed’.102
Marx had wrien that the ‘social revolution of the nineteenth century
cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future’. But even
critics from within the Marxist tradition of solarship have occasionally
osen to go beyond this frame. And this seems perfectly consistent to me.
In earlier times in India, the identificational Hindu or Muslim did not in the
political community approximate to Hindutva or its Islamic variant of today.
Writing of the different paths opted for by Maulana Azad and M. A. Jinnah
in their imagining of a political community from a religious community,
Aijaz Ahmed has stated: ‘It is one of the great paradoxes of modern Indian
history that traditions of Islamic piety, from Azad to the Deoband ulema,
eventually found their way into composite cultural and political
nationalism; theories of modernization, as taught in the British and proto-
British institutions, from Lincoln’s inn to Aligarh, begat, on the other hand,
communal separatism.’103 Confining myself to the first half of his statement,
I would mention that Ahmed consciously did not extend this thesis to the
period under discussion. It is our contention that it could be profitable to do
so with regard to the two gentlemen who are mainly the subjects of the
present discussion.

Notes
1. Sudhir Chandra, Dependence and Disillusionment: Emergence of National Consciousness in Later

Nineteenth Century India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), xxv.
2. Charles L. Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 209.
3. Miael O. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 17–18.
4. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy, 19.
5. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy, 258.
 6. Jotirao Phule, ‘Slavery’, trans. Maya Pandit in ed. G. P. Deshpande, Selected Writings of Jotirao

Phule (New Delhi: LeWord Books, 2002), 89. In a way commenting on the historical aitude of
the leading political parties to the issue, Ambedkar, speaking on 25 November 1949, to the
Constituent Assembly, warned of the disastrous consequences of an abiding disillusionment of the
suppressed classes with constitutional processes: ‘ese are my reflections about the tasks that lie
ahead of us. ey may not be very pleasant to some. But there can be no gainsaying that political
power in this country has too long been the monopoly of a few and the many are not only beasts
of burden, but also beasts of prey. is monopoly has not merely deprived them of their ance of
beerment, it has sapped them of what may be called the significance of life. ese down-trodden
classes are tired of being governed. ey are impatient to govern themselves. is urge for self-
realization in the down-trodden classes must not be allowed to devolve into a class struggle or
class war. It would lead to a division of the House. at would indeed be a day of disaster.’
Constituent Assembly Debates: Official Report, 5 Books (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1950;
rpt. 1999), 5: 980.
7. Congress Presidential Addresses, ed. A. M. Zaidi, 5 vols. (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied
Political Resear, 1986–1989), 1: 28.
8. Congress Presidential Addresses, 1: 47–48.
9. Congress Presidential Addresses, 1: 128.
10. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Speeches and Writings of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, 2 vols. (Delhi: Anmol
Publications, 1987 [hereaer Speeches and Writings]), 2: 743.
11. Speeches and Writings, 2: 744.
12. Speeches and Writings, 2: 745.
13. Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities,

trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 76.
14. Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco, trans. P. A. Bien (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1973),
176–177.
15. Tapan Rayaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal

(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 360.

16. S. N. Mukherjee refers to the prevalence of this perception: ‘It is oen suggested that Bankim
Chandra was a counter-reformist, a Bengali Loyola in relation to Rammohun Roy, a Bengali
Luther.’ S. N. Mukherjee, ‘Introduction’, in trans. and ed. S. N. Mukherjee and Marian Maddern,
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee − Sociological Essays: Utilitarianism and Positivism in Bengal

(Calcua: Rddhi-India, 1986), 14.

17. For a subtle analysis of su modernity, see Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness:

Bankimchandra and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1995), 158–168.
18. S. N. Mukherjee, ‘Introduction’, 14.
19. Rael Van M. Baumer, ‘e Reinterpretation of Dharma in Nineteenth-Century Bengal: Righteous
Conduct for Man in the Modern World’, in ed. Rael Van M. Baumer, Aspects of Bengali History
and Society (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976), 96. In an early study of modern Indian
political thought, Bimanbehari Majumdar wrote of Bankim in perhaps slightly emotional
appreciation: ‘In the history of western political thought, Maiavelli is regarded as the prophet
and preaer of the principles of nationalism and patriotism. In the history of the political thought
of Modern India, Bankimandra holds a position analogous to that of Maiavelli. Like the great
Florentine statesman, Bankimandra too held patriotism as the first principle of political
philosophy. But Bankimandra’s political philosophy is based on su high ethical conceptions
that it would be nothing less than sacrilege to uer his name in the same breath with that of
Maiavelli.’ Bimanbehari Majumdar, History of Political Thought from Rammohun Roy to

Dayananda, vol. I (Calcua: University of Calcua, 1934), 402.

20. Bankim Chandra Chaerjee, Essays & Letters, eds. Brajendranath Nath Banerji and Sajani Kant
Das (New Delhi: Rupa, 2010), 117.
21. Chaerjee, Essays & Letters, 117–118.
22. Majumdar, History of Political Thought from Rammohun Roy to Dayananda, 404.
23. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore:
e Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 213.
24. Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of
Nationalism (London: Methuen & Co., 1977), 463.
25. Kedourie gives the originary definition of the nation as in Europe: ‘Natio in ordinary spee
originally meant a group of men belonging together by similarity of birth, larger than a family, but
smaller than a clan of people.’ Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Malden, MA: Blawell Publishing,
1993), 5.
26. I am grateful to Murali Manohar Dwivedi for references, interpretation and the translation of the
relevant Sanskrit verses.
27. ‘Atvaharshamantaredhi dhruvastishthavichachalih / Vishastva sarva vanchhantu matvad

rashtramadhibhrashat.’ Rigveda (Poona: Vaidik Sanshodhan Mandal, 1946), 10/173/1.

28. For details, see Yajurveda (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978), 22/22; and generally Atharvaveda

(Pardi, Valsad: Svadhyaya Mandal, 4th edition, not dated), 1/29/1; 1/29/4.
29. For details, see Rigveda, 10/12/3.
30. ‘Na hi tad bhavita rashtram yatra ramo na bhupati / tad vanam bhavita rashtram yatra ramo

nivatsyati.’ Valmiki, Ramayana (Gorakhpur: Gita Press, 1976 [2033 Vikram Era]), 2/37/29.
31. Rayaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, 135–136.
32. ‘Vajasyemam prasavah sushuvegre somam rajanamoshadhishvapsu / ta asmabhyam

madhumatirbhavantu vayam rashtre jagryama purohitah’. − Yajurveda 9/23. For a comprehensive

analysis of the essential qualities, in Sanskrit literature, of the preceptor who normally functioned
as both priest and counselor, see Jan Gonda, Change and Continuity in Indian Religion (1965; rpt
Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1997), 229–283.
33. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays: Utilitarianism and Positivism in Bengal, trans. and ed. S. N.
Mukherjee and Marian Maddern (Calcua: Rddhi-India, 1986), 55.
34. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays, 56.
35. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays, 56.
36. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays, 58.
37. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays, 60.
38. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays, 117.
39. is aitude towards ancient kingship as being somewhat benevolent was not entirely uncommon
in the early days of Western-educated Indians responding to sweeping critiques of traditional
Indian polity by English historians. Perhaps, the earliest su riposte was a thoughtful paper
presented by a twenty-two-year-old student of the Hindu College, Kashi Prasad Ghosh, during his
annual examination in 1828. Ghosh defended Brahmins and kings from Mill’s arge of
perpetuating an arcane and retrogressive social system. According to Ghosh, the traditional
Brahmin pundit was respected not as a priest but as a solar and drew his resilience from his
complete devotion to learning as well as the traditional prohibition for Brahmins from acquiring
wealth. e authority of the Hindu monar was never unrestrained from law and a kind of public
opinion: ‘e allurement of wealth and power on one side, and the terror of religion and law on
the other, secured the peace of the kingdom.’ C. Ghosh, ‘Essay on Mill’s British India’, quoted in
David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian

Modernization 1773–1835 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 263–264.

40. Bankimandra Chaerjee, Prabandha o Onnanya Rachana (Kolkata: Sahityam, 2007), 536.
41. Chaerjee, Prabandha o Onnanya Rachana, 561.
42. B. N. Ganguli, Concept of Equality: The Nineteenth Century Indian Debate (Simla: Indian Institute
of Advanced Study, 1975), 104.
43. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays, 197–198.
44. Rezaul Karim, ‘In the Eyes of a Non-Hindu’, trans. William Radice, in ed. Bhabatosh Chaerjee,
Bankimchandra Chatterjee: Essays in Perspective (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1994), 177–181.
45. Chaerjee, Bankim Rachanabali: Upannyas Samagra (Kolkata: Shubham, 2009), 998.
46. Sisir Kumar Das, The Artist in Chains (Delhi: New Statesman Publishing Company, 1984), 239.
47. Das, The Artist in Chains, 239.
48. Das, The Artist in Chains, 236.
49. T. W. Clark, ‘e Role of Bankimcandra in the Development of Nationalism’, in ed. C. H. Phillips,
Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 445.
50. Chaerjee, Sociological Essays, 76.
51. Rayaudhuri, Europe Reconsidered, 230.
52. Peter Heehs discusses in his biography of Aurobindo the difficulties of a biographer in making a
study of the ‘spiritual life’ of a subject. Hees states: ‘It is one thing to scrutinize descriptions of
spiritual experiences, quite another to interpret them. Unlike su disciplines as history and
literary criticism, the study of spirituality has no generally accepted hermeneutic framework.
Spiritual experiences are not available on demand, nor do they lend themselves well to intellectual
systematizing.’ For details, see Peter Heehs, Sri Aurobindo: A Brief Biography (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 85–87.
53. G. C. Pande, Studies in the Origins of Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1995), 326.
54. Pande, Studies in the Origins of Buddhism, 327–328.
55. Pande, Studies in the Origins of Buddhism, 332.
56. G. C. Pande, Life and Thought of Sankaracharya (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2004), 246.
57. Pande, Life and Thought of Sankaracharya, 246.
58. ‘Karyam ity eva yat karma/niyatam kriyate ‘rjuna/sangatam tyaktava phalam cati ‘va/sa tyagah

sattviko matah’. S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita (Bombay: Blaie & Son, 1982), verse 8,
apter xviii.
59. I am grateful to Sibesh Chandra Bhaaarya for this interpretation of the relationship between
sanyas and the social consciousness.
60. Lal Mani Joshi, Discerning the Buddha: A Study of Buddhism and of the Brahmanical Hindu

Attitude to It (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1983), 210.

61. Charles H. Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1964), 9.
62. Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols. (Mayavati/Kolkata:
Advaita Ashram, 1948–1997 [hereaer Complete Works]), 5: 187.
63. Complete Works, 3: 446.
64. Complete Works, 3: 447.
65. Complete Works, 5: 35–36.
66. Complete Works, 3: 314. is view was shared by many of his contemporaries. For instance, Tagore
opined: ‘We will surely have to remember this doctrine that if any effort in our country aspires to
help the people of the country then it cannot by any means be successful if it does not take
recourse to religion. No countrywide opportunity, no temptation of the accomplishment of
national self-interest has ever generated vigour in the mind of our common people’ (my
translation). Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali (125th anniversary edition), 15 vols.
(Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 1986–1992 [1393–1398 Bengali era]), 5: 789.
67. Complete Works, 3: 32.
68. Complete Works, 3: 187.
69. Complete Works, 7: 160.
70. Complete Works, 4: 375.
71. Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 3.
72. Complete Works, 5: 25.
73. Complete Works, 5: 188.
74. Complete Works, 5: 190.
75. Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2011),
whi discusses responses to, among others, Derrida, Sartre and Levinas can be one reference on
the topic.
76. Complete Works, 6: 287.
77. Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society, trans. Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1998), 280–281.
78. Complete Works, 6: 370.
79. Complete Works, 6: 376. Peter Van der Veer finds Vivekananda’s view of yoga distinctive in the
context of a pluralistic vision of religion: ‘What I find important in Vivekananda’s construction of
yoga as the core of Hindu “spirituality” is that it is devoid of any specific devotional content that
 would involve, for example, temple worship and thus a theological and ritual position in sectarian
debates.’ Peter Van der Veer, ‘Colonial Cosmopolitanism’, in ed. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen,
Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002), 177.
80. Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali, 5: 763.
81. Complete Works, 5: 190.
82. Complete Works, 3: 374.
83. Complete Works, 5: 40.
84. Complete Works, 5: 39.
85. Complete Works, 5: 45.
86. One su highly critical, if equally polemical and sematic, study in this regard has been
authored by Narasingha P. Sil. is comment by Sil is representative of his critique: ‘All this
dithyramb for the downtrodden was in fact simply wishy-washy fashionable humanitarianism of
a Bengali bhadralok’. Narasingha P. Sil, Swami Vivekananda: A Reassessment (Selinsgrove:
Susquehanna University Press, 1997), 76.
87. William R. Pin, Peasants and Monks in British India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9.
88. Amiya P. Sen, Swami Vivekananda (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 101.
89. For details, see Bhupendranath Daa, Swami Vivekananda: Patriot – Prophet (Calcua:
Nababharat Publishers, 1993).
90. Christopher Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (Kolkata: Advaita Ashram, 2007), 326.
Peter Heehs, a veteran solar who has observed in detail the nuances of the nationalistic idea in
Bengal, similarly agrees: ‘It is possible, by taking passages from Vivekananda’s writings out of
context, to make him look like a consciously nationalistic figure. But if one goes through the
Complete Works dispassionately, one is forced to conclude that Vivekananda never ceased to
regard his mission as a spiritual one.’ Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary
Terrorism in India 1900–1910 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 25.
91. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (Minneapolis: Filiquarian Publishing, LLC, [1795] 2007), 22.
92. Isaiah Berlin, Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder, ed. Henry Hardy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 185.
93. Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, trans. Joan Pinkham (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2010), 44.
94. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfeld (Boston: Beacon Press,
1967), 138–139.
95. Complete Works, 9: 341.
 96. Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), 72.
97. Complete Works, 4: 407.
98. Complete Works, 3: 294.
99. Complete Works, 3: 316.
100. Complete Works, 3: 241.
101. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1967), 10.
102. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, 12.
103. Aijaz Ahmed, ‘Azad’s Careers: Roads Taken and Not Taken’, in Aijaz Ahmed, Lineages of the

Present (Delhi: Tulika, 1996), 189.

 II
Politics
Truth and non-violence

Non-violence and truth might provide the finest definition and the axis of
the political principles of Gandhi and Tagore. eir ethical operability can be
evaluated by a theoretical discussion that fleshes the first principles of their
political thought in difficult, even inhospitable, contexts. Miael Walzer has
pointed out that issues involving practical morality are beer understood
casuistically and suitably illustrated through historical cases paying
aention to the ‘nuances and details of historical reality’. He also admits
that these cases can be frequently controversial. But it was at the same time
important to him that he could in all justification believe that he was
‘reporting on experiences that men and women have really had and on
arguments that they have really made’.1 I have according to this frame,
aempted to study the ethical politics of Gandhi and Tagore in the context
of historical experience.e following discussion of the essential principles
of their politics, perhaps best describable in terms of conscionableness, truth
and non-violence, situates these virtues as political values in the ambiance of
protest, resistance and tragic despair.

Tagore: freedom of conscience and ethics of

community
It will be interesting to explore translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s ideas
on the ethics of community and, what perhaps is for many of us somewhat
paradoxical for Tagore, the ethics of nation. e ground for these ideas is
traceable in his historical situation and his philosophical inheritance,
including the awareness of nationalistic passion; experience of illiberal
colonial government; interaction with the West and other cultures of what
can now be called as the global South; and a sense of human dignity in
traditional Indian concepts, and its playing out, with its possible and
aendant complications, in some of his major writings su as Atmashakti,
Samuha and Kalantar. ese writings are still untranslated and also largely
under-analysed on the plane of a conversation among the established and
the alternative ideas of political action. e vision of Tagore also, in a way,
explores the ways to reconciliation between opposing historical inheritances.
In this, Tagore’s focus is predominantly on the individual as constituent of
larger communities, and his ideas on social responsibility deliberate on the
making of the ethical individual. It may prove interesting to detect the
development and interplay of these ideas in a still later text of Tagore’s, and
I aempt to bring particular focus on a controversial novel by him – Char
Adhyaya (Four Chapters, 1934). Char Adhyaya has been seen mainly as his
response to a political situation, but his deliberate oice, regarding form, of
a novel over a political essay may imply an engagement with the human
condition whi permits of a more nuanced representation of a theme that
had in a sense engaged Tagore all his life. is was regarding the ethical
oices confronting communities during difficult times, as also the
negotiating of the issue of ‘freedom’ – whether the acquiring of the freedom
of political intervention was, for even the briefest moment and at whatever
point, prioritisable over the freedom of conscience, and how could an ethics
of a community render that prioritisation adverse in the perception of the
community. e presuppositions whi Tagore brought to his political
experience also helped to form that experience. Although not grounded on
the plane of the merely political, this transition from the metaphysical to the
political-plus, if one can call it su, was conducive for creating a space for
historical imagination and insight, and crucially, involving an insistent
ethics in his political writings. Early in his mid-twenties, on the death of his
sister-in-law Kadambari Devi, an experience of the metaphysical
foundations of living reinforced his faith, whi had been formed in
ildhood in nearness to his father. ‘Yet amid unbearable grief, flashes of joy
sparkled in my mind on and off in a way whi quite surprised me. e idea
that life is not a fixture came as tidings that helped to lighten my mind. at
we are not forever prisoners behind a wall of stony-hearted facts was the
thought that kept unconsciously rising uppermost in rushes of gladness.’2
is inspirational awareness remained both a source of puzzlement and
resilience in his dealings with the political world; his puzzlement remained,
paradoxically, even with the political positions of, arguably the supreme
practitioner of ethical politics, Mahatma Gandhi. As Tagore wrote to
Rolland: ‘It is the moral loneliness whi is a constant and invisible burden
that oppresses me the most.’3 A poignant instance is Tagore’s agonising in a
leer to C. F. Andrews over Gandhi’s position on the Hunter Commission:
And for this, all the moral fervour whi the life of Gandhi represents, and whi he, of all other
men in the world, can call up, is needed. at su a precious treasure of power should be put into
the mean and frail vessel of our politics allowing it to sail across endless waves of angry
recrimination is terribly unfortunate for our country where our mission is to revive the dead with
the fire of soul. e external waste of our resources of life is great owing to external circumstances
– but [that] the waste of our spiritual resources should be allowed to happen on adventures that
are wrong from the point of view of moral truth is heartbreaking. It is criminal to turn moral force
into a blind force.4

It may appear to be a simplification to argue especially given Tagore’s

vocabulary that the major concern in his thinking is with freedom, both
from the feers of the intellectual orthodoxies as well as from the fetish of
total revolution. But it may not be impossible to aempt transactions
between the modern terminologies of participation and democracy and the
early indigenous concepts of knowledge and liberty.5 Tagore’s pervasive
regard for freedom inhabits his prioritisation of the ethical and is
intrinsically related to his defining the scope and validity of human goals.
On the plane of constitutive principle, Tagore’s idea of the just society is
sustained by the concept of su a freedom, as was later defined by Hannah
Arendt: ‘Freedom, moreover is not only one among the many problems and
phenomena of the political realm properly speaking, su as justice, or
power, or equality; freedom, whi only seldom – in times of crisis or
revolution – becomes the direct aim of political action, is actually the reason
that men live together in political organization at all. Without it, political life
as su would be meaningless. e raison d’être of politics is freedom, and
its field of experience is action.’6 However, Tagore extends his idea of
freedom forward from the point of a basic convergence with Arendt’s
concept. For Tagore, freedom did translate into a societal virtue, but it was
embodied in the individual and it was as an individual aribute and
aspiration that it was primarily valuable and most worth erishing. e
freedom of the individual was crucially reflected not in autonomy of
consumption and leisure, but in the individual’s courage to act according to
his conscience. On this plane of practice, the freedom of conscience would
be best sustained by the abiding philosophical principles and the example of
historical personalities who symbolised this courage. is faith, on Tagore’s
part, in the value of philosophical/historical inheritance, as also his
insistence on su freedom whi, even as it was political it had, at the same
time, distinctly non-political origins, is radically different from Arendt’s
basic premise. It needs to be mentioned that Arendt’s view on the
metaphysical concepts of living, located as they are in a specific
epistemological tradition, are so very different from those of Tagore.
Although Tagore too regards modernity, with its discounting of reflective
modes and of the ideas of the sanctity of virtue, as inhospitable to individual
freedom, the sequential divergence between their ideas is markedly apparent
in this statement by Arendt: ‘Obviously, this notion of an interdependence of
freedom and politics stands in contradiction to the social theories of the
modern age. Unfortunately it does not allow that we need only to revert to
older, pre-modern traditions and theories. Indeed, the greatest difficulty in
reaing an understanding of what freedom is arises from the fact that a
simple return to tradition, and especially what we are wont to call the great
tradition, does not help us.’7 Tagore, while not favouring a return to the past,
would place the highest value on many ideals from past traditions, whi he
believed would help in the living of a life of integrity.
Tagore would not have subscribed ultimately to Arendt’s discrimination,
whi she has outlined in another essay by her on ‘Truth and Politics’,
between the philosophical and the political: ‘Since philosophical truth
concerns man in his singularity, it is unpolitical by nature.’8 As we shall
subsequently see, Tagore refused to accept a concept of politics, whi he
anowledged that contemporary Western political practices had made
appear the sole mode of politics, whi was only strategy without any
ethical principle: ‘is statement is no doubt correct that in the modern
scripture of western civilisation, politics is at the highest, dharma is below
it.’9 e emphasis on the ‘modern’ is not merely incidental; Tagore venerated
the foundational ideals of civilisations. Arendt refers to Plato on the virtue
of truth telling: ‘In other words, since man contains within himself a partner
from whom he can never win release, he will be beer off not to live in
company with a murderer or a liar. Or, since thought is the silent dialogue
carried on between me and myself, I must be careful to keep the integrity of
this partner intact; for otherwise I shall surely lose the capacity for thought
altogether.’10 is would be for Tagore the core principle of ethical living.
Unlike Arendt, who regarded those principles as being in actual practice
largely peripheral to the conduct of the individual as the citizen, Tagore
would have anowledged the platonic dialogues on the intrinsic and
instrumental virtue of justice as similar to the Upanishadic dialogues on
conduct and ethics, and both of them as extremely relevant for ethical living
for the individual as human being as well as for the individual in his role as
a political agent and constituent unit of the community.
A probable thematic axis in Tagore’s political writings is the relation
between truthfulness and politics. e definition of ‘truthfulness’ as offered
by Bernard Williams maybe apposite to the discussion: ‘While truthfulness
has to be grounded in, and revealed in, one’s dealings with everyday truths,
it must go beyond truth as displayed in everyday truths.’11 It was not an easy
proposition for a writer also addressing the topic of decolonisation and self-
government, and relatedly the somewhat extended issue of the defining of
emergent communitarian identities in a land with a history of fractious
difference among communities, to locate the centre of gravity of his writings
on su metaphysical grounds. In the face of painful everyday truths
regarding racial discrimination by colonial government and its affront to
native sensibilities, Tagore persistently highlighted before his compatriots,
the many unjust social practices that were still largely appreciated as
forming the cultural heritage of the country. In addition to remonstrating
against the inherent injustices of colonial governance, he engaged in the
complicated exercise of indicating and discussing the disturbing truths
regarding Indian society; this also extended the definitions of dominance
and exploitation and pointed at the ethical unsustainability of Indian claims
for equality and autonomy before the colonial government, when many
Indians denied in practice su claims to large sections of their own
countrymen. Admiedly for him, the truth of India’s history was not limited
by the evidence of retrogressive and unjust practice. Appreciative of the
egalitarianising impulse of modern, and in part Western, thinking, he at the
same time considered it both feasible and advisable to negotiate the issues of
structural and institutional injustice within Indian society within the
framework of the Indian philosophical heritage and its intellectual tradition.
roughout his life, Tagore spoke glowingly of the austerity and self-
sacrifice of the seers of India who were ever absorbed in the pursuit of the
realising of truth. is, for him, was the essential truth of India, and he
evoked the image of Shiva, the eternal yogi, as a metaphor for the Indian
spirit. A pride in the philosophical traditions of India was vital to Tagore’s
understanding of Indian history and culture. In an essay wrien in 1930 and
entitled ‘Rabindranather Rashtranaitik Moth’ (‘Rabindranath’s Political
eory’), Tagore stated that he believed that the compulsory delinking of his
Brahmo family from the ritualistic associations of Hindu society had created
in his elders an ‘extremely powerful reverence for the ages-old community
ideals of India’:
at sense of pride that day has occupied in many shapes the inner nature and outer behaviour of
our home. During the days of that time those whose faith towards a ritualistic Hindu religion
 wavered, their minds were beset either by an atheism of the particular mould of that of eighteenth
century Europe or by an inclination to the Christian religion. But this account is known to
everyone that, in that time our family was always conscious in its zeal to reclaim India’s religion
by following the best ideals of India. Needless to say, that zeal naturally has in ildhood in a
particular essence initiated my mind.12

Tagore identified that essence in the recognition of the fact that the most
sublime gi of our life can only culminate through our own inner nature,
and we cannot receive for ourselves the alluring elements that exist outside
the limits of our innate nature unless we misappropriate them into our
innateness. is qualification was for him a crucial condition in the growth
of both the individual as well as the community, and he also transposed this
argument to the plane of national regeneration. ‘We will surely have to
remember this doctrine that if any effort in our country aspires to help the
people of the country then it cannot by any means be successful if it does
not take recourse to religion. No countrywide opportunity, no temptation of
the accomplishment of national self-interest has ever generated vigour in the
mind of our common people.’13 is is not to simplify the complexity of the
issues of discrimination and dishonour in Indian society and to gloss over
the problem of scriptural endorsement of many discriminative practices of
the past. Tagore himself was highly aware of su sanction of social inequity
on the part of religion. But he used the term religion without any
connotation of sacerdotal authority, of whi he remained extremely critical
throughout his life. However, he did not subscribe to the customary notion
that representational empowerment and the consequent enablement
regarding political intervention would by itself alleviate the distress of the
deprived. He was equally uninterested in the pretensions of the affluent
leadership of the Congress concerning the welfare of the masses, as he
considered them to be wholly elitist and motivated by selfish political
interests. ‘Nobody can completely usurp our country, and nobody has su
power to bestow this country to us from the outside from kindness. It is to
the proportion in whi we have relinquished our natural right over the
country that the other has occupied it.’14 e rule of India by the West had
hurt the country’s soul, whi has hitherto existed in dissemination in the
ubiquitous social matrix of its people. e state’s taking over the traditional
social arrangements had only served it ill. ‘Ever since this occupation [by
the state] became permanent, the ponds dried up in villages; ruined temples
and guest houses grew peepul trees, their remained nothing to deter
deception-fraud, untruth-perjury; the entire country sank to hell due to
disease, affliction, helplessness, ignorance and unrighteousness.’15 It is of
course undeniable that his portrayal of the traditional structure of social
responsibility in India was fairly idealised. e significance of his argument,
however, lies in the strong advocacy of an ethics of responsibility, and the
imagining of an ideal society that can only reside on the ground of su an
ethics. e refurbishment of the structural fissures in the Indian nation was
indicated in a sense of responsibility for social deprivation and in ideas of
restitution at both the individual and collective levels.
A central question that derives from mu of his writings is the question
whi has been described elsewhere and in another context by Williams as,
‘What does truthfulness in politics maer?’16 For Tagore, truth was
intrinsically linked to freedom of conscience, and this question for him
vitally affected the centre of man’s individual and corporate consciousness.
In the sphere of governance, Tagore would be directly opposed to the view
whi Williams describes as a ‘moderate version of Maiavelli’s thesis’, ‘the
responsibilities of government are different enough from those of private
individuals to make governmental virtue a rather different maer from the
virtue of individuals’.17 is translated into the essential need for defining
truth, and not only philosophically, as a supreme virtue; truth and justice
also needed to be defined as the effective restraint to the tyranny not only of
the government, but also to the tyranny of amoral politics, and thereby as
the basis for working towards establishing as public principle, su restraint
to the tyranny of the merely political. Tagore discussed the consistency of
this principle in the context of the public restlessness and governmental
repression that had beset Bengal during the closing years of the first decade
of the twentieth century, in a way trying the argument in a most
unfavourable political climate, when the general public opinion and
government policy alike seemed to relegate the qualities of community
ethics and justice as being irrelevant and unpractical. ‘In the times that have
set in now it is meaningless to make an appeal for ethics. e reason for this
is that the person who expresses with complete faith the doctrine that there
is a place for ethics in state policy is disregarded by people as either being
devoid of common sense or being neurotically obsessed with ethics.’18
Tagore described that to proclaim ‘Martial Law’ meant to exile the sense of
justice by calling it a hindrance, and on that occasion to declare that the
uncontrolled brutality of revengeful human nature was the prime resource
of fulfilling requirements. e conscienceless brutality of using the ‘punitive
police’ to oppress with force all the helpless village people also fell in the
same category. e use of all these methods conveyed to people that ‘pure
ethics was not enough for fulfilling the requirements of state policy’. Tagore
stated that this perfidious statecra of Europe was vitiating
conscientiousness everywhere in the world today. Hence, it will be of no
avail to revile all those people in the country who have decided on the
clandestine path as the only way of accomplishing the welfare of the nation
and who will laugh away any sermonising on righteousness. erefore, in
the present condition, if the agitated people of the country are to be told an
opinion, then it will have to be said only from the angle of necessity. It will
have to be well explained to them that even the gravest need should be
fulfilled through a commendable path; if we aempt to accomplish any task
in short and by a paroial path, we shall one day lose direction and in the
end we shall not find the path and destroy the work we set out to do. No
path in the world will reduce itself for us because of our ardour to aain the
goal, and neither will time shorten itself.19 Tagore warned that the path of
truth brooked no lapses. He reminded his fellow citizens that duty towards
the nation could on no account be taken to operate independently of the
duty to the individual conscience; purporting to serve the interests of the
nation by contravening the ethical code would inflict irreparable damage to
the community/nation. Enduring hardship was infinitely more worthwhile
for the community than to opt for political strategies that were ethically
unsure:
 Enduring sorrow is not so difficult, but to apply restraint in the face of false thought is extremely
difficult for the mind. If we once consider injustice and tyranny as executive resources then the
entire innate strength for protecting the mind from perversion is lost; wavering for once from the
fixed centre of truth is enough to ruin our sagacity, there is no longer any resoluteness in our
action, and then a terrible collision becomes unavoidable to effect a symmetry between the
universal law of truth and this corruption in our lives.20

Tagore would have been in complete agreement with Arendt’s definition of

the quality of truth: ‘Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot
ange; metaphorically it is the ground on whi we stand and the sky that
stretes above us.’21
e thematic axis, mentioned earlier regarding Tagore’s writings, resides
largely in his philosophical inheritance. e term home was perhaps more of
a connotation for Tagore. He laid greater emphasis on concepts like
‘atmosphere’, ‘associations’ and especially ‘milieu’. is last can be
construed as the defining constituent of the individual rather than mere
geographical location. Milieu was also a growing idea being formed through
a variety of ethnic and cultural participations. In 1921, when Tagore was
dissenting from Gandhi’s idea of non-cooperation, he also wrote to the
educationist and philosopher Brajendranath Seal against the idea of
‘fragmenting of education’ that he considered particularly inappropriate at a
time when ‘the different peoples of the world are coming within ea other’s
purview’. Aempting to ‘blo their vision with a screen of partisanship is
to flout God’s purpose’. Significantly, he did not envision a colourless
cosmopolitanism. ‘To sacrifice the diverse forms of goodness on the altar of
mere necessity is not good. But for whi form am I particularly
responsible? estions of this kind urn constantly in my mind when I feel
weary.’ e idea of his heritage is clearly conveyed in his complaint in the
leer against his latest biography by Edward ompson, whi he felt had
‘firmly detaed me from my atmosphere’. ‘But a cutout is an incomplete
picture of a man, who is not a mere individual but relates to his milieu; and
this relationship is far reaing and ill-defined.’ His own mental climate had
been formed by a mingling of ‘Vaishnava literature and the Upanishads’, as
his father’s had been by the Upanishads and Hafiz. ‘In my father’s heart
Hafiz and the Upanishads were in confluence, a union of two opposed
elements, as is necessary for the creation of beauty.’22 He never advocated
returning to a pristine culture, and this was in fact very significant for a
society aspiring to outlive historical and acrimonious contestation between
its communities; in fact, he strongly refuted the possibility of su a return
in the career of nations/civilisations, not least because he disbelieved in the
historical existence of su pristine cultures. He stated that the main
problem before India was unique, and for whi no precedent existed in the
history of other nations. e problem, ‘extending from the mountain regions
to the borders of the sea, and plainly visible to the eye, was that, so many
different races, so many different languages, different habits as in India are
found in any one country of the world’.23 roughout his writings, he has
consistently argued that there existed no real communitarian kinship
between the Hindus and the Muslims, and even though it might suit
nationalistic propaganda to blame the British for this divide, the roots of
suspicion between the two communities lay mu deeper, particularly in the
indifference of the majority Hindu community, on the plane of everyday
living, including commensality, to create enduring bonds with their Muslim
neighbours. He observed that ‘It is because that no all-inclusive and real
unity has been generated between Hindu and Muslim, that suspicion and
scepticism has originated regarding the effort to unite them in the area of
politics’.24 He was so very mindful of the dangers of imagining histories
among contested ideas of the past, a risk ever present during efforts at
craing national communities. Naturally, truthfulness regarding history is
crucial, and as Williams indicates: ‘Notoriously, the politics of identity is not
necessarily a friend of plain truthfulness. It breeds, almost inevitably, its
own myths or, not to put too fine a point on it, lies. It may be very important
to rescue from the authenticity of communal aament the more
elementary virtues of truth.’25 Notably, Tagore venerated the saints from the
Bhakti tradition, like Chaitanya, Nanak, Dadu, Kabir also for having, in the
different regions of India, tried to bring about the unity of bhakti in the
plurality of races and scriptures by ‘showering ambrosia of devotion’ on
them, and especially, as earlier mentioned, for being engaged in forming ‘a
bridge of ideals between the natural qualities of Hindu and Muslim’.26
Tagore’s stand on the national question examines the position of
individual conscience within the majority principle. His idea of the nation
may also indicate theoretical possibilities; the hypothesis that every
liberation/egalitarianising movement, at least theoretically, begins as
individual dissent on maers of conscience, but in course of time, it may
come to confront an individual conscience whi opposes the dynamics of
the movement while remaining in sympathy with its broad objectives. e
sustainability and significance of su movements may depend in
substantial measure on the successful negotiation of su dissents. During
the Indian national movement, Tagore argued against the idea of fixative
nationalism and the principle of non-cooperation. Mindless opposition to
progressive Western ideas and superstitious reliance on tradition would
smother the tradition that was being extolled. His idea of India’s supreme
aievement ‒ even when it was being denied its political freedom ‒ was not
the mere fact of self-rule, but its role in facilitating through becoming an
ideal, the cooperation and accord between nations. He felt that ‘the true
India is an idea and not a mere geographical fact’: ‘e idea of India is
against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one’s own people
from others, and whi inevitably leads to ceaseless conflicts. erefore my
one prayer is: let India stand for the cooperation of all peoples of the world.
e spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness,
the spirit of acceptance in the consciousness of unity.’27 It was this faith in a
common human destiny whi led to his complete rejection of violence as
an instrument of protest. However, even while speaking of Tagore’s
opposition to nationalism, his universalism ought not to be confused with
mere cosmopolitanism. His was more a faith in the harmony of influences
and traditions. He spoke of the ‘web of unity’ in Indian culture, ‘whi binds
all of us’ without our ‘knowing or not knowing it’, and the ‘truth of whi
was not contingent on our knowledge and anowledgement of it’. In 1915,
drawing an outline of his own identity, he emphasised on retaining the
distinctiveness of traditions in building bridges between cultures. ‘One who
makes himself an outsider can never make an outsider his own, it never
happens that the world agrees to partake the hospitality of a home that has
been disowned by its owner; the position that it is only through giving up
one’s own foothold that one can occupy the vast space of the universe can
never be an honourable one.’28
Largely because of, as yet, a very incomplete translation of his prose
writings, whi comprise almost two-thirds of his complete oeuvre, Tagore
is persistently perceived as an impractical dreamer. Along with his poems,
whi are of course central to an understanding of his vision, his prose
exhaustively explains his idea of the human destiny. Tagore had an abiding
commitment towards the socially disprivileged groups. But while
anowledging exploitation and criticising it, he did not subscribe to water-
tight identities; for him, human relations were in a fluid state and class/caste
categories did not perpetually obtrude upon individual emotions. As Isaiah
Berlin says of many of the leading Russian thinkers and writers, Tagore, too,
consistently ‘saw tendencies, political aitudes, as functions of human
beings, not human beings as functions of social tendencies. Acts, ideas, art
and literature were expressions of individuals, not of objective forces of
whi the actors or thinkers were merely embodiments’.29
Tagore believed that the country/nation was only as sound as its citizens.
Along with Gandhi, he represents a different philosophy of decolonisation,
wherein the means are equally important as the ends and whi thus puts
equal premium on reconciliation as it does on political liberation. Within the
Indian context, this also emphases on ideas whi have the potential of
providing intellectual rigour to the exercise begun slightly earlier, of
facilitating, not so mu as a command effort but as a free and honest
exercise, the even participation of the religious and social groups of the
Indian political community, in the transactions whi had commenced for
aieving the idea of the future Indian nation. Relatedly, Tagore strove to
articulate an abiding intellectual justification to the cause of a harmonious
world order. He conceived, and expressed through intellectual argument, the
idea of a reality transcending a strictly empirical verification, the ‘Eternal
Spirit of human unity’, whi inspires humans towards ‘disinterested works,
in science and philosophy, in literature and arts, in service and worship’. He
indicated at the unknown power of the ideals of that ‘Universal Spirit’ at
whose ‘call we hasten to dedicate our lives to the cause of truth and beauty,
to unrewarded service of others, in spite of our la of faith in the positive
reality of the ideal values’.30
Tagore also confronted the contemporary philosophies of social
revolution, whi believed the institution of private property to be primarily
exploitative and redundant. e programme of arbitrary restructuring of
economic relationship contained portents of the still more dangerous
restructuring of social – intellectual relationships. Different to this idea was
a kind of composite rural reconstruction. Economic cooperation was integral
to the idea of Santiniketan, whi would ‘not only instruct, but live; not only
think but produce’. Tagore valued the economic aspect of life, as its
‘necessities are the simplest and the most universal’. is motivated his
initiative at Sriniketan, where he institutionalised his ideas regarding
‘complete education’. Health, education, social awareness and economic
advancement were some of the prominent components in his seme of
rural reconstruction. He engaged with most of the crucial sociocultural and
political issues of his times, and this engagement largely reflects his idealism
with regard to the possible imaginary of an individual as well as of a
community pertaining to its innate qualities as also to its accomplished past
and aspired future. Isaiah Berlin’s remark on social idealism and the ethics
of political philosophy is also very appropriate in the context of the political
writings of Tagore:
Ethical thought consists of the systematic examination of the relations of human beings to ea
other, the conceptions, interests and ideals from whi human ways of treating one another
spring, and the systems of value on whi su ends of life are based. ese beliefs about how life
should be lived, what men and women should be and do, are objects of moral enquiry; and when
applied to groups and nations, and, indeed, mankind as a whole, are called political philosophy,
whi is but ethics applied to society.31

II
Before moving to discuss Tagore’s response to revolutionary violence in
Bengal, whi eventually crystallised in Char Adhyaya, a prefatory mention
of Tagore’s well-known meeting with Mussolini in 1926 may indicate his
commitment to the idea of freedom and in remarking on the occasion when
his instinct failed him, one also specifies his aracteristic caution against
‘strong men’ with visions of the future as with Indranath in Char Adhyaya.
Alex Aronson, a sympathetic solar-critic, inferred that Tagore succumbed
to a poet’s natural approval for vigour when he met and admired Mussolini,
and Tagore went wrong in not looking, as it must be mentioned he generally
did in maers relating to all else, at Italy ‘in terms of human criteria and
experience’ and indulged in ‘wishful thinking, self-deception, and an
unjustifiable optimism’.32 However, his mistaken impression apart, there was
no deviation by Tagore from his essential idea of freedom, and his
unfortunate appreciation of Mussolini was given on the basis of Tagore’s
ideals, as in this remark to Mussolini.
Perhaps a new Rome is being created. I see signs of a new creative activity. ere is need of harsh
discipline before one can aain true freedom. But su discipline is negative, it merely removes
obstacles, it cannot of itself create. A great vision is necessary for a new synthesis. I believe I see
signs of this masterful vision in Italy. We are waiting for this freedom of the spirit without whi
all discipline is meaningless. I hope there will be a great future for Italy. Material wealth and
power cannot make a country immortal. She must contribute something whi is great and whi
is for everybody, and whi does not merely glorify herself.33

Tagore withdrew his approval of Mussolini when he was informed of the

facts of fascist Italy, precisely on the grounds that he had extended his
approval in the first place. is foregrounds his unvarying concern with
truth and freedom and obviously, violent political strategy, for whatever end
and on whatsoever provocation, was entirely unacceptable, not least because
it destroyed the svabhava of the perpetrator and rendered him unfit for
dharma. His major statements on this theme were articulated around the
years immediately following the Muzaffarpur bombing by Prafulla Chaki
and Khudiram Bose, in whi two English ladies, Grace Kennedy and her
mother were killed instead of the target, Douglas Kingsford, an unpopular
English magistrate who was known for giving harsh punishments to
political offenders. Chaki commied suicide and Khudiram was hanged.
ey became martyrs in public perception. Tagore was disturbed both at the
public approbation for conspiracy and political assassination as well as at
the ethical perils of su thinking. Shortly aer, he wrote that those who
knew that any kind of welfare, whether of the individual or the community
or the country, could be accomplished only by the courageous, the self-
abnegating and the ascetic, could never even momentarily countenance
puing up with the robbery and unjust persecution that were circulating
around the country in the guise of accomplishing the country’s welfare. He
asserted that he who surely knew that virtue was the only power would
never for a moment entertain this terribly mistaken idea in his mind, that
one could build up one’s community by destroying the aracter of the
community.34 He continued to hone this argument in essay aer essay, even
as he accepted the arge that almost everyone in Bengal, tacitly, including
himself, had contributed towards the current spirit of militancy, whi was
quite easily translating itself as downright political violence, including acts
of terror. He affirmed that even without minutely judging and thereby
ascribing the proportionate responsibility that ea among the Bengalis had
towards the assemblage of whatever had been lately happening in Bengal,
this could be said with certainty that every one of them, whether in body,
mind or words, had supplied fodder to this volatile situation in some kind or
the other.35 He rued that in the inflamed political climate, no one even
wished to reflect on the incontrovertible human truth of the universe that ‘it
can never be possible that we can – by oppressing welfare obtain welfare, by
striking at the very foundation of freedom aieve freedom’.36 is is the
core of the argument that we obtain also in Char Adhyaya.
e ideas possibly emerging from a discussion of Tagore’s position on,
and his relationship with, the revolutionary violence of his times in Bengal
need to be perhaps discussed generally, and even if tangentially, with some
of the prominent voices whi argue in favour of violence as a means to
aieve ‘legitimate’ political ends – what they invariably term as the
‘legitimacy of violence’ against ‘illegitimate orders’. Although su
‘violently revolutionary’ activity may seek to draw its legitimacy from the
logic of history, should the present forever aempt to transfer its burden on
to the past/history and can the sanction to ‘burn’, as is the urge in the poet
Majaz, be ever taken to have been given?
e voices whi are represented, besides being very evocative, possess a
dialectical power contained in the anguish and despair, whi perhaps
essentially constitute the urgings to take to violence as an act of political
/social remedy. However, the proponents here appear to generally agree that
violence is in principle the last resort and that it is never the revolutionary
but always the unjust and the oppressor that are responsible for the act of
political violence – persecution forces the revolutionary into violence. Issues
of ethics and morality are irrelevant, and even deceptive, for those who are
engaged in combating an unequal and cruel socio-political order. Malcolm X
had stated:
We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want
equality by any means necessary … we want it now or we don’t think anybody should have it…. If
they don’t want you and me to get violent, then stop the racists from being violent. Don’t tea us
non-violence while those craers are violent. ose days are over. Tactics based solely on
morality can only succeed when you are dealing with people who are moral or a system that is
normal.37

In this connection, it is worth mentioning, as a point of reference,

Wolfenstein’s comment on Malcolm X and on violence, whi in a sense
sums up from his point of view, the argument regarding means and ends.
Finally, although ‘freedom by any means necessary’ is a morally justified conception of the
relationship between political means and ends, it does not follow that the end of human freedom
is historically realizable, and therefore situationally rational. But speculation about whether or not
class-racial struggle can lead to a society in whi the ‘free development of ea is the condition
for the free development of all’ is quite beside the point. We are not interested in a metaphysical
or contemplative conception of historical truths but, rather, in its production: given that can be no
apodeictic certainty concerning the future except that it will not be the past; that all knowledge
must be constituted in the light of a projected future if it is to be historical at all; and that history
itself must be viewed as nothing more or less than the process of human self-production …. e
truth of the ethic of revolutionary responsibility can only be proven in practice.38

Frantz Fanon, a theoretician of political violence, and whose influence is

evident in the writings of Malcom X and other Bla Panther leaders, uses in
his book, A Dying Colonialism, the fih year of the Algerian revolution as a
‘point of departure’ to offer a post facto explication of the legitimacy of
violent means and to ruminate on the way forward for revolutionary
violence in a state where the revolutionaries had come into a reasonable
position of assurance and influence. It is with a sense of accomplishment
that Fanon discusses the path of liberation as ‘revealed in a number of its
particular aspects’ and whi indicate that a ‘fundamental, irreversible, ever
more far-reaing’ revolution has occurred ‘strictly on the level of the
individual and his tremendous dynamism’.39 He praises the ‘resistance of the
masses’ in a ‘thousand ways, not only with arms at hand’, and then proceeds
to offer the classic argument for political violence as ‘oppression is
maintained by violence from above, it is only possible to liquidate it with
violence from below. Ultimately, once the struggle reaes a certain point,
arms in hand are indispensable’.40 e statement that ‘Having a gun, being a
member of the National Army of Liberation is the only ance the Algerian
still has of giving a meaning to his death. Life under the domination has
long been devoid of meaning … ’, and Fanon’s comment on it that su
statements ‘were not the error of judgement or of a “to-the-bier-end”
aitude, but an acceptance of indisputable fact, are significantly similar to
the sentiments expressed by the members of the terrorist underground
during the Indian freedom movement. ere is a very slight caveat in the
argument of Fanon. Fanon triumphantly proclaims even while the Algerian
war of liberation remains unfinished, that: ‘e old Algeria is dead. All the
innocent blood that has flowed onto the national soil has produced a new
humanity and no one must fail to recognize this fact’.41 However, there is a
prefatory anowledgement of revolutionary infallibility, although these
seemingly illegal acts are deemed as a necessary corollary to wars of social
ange, and never as occasion to rethink the principle and strategy of violent
means of aieving political ends. ‘It has in fact happened that Algerian
citizens have violated the directives of the commanding bodies and that
things that should have been avoided have transpired on the national soil …
[but what could be] psyologically more understandable than these sudden
acts of violence against traitors and war criminals?’42 Significantly, Fanon
states that even though revolutionary violence is justified, it must abide by
the ‘international laws of war’, and ironically declares that the European
nation ‘that practices torture is a blighted nation, unfaithful to its history’.
us, for Fanon, it is a historical fact that certain wars in European history
have abided by the rules governing combat, and perhaps his implication is
that by so doing they demonstrate a redeeming virtue. It is equally
significant that without mentioning reconciliation explicitly and even while
placing the onus of the unsaid but expectedly future effort of reconciliation
on France, Fanon recognises the psyologically lasting and deleterious
consequences of revolutionary violence, exhorting an ‘underdeveloped
people [to] prove’, even while fighting a revolutionary war, ‘by the purity of
every one of its acts, that it is, even to the smallest detail, the most lucid, the
most self-controlled people’.43 He states: ‘Because we want a democratic and
a renovated Algeria, because we believe one cannot rise and liberate oneself
in one area and sink in another, we condemn, with pains in our hearts, those
brothers who have flung themselves into revolutionary action with the
almost physiological brutality that centuries of oppression give rise to and
feed.’44 It need hardly be said that Fanon feels that it is oppression that
drives the oppressed to brutality, but revolutionary violence is in fact the
only agency that can cleanse, notwithstanding the occasional slips into
inhumanity, the feeling of stony submission on the part of the oppressed,
and provide them with a sense of ‘purity’ of mission. e question of an
error of perception, therefore, cannot simply enter the discourse in the face
of su unequal positions and grave provocation as from an unjust
oppressive order.
Wolfenstein has referred to the tendency prevalent among the oppressed,
when confronted with various stages of despair, to ‘mistake a good front for
substantial strength, maismo for manhood, and restless action for self-
conscious activity’.45 Despair is known to produce not only ‘restless action’,
but restlessness in poetic sensibility as well, where restlessness is manifested
in a tragic aspiration to destroy indiscriminately the surrounding world. e
reference is to the revolutionary poet Asrar-ul-Haq, beer known by his
pseudonym Majaz Lakhnavi or simply Majaz, who was a poet of an
altogether different calling from Tagore. e overwhelming passion almost
an angst that beset Majaz produced at times an aspiration, expressed
through his verses, to destroy and ‘burn’ along with symbols of despotism,
altogether innocent objects of nature su as the ‘moon and the stars’. In the
closing lines of his famous Nazm, Awara (The Wanderer), the poet, as a
restless youth with a heart laden with sorrow, fear and helplessness, gives
vent to his anger and to his desire to indiscriminately destroy the objects,
whi he realises embody and reflect despotism and exploitation.

III

e temptation to refer to Berlin yet again is irresistible, mainly because of

the acuity of this observation on Alexander Herzen whi is so strikingly
reminiscent of Tagore, and also because Herzen is a representative of a
society in decisive times; if roads that then were not taken had been
explored for passage, a different outlook for ideas of politics may have
become aievable. Rabindranath, we need hardly remind, was a seminal
exponent of exploring su alternative ideas of the enlargement of human
destiny. Berlin states:
Herzen’s most constant goal is the preservation of individual liberty. at is the purpose of the
guerrilla war whi, as he once wrote to Mazzini, he had fought from his earliest youth. What
made him unique in the nineteenth century is the complexity of his vision, the degree to whi he
understood the causes and nature of conflicting ideas simpler and more fundamental than his
own. He understood what made – and what in a measure justified radicals and revolutionaries:
and at the same time he grasped the frightening consequences of their doctrines.46

Something very mu to this effect can be said of Tagore. At this stage of the
argument, it may be relevant to mention the theme of perception or aitude
whi is constitutive of the responses to the question of ‘legitimate’ violence.
In specific philosophical traditions, even the concept of a just war is
aitudinally denied, although the tradition may anowledge its
inevitability under certain conditions. G. C. Pande has offered a nuanced
reading of Jaina political thought on the paradox of violence, on both the
individual as well as the societal plane:
 e definition of himsa [violence] the root evil, has two parts, viz., the presence of pramada or
wrong aitude, and the infliction of injury to life. Egoistic passions are inherently other-
disregarding and constitute bhava-himsa [sentiment of violence]. e infliction of injury
positively as aghata [strike] or negatively as pratibandha [alternatively, retaliation/the fending off
the blow/defence/counterblow] on any aspect of vital activity physical, vocal or mental, or
breathing etc., constitutes dravya himsa [materialized violence]. It will be obvious that a limited
acceptance of su himsa is inevitable in social life. e rules of su limitation take into account
the connection of eternal behaviour with internal motivation. While they arise from moral
consciousness or bhava-ahimsa insofar as they apply to dravya-himsa especially sthula dravya
himsa they become susceptible of behavioural definition and theoretically at least, of sanction by

the state.47

e style of writing coupled with references to Jain Prakrit terminology

(with its specific connotations) has perhaps made this statement slightly
dense, but it reflects an essential position on violence/non-violence,
involving a statement of wider scope − not only should the unmanifested
violent sentiments be abjured but also that the violence that occurs while
fending off a blow is also deemed to be a violent activity and is as
condemnable as primary violence. Jain philosophy also calls into question
the policy of deterrence adopted by the state, and enunciates, as in early
Jaina cannon, that ‘policemen and executioners [were] parallel to the
robbers and murders’, and that ‘war [was] mere brigandage, only more
organized and on a larger scale’. However, Pande does not describe the
unambiguity of su a position as constituting an inherently unpragmatic
approa to politics, but as an ideal that is simultaneously valuable and
sustainable:
e question may be raised that su moral advice cannot be regarded as political thinking whi
ought to be concerned with devising impersonal and institutional ways of improving the laws and
regulating political behaviour. is objection has force only in a very narrow and trivial sense of
politics. Fundamentally, one may argue that there are no non-moral solutions of political
questions whi arise from the conflict of interests. Like Plato and Confucius, Buddha and
Mahavira also hoped for an ideal society through the agency of enlightened rulers. eir political
thinking, therefore, has a broad moral, not a narrow tenical orientation. e unity of ethics and
politics follows from the fact that the psyic and physical components of behaviour have to be
coordinated and regulated together.48

It has been stated that Tagore had a ‘duality’ in his feeling and approa to
the terrorist groups of Bengal, and that this duality is evidenced, on the one
hand, in his poetry and fiction, and notably in his essays, leers and
speees, and on the other, his conversations on the subject within his
intimate circle and with revolutionaries and in his personal relations with
them, whi included helping them in many ways and even on occasions
extending shelter to them.49 Notwithstanding su assertions, Tagore never
compromised on his disapproval and opposition to the ‘path of horror’, as he
called the way of revolutionary violence – as hopefully adequately discussed
in the earlier sections of this apter, even though he was appreciative of the
self-sacrifice of the protagonists and acutely sensitive and sympathetic to
their predicament, and to the tragedy of their lives. Moreover, he did not in
the least absolve the colonial regime of the injustice of its rule and its
insensitivity and harshness to the revolutionaries in particular, and to
Indians in general. Tagore’s single-most powerful statement against
revolutionary violence is contained in his novel Char Adhyaya (Four
Chapters), the third and final novel in the trilogy of Gora (1908), Ghaire
Baire (1916) and Char Adhyaya (1934), whi engage with issues including
national identity, cultural auvinism and of course the relationship of the
self with political experience. Of the three, Char Adhyaya, perhaps
differently from the others, was wrien in times more complex and hence
more restless than was the case with the earlier novels. Even when his stand
on violence remained very clearly undivided, Tagore was undeniably
disturbed at the torture being undergone by the young revolutionaries and
the ‘extremism of the government’ and what he bierly called the ‘evil tou
of the secret police’. An unaracteristic bierness infuses his poem entitled
Prasna (Question, 1932) commenting on the evil of police persecution and
perhaps also on those whom Tagore held responsible for spreading the
doctrine of revolutionary terrorism and instigating the atmosphere of
mistrust and brutality that we see described in Char Adhyaya. is short
poem is illustrative for our purpose, and the complete text is reproduced in
translation:
God, age aer age, you sent messengers over and over again
To the merciless world,
ey have said: ‘Forgive everyone’, have said ‘Love –
 Obliterate from within the poison of hatred.’
Venerable are they, memorable are they, even then at the doorstep
At the hour of darkness today I have turned them away with barren greeting.
I that have seen secret violence in the sham shadow of night
Fell the helpless,
I that have seen the voice of justice weeping in lonely silence
At the un-redressed crimes of the powerful.
I have seen a young boy rush in mad excitement
Die in what agony bursting his head against a stone in vain.
My voice is oked today, the flute has lost its music.
e prison of dark night
Has made my world disappear under nightmare,
at is why I ask you over tears –
‘ose who your air have poisoned, extinguished your light,
Have you forgiven them, have you given them your love’.50

e certitude of Nikhilesh is absent from Char Adhyaya, and the novel, in

reflecting on the tension between the conflicting values in one
consciousness, represents the general mood of the times. e allenge
before Tagore was to refute the way of violence and to foreground the
sovereign virtues of truth and freedom, and this was more difficult in the
bier atmosphere of the times. Tagore, it can be conjectured, deliberately
ose the novel over the political treatise, and in the novel itself he deployed
a montage of aracters and dialogue to represent the narrative; this enabled
him not to speak in the first person and effectively translate the argument
onto the plain of philosophical questions regarding good and evil and of
means and ends. What Bernard Williams says of Plato, in another context, is
relevant in analysing Tagore’s present oice of form. ‘e dialogue form is
not meant to give an historical record; it is a style of writing that enables
Plato to explore philosophical questions in ways more vivid, and more
intellectually flexible than are available to a treatise.’51
e narrative of Char Adhyaya details a apter in the career of a
revolutionary group, in a way foregrounding Ela the heroine, whose story
comes to an end with that of the novel, as misguided nationalism and
violence vitiate human relationship, and ultimately claim the life of Ela, who
has played her part in the terrorist enterprise by inflaming the boys by
marking their foreheads with ‘drop[s] of blood-red sandalpaste’ and
bringing them to the group in an act of unconsciously semi-erotic invitation.
It was wrien in the closing years of Tagore’s life, also as a conscious protest
against Sharat Chandra Chaerjee’s provocative novel Pather Dabi (1926),
espousing the cause of revolutionary terrorism.52 Tagore’s earlier novel
Ghare Bhaire, portraying Sandip as the callous, amoral revolutionary, was
severely criticised across Bengali readership. Bhupendra Nath Daa, the
younger brother of Vivekananda and himself a Marxist revolutionary,
protested that he had not encountered a single person like Sandip among the
revolutionaries of Bengal. is protest, articulated in Daa’s book on the
extremist movement, is however ironically preceded by an anowledgment
of the truth of Tagore’s arge in his portrayal of sandip:
Punjabi revolutionaries say that in their revolutionary endeavours during the war Punjabis had
laid down their lives, and among the Bengali’s some had misappropriated money. is statement
cannot be rejected. But if an evaluation based on the qualities of the [revolutionary] group as su
is conducted, barring stray individual examples, the good qualities will outnumber the defects.53
(my translation)

Tagore, however, retained great affection for the revolutionaries and was in
turn revered by them, although they were hurt and bewildered by Four
Chapters. Chinmohon Sehanobis, in Rabindranath o Biplabi Samaj (1998),
documents and analyses Tagore’s relationship with the votaries of ange
the world over and his support for aspirations of social ange. Tagore
expressed warm regard for the fervour and selflessness of the young
revolutionaries, who eerfully underwent torture and death.
ey were born with the fire. But alas! the fire that should have lit the lamps and given us light
was used to burn and destroy. ey paid dearly for their mistake. ey themselves were consumed
by the flames and aer the conflagration was over, there remained no light to guide the benighted.
But misguided though it was, the heroism that they showed even in the tragic futility of their
blunder was something whi I did not see anywhere else in India at that time.54

e essay ‘Chhoto o Boro’ (‘Small and Big’), published in 1917, is a cogent

analysis and an explanation of Tagore’s opposition to revolutionary
terrorism.55 Tagore argued that wrong means ultimately vitiated the end,
however noble that end might be. ‘Extremism’ in government policy was
also a crime, even though the West believed that untruth was essential to
politics, as alloy was to gold. Indians had also begun to think that the
‘placing of the welfare of the individual above the interests of the nation,
while continuing to harp on dharma is foolishness, weakness; it is
sentimentalism’.56 He was troubled by the country’s misfortune that
revolutionary violence was casting its dark shadow on the glow being
ushered in by patriotism: ‘e light of patriotism is glowing, but what sight
do we see in this light – this thievery, brigandage and secret killing? … e
paths of the thief and the brave will never meet at any crossroads.’57
Tagore’s definition of the brave had altogether different meanings, and the
‘brigandage’ that he mentions is brutally depicted in Ghaire Baire and
especially in Char Adhyaya. It is a fact that all types of revolutionary
violence against the oppressors of a community inevitably begin at an early
stage to strike terror in the oppressed community itself, initiated in the name
of eliminating collaborators, deviants, informers and the like. We have seen
Fanon terming this as unfortunate, even while anowledging its
inevitability. Tagore came out very strongly against violence, not only
because it violated rules of human living but also because of what violence
does to the perpetrator of that violence and also what it does to the
oppressed community’s life and psye, in whose name recourse is taken to
su activity. It is worth mentioning that for Tagore, political freedom, as
this was understood in the West, was of secondary importance, being mostly
understood there in a half-baked sense, and substantially responsible for
conflicts. It was coveted as an object that had to be taken, wrested even, and
thus in need of being defended with vigilance and aggression. Tagore valued
dharma as something highly superior to political freedom, dharma being the
inner strength of humans independent of any external agency, therefore self-
validating and self-supporting. Dharma was vastly different from religious
norms; it was the essence of life, the life giving equanimity that finds
expression in so many of Tagore’s writings. Here, Tagore was at one with
Gandhi.
Given his relationship with the extremists, the question may naturally be
asked why Tagore felt compelled to write in Char Adhyaya in 1934, almost
twenty years aer Ghare Baire, a novel that was even more critical of
extremism than Ghare Baire. Tagore had been tirelessly petitioning the
government for the release of those detained on arges of extremist
activities and was at the same time scathingly critical of the policy of
government repression and its horrific effects on the young men and women
of the community and was anguished at the suicides commied by youth
who had broken down under the stress of constant surveillance and house
arrest and who had recorded and conveyed their agony in the suicide notes
wrien to their family members. He had responded to every su incident
by sending messages of condolence, throbbing with pain at a tragedy he felt
he was a hopeless spectator to; importantly, he had protested against the
tyranny of the state in public, puing on record that su rule was evil and
that in su circumstances as prevailed the very tou of the police was
horrific to the lives of men and women. e revolutionaries in turn revered
him. ere are many instances of extremists, su as Surya Sen, quoting
Tagore’s songs in their last leers wrien from their ‘condemned cells’ while
awaiting execution.
Now, having seen the acts of revolutionary violence and their reprisal,
and knowing the minds of the terrorists and their sympathisers through his
close and frequent encounters with them, he felt compelled to once again
starkly explain the ethical and psyological ramifications of violence on the
country and its perpetrators, even that violence whi was being portrayed
as sublime by its own ideologues. He was shaken by the course of events,
and also by the way in whi many men and women, many of them
students of Shantiniketan, were thinking. is is illustrated by a
conversation that Gopal Haldar had with Tagore in the presence of the
eminent linguist Suniti Kumar Chaerjee in Tagore’s residence at Jorasanko,
in 1931, a few days aer prison guards had killed young political prisoners in
Hijli jail, an incident whi Tagore denounced as the main speaker at a
mammoth public meeting in Calcua. On coming to know that Haldar was
associated with extremist politics he said, ‘I do not know what you people
think, but the solution to the problem does not lie in anger and anguish.
Only energy is wasted in this. Power must be established on truth only. But
freedom cannot come through man’s sudden ignition, the secret killings of
the rulers’58 (my translation). Haldar explained that in spite of their
anowledging this truth, many revolutionaries also believed in the dictum
that the maximum sacrifice by the minimum would rouse the maximum for
minimum sacrifices. Tagore dismissed this idea. He explained that su
sacrifice could momentarily dazzle people but eventually the majority would
recoil, thinking themselves incapable of su sacrifices. e need of the
times was to inspire them along a path of constructive endeavour, whi
might appear unaractive in the short term but would ultimately be proven
to be the right course of action. Haldar did not disagree. However, he further
said that the revolutionaries perceived the situation somewhat differently:
ere are some who say – ours is su a vast country, with a legacy of su an ancient civilization.
Men from an ordinary, distant country sit as rulers and wield the rod in su a manner as if it
were a allenge against our humanity and a personal insult for everybody. I become untrue to
myself if I am unable to answer this.59 (my translation)

Tagore fell silent for a moment. en, as if ‘removing the shadow from the
brow’, he replied in a calm tone:
I have understood your pain, but look, it will not do to see the issue in this way. It is an
extraordinary problem in our country – it is a huge question, possibly linked to the greater
problem of the earth. And we shall have to find a solution in our country that will be acceptable to
the entire world. ere can be no short answer to this – a big problem will have to be answered in
a big way.60 (my translation)

e views expressed by Tagore in this conversation find complete expression

in Char Adyaya. at he understood the ‘inner pain’ of the revolutionaries is
evident in his treatment of the aracters. Indranath, the leader of the
terrorists, is not a flat aracter; some of his views are strikingly similar to
Rabindranath. Indranath’s assessment of the English aracter, as well as the
contemporary Indian mind, eoes Tagore’s thinking.61 But Indranath
appears to be blinded by a sense of insult and injustice, lapsing into
cynicism even while claiming to be clear sighted: ‘I do not believe blindly
Kanai. I have abandoned all thoughts of either victory or defeat. I am here
because it is meet that I should be the master of su a grand affair. e
stakes are high either way, whether or not it ends in victory or defeat. ey
tried to shut all the doors on my face, to belile me. I want to prove that I
am greater than they are even as I die.’62 Tagore portrays Indranath as a
person who has become primarily the representative of politics and for
whom politics is both the means as well as the end. Further, through his
aracter, the danger of being haunted by a sense of personal and
communitarian hurt, as expressed by Haldar, is seen in the novel as real and
exacting were one to succumb to it. However, it is necessary to mention that
the kind of political strategy whi Indranath represents remains implacably
unaware of what Arendt, like Tagore, so evocatively describes ‘as the actual
content of political life’: ‘e joy and the gratification that arise out of being
in company with our peers, out of acting together and appearing in public,
out of inserting ourselves into the world by word and deed, thus acquiring
and sustaining our personal identity and beginning something entirely
new.’63
Kanai tells Indranath what is in fact Tagore’s apprehension regarding
strategies focussed on manipulation and abhorrence: ‘e business that
you’ve got into brother – that is bound to go bankrupt sooner or later.’64
Similarly, towards the close of the novel, Antu expresses Tagore’s views of
the tragedy of the lives of young terrorists. His reiteration that there is
‘something bigger than patriotism’, and that being patriotic resembles riding
a crocodile across the river, eoes sentiments that are repeatedly expressed
in Tagore’s writings. ‘Deception, peiness, mutual suspicions, conspiracies
for power and spying will one day pull them down into cesspools. I see this
clearly. In the ugly world inside the pit, the poisonous air engulfs them by
day and night. ey will never be able to defend the paurush in themselves,
without whi no great work is ever aieved in this world.’65
e world of Char Adhyaya is a world of futile endeavour. e group of
young men seems unconnected to the larger world of ordinary people.
Atindra lives without warmth in the vicinity of poor jute mill workers; men
of the group rob an old woman benefactor and kill her; it is hardly
incidental that there are no Muslim aracters in the novel. Ela sounds the
ominous note of foreboding to Indranath very early in the novel – ‘I shall
remember your words Master-moshai. I will be prepared. Perhaps a time
will come to remove me: I shall disappear without a trace, silently.’66 e
English are, at the same time, ‘stru by a terminal disease, their insides
hollowed out through years of ruling people and other lands’.67 Indranath
explains to Kanai – ‘No race carries on its shoulders the burden of so many
nations, and that eats into their swabhava, their very nature.’68 Tagore had
said as mu in so many contexts. Ironically, Indranath fails to realise that,
in ruling over the personal lives of his disciples, he too tries to carry the
burden of other lives, whi eats into his svabhava. Correspondingly, he is
insensitive to the toll that a ruthless campaign takes on the lives of the
helpless sufferers of hatred and violence. Char Adhyaya appears more or less
to be Tagore’s full statement on violent paths of political liberation. One is
led to believe that he had consciously intended the novel to carry his
message on this contentious and painful issue. It is hardly incidental that the
dialogue largely reflects his own views and that of his interlocutors. In his
essay ‘Ladaiyer Mool’ (‘e Origins of War’),69 Tagore refused to buy into
mere political rhetoric and said that World War I was a conflict between
capitalist countries to seize more markets, although he used the word jati
prem (nationalism) in place of imperialism. Locating, as ever, his position on
the plane of the philosophy of life and its human dimensions rather than on
that of a political discourse of identity and rights, he felt that in most cases
imperialism masqueraded as nationalism in the theatre of war. He had
earlier commented presciently in his ‘Desher Katha’ (‘Country’s Tale):
To sell humanity at every step in the interest of nationalism, to shelter falsehood, to shelter
deception, to shelter cruelty, is in reality to be deceived. If we continue to deceive ourselves in this
manner, it shall be seen one day that nationalism is on the verge of bankruptcy … If nationalism
sells off the welfare of mankind, then one day the welfare of nationalism itself will begin to be
sold into the hands of individual, selfish interests. ere can be no other outcome but this.70

At the close of the novel, its hero Atindra laments:

All over the world there are nationalists who have begun to announce in bestial voices the terrible
lie that you may save the country only aer you have killed its spirit. I protest this in my mind,
raed by an unbearable pain. I might have enunciated my protest with integrity: it would have
been a universal truth far greater than playing hide and seek inside tunnels and trying to save the
nation. But there will be no time to say so in this life time.71
e metamorphosis that violent political activity for ‘higher causes’ brings
to the lives of its protagonists, like Atindra, is somewhat similar to the
transformation of the diligent, diffident, quiet sool teaer Pasha Antipov
to the feared Soviet Commissar Strelnikov in Dr. Zhivago. Strelnikov’s
nostalgic yearning for his early life with his wife and daughter is
reminiscent to Atindra’s longing for a return to being the young man he
thinks he once was; Strelnikov sits in his compartment on the train berthed
at a station close to where his home used to be, in a place called Yuratin:
Suppose his wife and daughter were still there! Couldn’t he go to them? Why not now, this very
minute? Yes, but how could he? ey belonged to another life. First he must see this one through,
this new life, then he could go ba to the one that had been interrupted. Some day he would do
just that. Someday. But when, when?72

e interruption in his life turns out to be permanent. Soon aer, Strelnikov

shoots himself.
In Char Adhyaya, Kanai, a very astute reader of situations and men,
represents a kind of ideal, the sense of loyalty to a cause, the limitations of
whi he understands but is by nature disinclined to interrogate to a point of
irrevocable rupture. Ela and Atindra begin their career in the novel as
political aracters, but beyond a point transcend their political role and
become human. Ela recoils from the sordidness of violence and realises
instinctively that to love and share was a rightful human destiny, howsoever
paltry Indranath may make it appear to be in his seme of things. She is the
only one of his group who speaks her mind to him. A critic has commented:
‘No other heroine of Rabindranath is so outspoken and analytical as Ela.’73
Atindra is seemingly indifferent to sharing his thoughts with Indranath
who knows that Atindra is not a camp follower. Atindra is the complicit
dissenter, unbelieving of the ideals of the group, but bound by his own sense
of downfall and unworthiness to living out the life of a conspiratorial
violence that he detests.
Like Dante, Atin too had leapt into the turbulence of a national revolt, but for him where was the
truth? courage? glory? In a short while he had been sued into the mire, into an infernal darkness
of masked banditry and murder from whi no radiant pillar of light would ever rise in history. At
the cost of degrading his spirit he now found no worthy realisation in this path, only an
 unequivocal submission. ere is value in submission, but not in the submission of spirit that is
dragged out from furtive secret terrors – that has no meaning and no end.74

e tragedy of Atindra and Ela is on one plane a perennial tragedy –of

the human being trapped in the fate of the mundane world and by having
lost the freedom of conscience also losing the means whi can redeem the
life lived out in the mundane world. Atindra laments that ‘the very boys
who were the most outstanding and had the highest ideals, were gradually
losing their humanity. ere is no greater loss than this’.75 For Tagore, the
loss of truth and conscience constituted the highest tragedy. is loss
represented the destruction of something even higher than dharma; it was
the subversion of rita, whi was the sustaining principle of the universe.
e noblest aracters in the novel, Ela and Atindra, suffer the most;
Atindra’s suffering is even more brutal, and the suffering of an individual of
his sensitivity can only be imagined aer he has killed Ela. e only path of
redemption could have been through love, but Atindra’s unflining
adherence to what he feels is the truth of his unworthiness effectively closes
that path to him. He declines Ela’s appeal to him to leave it all: ‘Make me
your wedded companion and take me on your path’. ‘Had it been a path of
danger I would have. But where Dharma itself has been destroyed, I cannot
make you a companion.’76 e novel begins as a political novel but ends as a
metaphysical novel – ruminating on the human possibilities of redemption
and belief and faith. Tagore’s vision on this issue can be termed as being
profoundly non-historicist, in a sense. Revolutionary violence in seeking to
ange society, because of the means it adopts, remains a prisoner of a
limitation whi it sees as imposed on it by history. is is oen due to the
analysis of the past performed almost solely through the terms of the
present, wherein even the historical instances of the transcendence of those
limitations are very oen overlooked. ere is, perhaps, an existential
responsibility upon the present to fashion its own terms of existence and of
engagement with the germinal issues of its day. Instances of this effort, even
when instituted in spheres of thought and activity customarily deemed as
non-political, are oen obscured in the question regarding the means of
protest against unjust regimes. It is puzzling as to why the political writings
of Tagore should remain untranslated for so long, given that they so
unambiguously speak his conscience and his thought, and that he himself
never considered them to have engaged with only contemporary and
temporary issues. One might ask in a lighter vein – it is widely known and
equally widely circulated that Surya Sen mused on Tagore’s songs till his
last day; why is there no proportionate curiosity as to whether Sen read
Tagore’s prose writings, or if at all he did, what did he think about them?
I have, in the above discussion, aempted to set up conversations between
voices whi, for ronological and other reasons, did not engage in
conversation, and I have, perhaps too rashly, reaed out at a merging of
philosophical and historical categories.
is aempt had also begun from a wondering at the protocols of certain
contemporary debates, insofar as it concerns the representation of certain
voices that have been so far generally absent in these debates. Adrian Moore
described the contribution of Bernard Williams to the history of philosophy
in su words: ‘is contribution was not, as philosophers in the analytic
tradition used to think, to indicate voices of yore whi could be heard as
participating in contemporary debates: precisely not. It was to indicate
voices of yore whi could not be heard as participating in contemporary
debates, and whi thereby called into question whatever assumptions made
contemporary debates possible.’77
is discussion of Tagore’s political writings is a humble aempt at also
calling into question the assumptions that make certain contemporary
debates possible.

Gandhi: the limit and pragmatism of non-violence

is section seeks to explore Gandhi’s concept of political non-violence,
whi had been originally given shape in Hind Swaraj the text to whi
Gandhi can be said to have adhered till the last day of his life, barring
perhaps one exception, whi however could be read in accordance to what
he had theorised in Hind Swaraj. e statement of his ideas occasionally
invited critical comment, and perhaps none more so than when he advised
Jews living in Germany to offer non-violent resistance in the face of Nazi
persecution. is discussion will focus on the significant aspects that can be
culled over from this episode regarding the centrality of non-violence to
Gandhi’s politics.
is episode is significant for a number of reasons. e Holocaust
constitutes one of the most horrific apters of human history and Gandhi’s
suggestion that the Jews offer their lives to awaken world opinion was
greeted in most quarters with incredulity and derision. is episode
embodies to a great degree not only the question of the ultimate validity of
Gandhian non-violence, but it also holds within itself the contours of the
debate as to whether non-violent protest can succeed against despotic
regimes, and therefore provides an opportunity to examine its relevance for
our times.
Is non-violence endowed with an abiding intrinsic validity existent only
on its own set of conditions on the plane of praxis or is it perpetually
dependent upon its other to whom it is directed? Is the source of its validity
intrinsic or will it be perpetually understood to subsist within a set of
extraneous factors? ese will be the questions that this study of the details
of this episode will try to look into.
It was ‘not without hesitation’ that Gandhi ventured to offer his views on
the ‘Arab–Jew question in Palestine’ and on the ‘persecution of Jews in
Germany’ through an article wrien in the Harijan on 26 November 1938, in
response to leers that he had been receiving whi solicited his opinion on
these issues. It would be relevant to quote in some detail from his response:
My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of
them became life long companions. rough these friends I came to learn mu of their age long
persecution. ey have been the Untouables of Christianity. e parallel between their
treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouables by Hindus is very close. Religious
sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out
to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my
sympathy for the Jews.78
He then stated that his sympathy for them was, however, tempered with the
untenability of the demand for a Jewish homeland and that he wished that
the Jews should make their native lands their home. To restore Palestine
‘partly or wholly’ to the Jews would be a ‘crime against humanity’, as it
would reduce greatly the position of the Arab population whi had been
living there for centuries. Gandhi’s remark on the persecution of Jews, as we
shall see, reflects on larger philosophical and moral questions. Since the
responses to Gandhi’s statement are generally quoted in greater detail than
as to what Gandhi actually stated in this case, I would rather than
summarising it prefer to quote his statement in substantial measure. He
stated:
e nobler cause would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and
bred. e Jews born in France are Fren in precisely the same sense that Christians born in
France are Fren. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced
to leave the other parts of the world in whi they are seled? Or do they want a double home
where they remain at will? is cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the
German expulsion of Jews. But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in
history. e tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it
with religious zeal. For, he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in
the name of whi any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and
hereaer. e crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon this whole race
with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of humanity, a war
against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely
justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of su a war is,
therefore, outside my horizon or province…. Germany is showing to the world how efficiently
violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as
humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.
Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their
self-respect and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. If I were a Jew and
were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even
as the tallest gentile German might, and allenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I
would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should
not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the
end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the
prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily
undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy whi no number of resolutions of sympathy
passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to
declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. e calculated
violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to
the declaration of su hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary
 suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy
that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant.79

Gandhi went on to say that Satyagraha in South Africa had been practiced
by a ‘handful of Indians’, who aracted no sympathy to their cause from
any quarter, and ‘world opinion and the Indian Government came to their
aid aer eight years of fighting’. e Jews in Germany were ‘far more gied’
than the Indians in South Africa, and were a compact, homogeneous
community, and therefore ‘infinitely’ beer placed to offer Satyagraha. Were
they to turn to non-violent resistance, they would be able to turn a
‘degrading manhunt’ into a calm and determined stand against the ‘godless
fury of dehumanized man’. ey would be able to render ‘service to fellow-
Germans’ and to ‘prove their title to be the real Germans as against those
who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the
mire’.80
is statement aroused a storm of controversy, not only among Jews
around the world but among non-Jewish Germans also. e Germans
alleged that Gandhi had indulged in slander against their nation, while Jew
opinion expressed outrage and anguish at Gandhi’s ignorance of the
situation and his insensitivity to the horrors that the Jews in Nazi Germany
were experiencing. Non-violence has been a debated issue even within the
Indian national movement. ere is an effective critique of extremism and
revolutionary terrorism, notably by Gandhi and Tagore. In turn, there are
critiques of Gandhi and Tagore by thinker activists su as M. N. Roy. ese
centre around Gandhi’s allegedly ambivalent aitude towards the
relationship of non-violence and religion and non-violence and state
formation; Tagore’s ‘upper class’ outlook on questions of social
ange/tradition; and analyses particularly of the ‘innate violence’ in mu
of ‘tradition’. Gramsci understood Gandhi’s movement of political liberation
of India, as in many ways possessing the same features as Germany’s
political struggle against France in 1923 and that of Hungary against the
Lile Entente and described the stages of the Indian freedom movement in
terms of a war: ‘War of movement, war of position, and underground
warfare.’ ‘Gandhi’s passive resistance is a war of position, whi at certain
moments becomes a war of movement, and at others underground warfare.
Boycos are a form of war of position, strikes of war of movement, the
secret preparation of weapons and combat troops belongs to underground
warfare.’81 Apart from misunderstanding, the revolutionary violence in India
to be part of Gandhi’s movement, this simplistic view thwarts the
understanding of either the nuances or the ethics of Gandhi’s philosophy of
non-violence.
A set of three leers – Gandhi’s open leer of 26 November 1938 to the
Jews in Germany suggesting Satyagraha against Hitler’s inhuman treatment
of Jews82 and responses to him from two highly distinguished Jewish
solars, Martin Buber’s leer of 24 February 193983 and the leer of 26
February 1939 from Judah L. Magnes84 – contain a difficult and remarkable
debate on non-violence. Buber and Magnes, while placing on record their
great appreciation of Gandhi, make an impassioned protest against Gandhi’s
advocating non-violence as a form of resistance/protest by the Jews against
genocide. It is open to deduction as to whether Buber and Magnes seek to
limit the scope of non-violence and also whether there was a subtle truth in
their critique of Gandhi. eir leers, confronting the issue of the
practicability of non-violent protest against a despotic regime, carry a larger
philosophical load as well. ey question the ultimate validity of Gandhian
non-violence and posit a major argument of the religious traditions
regarding justice and non-violence, on the possibility of non-violence and
justice becoming contradictory in certain specific situations, as in the ‘evil’
regime of Hitler. In that case, war becomes necessary, neither as a ‘righteous
war’ nor as a ‘justifiable war’, but a ‘necessary war against the greater evil’.
It is greatly unfortunate that Gandhi never received these two leers and
therefore did not get to respond to them. It is said that there is no record in
Jerusalem of the leers having been posted to Gandhi.85
ese two leers to Gandhi are exceptional in their thoughtfulness and
tone. Buber and Magnes both appear disappointed that even with his moral
genius, Gandhi could have so misread the situation and recommend a noble
general principle, whi was wholly unsuitable in the face of an evil regime.
All three of them draw on the ancient traditions of the Jews. Gandhi refers
to the Jewish conceptions of Godhead to indicate Jew resilience in suffering
whi is basic to non-violence, while Buber and Magnes invoke tradition to
argue the position that not only the efficacy but also the justification of
pacifism is not universal but determined by its context. Jews are burdened
by the tragedy of their pacifism and their self-restraint expressed in the term
Havlaga. is also serves as an interrogation of the normative capacity of
traditions. Instances of Jewish testimony and martyrdom have been
ineffective and unmemorialised in Germany. Even noble deeds of
individuals are not axiomatically emulative in situations of collective
suffering. Both Buber and Magnes mention the ethics of war whi while
limiting non-violence is not anti-thetical to it. In an agonised response
wrien on 24 February 1939, from Jerusalem, Martin Buber, confessed to
‘having been very slow in writing this leer to you, Mahatma … to have
made repeated pauses ‒ sometimes days elapsing between short paragraphs
‒ in order to test my knowledge and my way of thinking…. searing
whether I had not in any one point over stepped the measure of self-
preservation alloed and even prescribed by God to a human community
and whether I had not fallen into the grievous error of collective egoism’.86
Recollecting the ‘many instances of genuine Satyagraha’ he had seen among
Jews, where ‘force nor cunning was used to escape the consequences of their
behaviour’, but whi ‘apparently exerted not the slightest influence on their
opponents’, Buber stated that non-violence may harbour the hope of
gradually bringing unfeeling human beings to their senses, but a ‘diabolic
universal steam-roller cannot thus be withstood’:
ere is a certain situation in whi from the ‘Satyagraha’ of the strength of the spirit no
‘Satyagraha’ of the power of truth can result. ‘Satyagraha’ means testimony. Testimony without
anowledgement, ineffective, unobserved martyrdom, a martyrdom cast to the winds − that is the
fate of innumerable Jews in Germany. God alone accepts their testimony, and God ‘seals’ it, as is
said in our prayers. But no maxim for suitable behaviour can be deduced there from. Su
martyrdom is a deed − but who would venture to demand it.87

Buber stated directly that he would not have been a ‘supporter’ of Jesus:
 For I cannot help withstanding evil when I see that it is about to destroy the good. I am forced to
withstand the evil in the world just as the evil within myself. I can only strive not to have to do so
by force. I do not want force. But if there is no other way of preventing the evil destroying the
good, I trust I shall use force and give myself up into God’s hands.88

He alluded to the Mahabharata and particularly to the Bhagavadgita in its

similar position on this issue, whi placed the highest value on justice for
whi all striving is right, and in its stating that in this only the heart
needed to be freed of hatred.
Another prominent critic of Gandhi’s position, Rabbi Judah L. Magnes
thought that the possibility of Jews offering ‘civil resistance’ in Germany did
not exist as the protagonists of su action were either killed or sent to
concentration camps in the ‘dead of night’, without ‘even a ripple’ being
produced on the ‘surface of German life’, in contrast to Gandhi’s actions like
the salt mar ‘when the whole world is permied to hang upon your words
and be witness to your acts’.89
Magnes was agonised at his moral dilemma between the philosophical
and the political. War cannot be righteous even against the ‘ghastly Hitler
savagery’, whi itself has been the consequence of the sins of the
‘conquerors and conquered alike’ of the last war; it is ‘because of our la of
generosity and the spirit of conciliation and renunciation that the Hitler
beast has been enabled to raise its head’. It is humbling to see su
adherence to principles even at an hour of supreme disillusionment, when
natural instinct dictates a bier apportioning of blame to other communities,
whi so clearly were responsible in varying degrees for a human
catastrophe. But Magnes could not bring himself to abandon his lifelong
beliefs at the point of cruel oice. e Evian conference might compel the
Jewish world to cooperate financially with Nazi Germany and to deal ‘in
Jewish flesh and blood in a most modern and up-to-date slave market’ for
saving lives: ‘Have you an answer’. He seeks Gandhi’s guidance on the ‘pros
and cons’ of a war against Germany as well as on ‘practical tenique of
satygraha’ against Nazis: ‘But we have no one comparable to you as
religious and political leader.’ Jews may not be the fit subjects of Satyagraha
as the Biblical injunction is to live not to die, and Satyagraha required also
non-cooperation and ‘renunciation of property and the disdain of death’.
I will be overreaing myself in aempting to surmise Gandhi’s responses
to questions of su integrity. It may be, however, possible to indicate some
basic premises in Gandhi’s position. Gandhi seems to have refrained from
absolutising the question of war in stating that as he did not believe in any
war, it was outside his province to discuss the pros and cons of a justifiable
war su as seemed so needful against Germany ‘in the name of and for
humanity’. e caveat is closer to the position of the religious traditions, in
this respect. Markedly, he does not discuss the cons of war. In fact, within
days of this leer, he clarified that his advice to Jews did not by inference
suggest non-interference by the democratic nations on behalf of the Jews.
‘ey will, they are bound to, do all they can to free the Jews from the
inhuman persecution.’90 Nonetheless, this cannot mean undeniably that this
is endorsement for military intervention. Around this time, particularly in
his writings on the Cze predicament before German aggression, Gandhi
appears to interlink terms su as honour, life, freedom, soul, non-violence,
the science of non-violence and democracy, as existing in coherence. Ideally,
Cze’s should free other nations from the obligation to defend their
country with war as it ‘can only mean bloodshed and destruction su as
has never seen before’. Yet, they ‘must live’ with complete independence ‘or
perish’. Instead of the ‘pure bravado’ of seeking to win in a clash of arms,
they should refuse the aggressor his will, even though thereby they perish
unarmed. ‘In so doing, though I lose the body, I save my soul, i.e. my
honour.’91 Living can, thus, only be possible with freedom. Gandhi is
perhaps suggesting the principle that ‘I live even without the body if I retain
my soul that is my honour’. Soul and honour, herein, are translated into
ethical qualities as opposed to the body whi represents the appetent not
only materially, but also socially and historically. Significantly, honour is at
this point being delinked by Gandhi from its general association with
hierary and violence. Gandhi appears to postulate that the principle of
non-violent living remains uncontroverted by historical factuality since its
validation transcends material aievements.
 History has no record of a nation having adopted non-violent resistance.92 If Hitler is unaffected
by my suffering, it does not maer. For I shall have lost nothing worth (sic). My honour is the only
thing worth preserving. at is independent of Hitler’s pity. But as a believer in non-violence I
may not limit its possibilities.93

Non-violence is primarily a maer concerning man’s own soul.94 As had

been evident in his position on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, to be
discussed in detail in the subsequent apter, Gandhi saw martyrdom as the
affirmation of non-violence in a conscious act of suffering. Voluntary
suffering would be a source of greater ‘inner strength and joy’ for Jews than
expressions of solidarity by others, even war in their cause ‘can bring no
inner joy, no inner strength’. e philosophical emphasis of Gandhi is
different from that of Buber and Magnes. Rather than indicating success and
failure in objective terms, Gandhi perceives non-violence on a mainly
psyological plane. Practice of non-violence, particularly in extremely
adverse circumstances, is only possible with the conviction that it is
essentially an individual virtue. It is significant that for many survivors, one
of the central deductions drawn from their experience of the Nazi
concentration camps concerns the idea that ‘acts of courage and virtue are
irreplaceably individual’.95 Events in Jewish history show that both the evil
of the Nazi state and the degradation in the life of those who moved from
hopelessness and passivity to become well-meaning and deceived
collaborators in the extermination of their own community, followed from
the abdication of individual responsibility for protest against evil. Sensitive
individuals like Adam Czerniakow, an official of the Warsaw gheo,
commied suicide at the brink of crossing the ultimate boundary of human
conduct.96
A powerful stream of Holocaust literature is inhabited by thinking whi
approximates to Gandhi’s position. e entire Nazi exercise at the same time
was inhered in and aimed at reducing Jew agency to levels lower than what
are commonly known as human standards of behaviour. Su reduction
affirmed theories of racial inferiority and justified animal torture. e
preservation of sanity seemed to depend on remaining human. It is not
possible to say with absolute certainty that Gandhi had foreseen su
aempts at degradation. But it can be argued reasonably that the idea of
living, whi was carried in his suggestion of non-violent resistance, could
have constituted an important source of resilience and dignity whi was so
essential to Jews in their hour of inhuman suffering. e supremely nuanced
and sensitive portrayal of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust in the
writings of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi affirms in many ways Gandhi’s
position. Wiesel’s response to the violence of Nazism, contained in the
following description of a metaphorical (?) photograph of the last moments
of a father and his lile boy − in what was, going by an identical description
in the Nuremberg court, probably a scene near the execution pits at Dubno
in the Ukraine − seems to immortalise the tragedy of human reasoning
confronting wanton cruelty.
It [photograph] shows a father and his son, in the middle of a human herd, moving toward the
dit where, a moment later they will be shot. e father, his le hand on the boy’s shoulder,
speaks to him gently while his right hand points to the sky. He is explaining the bale between
love and hatred: ‘You see, my ild, we are right now losing the bale.’ And since the boy does not
answer, his father continues: ‘Know, my son, if gratuitous suffering exists, it is ordained by divine
will. Whoever kills, becomes God. Whoever kills, kills God. Ea murder is a suicide, with the
Eternal eternally the victim.’97

Recalling the horror of Auswitz, Levi has stated that while he never
forgave ‘our enemies’ nor ‘their imitators in Algeria, Vietnam, the Soviet
Union, Chile, Cambodia, or South Africa’, his demand for justice excluded
retributive violence. e intransigence of violent ideologies deprives life of
the vital capacity of ‘finding joy in life, indeed of living’. ‘ose who “trade
blows” with the entire world aieve dignity but pay a very high price for it
because they are sure to be defeated.’98
In Dawn, Weisel portrays the dilemma of a Holocaust survivor turned
fighter of the Jewish underground in Palestine, who agonises over questions
of memory and revenge when he is ordered to kill for the cause a British
officer who has been taken hostage. e arguments advanced for killing are
the standard ideological arguments conflating violence and justice.
Tragically, he kills. e abiding theme is what refuses to leave his mind as he
wrestles within himself before the killing. ‘ere are not a thousand ways of
being a killer; either a man is or he isn’t … He who has killed one man alone
is a killer for life.’99
Ironically, most of the analyses, specifically of Gandhi’s position on
Jewish responses to Nazi persecution, appear to concur with the view that
his statements on the Holocaust brought discredit on Gandhi. Joan
Bondurant, to whom we shall return later, is arguably the major exception,
who argues in favour of Gandhi’s stand, but her analysis confines itself to
the general principle of struggle against totalitarian systems, without going
into the specifics of the case at hand. Dennis Dalton, one of the few solars
who have examined this episode in a slightly more detailed fashion,
wondered: ‘Where is his compassionate understanding for the oppressed or
even a hint of practical programme of action? He seemed unable at this time
to grasp the enormity of the Holocaust. Yet the differences between Nazi
Germany and British India were evident then as now.’100 However, it is
rather puzzling to find Dalton’s counter assertion in the relevant end note
that ‘Gandhi was unusually well informed during the 1930s and 1940s about
the plight of Jews in Europe in the face of Nazi persecution’.101
Ronald Terek, arguing, on another plane and in a slightly different
mode, against Gandhi’s position has reasoned that Gandhian non-violence
was not an autonomous principle but was effectually dependent on the
context of its application. e cost of non-violent resistance against
individuals and regimes that are inured to appeals of truth and justice will
not only be excessive but in fact also prohibitive. In a fairly common
analogy on the topic, Terek compares the totalitarian Nazi state to the
comparatively mu more democratic and humane British regime whi had
rendered success to Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Gandhi, according to Terek,
obscured this crucial difference in the aracter and ethos of these two
political systems when he advocated Satyagraha against Hitler’s
Germany.102 It is important to mention here that Terek has further
speculated on the possibilities of the epistemic extensibility of non-violence
in case Gandhi had enlarged his argument to include ‘justifiable violence’ in
his position on Jew resistance to persecution in Germany.
 A problematized reading of Gandhi invites a different recommendation to German Jews than the
one Gandhi himself gives. It moves away from a position that always denies the applicability of
violence and invites a dialogue about specific, limited cases where violence may be appropriate to
protect autonomy. Any conclusion about exceptions to non-violence reaed in su a dialogue
does not falsify the theory but recognizes there are exceptional circumstances where violence
might be appropriate.103

e sheer inhumanity of the Nazi state has understandably obscured the

nuances of Gandhi’s position regarding non-violent resistance to Hitler’s
regime. Unfortunately, this has relatively proceeded to conceal the potential
of the ideas that are encapsulated in the debate whi is still being carried
on different planes, between different interlocutors over the times.
In a study unallied to Gandhi and the Jews, Hannah Arendt similarly, and
famously, stated:
In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. If Gandhi’s
enormously powerful and successful strategy of non-violent resistance had met with a different
enemy – Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, even pre-war Japan, instead of England − the outcome
would not have been decolonization, but massacre and submission. However, England in India
and France in Algeria had good reasons for their restraint. Rule by sheer violence comes into play
where power is being lost … 104

She went on to say that power and violence were opposites, ‘where the one
rules absolutely, the other is absent’, and that uneed violence ensures
the disappearance of its power. Strangely, she is led to the conclusion that
‘is implies that it is not correct to think of the opposite of violence as non-
violence; to speak of non-violent power is actually redundant’.105 But the
statement that can be said to emerge from her study is that violence will
hardly be ‘effective with respect to the relatively long-term objective of
structural ange’106 and that ‘mu of the present glorification of violence
is caused by severe frustration of the faculty of action in the modern
world’.107
Gandhi was in fact trying to revitalise the faculty of action among Indians
through his movements in India and suggested the same to Jews in
Germany. However, in a study on Gandhi, while discussing ‘Hitler, Jews,
Palestine’, Rajmohan Gandhi writes:
 ere is no way of knowing how, if born a Jew in Germany, Gandhi would have organized non-
violent resistance there. In him we have seen a calling to present non-violence joined by strong
pragmatism. He never asked Indians to invite a massacre from the British, or Hindus, Muslims or
‘Untouables’ to invite a massacre from their Indian foes. e real commander of a non-violent
bale was very different from the professor of a remorseless non-violent ethic.108

is statement is extremely significant because unlike most of the other

statements on this issue, it has perhaps inadvertently let in a suggestion of
uncertainty into Gandhi’s stand and put to question Gandhi’s repeated
assertion made right from the days of writing Hind Swaraj till the last day of
his life that presented with an irremediably unjust situation he would opt
for non-violent protest, irrespective of the cost su a course of action
entailed. Rajmohan Gandhi’s statement seems to imply that in extreme
cases, even with Gandhi, the pragmatic could become opposed to the ethical.
I would like to argue that Gandhi’s position on the issue of Jews in Nazi
Germany illuminates the point that Gandhi’s pragmatism is a different
pragmatism: it is the ethical as pragmatic, an unshakeable conviction that
the ethical was the pragmatic. To delineate the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of this
premise, let us go ba to our different interlocutors and in due course
contemplate on the two different scenarios that might possibly seem to
emerge from this debate.
For a few months aer his initial statement of November 1938, Gandhi
was engaged in a wrien dialogue with people who responded to his
suggestion and his responses to the reservations of his interlocutors through
the pages of the Harijan to clarify his stand. In his first reply to his German
critics, he refuted the allegation that as he was ignorant about the real
situation his intervention was misinformed and inaccurate. Admiing his
‘ignorance about European politics’, he spoke of the ‘main facts about the
atrocities’ being ‘beyond dispute’. He stated that non-violence was a
sovereign remedy, and that ‘to commend my prescription to the Jews for the
removal of their many ills, I did not need to have an accurate knowledge of
European politics’. He wondered whether his ‘remedy was aer all not so
indecorous as it may appear, but that it was eminently practical if only the
beauty of suffering without retaliation was realized’.109 His subsequent
statement is a cogent exposition of the ethical as pragmatic:
To say that my writing has rendered neither myself, my movement, nor German-Indian relations
any service, is surely irrelevant, if not also unworthy, implying as it does a threat; and I should
rank myself a coward if, for fear of my country or myself or Indo-German relations being harmed,
I hesitated to give what I felt in the innermost recess of my heart to be cent per cent sound
advice.110

It would be interesting to compare this with what his disciple, Jawaharlal

Nehru, was to say on the Tibetan issue while replying to a non-official
resolution, whi was moved in the Lok Sabha on 4 September 1959 seeking
to enjoin the Indian government to raising in the United Nations the
question of Chinese aggression on Tibet. Nehru mentioned that his
government’s approa was governed mainly by ‘sympathy for the Tibetan
people’ and the ‘desire to maintain friendly relations with China’, and that
the ‘slight contradiction’ between the two was the ‘difficulty of the
situation’. Any step, therefore, could not be taken ‘in a huff, regardless of the
consequences’, as it was ‘essential’ that India and China ‘should have
friendly and as far as possible, cooperative relations’. His summing up of the
situation was in a sense a classic display of diplomacy:
Looking at it from this point of view, the United Nations may come into the picture for two
reasons: one, violation of human rights and two, aggression. Now, violation of human rights
applies to those who have accepted the arter of the United Nations; in other words, the members
of the United Nations. You cannot apply the arter to people who have not accepted the arter,
who have not been allowed to come into the United Nations.
Secondly, if you talk about aggression by one sovereign independent state on another, as I told
you, in so far as world affairs are concerned, Tibet had not been anowledged as an independent
state for a considerable time. Suppose we get over the legal quibbles and legal difficulties. What
good will it aieve? It may lead to a debate in the General assembly or the Security Council
whi will be aer the fashion of the cold war. Having had the debate what will the promoters of
the motion do? Nothing more. ey will return home. Obviously, nobody is going to send an army
to Tibet and China, for that was not done in the case of Hungary whi is a part of Europe and
whi is more allied to European nations. It is fantastic to think they will move in that way in
Tibet.
All that will happen is an expression of strong opinion by some and denials by others. e
maer will be raised to the level of the cold war and will probably produce reactions on the
Chinese Government whi will be more adverse to Tibet and the Tibetan people then even
now.111
It hardly needs to be pointed out that there is no mention of the moral issues
at stake: the suppression of the voice of a people and of the need to protest
against su repression. We witness in these lines the pragmatism of the
state, where the pragmatic is opposed to the ethical. One wonders what
Gandhi would have said to Nehru or perhaps one need not; one can perhaps
accurately conjecture what counsel he would have offered to Nehru as also
to the Dalai Lama. It is said that when Gandhi was proposing non-violent
resistance to the Jews, he was unaware that Hitler in November 1937 had
offered a simple suggestion regarding the Indian political movement to Lord
Halifax: ‘All you have to do is to shoot Gandhi. If necessary, shoot more
leaders of Congress. You will be surprised how quily the trouble will die
down.’112 It has been narrated elsewhere as to how Hitler had similarly
remarked in January 1942: ‘If we took India, the Indians would certainly not
be enthusiastic, and they’d not be slow to regret the good old days of
English rule.’113 Goebbels, on another occasion, is said to have called Gandhi
‘a fool whose policies (of ‘passive resistance’) seem merely calculated to drag
India further and further into misfortune’.114
Gandhi would have been hardly disconcerted by the prospects of his
likely reception in Germany. In one of his comments on the supposed
cruciality of the receptivity of the object of non-violent protest, he drew a
distinction between the ‘passive resistance of the weak and active non-
violent resistance of the strong’, whi ‘can and does work in the teeth of
the fiercest opposition’. He clarified that by advising non-violent resistance
against Nazi persecution he had not thereby logically advised the
‘democratic powers’ to refrain from appropriate action on their part; on the
contrary, he expected them to come to the rescue of the Jews since they were
duty bound to do so. He, however, was convinced that the any su help
would be largely ineffective, and to all intents and purposes the Jews would
have to fashion their own resistance, for whi he felt his prescription to be
infallible when taken recourse to in the correct manner. Gandhi also
anowledged the criticism that he had not been able to gain universal
acceptance to his remedy even within India, and that even where he was the
‘self-appointed General’, his own country had been unable to imbibe non-
violence in its right spirit. He, however, said that it would be unethical on
his part to refrain from advising non-violence to situations whi required it
and that he believed without doubt in the necessity and effectivity of non-
violence in Germany. Moreover, he counted himself among the blessed, who
expected nothing from others, not least in the realm of non-violent
movements. Subsequently, during a spee to the Gandhi Seva Sangh at
Wardha in 1940, in outlining a frame of reference for the practice of ahimsa,
Gandhi had drawn aention to the fact that notwithstanding his own
imperfections and of whi he said he was fully aware, ‘what lile power
[he possessed] is derived from [his] ahimsa’, and made a comment on the
need for unremiing cultivation of ahimsa in the mind of aspiring
satyagrahis. e comment might be highly significant for our discussion.

But neither you nor I can trade on our capital. We have to be up and doing every moment of our
lives and go forward in our sadhana. We have to live and move and have our being in ahimsa,
even as Hitler does in himsa. It is the faith and perseverance and single-mindedness with whi he
has perfected his weapons of destruction that commands my admiration. at he uses it as a
monster is immaterial to our purpose. We have to bring to bear the same single-mindedness and
perseverance in evolving our ahimsa. Hitler is awake all the 24 hours of the day in perfection of
his sadhana. He wins because he pays the price. His inventions surprise his enemies. But it is his
single-minded devotion to his purpose that should be the object of our admiration and emulation.
Although he works all the waking hours, his intellect is unclouded and unerring. Are our intellects
unclouded and unerring? A mere belief in ahimsa or the arkha will not do. It should be
intelligent and creative. If our intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays
a larger part in the field of non-violence.115

It ought to be underlined at this point that there is a noticeable similarity

in the conditions whi had, in 1909, engendered the writing of Hind Swaraj
and Gandhi’s statement in 1938 on the possible options of non-violent
resistance open to Jews in Nazi Germany. Although Hind Swaraj contains
the mu more elaborate treatment of non-violence, his statement to the
Jews introduced dramatically, and in a trying context, the concept of non-
violence to the Western world in general, whose ethos he deemed to be
broadly anti-thetical to the concept and its practice. Germany, in particular,
had the most adverse conditions imaginable for the practice of non-violent
resistance. e similarity of origin between Hind Swaraj and his statement
of 1938 lies in the apprehension of violence being anowledged as the
viable expression of protest under inhospitable conditions. Hind Swaraj was
the rebual of the growing ideas of political violence within the Indian
freedom movement, demonstrated in the assassination of Curzon-Wyllie by
Madan Lal Dhingra.116 It is highly significant that Gandhi understood the
undercurrent of violence in the Jewish psye of the 1930s, whi led to the
predominance of David Ben Gurion over Chaim Weizmann in the Zionist
movement and whi has come to represent a major stream of thought in
modern Israel. It is another maer that the Jews were helpless before Nazi
persecution; indeed, their very passivity could be said to have been
annelised later into the violent assertion that we witness today. e
greater meaning, in human terms, of the suffering of their community,
appears to have been unfortunately lost on many of them. Even before Nazi
persecution began, a strong Jewish opinion had begun to build up against
the ‘assimilationists’, the Jews who favoured assimilation in the culture and
society of the land of their domicile. e opponents of assimilation within
the Jewish community felt that assimilatory aspirations were diluting the
movement for a separate Jewish homeland through the emphasis that the
‘fight against anti-Semitism’ was the need of the hour rather than the
assertion of a separate, exclusive identity. Curiously, a pro-Zionist aitude
had aracterised the first stages of the Jewish policy of the National
Socialists. On the other hand, the polemical Jewish slogan ‘Wear it with
pride, the yellow star’, given in response to the Boyco Day of 1 April 1933,
was also directed at the assimilationists for whom it was said among the
community that they ‘were always behind the times’. It was only six years
later that the Nazi state would actually compel the Jews to wear the Star of
David as a mark of inferiority. e evolving of the militaristic psye in
European Jewry is not entirely unprofitable in a discussion of the efficacy of
political non-violence against a diabolical Nazi maine, whi it is widely
believed would have anyway not been dissuaded from its course of state
terrorism. However, the degree of its success would have to depend also on
the state of the Jewish mind, as in turn it would be the state of the Jewish
mind whi would opt on the subsequent course of Jewish action, on whi
arguably would rest substantially the subsequent course of world history.
Robert Welts, who had coined in 1933 the slogan of displaying publicly the
Star of David, was to say later that he ‘would never have issued his slogan if
he had been able to foresee developments’.117 In October 1938, Zindel
Grynszpan, a German Jew of Polish descent, along with thousands like him,
was brutally evicted from Germany. On 7 November 1938, his seventeen-
year-old son Hersel Grynszpan, living in Paris, shot and killed a young
German diplomat posted in Paris named Ernst Vom Rath. e assassination
was the immediate provocation for the ‘Kristallnat’ or the ‘night of the
broken glass’ of 9 November, when ‘seventy five hundred Jewish shop
windows were broken, all synagogues went up in flames, and twenty
thousand Jewish men were taken off to concentration camps’.118
On 26 November, Gandhi wrote his first statement on the issue of Jewish
persecution, referring to Hersel Grynszpan as an ‘obviously mad, but
intrepid youth’. However, Gandhi’s recommendation of an altogether
different intrepidity for the Jews continues to be misunderstood, with the
resultant denial of its relevance in human history. Gandhi accepted the
probability expressed by one of his correspondents that ‘a Jewish Gandhi in
Germany, should one arise, could “function” for about five minutes – until
the first Gestapo agent would lead him, not to a concentration camp, but
directly to the Guillotine’.119 But for Gandhi that did not disprove the
‘efficacy of Ahimsa’. He could imagine the suffering and death of many
more in su a course of action: ‘Sufferers need not see the result during
their lifetimes. ey must have faith that, if their cult survives, the result is
certainty. e method of violence gives no greater guarantee than that of
non-violence.’120
ere can conceivably be two possible scenarios whi can be offered to
what might still be an abiding question as to what could have possibly
happened if German Jewry could have followed Gandhi’s advice.

Two scenarios
Scenario 1
ere is unified non-violent resistance movement by Jews in Germany, in
whi they come out openly against the decree of wearing the Yellow Star,
refuse to leave Germany when given expulsion orders, refuse to report when
served summons from the Gestapo offices. ere are public demonstrations
all over Germany, as in 1938, World War II has not yet commenced, and
Nazi’s are in control only in Germany and Austria. Jews in the rest of
Europe and America begin protests against the Nazi regime.
Hitler diverts the war maine he had been assembling for the future war,
from preparing for a state of war readiness, against the Jews. Most of them
are mercilessly killed and the survivors taken to incipient concentration
camps, su as Daau, as systemised extermination camps like Auswitz
have not yet begun operating, where they also die. Most of these operations
against the Jews are public knowledge, as the world press still has access to
public events in Germany since Hitler is still negotiating with the major
European powers and wartime restrictions are not in place, as it is not yet
wartime in 1938. However, there is no effect on German public opinion. e
major powers ignore this massacre or pass resolutions against it, all the
while engaging diplomatically with Hitler to further goals and aims of real
politic. Hitler goes ahead with his plans of aggrandisement. e World War
takes place with more or less the same results. e Jews are almost
decimated. Only the comment of Gandhi regarding non-violent
resistance/Holocaust would have anged. Or would it?
But this scenario seems rather implausible, simply because too many
imponderables are involved. is will be borne out from the obsessive
secrecy that shrouded the details of the infamous ‘final solution’ throughout
the war. It is indicative of the power of reality, whi even in the harshest of
times outrages opinion and also that the possibility of su outrage deters
flagrant transgression, at least till the complete domination of opinion can be
ensured by the aggressor. Even when the seme of extermination of Jews
began to be implemented well into the war, with the concomitant dispensing
of all international norms of war on the part of Germany, the perpetrators of
the horrible crimes were immensely anxious to obliterate all traces and
evidence of their infamy. In his documented study of the Hitler rule, Shirer
describes the methodical camouflage and the subsequent aempt at denial of
the existence of su a programme. ‘What became known in Nazi circles as
the “Fuehrer Order on the Final Solution” apparently was never commied
to paper – at least no copy of it has yet been unearthed in the captured Nazi
documents. All the evidence shows that it was most probably given verbally
to Goering, Himmler and Heydri, who passed it down during the summer
and fall of 1941.’121 Similarly, in what is regarded as the standard text on the
Nazi extermination of European Jewry, Raul Hilberg has recorded the
process in German bureaucracy of ‘an atrophy of laws and a multiplication
of measures for whi the sources of authority were more and more
ethereal’.122 On the field, the German army had to confront the
psyological repercussions for soldiers who were participating or
witnessing mass executions in Eastern Europe. e army command regarded
this issue as a substantial threat for German society aer the end of the war
and felt constrained to issue a number of directives to rationalise, with racial
theories of inadequacy and deviance, the mass executions and to prevent
soldiers participating in executions from graduating to what were termed as
wanton killers, especially with a view towards post-war German society.
ere were instances of soldiers and high-ranking officers having to submit
for medical treatment for suffering from hallucinations and other
psyosomatic disorders. e killings were ordered to be conducted away
from the city and preferably at night, and involved units were ordered to
prevent strictly other soldiers wating as spectators. On one occasion, even
Himmler in a spee to troops responsible for mass killings had to claim that
he personally hated the slaughter and had on witnessing them ‘been aroused
to the depth of his soul’ but that he was only ‘obeying the highest law by
doing his duty’. He reiterated that combat and a hierary of survival was a
law reflected and established in nature and that he undertook sole
responsibility ‘before God and Hitler’. e soldiers persisted in wating,
taking photographs and writing leers describing them, and consequently
information began to stealthily disseminate into Germany. Notwithstanding
the systematic aempts to control these repercussions, nervous breakdowns
and subsequent persistent alcoholism spread into the units that were
connected with the extermination of Jews.123 e visual and public effect of
a Satyagraha by the Jews, with the ensuing of a possible turbulence in
opinion on the part of the German public, even if flowing from a stampeding
desire to be spared the overt but unavoidable knowledge of the details of the
persecution, can well be imagined. Logically, therefore, global quietude in
the face of Jew resistance and its described possible reprisals seems
inconceivable, and as evidenced earlier, the possibility of su quietude had
not been expected by the Nazi state either.
Describing the Holocaust as the ‘greatest crime of our time’, Gandhi
reiterated in 1946 what he had said in 1938 that a Jewish resistance would
have had definitely other consequences than those whi had occurred
without su a movement: ‘ey should have thrown themselves into the
sea from cliffs … It would have aroused the world and the people of
Germany … As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.’124 A section
of opinion still holds this statement to be typical of Gandhi’s la of
sensitivity and understanding of the Holocaust, where he offered
prescription without offering a practical programme.125 But it is a fact that
Gandhi’s contemporary interlocutors on this issue did not ask for practical
suggestions. ey were simply incensed that he had linked Nazi persecution
with the Jew–Arab dispute in Palestine. ey normally stated as fact that
non-violent resistance was simply not possible in Nazi Germany, and
Gandhi’s unflining stand that it was almost never provoked them to ask of
him as to how precisely could it be organised. ey stopped with censuring
him. ere was no effort to explore the moral issues Gandhi had raised:
individual responsibility to protest against inhuman regimes; the preparation
of the self for undertaking su a protest; that passivity before oppression
was doubly unethical inasmu as it violated the principle of individual
responsibility and frequently, if not always, allowed passivity to depict itself
as non-violence.126
Hayem Greenburg’s allegation (made out in his article published in the
Jewish Frontier and sent to Gandhi) that Gandhi had been misled because of
his proclivity for Muslim appeasement is cited in detail in most studies, but
the infinitely more significant portion of his article is not so oen quoted. It
is another maer that Greenburg did not recognise that appeasement is built
into pragmatism of a kind whi was entirely alien to Gandhi, and whi
would make appeasement of a person or a principle impossible for him.
However, it was perhaps only Greenburg, of all the distinguished
correspondents of Gandhi on this issue, who understood and anowledged
the subtle point whi Gandhi had made on the virtue of non-violence, more
clearly in a subsequent statement on the debate: ‘I hold that non-violence is
not merely a personal virtue. It is also a social virtue to be cultivated like the
other virtues. Surely society is largely regulated by the expression of non-
violence in its mutual dealings. What I ask for is an extension of it on a
larger, national and international scale.’127
Greenburg saw no sism in Gandhi’s thinking and accepted that his
suggestion of non-violence was ‘quite natural’ and in ‘complete harmony
with his entire outlook’ and that ‘his ethical-religious convictions dictate to
him the duty of heroic and active resistance’, the truth of whi was to
Greenburg ‘as self-evident as a mathematical axiom’. Noting at the same
time that Gandhi had since years advocated Satyagraha ‘as a universal ideal
whi could be applied by all the oppressed and injured everywhere and
independent of the specific historical situation’ and that it had ‘proved to be
practical and effective’, Greenburg expressed his doubts as to whether
Satyagraha would succeed among the Jews of Germany, not only because of
the adverse situation in Nazi Germany but also mu more so because the
German Jews were psyologically not equipped for su a movement given
that it was not in keeping with the ethos and aracter of the Western
world.
But I admit to myself that in order to apply Gandhi’s method of struggle it is necessary to accept it
not only on a purely intellectual plane; it is also imperative that it be assimilated emotionally, that
it should be believed in with all the force of one’s being. Su faith the Jews of Germany do not
possess. Faith in the principle of Satyagraha is a maer of special predisposition whi, for
numerous reasons, the German Jews have not developed. e civilization in whi German Jews
have lived for so many generations, and to the creation of whi they have so energetically and
ably contributed, has not prepared them for the “pathos” of Satyagraha…. ey cannot resort to
passive resistance because they la the heroism, the faith and the specific imaginative powers
whi alone can stimulate su heroism.128
 Greenburg’s analysis of ahimsa, as being anti-thetical with the
predominant ethos of the Western world, came quite close to what Gandhi
himself had said in Hind Swaraj. But Greenburg’s highlighting of the
brutality of the Nazi regime was coupled with a hint that even though the
hope of a passive resistance from the German Jews could be to some extent
nurtured, the expectations of that hope being fulfilled would be unrealistic
as it would require a near enormous ange in the psye of Jews living in
Germany.
is brings us to the second scenario. Could passive resistance have been
successful in Germany, and if so what would be the time frame in whi the
success or failure of su resistance be judged? e second scenario can be
envisaged through the examination of some of the major trends of the
Holocaust. It would be useful to have a sense of what had actually occurred,
and thus to know what ought not to have happened for a non-violent
resistance of some magnitude to have been born in Nazi Germany itself.

Scenario 2

is scenario is recreated from Hannah Arendt’s interrogation of the cast of

aracters in her report on the investigation of the Holocaust, at the trial of
Adolf Eimann in Jerusalem. Arendt’s book, whi upset Jew opinion,
justifies Gandhi’s analysis of the situation without her knowing it. is is
especially noteworthy in the light of her comments, mentioned earlier, on
Gandhian teniques. It also illustrates how some of Gandhi’s forebodings
regarding the perils of not protesting against injustice were proved accurate
in the context of the Holocaust.
First, the ironical dimensions of the killing of Vom Rath by Hersel
Grynszpan. Vom Rath was ‘a singularly inadequate victim’, who far from
being a Nazi fanatic was known for his ‘openly anti-Nazi views’ and was, in
fact, being kept under surveillance by the Gestapo because of his sympathy
for Jews. Grynszpan was probably a ‘psyopath’ who had been unable to
finish sool, having been expelled in Brussels and Paris. e German
government had him extradited, although he was never put under trial, and
it is said that he survived the war. It was the ‘paradox of Aushwitz’ that
Jews who had commied criminal offences were allowed to live. e
Gestapo encouraged a theory of homosexuality to explain Vom Rath’s
murder. Arendt has speculated that the story of his homosexuality might
have been a fabrication by the Gestapo: ‘Grynszpan might have acted as an
unwilling tool of Gestapo agents in Paris, who could have wanted to kill two
birds with one stone – create a pretext for pogroms in Germany and get rid
of an opponent to the Nazi regime.’129
Arendt wrote about the collusion of some Jewish leaders with the Nazis
during the Holocaust, basing her comments on the Holocaust largely on the
depositions in the court in Jerusalem and on various highly respected
investigative studies on the subject, prominently Hilberg’s The Destruction
of the European Jews.
130 Emissaries from Palestine approaed the Gestapo

and the Sutzstaffel, or the SS, on their own initiative in the early stages of
the Nazi regime, to ‘enlist help for immigration of Jews’ into Palestine,
whi was promptly rendered. e emissaries were not interested in rescue
operations: ‘ey wanted to select “suitable material”, and their ief enemy,
prior to the extermination program, was not those who made life impossible
for Jews in the old countries, Germany and Austria, but those who barred
access to the new homeland, that enemy was definitely Britain, not
Germany.’131
We may recall Gandhi’s relating of the issues of militant Zionism in
Palestine with that of civil resistance of Jews in Germany in 1938. Some of
the overzealous proponents of a Jewish Palestine had begun to operate in
Nazi Germany around this time, of course without a foreknowledge of the
sinister plans the Nazi’s harboured for future implementation.
Unfortunately, the Zionists thought that the Jews themselves should
extricate the ‘best biological material’ for survival away from a hostile
situation. e obsession with the ‘best biological material’ was also common
to the Nazis. Gandhi’s worst apprehensions, regarding the consequences of a
combination of passivity on the one hand and militant Zionism on the other,
seem to be completely realised in this comment of Arendt on the activities of
the Zionists in Germany: ‘It was this fundamental error in judgment that
eventually led to a situation in whi the non-selected majority of Jews
inevitably found themselves confronted with two enemies – the Nazi
authorities and the Jewish authorities.’132 Gandhi had refused to believe that
the ‘Germans as a nation have no heart or markedly less than the other
nations of the earth’. Hitler would have been forced to take cognizance of
German opinion as he ‘would be a spent force if he had not the baing of
his people’.133 He wrote that an armed conflict would entail widespread
destruction and may even terminate the present regime in Germany, but it
would fail to produce a general ange in human heart and might ultimately
serve to produce another Hitler as aer the last war. Referring to the
continuing incarceration of Pastor Niemoller and of other protestors against
Nazi militarism, Gandhi believed that actions su as theirs would, as would
a protest by the Jews, never be in vain. It was a scientific principle that
energy was never wasted, it was only that the meanical forces were less
abstract. Human actions resulting from a concurrence of forces albeit
invisible had a similar power; the only thing required was to keep faith.
Individual human responsibility was thus of utmost importance.
Joan Bondurant has doubted the power of any totalitarian system,
‘however effective in its policing’, to ‘prevent word-of-mouth propaganda of
an idea, or even of an understanding of a tenique if there had been some
previous understanding of its meaning and effectiveness’. In her opinion,
‘[H]ad the Jews of Germany been sooled in satyagraha, an organized
satyagraha could have got under way.’134
e trial of Eimann demonstrated how the mistaken notions of the
leaders of the German Jews had made collaborators out of them, and how
anxious the Nazis had been to secure their collaboration to ensure the
secrecy and continuity of their operations. An authoritative account of those
years unambiguously states that ‘without the cooperation of the victims, it
would hardly had been possible for a few thousand people, most of whom
moreover, worked in offices, to liquidate many hundreds of thousands of
people’.135 It is ironical that Arendt stated in a later work that a Gandhian
movement in Germany would have resulted in massacre and submission. In
her earlier report on Eimann’s trial, she had raised those very questions
whi are central to Gandhi’s argument, and her documentation supports
with empirical data Gandhi’s claim that non-violence would not have been
entirely unsuccessful in Germany as Hitler would not have been able to
dispense with the veil of secrecy and the semblance of order in the fulfilling
of his evil design. In a different, somewhat non-judgemental manner, Elie
Wiesel had in the beginning of Night, his famous account first published in
1958 of life in the extermination camps and predating Arendt’s work,
described the reluctance of the Hungarian Jewish community of Sighet, in as
late as 1944, to believe itinerant informants describing the extermination of
Jews deported from Hungary and scepticism regarding Hitler’s plans to
exterminate the entire race: ‘Yes, we even doubted his resolve to exterminate
us. Annihilate an entire people? Wipe out a population dispersed throughout
so many nations? So many millions of people! By what means? In the
middle of the twentieth century!’136 Even aer accounts from Budapest
conveyed that Jews there lived ‘in an atmosphere of fear and terror’, the
initial foreboding anged very quily to one of ‘optimism’: ‘And thus my
elders concerned themselves with all manner of things ‒ strategy, diplomacy,
politics, and Zionism ‒ but not with their own fate.’137
Hilberg has adeptly conflated his knowledge of Jew history with that of
the German state in analysing the response of the Jews of Europe to the Nazi
state. Both historical and psyological factors created the aitude of the
victims in a traditional combination of what Hilberg describes as resistance,
alleviation, evasion, paralysis and compliance. e Jews adopted mainly a
policy of complying with all orders aimed at their own destruction from
their historical knowledge of pogroms, when the fury of the aaers would
gradually abate and the community could somehow recover from their
emotional and material debris the means of proceeding with its life. us,
for them, the German state resembled a wild beast, whi would at some
point satiate its rapacity and violence, and Jews would, as in the past, turn to
rebuilding a broken life. Moreover, many in the community relied on their
own recognition that Jews were not economically useless – ‘one does not kill
the cow one wants to milk’ – and additionally, in Central and Eastern
Europe, Germany was generally regarded as a traditional place of refuge as
compared to Russia. As stated by Hilberg, ‘We see, therefore, that both
perpetrators and victims drew upon their age-old experience in dealing with
ea other. e Germans did it with success. e Jews did it with disaster.’138
At the same time, it cannot but be obvious that consenting to the death of
oneself and one’s own should naturally be difficult, and the aempt to
escape or, as happened in many cases, to actually only postpone destruction,
through petitions, cooperation, even bribery, were the acts of a consumed
and abandoned people. However, in spite of the extreme circumstances,
Jewish resistance organisations at places did make an aempt ‘to reverse the
mass inertia’ and exhorted their community to deny to their being ‘led like
sheep to slaughter’.139 It is concurrently remarkable that Gandhi addressed
himself principally to both the naturality and the liability of psyological
crisis in victims, as well as to the possibility and complicacy of resistance in
the harshest of conditions.
e numbing and silential descriptions of life under the shadow of
deportation and death convey a kind of coherence to the seeming
willingness of the community to be deceived by the false assurances of their
torturers. It is grievous reading of accounts of how the Jews, being human,
were perhaps compelled to endeavour to maintain continuity in their lives,
even when they were confronted with almost incontrovertible indicatives
against any possibility of survival.140 Even at points, when in the minds of
Jewry the consequences of resistance and compliance were on balance and
equitable, the futility of the situation rendered a kind of paralysis. What is,
however, more crucial and less understandable is the widespread
phenomenon of ‘institutional compliance by Jewish councils employing
assistants and clerks, experts and specialists.’141 e Germans did not have
the resources to run the Gheo administration and whenever required, the
Jew councils provided their German supervisors information, money, labour
and police. Although this was done primarily to ward off punishment, this
was of vital assistance to their persecutors, and for this reason, the German
administration both maintained and exploited the gheo councils. Arendt
more or less similarly concludes: ‘Without Jewish help in administrative and
police work – the final rounding up of Jews in Berlin was, as I have
mentioned, done entirely by the Jewish police – there would have been
either complete aos or an impossibly severe drain on German power.’142 It
needs to be mentioned that Hilberg differs pointedly with the counterfactual
proposed by Arendt that, without the leadership as was, the Jews would
have been nevertheless reduced to great misery in the Holocaust, but the
disruptive absence of a cooperative leadership would have made it
impossible for the German administration to annihilate six million Jews. In a
later assessment of her argument, Hilberg, offering a historic explanation for
the compliance of the Jew leadership with German directives, did not agree
to the postulate of a disjunction between the Jew leadership and the
community.143 Arendt, however, maintains that ‘this role of the Jewish
leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest
apter of the whole dark story’.144 She spoke of the absurdity of presuming
either the collective guilt of the German people on an ‘ad-hoc interpretation
of history’ or ‘a kind of collective innocence of the Jewish people’, and
criticised the ‘reluctance evident everywhere to make judgments in terms of
individual moral responsibility’.145 In his statement regarding Jew resistance
in Germany, Gandhi had said mu the same in evoking the centrality of the
moral responsibility of resistance on the part of the victims. It is pertinent to
recall his definition, given during his trial in an Ahmadabad court in 1922
for leading a non-cooperation movement in India, of the ethics of protest as
also of its undeniability even in extreme situations: ‘I am endeavouring to
show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiplies evil,
and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support
from evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies
voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil.’146 Is,
thereby, the sufferer, even the vulnerable and infirm, never exempt from the
responsibility to resist injustice? Do truth and non-violence admit no
exemption, and are therefore for their practice never conditional to
memorialisation? e depictions by Holocaust survivors, of the horrific life
in the camps housing the gas ambers, also contain tragic accounts of the
inevitable dehumanisation of not only the perpetrators but also of many of
the victims trying to survive the hellish torture of the situation.147 Levy, in
particular, agonises over the general inability of the victims to ‘acquire an
overall vision of their universe’. e sheer pressure of survival forced them
into an aitude that relinquished scrupulousness. ‘Every victim is to be
mourned, and every survivor is to be helped and pitied, but not all their acts
should be set forth as examples.’148
e scenario that we have been discussing raises in Arendt’s evocative
words ‘one of the central moral questions of all time, namely upon the
nature and function of human judgment…. that human beings be capable of
telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own
judgment, whi moreover, happens to be completely at odds with what
they regard as the unanimous opinion of all those around them’.149 Gandhi
unfailingly recognised and sustained the centrality of this principle,
particularly important during times of peril when suffering could be borne
and redeemed; only possible, perhaps, with the sufferer realising that
individual, moral responsibility was a non-modifiable virtue.
All the same, one must anowledge at this point that post facto
evaluation, su as the present discussion, of a situation whi involved
cruel oices must inevitably and perhaps correctly, begin to seem to a
degree insensitive and even sanctimonious. However, my endeavour is
hopefully far from being judgemental. is consideration of the historical
hypothetical is motivated by the possibility of an indication of the historical
alternative.

e possible historical
In the history of Nazi persecution of Jews, there are indeed some stray
stories of individuals reclaiming a sense of responsibility along with a moral,
human space for themselves. e story of Anton Smidt was told at the
trial of Eimann. He was a sergeant in the German Army, assigned to a
patrol in Poland, who in the course of his duties came across members of the
Jewish underground, whom be helped with forged papers and trus,
without taking any money. He did it for five months from October 1941 to
Mar 1942, when he was caught and executed. Arendt wondered how
‘uerly different everything would be’ not only in Israel, but also in the
entire world, ‘if only more su stories could have been told’. Peter Bamm, a
German Army physician had, in his account of the killings of Jews in
Sevastopol, anowledged that he and others like him knew of the
extermination units but did nothing because any protestor would have
summarily disappeared, as totalitarian regimes ‘don’t permit their opponents
to die a great, dramatic martyr’s death for their convictions’. ‘A great many
of us might have accepted su a death,’ he says, if only totalitarian states let
them do so. Any sacrifice in anonymity would have been futile. However, he
had the courage to say, ‘is is not to say that su a sacrifice would have
been morally meaningless. If would only have been practically useless. None
of us had a conviction so deeply rooted that we could have taken upon
ourselves a practically useless sacrifice for the sake of a higher moral
meaning.’150 is is obviously the kind of utilitarian ethics, where ethics
dilutes its essence and loses its way into becoming a pragmatism shorn of
value.
Contra Bamm, the German bureaucracy, faced as it was with an
unprecedented ‘asm between moral precept and administrative action’ did
take resort, in albeit a very limited way, to some criticism if not protest and
in the deliberate delaying of the executing of a few orders relating to the
Final Solution, reflected what has been termed by Hilberg as ‘the lingering
effect of two thousand years of Western morality and ethics’. ey either
conducted themselves with suitable discretion in this or due to the
abovementioned problematic consequences for the entire system that were
anticipated by Nazi state; very few of them were actually penalised. In a
spee in 1943, Himmler referred to the extermination of Jews as a
‘particularly difficult apter’, whi he was thankful to God for being
accomplished smoothly and without being talked about openly in Germany.
His view was that although everyone, including himself, of the performers
of the difficult task had been ‘horrified’, all of them knew that they would
not hesitate to do it again if necessary. In one case of true public protest –
one whi Gandhi would have wholeheartedly endorsed − involving the
Catholic Chur in Germany, a priest named Bernhard Litenberg
continued to offer public prayers at St. Hedgwig’s Cathedral in Berlin for
victims of the ongoing Holocaust and was ultimately arrested. Subsequently,
he denounced National Socialism and wished to go to Eastern Europe to
pray for, and suffer along with, the Jews who were being massacred there.
He died en route to a concentration camp. In a more dramatic, if mu less
valid, protest involving close proximity with Hitler, the wife of a hardened
Nazi functionary, Gauleiter Sira, on the advice of her husband,
mentioned to Hitler during a visit to him an instance of rounding up of Jews
at night in Amsterdam. e screaming of the women had disturbed her, and
assured in the belief that the Fuehrer would naturally be ignorant of su
activity and would order stopping any recurrence of it, she described the
incident to him. Hitler listened rudely, repeatedly interrupted her and told
her not be ‘sentimental’. e couple withdrew from the by now thoroughly
embarrassed gathering and while leaving the next morning were unable to
present their farewell greetings to Hitler.151
Another question whi arises from the second scenario is why in the
face of su odds, as are aracteristic of totalitarian regimes, did Gandhi
continue to emphasise on the validity of suffering for ones convictions? is
is contained in the obviously larger question: Why is the ethical also the
pragmatic? An answer to this must negotiate through Gandhi’s very
occasional statements to the effect that he preferred people to die ‘fighting
violently than become helpless witnesses’, with its inference that he could
have, in certain eventualities, legitimised violence. is statement of 1945,
with regard to protecting women against rape, however did not specifically
entail men to take to violence, but declared Gandhi’s belief that rather than
becoming merely a ‘helpless witness’ to su heinous crimes, the ‘truly non-
violent man would never live to tell the tale of su atrocities. He would
have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance’.152 In this,
Gandhi thus reiterates the sovereignty of non-violence rather than suggest a
caveat.
In a broad overview of Gandhi’s statements on non-violent protest, the
year 1920 is significant, particularly regarding Gandhi’s public definitions of
bravery, sacrifice, resistance and iefly, his exhortations, on a couple of
occasions, against the cowardice of the community during pillage and
molestation by the police on 30 November that year, in a village near Beiah
in Champaran. Occasionally, extracts from the spee given at Beiah and
at Dacca, and from an essay entitled ‘Dyerism in Champaran’ published in
the Young India and all occurring in the course of December in 1920, are
assumed to be evidential of Gandhi’s endorsement of violent resistance in
extreme situations. Following the popular foiling of the arrest of an
influential local in connexion with a village dispute near Beiah, the police
organised in the village a spree of loot and molestation by some men from
the neighbouring village. Gandhi mentioned that ‘houses were denuded of
their contents – grain and ornaments’, and women were molested, including
cases of public stripping. Gandhi was incensed that the villagers had in fear
abandoned their homes and the womenfolk to depredation and abuse. On
his visit to the village, women narrated their torture, and broken bins and
boxes in the plundered houses were shown to him. He had since long
regarded the peasantry in Champaran as ‘the most helpless and the most
terror-strien of all [Gandhi] had seen’, who dreaded the police and fled on
the merest sign of their approa. On their part, the local police had become
grossly corrupt and demoralised, who did not know and did not care about
the intervallic reprimands from the magistracy: ‘[a] system of terrorism
continues and flourishes’.153 Since Gandhi believed that the government had
not connived at the incident, he felt one possible solution would be for a
delegation to reason with the police that they were bound to protect the
people and hence restore the loot. He was particularly angry that the
villagers with their ‘long stis’ had shown their ‘heels’ while the women
were being dishonoured and clearly stated that cowardice was not
Satyagraha. ‘Our dharma does not tea us to be cowards, to submit to
tyranny. What it teaes is that, instead of taking the life of the tyrant, it is
beer to lay down one’s own. If we could do this, we would be as gods;
should we, however, run away from the scene of oppression, we would have
behaved worse than beasts.’154 But fleeing from persecution to save one’s life
was being akin to ‘neither beasts nor men’ but plain cowards. Gandhi had
always believed that delivering the people of India from cowardice was
central to his duty to his country, since truth and cowardice were simply
incompatible, and the fact that people had run away at the sight of the
police was intolerable for him. Lacing his spee with sarcasm he now
observed, ‘If the people of India cannot display their humanity, they can
certainly show that they are animals.’155 He said that he would laud them for
laying down their lives, even for having ‘fought [the police] hard’, but it was
abominable for him to countenance their timidity; even the law permied
the employment of force for defending life and property. He then stated
what has since become controversial: ‘Hereaer, every inhabitant of
Champaran will fight ba on su occasions and kill or be killed. I cannot
bear to hear what I heard today.’156 He added that only the resistance must
be proportional to the aa on oneself. Almost immediately, however,
Gandhi cautioned that he might be misunderstood and urged that the ‘sober’
among those present must continue to repeat exactly to others his advice on
this occasion. ‘I want that you should never behave as cowards, and yet not
take anyone’s life.’157 Gandhi returned publicly to the issue a week hence,
through the pages of the Young India. He said that Congress workers needed
to be careful while motivating ‘a people so fallen as in Champaran’ and that
any resistance to the lawful activity of the police, su as resisting any arrest
made with a warrant − even if the arrest were to appear and proven
unlawful − would be wrong. Reiterating his earlier criticism of the villagers
for fleeing in terror from a persecution whi could have been warded off by
organised resistance, he provided his definition of bravery. ‘A brave man
does not kill a thief but arrests him and hands him to the police. A braver
man uses just enough force to drive him out and thinks no more about it.
e bravest realises that the thief knows no beer, reasons with him, risks
being thrashed and even killed, but does not retaliate.’158
Gandhi’s position regarding violent resistance in this episode is obviously
not entirely uncomplicated in the tracing of his idea of non-violent
resistance. It might appear ironical that within a year of this incident, a
village mob aaed and killed nineteen constables aer some of the
villagers were killed in unprovoked police firing on a peaceful
demonstration in Chauri Chaura. Yet, however striking it might appear to
be, the linkage is tenuous between Gandhi’s exhortation in Beiah against
cowardice and the killing of policemen who were begging for mercy. Along
with almost all parametres of ethics and non-violence in Gandhi’s concept
of protest, whi clearly deny any justification to the action of the protestors
in Chauri Chaura, even the most mundane clause of proportionate response
stands violated in this context. While calling off the civil disobedience
movement in the aermath of Chauri Chaura, Gandhi announced a personal
penance for himself in the form of a public fast to arouse the conscience of
his co-workers. We will return in greater detail to this incident in the
subsequent apter, but a reference to Gandhi’s statement on the linkage
between all actions is markedly relevant to the present discussion. Gandhi
felt that the repression by the police and the violent response by Congress
volunteers signified the corruption of standards that had become widely
prevalent in the polity of the nation. Volunteers were either ignorant of his
ideals or, still worse, were participating in the movement wilfully sceptical
of the principles of truth and non-violence. e symptom of the malady,
expressed in the violence of the protestors, also provided an opportunity for
atonement and purification. ‘ey and we must suffer for the crime of
Chauri Chaura. e incident proves, whether we wish it or no, the unity of
life. All, including even the administrators, must suffer. Chauri Chaura must
stiffen the Government, must still further corrupt the police, and the
reprisals that will follow must further demoralize the people. e suspension
and the penance will take us ba to the position we occupied before the
tragedy … If we learn the full lesson of the tragedy, we can turn the curse
into a blessing.’159
Twenty years later, during the closing stages of the national movement, in
a leer to Reginald Maxwell in 1943, answering Maxwell’s criticism of his
fast, Gandhi said ‒ ‘I have stated times without number that I detest violence
in any shape or form.’ He then asked a rhetorical question: ‘Whi is beer,
to take the opponent’s life secretly or openly or to credit him with finer
feelings and evoke them by fasting and the like? Again whi is beer, to
trifle with one’s own life by fasting or some other way of self-immolation, or
to trifle with it by engaging in an aempt to compass the destruction of the
opponent and his dependents?’160
For the practice of su means of protest, Gandhi relied on the
interrelated ideas of faith and the conservation of all human acts. In 1928, he
had asserted that non-violence was a practicable ‘religious ideal’, even as it
was not fully realisable ‘in the flesh’. Su ideals as this derived their energy
from the ‘ceaseless quest’ they involved. e impossibility of a ‘cut-and- dry
model’ was thus not an impediment; it was, on the contrary, a positive
quality.
e virtue of an ideal consists in its boundlessness. But although religious ideals must thus from
their very nature remain unaainable by imperfect human beings, although by virtue of their
boundlessness they may seem ever to recede farther away from us, the nearer we go to them, still
they are closer to us than our very hands and feet because we are more certain of their reality and
truth than even of our own physical being. is faith in one’s ideals alone constitutes true life, in
fact it is man’s all in all.161

Relatedly, the ethical is thus proven to be the pragmatic, insofar as the

belief in certain ideas is beneficent because of their inspirational value along
with their practical efficacy. is also transforms the plane of their
practicability. is position is not similar to Pascal’s wager and not
exceptionable, since belief in truth and non-violence is not subject to a
narrowing, as may otherwise be the case with a sectarian belief. e
admission of the ethical in the sphere of pragmatism regarding communal
oices is indicated as well in Arendt’s poignant comment on Peter Bamm’s
reference to the futility of a sacrifice consigned to oblivion:
e holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many
people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be le alive to tell the story.
Hence, nothing can ever be ‘practically useless’, at least, not in the long run. It would be of great
practical usefulness for Germany today, not merely for her prestige abroad but for her sadly
confused inner condition, if there were more su stories to be told. For the lesson of su stories
is simple and within everybody’s grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror
most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to whi the
final solution was proposed is that ‘it could happen’ in most places but it did not happen
everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for
this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.162
Conversations on the Holocaust (Shoah) between the Chur and the
Synagogue have been persistently dominated by the general silence on the
part of the Vatican during the Nazi persecution of Jews.163 One response of
the Catholic Chur to the accusations relates to the futility of any
intervention in Nazi Germany and to the fact that a concerted response on
its part would have endangered whatever lile it otherwise was able to
accomplish for Jews through scaered initiatives. Lately, in an interesting
shi for the issue of human agency, the traditional question regarding the
absence of God has been subtly replaced by an emphasis on the absence of
human action. In a recent conversation with Pope Francis, Rabbi Skorka
incisively brings the question centrestage with the comment that human
society occasionally esews its consistent claim on free will for the purpose
of abdicating responsibility for action in certain crucial periods of history.
Skorka proceeds to inquire into the ramifications of the acceptance of a state
of general helplessness in a theatre of injustice: ‘ere are things that we
will never be able to understand, but it is clear that before we ask God
where He was during the Holocaust, we should ask where the people were,
both those who took action as well as those who mercilessly and cruelly
failed to act – those who murdered and those that looked the other way.’164
For Skorka, the patrician Pius XII had believed in diplomacy as the only
instrument of redressal – ‘that if a solution could not be found through
diplomacy, there was no solution’ − as opposed to the activist practicality of
John XXIII with his roots in the peasantry whi inculcated a kind of care
ethics whi was the ‘complete opposite of diplomacy’.165 It needs to be
recalled that in situations of injustice, Gandhi’s prioritisation of the ethical
imperative made avoidance of individual resistance impossible. Skorka’s
position approximates to that of Gandhi, and in speculating on the
relationship of resistance and the human conscience, Skorka underlines the
significance of Gandhi’s faith in ethical action and in a way historicises the
centrality of this faith in the ethics of resistance. It can be drawn that like
Arendt, Skorka perceives that protest, by non-Jews as well, would not only
have been a saving grace in a period of agential atrophy, but also, while
problematising the anowledged sequence of injustice and revenge, would
have perhaps constituted an insight into the possible equation of politics and
truth.
e great existential doubt that I have is how could [Pius XII] have kept quiet when he came to
learn about the Shoah? What kept him from shouting about it in anger from the rooops?
Prophets cry out against the smallest injustice. What could have happened if he had cried out?
Would consciences have been awakened? Would more German soldiers have rebelled? I am not
saying that these things would have happened, I am just trying to put myself in the place of those
who suffered, those that do not have a voice anymore, as if I were talking to them and sharing
their pain. Should some be saved if it means others will be abandoned? According to Jewish law,
when an enemy army surrounds a city and declares that they will murder everyone in town if an
innocent person is not handed over to them to be killed, the whole town should let themselves be
killed. No one has the right to oose who is saved and who is not.166

In arguably his last major statement on this issue made during the last
months of his life, Gandhi lamented that the heartless persecution of Jews
had driven them to Palestine, but it also grieved him that they sought to
impose themselves on an ‘unwelcome land’ with the ‘aid of naked
terrorism’, and ‘American money’ and ‘British arms’. He hoped a universally
gied race su as theirs would ‘adopt the matless weapon of non-
violence whose use their best prophets have taught and whi Jesus the Jew
who wore the crown of thorns bequeathed to a groaning world’. It would be
a ‘soothing balm to the aing world’, and their case would then become the
world’s case.167
e Gandhian path of non-violence may not be entirely irrelevant in the
way forward in one of the most intractable conflicts of our times, whi has
so far failed all aempt at a rapproement. Tagore had wrien to Gandhi in
1919 at the commencement of his first nationwide Satyagraha that ‘ose
who believe in spiritual life know that to stand against wrong whi has
overwhelming material power behind it is victory itself, − it is the victory of
the active faith in the teeth of evident defeat’.168 Gandhi provides in this,
perhaps, a philosophical guarantee that it is possible to accomplish moral
resistance in spite of its apparent remoteness from our immediate
capabilities. e examination of the two foci of non-violence and truth in
the political thought of Tagore and Gandhi see a further play with issues of
nation and community in the ensuing discussion.
Notes
1. Miael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York:
Basic Books, 2006), xxiv.
2. Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, eds. Krishna Dua and Andrew
Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 83.
3. Tagore, Selected Letters, 322.
4. Tagore, Selected Letters, 237.
5. Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani, among others, refer to the possibility of this transaction:
‘Many non-Western societies have intellectual cultures of great antiquity and sophistication.
Oen, however, these intellectual traditions did not have a pronounced aention to the sphere of
‘politics’ in the modern sense and therefore do not have a highly developed vernacular tradition to
draw upon and develop. As a result, their historical entanglement with the modern state – the
expression of its entirely novel structure of historical experience, dealing with its concentrated
power, its ability to affect people’s lives on an unprecedentedly large scale – has to rely at least
initially on the language that comes from the West, the habitual, standard language of conveying
and reflecting on this experience. However, over the longer historical term, as these historical state
trajectories and the human experiences associated with them come to diverge from Western
forms, inevitably new elements emerge.’ Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani, ‘Introduction’, in eds.
Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani, Civil Society: History and Possibilities (Delhi: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 5.
6. Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 145.
7. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 155.
8. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 241.
9. Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali (125th anniversary edition), 15 vols. (Kolkata: Visva-
Bharati, 1986–1992 [1393–1398 Bengali Era]), (hereaer cited as Rachanabali), 5: 763. All citations
are in translation from Bangla, and have been translated by myself, unless otherwise specified.
10. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 241–242.
11. Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 12.
12. Rachanabali, 12: 662.
13. Rachanabali, 5: 789.
14. Rachanabali, 12: 664.
15. Rachanabali, 12: 664.
16. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 207.
17. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 207.
18. Rachanabali, 5: 667.
19. Rachanabali, 5: 667–668. It may be interesting to compare the point of Tagore’s argument with that
of Glaucon regarding the virtue of justice in Plato’s Republic, as interpreted in another context by
Williams. Williams concludes reading the argument in, as he says, ‘a very different, and
differently democratic time’: ‘Perhaps the lesson of Glaucon’s argument is just this, that precisely
because we need justice as an instrument we need to admire it for its own sake; and what we need
to do is to learn how to do this, while not forgeing why we are doing so.’ Bernard Williams, The
Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, ed. Miael Burnyeat (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2008), 107.
20. Rachanabali, 5: 674.
21. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 259.
22. Tagore, Selected Letters, 283.
23. Rachanabali 5: 682.
24. Rachanabali, 9: 605.
25. Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, 206.
26. Rachanabali, 5: 668.
27. Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Leer to C. F. Andrews’, ed. Sabyasai Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and

the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941 (Delhi: National Book Trust,
2005), 61.
28. Rachanabali, 9: 603.
29. Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers, eds. Henry Hardy and Aileen Kelly (London: Penguin Books,
1994), 295.
30. Rabindranath Tagore, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, 4 vols. (Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 1994–2007 [hereaer cited as Writings]), 3: 88–89.
31. Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 1–2.
32. Alex Aronson, Rabindranath Through Western Eyes (Calcua: Riddhi-India, 1978), 62.
33. Tagore to Mussolini in a conversation on 13 June 1926. An account of the conversation was
subsequently dictated by Tagore himself to his secretary on the same day. Cited in Aronson,
Rabindranath Through Western Eyes, 63–64.
34. Rachanabali, 5: 790.
35. Rachanabali, 5: 666.
36. Rachanabali, 5: 674–675.
37. Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary (New York: Pathfinder, 2008), 61–67.
38. Eugene Victor Wolfenstein, The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution (New
York: e Guilford Press, 1993), 370–371.
39. Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, trans. Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 180.
40. Fanon, Colonialism, 27.
41. Fanon, Colonialism, 27–28.
42. Fanon, Colonialism, 23–24.
43. Fanon, Colonialism, 24.
44. Fanon, Colonialism, 25.
45. Wolfenstein, The Victims of Democracy, 344.
46. Berlin, Russian Thinkers, 207.
47. G. C. Pande, Jaina Political Thought (Jaipur: Prakrit Bharati Sansthan, Centre for Jain Studies,
University of Rajasthan, 1984), 34.
48. Pande, Jaina Political Thought, 36.
49. Chinmohon Sehanobis holds one su view. See Chinmohon Sehanobis, Rabindranath o Biplabi

Samaj (Calcua: Visva Bharati, 1998), 15.

50. Rachanabali, 8: 185–186.
51. Williams, The Sense of the Past, 83. It might be interesting to likewise refer to Burhardt’s
comment indicating the qualities of cogency and receptivity in thoughtful conversation on the
dialogue form preferred by the Greek philosophers: ‘For the Greeks the dialogue form was
especially congenial, and as a practical teaing device it is perhaps as old as the acroamatic

lecture, for the formal dialogue develops more sharply than any other kind of discussion and
hence, as mentioned earlier, philosophy was primarily an oral discipline. Socrates, who wrote
nothing himself, may well have stimulated his listeners to write down whatever they could
remember of his conversation. is may explain the next step philosophers took in composing
well-wrought dialogues. at Plato and Socrates worked very hard on the form of their
compositions is certain. To master the conversational tone, Plato is said to have studied Sophron’s
 mimes, i.e., prose conversations taken from the life of the common people. A tradition reports that
throughout his long life Plato kept polishing and filing at his dialogues. Even the impious parody
of Lucian as seen in The Carousal or the Lapiths is above all lucid and dramatic.’ Jacob Burhardt,
History of Greek Culture, trans. Palmer Hilty (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2002), 318–319.
52. For a concise and penetrating analysis of the themes of the two novels in comparison, see Ashis
Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism, in Return from Exile (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1998), 27–34.
53. Bhupendra Nath Daa, Bharater Dvitiya Svadhinata Sangram (Calcua: Burman Publishing
House, 1949), 82; cited in Sehanobis, Rabindranath o Biplabi Samaj, 96.
54. Tagore, Writings, 3: 718.
55. Rachanabali, 12: 553–568.
56. Rachanabali, 12: 563.
57. Rachanabali, 12: 563–564.
58. Sehanobis, Rabindranath, 68.
59. Sehanobis, Rabindranath, 69.
60. Sehanobis, Rabindranath, 69.
61. Tagore, Four Chapters, 22–24.
62. Rabindranath Tagore, Four Chapters, trans. Rimli Bhaaarya (Delhi: Shrishti, 2001), 21.
63. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 259.
64. Tagore, Four Chapters, 19.
65. Tagore, Four Chapters, 79.
66. Tagore, Four Chapters, 17.
67. Tagore, Four Chapters, 24.
68. Tagore, Four Chapters, 24.
69. Rachanabali, 12: 553–555.
70. Rachanabali, 5: 778.
71. Tagore, Four Chapters, 79.
72. Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago, trans. Max Hayward and Manya Harari (London: Vintage Books,
2002), 228.
73. Bimanbehari Majumdar, Heroines of Tagore: A Study in the Transformation of Indian Society

1875–1941 (Calcua: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1968), 282.

74. Tagore, Four Chapters, 63.
75. Tagore, Four Chapters, 77.
76. Tagore, Four Chapters, 80.
77. Adrian Moore in Williams, The Sense of the Past, ix–x.
78. M. K. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 2 vols. (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House,
1942), 1: 170.
79. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 170–172.
80. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 173.
81. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, trans. and ed. intin Hoare and
Geoffrey Nowell Smith (Chennai: Orient Longman, 1996), 229–230.
82. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 170–172.
83. Arvind Sharma, Modern Hindu Thought: The Essential Texts, Appendix II (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 290–301.
84. Sharma, Modern Hindu Thought, Appendix III, 302–310.
85. I owe this information to Daniel Raveh − grandson of Judah L. Magnes, personal communication.
86. Sharma, Modern Hindu Thought, 301.
87. Sharma, Modern Hindu Thought, 292.
88. Sharma, Modern Hindu Thought, 301.
89. Sharma, Modern Hindu Thought, 303.
90. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 179.
91. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 162.
92. It appears that Gandhi was perhaps not fully aware of historical instances of non-violent
resistance by communities, su as by Jews against the Roman Empire; the Sakyas against King
Vidudabha; and the Maoris against the British. But then, he may be implying that nation – with
its implicit military organisation − and non-violence are mutually exclusive categories.
93. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 163.
94. e religious traditions generally take a similar position, as in Jainism: ‘Himsa and ahimsa relate to
one’s own soul and not to others…. Self-culture is the main problem of ahimsa’. T. G. Kalghatgi,
Study of Jainism (Jaipur: Prakrit Bharati Academy, 1988), 202.
95. Miael Ignatieff, ‘Introduction’, in Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve, trans. Ruth Feldman
(London: Penguin Books, 2002), 6.
96. For the details of his inner conflicts as Chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council (a unit of the Nazi
administration), as well as the insensitivity and corruption of gheo administration, see The

Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom, eds. Raul Hillberg, Stanislaw Staron and
Joseph Kermisz (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publishers, 1999). Rather than assisting in killing helpless
 gheo ildren by handing them over for transportation to concentration camps as demanded by
the SS, Czerniakow killed himself on 23 July 1942, writing in his suicide note to his wife: ‘I am
powerless, my heart trembles in sorrow and compassion. I can no longer bear all this. My act will
show everyone the right thing to do.’ Joseph Kermisz, ‘Introduction’, in Czerniakow, Prelude to

Doom, 23.
97. Elie Wiesel, A Beggar in Jerusalem, trans. Lily Edelman and Elie Wiesel (New York: Shoen
Books, 1985), 208. ere is a likelihood of Wiesel’s description drawing on the account of an
extremely poignant incident read out at the Nuremberg courtroom by British prosecutor Hartley
Shawcross from the sworn affidavit of Hermann Graebe, who was an engineer with a German
firm posted in the Ukraine. e testimonial description of the ‘comparatively minor mass
execution’ has been reproduced by the noted journalist, William Shirer. Shirer mentions that a
‘hush of horror’ had descended in the courtroom at the reading of this account of the execution of
the 5,000 Jews residing in Dubno by the German Einsatz commandos in October 1942. is extract
conveys both a sense of resignation and fortitude on the part of the victims immediately before
the massacre: ‘An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old ild in her arms
and singing to it and tiling it. e ild was cooing with delight. e parents were looking on
with tears in their eyes. e father was holding the hand of a boy about 10 years old and speaking
to him soly; the boy was fighting his tears. e father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and
seemed to explain something to him. At that moment, the S.S. man at the pit shouted something
to his comrade. e laer counted off about twenty persons and instructed them to go behind the
earth mound … I well remember a girl, slim and with bla hair, who, as she passed close to me,
pointed to herself and said: “twenty-three years old”.’ William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the

Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany [1950] (New York: Ballantine Books, 1983), 1252.
98. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Vintage
International, 1989), 136.
99. Elie Wiesel, Dawn, trans. Frances Frenaye, in The Night Trilogy (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008),
195.
100. Dennis Dalton, Nonviolence in Action: Gandhi’s Power (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007),
137.
101. Dalton, Nonviolence in Action, 229–230nn177, 178.
102. Ronald J. Terek, Gandhi: Struggling for Autonomy (Lanham: Rowman & Lilefield Publishers,
Inc., 1998), 210–211. In this context, Terek also cites Karl Jasper’s comment: ‘It was only under
the British, and only under their aempt at liberal rule whi is unique in the history of empires,
 that Gandhi could succeed.’ Karl Jaspers, The Future of Mankind (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1961), 38.
103. Terek, Gandhi, 212–213.
104. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (London: Allen Lane e Penguin Press, 1970), 53.
105. Arendt, On Violence, 56.
106. Arendt, On Violence, 80.
107. Arendt, On Violence, 83.
108. Rajmohan Gandhi, Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire (Delhi: Penguin
Books, 2006), 444.
109. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 177.
110. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 177.
111. India’s Foreign Policy: Selected Speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru, September 1946–April 1961 (New
Delhi: e Publications Division, Government of India, 1983), 346.
112. Halifax, quoted in Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs (London: Cassel, 1962), 163; cited in Rajmohan
Gandhi, Mohandas, 422.
113. Hitler’s Secret Conversations 1941–1944 (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1953), 163; cited in Dalton,
Nonviolence in Action, 229 n176.
114. The Goebbels Diaries: 1942–1943, ed. and trans. Louis P. Loner (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 162;
cited in Dalton, Nonviolence in Action, 229n176.
115. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 vols. (Delhi: Publications Division, Government of
India, 1958–1994,) [hereaer Collected Works], 72: 193.
116. In his Presidential Address to the Congress session of 1909 at Lahore, Madan Mohan Malaviya
offered condolences to Lady Curzon Wyllie and the family of Dr. Lalkata who was killed by
Dhingra while he was trying to save Wyllie, and deplored the rising creed of political assassins.
But he felt compelled to express his frustration at the helplessness of the political leadership before
this cult of violence. ‘But we are grieved to find that these new political ghazis have now risen in
our midst, and have become a source of shame and sorrow to the country. I am sure we are all of
one mind in our desire to do all we can to eradicate this new evil from our land. But we do not
know what steps should be taken to do so. We have repeatedly denounced these outrages, but
those who commit them have obviously gone beyond the rea of our influence.’ Congress

Presidential Addresses, ed. A. M. Zaidi, 5 vols. (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied Political
Resear, 1986–1989), 2: 421.
117. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin
Books, 2006), 59.
118. Eichmann in Jerusalem, 39.
119. Hayem Greenburg, ‘We Are Treated As Subhumans ‒ We Are Asked To Be Superhumans’, in
Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 464.
120. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 219.
121. Like many of the accused, who subsequently feigned ignorance about its contents, Goering stated
at his trial at Nuremberg, ‘e first time I learned of these terrible exterminations was right here
in Nuremberg.’ Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 1256.
122. Hilberg reasons that it was hardly incredible that ‘wrien directives would give way to oral ones’.
‘Hitler himself may never have signed an order to kill Jews. On the other hand, there are records
of his uerances in the form of comments, questions, or “wishes”. What he actually meant, or
whether he really meant it, might have been a maer of tone as well as of language. When he
spoke “coldly” and in a “low voice” of “horrifying” decisions “also at the dinner table”, then his
audience knew that he was “serious”. Oral orders were given at every level. Hoss was told to build
his death camp at Auswitz in a conversation with Himmler. Stangl received instructions about
Sobibor from Globocnik on a park ben in Lublin. A railroad man in Krakow, responsible for
seduling death trains, recalls that he was told by his immediate superior to run the transports
whenever they were requested by the S.S.’ Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews

[Chicago: 1961] (Teane, NJ: Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc., 1985), 265.
123. For details, see Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 125–138.
124. Louis Fisher, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1990), 447.
125. Dalton, Nonviolence in Action, 136–137.
126. It is perhaps also safe to assume that, given Gandhi’s plausible familiarity with Jewish tradition
through his close relationship with friends su as Kallenba, with his statement that Jews should
have thrown themselves into the sea as a means of resistance, he was referring to Kiddush ha-
Shem or ‘the sanctification of the divine name’, embodying the steadfastness of faith, whi
involves prayer and willingness for martyrdom.
127. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 192.
128. Greenburg, ‘We Are Treated As Subhumans ‒ We Are Asked To Be Superhumans’, in Gandhi,
Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 462.
129. Arendt mentions the bizarre nature of the case; on the one hand, the Nazi slander of the victim for
homosexuality and ‘illicit relations’ with Jewish boys, and on the other making him ‘a martyr and
 victim of world Jewry’. See Arendt, Eichmann In Jerusalem, 227–228.
130. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews. However, it should be mentioned that Arendt was
highly critical of some of Hilberg’s subsequent observations on the Jewish psye, su as the
‘death wish of the Jews’; they never met and the relationship between Arendt and Hilberg was
hardly congenial. For an interesting version of their aitude to ea other, see Raul Hilberg, The

Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Inc., 1996), 147–
157.
131. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 61.
132. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 61.
133. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1: 191.
134. Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988), 227.
135. Robert Pendorf, Morder und Ermordete. Eichmann und die Judenpolitic des Dritten Reiches

(Hamburg: 1961); cited in Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 117.

136. Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. Marion Wiesel, in The Night Trilogy (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008). 26.
137. Wiesel, Night, 26.
138. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 24.
139. Hilberg mentions the post-war observation of a commander of two death camps and war criminal
Franz Stangl on the victims: ‘[Stangl] said that only recently he had read a book about lemmings.
It reminded him of Treblinka.’ Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 299.
140. is description is representative of the life in the gheos of Eastern Europe during the closing
years of the war: ‘roughout Europe the Jewish communities strove for community. ey treated
the si who would not have time to recover, they fed the unemployed who would not work again,
they educated the ildren who would not be allowed to grow up. For a middle aged leadership
there was no alternative. Younger people also were caught in the psyological web. e ildren,
however, were least prone to fall into illusion. When in the eresienstadt gheo a transport of
ildren was funneled to ordinary showers, they cried out: “No gas!”.’ Hilberg, The Destruction of
the European Jews, 302–303.
141. Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 299.
142. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 117. Hilberg had similarly deduced that the entire process of
extermination depended largely on Jewish participation, both at the level of individuals as well as
at the level of organised collective activity, as through councils.
143. Hilberg has noted in this regard: ‘In writing about the Jewish councils I had emphasised the extent
to whi the German apparatus counted on their cooperation. e accommodation policy of the
councils had ended in disaster. For me, however the problem was deeper. e councils were not
only a German tool but also an instrument of the Jewish community. eir strategy was a
continuation of the adjustments and adaptations practiced by Jews for centuries. I could not
separate the Jewish leaders from the Jewish populace because I believed that these men
represented the essence of a time-honoured Jewish reaction to danger.’ Hilberg, The Politics of

Memory, 150–151.
144. Arendt specifically refers Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews as conclusive evidence in
this regard. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 117.
145. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 297.
146. Gandhi, Collected Works, 23: 118.
147. Among the most graphic and painful are those contained in Elie Wiesel’s Night and in Primo
Levy’s The Drowned and the Saved.
148. Levy, The Drowned and the Saved, 20.
149. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 295.
150. Peter Bamm, Die Unsichtbare Flagge (Muni: 1952); cited in Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 232.
151. For details of this psyo-social aspect of the Holocaust, see Hilberg, The Destruction of the

European Jews, 274–293.

152. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 2: 8.
153. Collected Works, 19: 116.
154. Collected Works, 19: 89.
155. Collected Works, 19: 90.
156. Collected Works, 19: 90.
157. Collected Works, 19: 91.
158. Collected Works, 19: 118. It is interesting to recall in this context what Gandhi had said in a spee
at Dacca in 15 December 1920: ‘We do not possess so mu strength that we can approa the
cultivators and tell them not to pay taxes or ask a soldier to leave his service. We will use swords,
when the time will come. He who does not draw the sword at the proper time is a fool and he who
uses his sword at an improper time is also impudent.’ Collected Works, 19: 122. However, given
that he never once in later years discarded his public position regarding non-violence, the
statement can be taken perhaps as a rhetorical reference to an adage, a momentary aside during a
crucial public campaign.
159. Collected Works, 22: 421. e somewhat more difficult issue in this connection pertains to a report
by Nirmal Kumar Bose of Gandhi’s support to a group of young violently inclined Hindus who
were resolved to use, if necessary, their usual weapons to save the lives of some Muslims
endangered in the partition riots in Calcua during September 1949. In spite of his managing to
temporarily instill a semblance of sanity to a communally passionate Calcua, poor and ailing
Muslims, who were still living in Mianbagan, fearing for their lives by a renewed threat of
communal violence in the city were about to start for a safer neighbourhood aboard a tru, when
grenades thrown on the vehicle killed two of the passengers. e said group of Hindu young men
approaed Nirmal Kumar Bose with their offer of protecting the targeted minorities, but with a
request to Gandhi to prevent the police from arresting them for possession of unlicensed arms.
Bose reports that Gandhi agreed to help them in their resolve, saying that ‘he was with them. If
Prafulla Babu, the Chief Minister, could not protect the minority with his government forces, and
the young men decided to do so, they deserved his support’. Gandhi’s endorsing of violent
intervention in this case is apparently centred on the principle of preventive violence through the
agency of the state in situations of group persecution. Additionally, it involves violence on the part
of not the sufferers themselves but by the enabled against the vindictiveness of their own
community. Only, it is as if Gandhi is substituting an ineffective state apparatus with the
buressing community of the state in the performance of its essential function, the protection of
the life and liberty of its citizens. However, this instance needs to be distinguished from vigilante
justice. According to Bose, a Jewish intellectual from Palestine University, Walter Zander, some
years later professed to understand Gandhi’s position, stating that ‘Gandhiji was here not
encouraging violence; he was trying to protect those who were against him from the hand of his
own people. And if violence was condoned for this purpose, it was no more than cuing off one’s
own hand to prevent it from doing misief.’ Nirmal Kumar Bose, My Days with Gandhi (Delhi:
Orient Longman, 1987), 236.
160. Collected Works, 77: 91.
161. Collected Works, 38: 69.
162. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 232–233.
163. For a literary representation of the arges of inaction, or worse, concerning Pope Pius XII, see
Rolf Hohuth, The Deputy, trans. Riard and Clara Winston (New York: Grove Press, 1964). It is
significant that Bernhard Litenberg, whose courageous protest against the Holocaust we have
mentioned earlier, was a dedicatee of this play. It is interesting to recall Hannah Arendt’s account
of the response of Pope John XXIII when he had read the recently published play and was asked
 about the possible course of action against it. He had reportedly retorted, ‘Do against it? What can
you do against the truth?’ Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (San Diego: Harcourt Brace and
Company, 1968), 63.
164. Pope Francis agrees: ‘Where was man? – that is the biggest contradiction to human solidarity of
that period.’ Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka, On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on

Faith, Family, and the Church in the 21st Century, trans. Alejandro Bermudez and Howard
Goodman (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013), 176–177.
165. Bergoglio and Skorka, On Heaven and Earth, 185. We can recall an interesting formulation by
Judith Shklar regarding class and a perception of injustice: ‘Noblemen are dishonoured as
members of a caste, but a democratic sense of injustice asserts itself when one has been denied
one’s dignity as a human being. ere is a vast difference between an aristocratic and a
democratic ethos. One could argue that no aristocrat could possibly anowledge a sense of
injustice in all its fullness. If wounded honour calls for satisfaction, the democratic sense of
injustice cries out for more, for a public recognition that it is wrong and unfair to deny to anyone
a minimum of human dignity.’ Judith N. Shklar, The Faces of Injustice (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990), 85–86.
166. Bergoglio and Skorka, On Heaven and Earth, 183.
167. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War, 2: 116–117.
168. Sabyasai Bhaaarya, ed., The Mahatma And The Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi

and Tagore 1915–1941 (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2005), 49–50.
 III
Nationalism
Ethics and responsibility

The aempt to evaluate the relationship of Gandhi and Tagore with the
phenomenon of nationalism is hardly uncomplicated and defeats easy
categorisation, naturally drawing aention as it must, to the porosity of the
concept of nationalism. Although it is the received wisdom in many quarters
that Tagore unlike Gandhi was opposed to nationalism, a close analysis may
reveal why Gandhi ose to call him ‘an ardent nationalist’. Gandhi’s
obituary of Tagore might be recalled relevantly in this regard:
In the death of Rabindranath Tagore, we have not only lost the greatest poet of the age, but an
ardent nationalist who was also a humanitarian. ere was hardly any public activity on whi he
has not le the impress of his powerful personality. In Santiniketan and Sriniketan, he has le a
legacy to the whole nation, indeed to the whole world. May the noble soul rest in peace and may
those in arge at Santiniketan prove worthy of the responsibility resting on their shoulders.1

Equating Tagore with nationalism and Santiniketan at the same time may
sound intriguing. If anything, Santiniketan is located in the tradition of
viewing humanity as transcending cartographical divisions. Tagore was ever
vigilant against ‘nationalistic prejudices’ that were ‘sedulously cultivated in
our sool-books, and also by the patriots who wish the boys to be proud of
the exploits of their own country by running down other countries’.2 us,
for him, most sools distorted ildren’s sympathy and made them
‘incapable of understanding alien peoples with different languages and
cultures’.
In India, as a response to the Macaulayan policy of acculturation, a
genuine effort was initiated to create an alternative system of education
whi was not auvinistic but was premised on the complementarities of
cultures. It was believed that to privilege one single culture as supreme
would in effect impede and asphyxiate the interange of human values and
cultures. While concluding his acceptance spee for the Nobel Prize in
Stoholm, Tagore alluded to the global aracter of Santiniketan with an
invitation to the world, in the ‘name of the unity of men’, in the ‘name of
love’ and ‘in the name of God’ to ‘join hands with us and not to leave this
institution to us’, to ‘make it living and representative of the undivided
humanity of the world’.3
e undoubted astuteness of Gandhi and his propinquity with Tagore
even as they argued their way through some of the crucial periods of the
nationalist movement indicate to the soundness of Gandhi’s perception
regarding Tagore. Was there a nationalist hidden in Tagore whi appealed
to Gandhi’s nationalism? Was Gandhi not a nationalist in the conventional
sense and so appreciated Tagore’s similarly unconventional nationalism? Or
is nationalism itself a complicated category and whi is admiing of
nuances?
Friedri Waismann introduced the idea of open texture more generally
used in the philosophy of language, whi indicates that notwithstanding
definition as applicable category, there still remain possibilities of a
definition being inadequate, even though this entails that the definition in
question will remain different from any kind of vagueness, insofar as the
definition may be fairly accurate in actual situations.4 It might be interesting
to look at the definitions of nationalism.
Broadly defined nationalism is the assumption of an identity by a group
of people primarily on the basis of territory, language, religion and culture.
It is the political aspect of a categorisation of history in the industrial age.5
Hans Kohn defined nationalism as initially a collective ‘state of mind’, whi
has been variously constituted across history. Different elements of this
collective mind, su as language, territory and traditions, have mutated
both in scale and intensity, and the idea of nationalism has motivated
human beings towards different objectives and accomplishments, and these
objectives have been considered to be possible and realisable mainly in a
sovereign state. e building of an independent state has been the ultimate
aim of the nationalities compelled to traverse the historical stages from
political subjection to autonomy. ‘Nationalism demands the nation-state; the
creation of the nation-state strengthens nationalism. Here, as elsewhere in
history, we find a continuous interdependence and interaction.’6 One
perilous development in the nineteenth century was investing a divine
status to the nation. Seton-Watson connects the subsequent growth of this
fledgling sentiment to the diminution of religious faith. ‘Nationalism has
become an ersatz religion. e nation, as understood by the nationalist, is a
substitute god; nationalism of this sort might be called ethnolatry’ (emphasis
as in the original).7 In the history of Indian nationalism, Gandhi and Tagore
were opposed to this tendency to conflate the nation and godhead. Recently,
some solars have seriously debated the logical correctness of the claim of a
national community to be regarded as a moral community, based in the
concept that the ethnicities constitutive of nationality are inherently vested
with ethical value. Margaret Moore points to the normative aracter of this
argument: ‘Nationalists see their arguments as arguments about what should
be done, about what is legitimate state action. ey oen appeal to the good
of the nation, as part of a claim about legitimate political action. ey think
that this sort of claim counts as a moral reason in favour of a particular
policy’ (emphasis as in the original).8 Elie Kedourie regarded nationalism as
a pretension contrived in Europe for rationalising autonomy of government
for a component of a population in a specific geographical area. As a form of
ideological politics, nationalism was contradistinct from constitutional
politics, whi supersedes sectional claims in the providence of a system of
law and procedure to protect and promote common interests and aspirations
of a society or state. Nationalism in the form of ideological politics is more
oriented to establish an ethos, whi will supposedly facilitate an ideal
society repositing desired well-being and values. ‘To do so, the ideologist
will, to borrow Plato’s analogy in the Republic, look upon state and society
as a canvas whi has to be wiped clean, so that his vision of justice, virtue
and happiness can be painted on this tabula rasa.’9 Some years into the
twentieth century, a nation was defined by Stalin as ‘a historically evolved,
stable community of language, territory, economic life and psyological
make-up, manifested in a community of culture’.10 e universal
applicability of this historical evolution has been contested in contrary
formulations of the nation as a product of historical amnesia11 or as an
imagined community.12 Marxist solar James M. Blaut draws aention to
the fact that whereas Stalin’s definition later became immensely influential
within Marxist circles, Lenin did not apply Stalin’s nomenclature on the
subject in his regular discussions of colonial nationalism through his
speees and writings from 1915 to the end of his life: ‘In none of these did
he refer to or use Stalin’s definition of “the nation”.’13 Moreover, in the
details of his formulation, Stalin was responding polemically particularly to
the Jewish Bund and generally to the Bolshevik endorsement of the
aspirations of nationalities within Russia. Since the Jews did not have
territorial rights or territorial possession, they were not entitled to the status
and claims of a nation.14 Blaut finds it difficult to accept the all too readily
accepted linkage between nationalism and fascism in certain theoretical
formulations. Nationalism is a composite of different ideologies in different
historical contexts and it may become very simplistic to club them all under
one common rubric from a particular theoretical point of vantage. ‘Fascist
movements can make use of the politics of national aggrandizement, and
even the politics of secessionism. But nationalism has no direct and close
connection to fascism, and the problem of fascism cannot be solved within
the theory of nationalism.’15 However, it is generally believed the
exclusionary element is predominant in nationalism. On one plane, it
‘connotes a tendency to place a particularly excessive, exaggerated and
exclusive emphasis on values, whi leads to a vain and importunate
overestimation of one’s own nation and thus to a detraction of others’,16 and
on another, it denotes, as in Camille Julian’s searing for spiritual France
even while dealing with periods thousands of years preceding the existence
of his country, an ‘extreme case of the emotional and intellectual
substitution of a nation for Mankind.’17 Gellner is of the view that this
exclusivity and imposition is practised by nationalisms not only in relation
to other nationalisms across the borders of the nation states, but also, and
more crucially, within the ‘nation’ by the ‘high culture’ whi dominates the
nationalistic consciousness. e apparatus of the national state assists in this
imposition of a politically powerful high culture over the ‘low culture’ that
was hitherto practised by the majority of almost the whole of the national
population: ‘It is the establishment of an autonomous, impersonal society,
with mutually substitutable atomized individuals, held together above all by
a shared culture of this kind, in place of a previous complex structure of
local groups, sustained by folk cultures reproduced locally and
idiosyncratically by the groups themselves.’18 It is significant in this context
to mention that P. Ananda Charlu, offering one of the earliest definitions of
nationality in the history of Indian nationalism in his presiding address to
Congress in 1891, relegated the commonality of language and religion,
commensality and inter-marriage as at best only ‘potent auxiliaries’ of
nationality. Favouring the Sanskrit word prajah as most aptly translating
nationality, Charlu drew aention to the historical environing of diverse
communities/races that for him constituted the basic element of a
nationality. Charlu proceeded to adapt with approbation an illustration of
the evolving Indian nation: ‘In the next place [racial stem] gets added to,
from time to time, by the accession of other peoples – like scions engraed
on the central stem, or like creepers aaing thereto – who sele in the
country in a like manner, and come under the many unifying influences
already referred to, though still exhibiting marks of separateness and
distinctness.’19 e metaphor of the trunk and the creeper is interesting.
Although the extent to whi the category of nationalism can be streted
– without its becoming something of its opposite – is debatable, it does
contain quite a variety in itself; for instance, Hobsbawm has likened Mafias
to national movements inasmu as they were also points of convergence
for diverse social tendencies, divergent social and personal aspirations and
focalised defence of social tradition against alien and disruptive tendencies:
‘[Mafias] are to some extent, like national movements, of whi perhaps
they are a sort of embryo fluid.’20
Tagore called nationalism ‘a great menace’, stating that he was ‘not
against one nation in particular, but against the general idea of all nations’.21
However, his hostility to the nation is not monolithic and as intractable, in
spite of similarities, as that of George Steiner, who has famously stated:
Nationalism is the venom of modern history. Nothing is more bestially absurd than the readiness
of human beings to incinerate or slaughter one another in the name of nationhood and under the
infantile spell of a flag. Citizenship is a bilateral arrangement that is, that always ought to be,
subject to critical examination and, if need be, abrogation. No city of man is worth a major
injustice, a major falsehood. e death of Socrates outweighs the survival of Athens. Nothing
dignifies Fren history more surely than the willingness of Fren men to go to the brink of
communal collapse, to weaken the bonds of nationhood drastically (as they in fact did) over the
Dreyfuss case…. Trees have roots, men have legs with whi to leave aer they have, in
conscience, said no.22

ere is, in this passage by Steiner, an interesting conflation of the nation

and the state. ere are also obvious eoes of Lincoln who had at one stage
contemplated emigrating if America became more intolerant to minority
groups.23 But for the present purpose, I am drawn more to Socrates than to
Steiner. Confronted by death, Socrates refused to leave Athens at the
bidding of Crito. In spite of anowledging that the state had ‘injured’ him
and had given him ‘an unjust sentence’, Socrates nevertheless constructed a
dialogue with the Laws before Crito for elaborating his reasons for not
leaving the city state. Socrates states that the laws tell him that he had been
‘the most constant resident’ of Athens, renouncing the oice to ‘go to a
colony or any other city’ and ‘take his goods with him’. He had signed his
covenant with the laws and leaving now would amount to an unworthy
transgression. Socrates prefers to ‘depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a
doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws but of men’. e voice urging him in
this is he says, ‘murmuring in my ears, like the sound of a flute in the ears of
a mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from
hearing any other’.24 Rather than individual secession from an unjust
nation/state, the principle of bearing witness becomes overriding in this
case, also perhaps indicating in the process the other, and the possible ethical
foundations of the nation state.

Nationalism and cosmopolitanism

Similarly, for Tagore, as mentioned earlier, mere political freedom as
understood in the modern West was of secondary importance, being mostly
only inadequately realised and thereby catalysing in international disputes
and tensions. It was publicly associated with contestable claims, and a sense
of tensed alertness: ‘Political freedom does not give us freedom when our
mind is not free.’25 In Tagore’s perception, dharma transcended political
liberty and was related to individual resilience rather than to external
agency. Recurrently explored in his writings, his concept of dharma differed
from common notions of religious code, and agreed with Gandhi’s view of
its living quality. For Tagore, the nation is apparently an amoral, rather
immoral category, whi ‘will never heed the voice of truth and goodness’.26
But more to the point is the fact that when he says that ‘in the reign of the
nation the governed are pursued by suspicions’, his experience is primarily
that of the repression practised by the colonial state; even though for him ‘it
is not a question of the British government, but of government by the
nation’, he nevertheless anowledges that ‘our only intimate experience of
the nation is the British nation’.27 But, ‘[this] government by the nation is
neither British nor anything else; it is an applied science and therefore more
or less similar in principles wherever it is used’.28 However, thus far, the
paradox of the nation and the no-nation remains unresolved. e paradox
can perhaps be explicated and partially resolved by looking at what
Amartya Sen has termed ‘Tagore’s dual aitude to Nationalism’, and
thereby recognising the open texture of nationalism as well.
Tagore’s ‘dual’ aitude to Nationalism − supporting its emphasis on self-respect but rejecting its
patriotism − was not an easy one to get across, even in India. His criticism of Japan and of Britain
were received with easy understanding in India, but when similar criticism were made of India
and Indians, there were many aempts to see Rabindranath as a lukewarm Indian. But Tagore
 remained deeply commied to his Indianness, while rejecting both patriotism and the advocacy of
cultural isolation.29

Tagore’s combined stress − on studying the Indian classics and on the

importance of Bengali as the medium of instruction on the one hand, and on
courses studying the culture and traditions of the West as well as of the Far
and the Middle East, evoke Sen’s comment: ‘Tagore aempted to reflect his
dual emphasis, mentioned earlier, in the educational arrangements at
Santiniketan.’ Perhaps, this informed Gandhi’s statement about Tagore,
nationalism and Santiniketan.
However, it was of paramount concern for Tagore that the urge to unify
into one nation should in no case destroy the natural diversity of culture and
community in the nation. He had repeatedly observed the uniformalising
tendencies that almost inevitably and naturally accompanied the rise of
nationalistic sentiment. He was aware that innate divisions did not
automatically indicate auspiciousness for any country. Early in 1909, he
stated that the roots of India’s impairment lay in the separateness of her
people. ‘erefore it is our devotion to unify into one the many of our
country. Who can make into one the many? It is Ethics. It is the discarding
of ethics on the temptation of necessity that weakens the bonds of fidelity.’30
He was aware that the catalysis of distinct identities and culture whi had
occurred on the dispersal of some of the empires in Europe had, on the one
hand, caused the partition of countries as between Norway and Sweden,
and, on the other hand, it had caused an equally powerful instinct on the
part of certain empires to deny even a semblance of autonomy of culture
and language to its constituent peoples. As with the seed growing into the
flower, the genealogy of communities indicated no difference. However, the
development of distinct communitarian identities commenced with the
growth of national communities. e exacerbation of conflict had made very
powerful the aspirations of separateness on the part of communities, and all
around the world smaller communities and countries desired to survive on
the basis of their distinct identities. e contrary aspiration to submerge
differences into larger entities had lost its appeal. Tagore pointed out that
nations are normally apprehensive that any kind of ‘hesitancy’ on the part
of a constituent community with regard to ‘national aspirations’ results in
the dissipation of national strength, and that it was this apprehension whi
lay at the heart of Russia’s desire to homogenise Finland and England’s
imperialistic aitude with Ireland. He felt that the same spirit was now
motivating the Hindus in their efforts to somehow aieve ‘national unity’
by convincing Muslims that their interests lay in a united India. He stated
that the Muslims were rightly doubtful of this, and stable integration lay not
in assimilation, but in the acceptance of the differences that lay between
communities. ‘Now the problem worldwide is not that of unity by dissolving
differences – but how to meet while preserving differences. is task is
difficult – because, therein no laxity is permissible, therein ea other will
have to leave ea other’s space.’31 For Tagore, the actual ideal for modern
India ought to constitute a cooperative of different communitarian
aspirations, whi would actualise the cosmopolitan consciousness that was
necessary to the survival of a world being driven by the ambitions of
dominance and exploitation. He wrote about this particularly during the
non-cooperation movement of 1921, whi he perceived to be encouraging
of xenophobic emotions.
e awakening of India is a part of the awakening of the world. e door of the New Age has been
flung open at the trumpet blast of a great war. We have read in the Mahabharata how the day of
self-revelation had to be preceded by a year of retirement. e same has happened in the world
today. Nations had aained nearness to ea other without being aware of it, that is to say, the
outside fact was there, but it had not penetrated into the mind. At the sho of the war, the truth
of it stood revealed to mankind. e foundation of modern, that is Western, civilization was
shaken; and it has become evident that the convulsion is neither local nor temporary, but has
traversed the whole earth and will last until the shos between man and man, whi have
extended from continent to continent, can be brought to rest, and a harmony can be established.
From now onward, any nation whi takes an isolated view of itself will run counter to the spirit
of the New Age, and know no peace. From now onward, the anxiety that ea has for its own
safety must embrace the welfare of the world. For some time, the working of the new spirit has
occasionally shown itself even in the Government of India, whi has had to make aempts to
deal with its problems in the light of the world problem. e war has torn away a veil from before
our minds. What is harmful to the world, is harmful to ea one of us.32

In the West, notably in Europe, the rise of Latin solasticism and a

ur administration constituted of representatives of varied communities
as against the local visions of rural communities had symbolised the spirit of
cosmopolitanism since the Middle Ages. William Chester Jordan has traced
both the growth and the decline of cosmopolitanism in Europe. ‘e system
of papal legatees, nuncios, and judges-delegate, the pope’s eyes and ears in
even the most distant provinces of the ur, knied together the whole in
an impressive, if fragile, pan-European administrative network. Over against
this cosmopolitanism stands the relative self-sufficiency of the village
economy, the extreme paroialism of rural priests and of the inmates of
minor religious establishments, and the oen restrictive impulses associated
with concerns for family and lineage.’33 e emphasis was thus clearly on
urban, ‘progressive’ centres, including universities and on the larger markets
as developing sites regarding cosmopolitan values.34 According to many
solars, however, the growth of universities founded by rulers and
governed on regional/national principles and requirements started the
undermining of the cosmopolitan aracter of the European universities
fairly early in the life of the universities, although the solars continued
with professions of and discussions on cosmopolitical concerns. Jordan
notices the historical legacy of this tendency rather humorously: ‘I am
tempted to see a parallel in my home institution, Princeton. Solars there
talk oen of their contributions and loyalty to the world of learning, but the
university moo is “Princeton in the nation’s service.”’35
Tagore, in perhaps a unique logical turn, equated the growth of the
auvinistic national sentiment in India with the rising urban educated class
− even associating a political insincerity in the profession of hollow
solidarity on their part with the rural and exploited classes whilst they
formed the educated leadership of the Congress and thus inverted the
traditional view that identified cosmopolitanism with the urban professional
classes. As mentioned earlier, Tagore was highly apprehensive of artificial
concerns of wider identities undermining local mores that provided essential
resilience to communities threatened with homogenising mobilisations that
were generally the companions of nationalistic urges.
e theme is still relevant in mapping and gauging the growth and
potential of many of our dominant ideas of culture and polity, both because
Tagore was in a sense the autobiographer of the times in whi these ideas
generally acquired an outline and a substance, and because su issues as
the identity and rights of immigrant/migrant/stateless communities and the
anging perceptions of the home and the world seem fated to have a
persistent and pervasive presence in the coming decades.
It can perhaps be said that the inter-relationship of the home and the
world of late operates most illustratively within the philosophical category
and the juridical norms of cosmopolitanism. As Seyla Benhabib has
observed, ‘e term “cosmopolitanism”, along with “empire” and
“globalization”, has become one of the keywords of our times.’36 e play
within the term, however, contains themes that are of universal validity
even when they are located within certain regional contexts, as they were in
the times when Tagore was writing around these themes. is may be
relatable to Jeremy Waldron’s indication of the kniing of the different
possibilities of the term as used by Benhabib. Waldron perceives the
congealment of a variety of meanings around the idea of cosmopolitanism,
beginning from a general inspiration towards the love of mankind and an
aendant and accepted principle of indiscriminative human obligation and
duty on the part of the individual towards every person on the planet
regardless of her national or ethnic identity. e meanings of
cosmopolitanism include, on the other hand, ‘the fluidity and the
evanescence of culture’ and the extolment of a natural and gradual process
of the historic mutation in the particularities of hitherto established and
distinct cultures, and of the possibilities of a ‘world of fractured and mingled
identities’. For Waldron, the existence of still another aspect of the concept is
considerably significant, and according to him, it is this aspect that is
explored and prioritised by Benhabib that the sustenance of
cosmopolitanism is crucially dependent upon the observance of standards
and rule rather than the comparatively vague expressions of cultural
similarity and honourable feelings. ‘It [cosmopolitanism] envisages a world
order, and (in some views) a world government or world polity. According
to the cosmopolitan, there are already many norms in the world whi
operate at a cosmopolitan level, including (for example) the principles that
define human rights and crimes against humanity, the laws that govern
refuge, asylum, travel, and migration, and the dense thiet of rules that
sustain our life together, a life shared by people and peoples, not just in any
particular society but generally on the face of the earth.’37
e genealogy of modern cosmopolitanism is by no means confined to the
global west and includes the cosmopolitan consciousness of Chinese
philosophers; the Arab and Muslim cultures; and also as seen embedded in,
but not limited by, what is now described as ‘colonial modernity’. Solars
su as Peter van der Veer have discerned, with particular reference to India
and Vivekananda, the emergence of a ‘nineteenth-century cosmopolitan
consciousness based on universal spirituality’, whi was very different from
the cosmopolitan ethos generated by the pronouncedly secular ethic of the
Western European Enlightenment.38 According to van der Veer, this
prominence of Vedanta in the metaphysical foundations of a spiritual and
variously non-modern and anti-colonial cosmopolitanism makes for a
‘complex story connecting Immanuel Kant, Madame Blavatsky and Swami
Vivekananda in a variety of ways, and whi show global connections that
are different from world capitalism or modernity as usually conceived’.39
Conversely, with a rather obvious Western accent, Robert Fine and Robin
Cohen trace certain cosmopolitan ideas whi they find to be of current and
particular relevance, through four contexts or moments; the word moment
serving for them, not as a theoretical vessel but as ‘a convenient device to
anor some key debates and antinomies’. Although we may not wish, for
our present purpose, to examine the four moments whi are enumerated as
‘the ancient world (Zeno’s moment), the enlightenment (Kant’s moment),
post-totalitarian thought (Arendt’s moment) and the late North American
thought (Nussbaum’s moment)’, it may be of our immediate interest to focus
on Fine and Cohen’s comment on Nussbaum. ‘Nussbaum promotes a
radically alternate vision, one that draws explicitly on the ancient cynics
and stoics and, less convincingly, on the Indian novelist Rabindranath
Tagore.’40 ere is no further elucidation of this comment. Although many of
us will perhaps agree that Tagore’s position regarding cosmopolitanism may
not be very easily defined, it still comes quite close to some of the aspects of
the term, as mentioned by Waldron earlier. So, does this comment refer to a
deficit in Nussbaum’s understanding of Tagore’s cosmopolitanism? Or to a
deficiency in Tagore’s vision itself? Should one ignore this comment as
being typically uninformed and thereby not needing any further
explanation? Or, does it yield to further disputation and thus extends the
scope of the concept?
In Atmaparicahaya (Self-Introduction), Tagore was defining the
relationship between individual consciousness and group identity and
thereby drawing the subtle distinction between nationalistic identity and the
cosmopolitan tradition: ‘If in human nature there were to be only that whi
is perpetual, if there were to be nothing that he can create himself, if in his
own mind there were to be no space for exercising his own will, then he is
but a lump of clay. Again, if there were to be no one perpetual current from
his past, if all of it was to be unexpected or to be created of his own will,
then it would be an insanity, a imera.’41 ese questions may thereby
follow: Is definitive identity indispensable and a vital necessity? And to
what extent is it only an accretion inimical to anging times? Or,
conversely, does it serve as affirmation in times of uprooting and exile? Elie
Wiesel, the suffering writer of the Holocaust, has stated in the context of
identity and displacement/effacement: ‘I am seeking ildhood; I will always
be seeking it. I need it. It is necessary for me as a point of reference, as a
refuge. It represents for me a world that no longer exists; a sunny and
mysterious place where beggars were princes in disguise, and fools were
wise men freed from their constraints.’42 Su statements are significant and
largely representative of the experience of alienation and exile cuing across
space and time, and it might be appropriate to illustrate this from an
extended quotation from Wiesel’s description of his own dilemma of
location and identity framed by his ethical concerns of suffering and social
responsibility, and perhaps also by his view of social reality and social
consciousness in India. is is as if a testament that in poignantly
underlining what Jeremy Waldron calls the dense thiet of rules that
sustain our life together and reinstates the issues of ethical oices
confronting the apparent insensitivity and irresponsibility of societies/states
during times of human crisis, as Wiesel aempts to recollect his negotiation
with the oices of living aer the death camps of Auswitz. Repelled by
the organised cruelty that he had witnessed in the war-trampled West,
Wiesel was also aracted, during his many explorations of spiritual
marginality in Europe, by Hindu mysticism and Sufism and considered
relocating to India.
If I had been able to sele in an ashram somewhere in India, I would have. But I couldn’t. I had
seen under the incandescent sky of India, an immeasurable, unnameable suffering. I couldn’t bear
it. In the face of this suffering, the problem of evil imposed itself on me with a destructive force. I
could oose to steel myself against it or flee. I was not anxious to be an accomplice. Hindu friends
would cross the street stopping over mutilated and si bodies without even looking at them. I
couldn’t. I looked and I felt guilty.
Finally I understood: I am free to oose my suffering but not that of my fellow humans. Not to
see the hungry before me was to accept their destiny in their place, in their name, for them and
even against them. Not to mention their distress was to acquiesce to its logic, indeed to its justice.
Not to cry out against their misery was to make it all the heavier. Because I felt myself too weak to
cry out, to offer a hand to so many disfigured ildren, because I refused to understand that
certain situations couldn’t be anged, I preferred to go away. I returned to the west and its
necessary ambiguities.43

It was Tagore’s considered view that the Indian nation would essentially
require a social conscience and an ethical arrangement among its diverse
races and communities to exist as a viable nation, particularly with its
diverse social hieraries and its extended register of su historical
difference, animosity even, between its social communities. He rejected the
notion that the English had done service to the country by compelling the
erstwhile differing groups to live together under a strong administrative
centre, and that once the political movement had successfully invented the
English as the enemy in public perception, the diverse groups would, in turn,
perceive India as a common racial political home. He termed su an
argument facile, whi likened, and thereby avoiding, the ronic problem
of divisive identities in India to a large family constituted of members
having different natures but bound together by common feelings. In his
opinion, su common feeling did not exist among the varied communities
of India. e forming of a national union of various races in Switzerland
evidenced that there was an effective element of unity among its peoples. In
India, there was only diversity, and in the absence of any natural unity, the
intrinsic particularities had prevailed, acquiring the shapes of language,
caste/race, religion and custom, and kept this vast country divided into
hundreds of units. He, therefore, personally did not feel any assurance in
invoking metaphors and instances and thus in neglecting the reality of the
country. He transferred this issue on to the plane of ethics in writing that
even the principle of justice would not be served through the contention that
a recently burgeoning national sentiment had accomplished unity, and that
aer somehow dislodging English rule from the political scene, communities
like the Bengalis, Punjabis, Marathis, Madrasis, Hindus, Muslims, could
possible live as free Indians with one mind and one interest. He said that
actually whatever lile unity that was apparent in India was meanical and
not organic. e unity among the diverse races of India had not been
aieved naturally but by the outside bond exercised by the rule of a foreign
power. Tagore raised uncomfortable issues, whi confronted the staple
political argument for linking political liberty and nationalism and whi
viewed the experience of the political movement itself as conducive to the
creation of an abiding national sentiment. He argued against the theory of
the binding of diversities of community by foreign rule and described the
union of communities by invoking the example of the graing of one variety
of plant on to one belonging to a different group. e two different plants
aieve, thereaer, an organic unity among themselves not by the force of
the outside binding applied at the time of graing − although the binding is
essential till the unity is aieved − but by natural and intrinsic unification
of the plants. e binding, therefore, howsoever painful, needed enduring till
su time the inner unity was aieved and the process of uniting ought to
commence immediately with the graing together of the plants. Similarly,
the diverse communities needed to accomplish a unity on the plane of
relationship and of interests and values. English rule was endurable till the
meanistic unity of communities was succeeded by a real organic unity to
be striven for by the people themselves, whi could only occur without the
passive dependence on the artificial binding provided by foreign rule. is
unity of diversified India through one umbilical bond needed to be
accomplished through service, love and by the removal of the artificial
barriers to a true unity. is foundation of one’s own country, out of a land
perceived by many as a mere geographical unit and one native community
out of a divided people would have to be performed through our own efforts
towards a diversely creative process directed at the ultimate union of the
people. He anowledged that an impression was prevalent among some
sections of the country that the aretypal hatred of the foreigner as being
the inveterate enemy was an effective bond uniting the country. He
cautioned in this regard that one day su unity, as was impressed by the
hatred of the alien, would become defunct with the inevitable departure of
the English rule from India. e simulated imagination of hatred nurtured
by some people would then naturally be detaed from popular
consciousness, and in the absence of this binding from without the artificial
thread of unity would be instantly snapped. In the absence of any alien
enemy, the countrymen would then turn against ea other with all the
accumulated bloodthirstiness and hatred that had been long fostered in their
minds.44 Tagore, in this, reinforces the theory that it is its ethical basis that
redeems nationalism and makes it a responsible means for the building of
stable and just communities. In this sense, his description and his prayer in
the Jana Gana Mana for an ideal India, whi had aracted people of
diverse identities and faiths to subsist and repose on its soil, represents only
a part of his visualisation of India – it describes not so mu the actual
historical scene as it does the possibilities of the emerging of a caring nation
in India enabled by the ideals of living. And this ideal is not the aretypal
nation, whi for him developed in the modern West, striving more towards
empire than for internal peace and cohesion. Tagore was ever apprehensive
of the threat of a similar militancy and exclusivism developing around the
national movement in India. He argued in The Cult of Charkha in 1925 that
individual ethics were indistinguishable from the ethics of the citizen, and
therefore amoral nationalism was a travesty and a mistake, and that the true
goal of nationalism was cooperation with the world.
As is livelihood for the individual, so is politics for a particular people, a field for the exercise of
their business instincts of patriotism. All this time, just as business has implied antagonism, so has
politics been concerned with the self-interest of a pugnacious nationalism. e forging of arms
 and of false documents has been its main activity. e burden of competitive armaments has been
increasing apace, with no end to it in sight, no peace for the world in prospect. When it becomes
clear to man that in the cooperation of nations lies the true interest of ea, − for man is
established in mutuality – then only can politics become a field of endeavour. en will the same
means whi the individual recognizes as moral and therefore true, be also be recognized as su
by nations. ey will know that eating, robbery and the exclusive pursuit of self-
aggrandizement are as harmful for the purposes of this world as they are deemed to be for those
of the next. It may be that the League of Nations will prove to be the first step in the process of
this realization.45

General critical opinion has agreed with the positing of Tagore in

opposition to the majority and nationalistic view inhabiting the freedom
movement. And it is completely valid to recognise that Tagore in his critique
of nationalism was concerned more with the excessive auvinism of
national movements than with the cooperative potential of nationalism.
Nepal Majumdar, a veteran Tagore solar, has perceived the presidential
address of C. R. Das at the Gaya session of the Congress in 1922, as also at
one remove directed at Tagore’s arguments against nationalism. But even
su an instance might also and appropriately include the possibility that the
definition of nationalism as outlined by Das is actually very close to the
position of Gandhi and Tagore, especially since Tagore did not fully disagree
with the cruciality of the idea of nationalism − whatever be its demerits − in
the corporate life of nations. For purposes of further detail, the position of C.
R. Das in his Gaya address approximates more closely to that of Gandhi. Das
described the nationalism of the Indian movement in contradistinction to
the nationalistic ideas prevalent in Europe. Nationalism was the natural
expression of a nation’s identity and spirit, and it existed not in opposition
to that of other nations but as a step towards the larger unity of the world.
e nationalism of Europe was a perversion of the nationalistic values, and
it reflected itself primarily in commercial and imperialistic struggle between
the major powers of the West. ‘I desire to emphasise that there is no hostility
between the ideal of nationality and that of world peace. Nationalism is the
process through whi alone will world peace come. A full and unfeered
growth of nationalism is necessary for world peace just as a full and
unfeered growth of individuals is necessary for nationality. It is the
conception of aggressive nationality in Europe that stands in the way of
world peace; but once this truth is grasped that it is not possible for a nation
to inflict a loss on another nation without at the same time inflicting a loss
on itself, the problem of Humanity is solved.’46
Gandhi’s references to the ‘nation’ appear quite early in his writings. In
the Hind Swaraj (1909), Gandhi’s interlocutor offers the argument that it
was the English, with their contributions su as the railways, who have
created a spirit of nationalism in a disparate country like India. Gandhi’s
response argues against both the Western aretypes of modernity and
nationalism. He not only refuses to concede that modern tenology
represents progress and unifies countries into nations but also rejects the
customary Western notions of homogeneity of race and culture as the basic
principle of nationalism. Gandhi posits unambiguously the idea that it was a
composite identity of its people that represented the ideal and ultimately the
resilience of the nation. Along the path of his argument, he also dismisses
another aretypical notion regarding nationalism that historical and
permanent enemies and allies were an essential political and psyological
reality for the nation. Gandhi states that it was an English propaganda that
India had never been a nation, and he invokes a distinctly non-Western idea
of nationalism in presenting cultural symbols and not the European concept
of cultural nationalism as a constitutive element of the nation. ‘I do not wish
to suggest that because we were one nation we had no differences, but it is
submied that our leading men travelled throughout India either on foot or
in bullo carts. ey learned one another’s languages, and there was no
aloofness between them.’47 He mentioned the erished pilgrimage centres,
su as Rameshwaram, Puri and Hardwar, as evidence of the early national
imagination of the Indian thinkers who founded these centres not so mu
as merely religious locations, as statedly for them, worship could be
performed within the consciousness of the devoted. ‘But they saw that India
was one undivided land so made by nature. ey, therefore, argued that it
must be one nation. Arguing thus, they established holy places in various
parts of India, and fired the people with an idea of nationality unknown in
other parts of the world. Any two Indians are one as no two Englishmen are.
Only you and I and others who consider ourselves civilized and superior
persons imagine that we are many nations.’48 e ‘reader’ in the dialogue
raises, considering originally modern Western notions of monoromic
nationalism, the rather obvious question of the historical and cultural
differences of the Hindus and the Muslims as an insurmountable obstacle for
India’s nation state: ‘We thus meet with differences at every step. How can
India become one nation?’49 Gandhi offers a concise exposition of inclusive
nationalism that is also of striking contemporary relevance:
India cannot cease to be one nation because people belonging to different religions live in it. e
introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation, they merge in it. A country is
one nation only when su a condition obtains in it. e country must have a faculty for
assimilation. India has ever been su a country. In reality, there are as many religions as there are
individuals, but those who are conscious of the spirit of nationality do not interfere with one
another’s religion. If they do, they are not fit to be considered a nation. If the Hindus believe that
India should be peopled only by Hindus, they are living in dreamland. e Hindus, the
Mahomedans, the Parsees and the Christians who have made India their country are fellow
country-men, and they will have to live in unity if only for their own interest. In no part of the
world are one nationality and one religion synonymous terms: nor has it ever been so in India.50

Allied to the issue of minority identity in nation states was the vexingly
recurrent emphasis, in the majority opinion, on the allegedly natural
relationship prevailing between minority institutions and communalism.
One of the founders of the Hindu Mahasabha, B. S. Moonje, wrote to Gandhi
opposing the campaign to raise funds for Jamia Millia Islamia in the
memory of Hakim Ajmal Khan, since Moonje felt that it was one of su
sectarian institutions that had been ‘emphasizing and exaggerating sectarian
separateness, culminating eventually in su deplorable Hindu-Muslim
tension’. He suggested that there be instead a fund for a common memorial
dedicated to ‘our revered and beloved late Hakim ji’ and Swamiji
(Shraddhanand). Gandhi, while agreeing to Moonje’s general concern, asked,
‘Can we enforce it only among Musalmans, or can we begin the reform with
them? Have we not got in the country innumerable purely Hindu
institutions … even a sectional institution may be called national if the
outlook is national and is in reality utilized for national advancement.’51 On
numerous occasions, as in this observation, in 1924, on C. F. Andrews’s
positive comment on nationalism, Gandhi stated clearly his opposition to
aggressive nationalism: ‘Violent nationalism, otherwise known as
imperialism, is the curse. Non-violent nationalism is a necessary condition
of corporate or civilized life.’52 Similarly, Gandhi wrote to an American
correspondent in 1935 that ‘Love has no boundary. My nationalism includes
the love of all the nations of the earth irrespective of creed.’53 Notably,
Gandhi extended the possibility of a non-aggrandising, non-expansionist
nation with regard to other countries as well, irrespective of even the
colonising governments that headed some of these countries. His statement
towards the end of the Hind Swaraj is especially significant: ‘You English,
who have come to India are not good specimens of the English nation, nor
can we, almost half-Anglicised Indians, be considered good specimens of the
real Indian nation. If the English nation were to know all you have done, it
would oppose many of your actions.’54 During the Congress boyco of the
visit of Prince of Wales, Gandhi refuted any suggestion that the boyco
could be translated as an insult to the people of England. He asked
rhetorically whether the viceroy by this allegation implied that the British
government in India could possibly be identified with the general British
public: ‘Does he wish India to infer that the British administrators here
represent the British people and that the agitation directed against their
methods is an agitation against the British people?’55 Gandhi further
declared that the Indian movement for self-rule could not be construed as
xenophobic, also aempting to define thereby the essential code and
resilience of nationalism conceived and practised on an ethical plane.56 is
conveyed a spirit whi was not anti-thetical to that of Tagore who had,
subsequent to his earlier stated opposition to the idea of the nation,
nonetheless explained during his lecture on nationalism that ‘Ea nation
must be conscious of its mission, and we in India must realise that we cut a
poor figure when we try to be political, simply because we have not yet
been finally able to accomplish what was set before us by our providence.’57
e nation that Tagore is severely critical of is the colonising English nation.
His comments on nationalism in India reflect more upon its impracticability
– given the obnoxious caste system whi occluded a common birthright
and intermarriage and race amalgamation – than on its absolute
undesirability in principle.58 His statement that nationalism ‘is the particular
thing whi for years has been at the boom of India’s troubles’ was
unmistakably a recoil from the recent emulation of the spirit of European
auvinism by Indians, rather than from the feeling of Indianness.
India has never had a real sense of nationalism. Even though from ildhood I had been taught
that idolatry of the nation is almost beer than reverence for God and humanity, I believe I have
outgrown that teaing, and it is my conviction that my countrymen will truly gain their India by
fighting against the education whi teaes them that a country is greater than the ideals of
humanity.59

Einstein, like Steiner, a Jew and categorised as a trenant critic of

nationalism, once famously calling it the ‘measles of mankind’, nevertheless
believed that ‘It is not enough for us to play a part as individuals in the
cultural development of the human race, we must also tale tasks whi
only nations as a whole can perform. Only so can the Jews regain social
health.’60 He despised national frontiers and armies, not national existence,
the ‘life of peaceful nations’ was ‘civilised and just’.61 Palestine, thus, was
‘not primarily a place of refuge for the Jews of Eastern Europe but the
embodiment of the reawakening corporate spirit of the whole Jewish
nation’.62 Einstein wished that the state of Israel should aspire to embody
three traditional ideals of Jewry: ‘e pursuit of knowledge for its own sake,
an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal
independence.’63 Likewise, Tagore may have aspired, as Einstein did for
Israel, for creating India primarily as a social and spiritual centre, but
nonetheless the centre did not negate the nation that was India. Gandhi and
Tagore were both nationalists in this sense of the term, although their
different understanding of the constituents of the nation – culture, language,
history, idea of nationhood, memory, non-violence – led them to
occasionally take stances that appeared to strike at the roots of the
conventional notion of nation. For instance, in theories of nationalism,
nationalistic consciousness is generally stapled with memories of racial
injustice. It is rightly mentionable that colonised nations sought to preserve
the scars of tortures perpetrated by the colonisers, in the collective psye of
the nation, as spurs to sentiments of resistance/nationalism. It is well known
that Tagore had renounced his knighthood in protest against the massacre at
Jallianwala Bagh. He, however, opposed the erection of a memorial for the
victims, in a message sent to the first memorial meeting presided over by M.
A. Jinnah on 13 April 1920. e message was read out by C. F. Andrews. is
extract is relevant:
Let those who try to burden the minds of the future with stones, carrying the bla memory of
wrongs and their anger, but let us bequeath to the generations to come memorials of that only
whi we can revere — let us be grateful to our fore-fathers, who have le us the image of our
Buddha, who conquered self, preaed forgiveness, and spread his love far and wide in time and
space.64

Nationalism, violence and the state

e tragic massacre at Jallianwala Bagh constitutes the single-most brutal of
su acts of repression that were executed by the British government during
the national movement in India. It was followed by a reign of terror in
Punjab. e historical reconstruction of the terrible incident, including the
political dimensions, and the philosophical connotations that emerge from
the process, all offer very significant pointers to a discussion of the
responsibilities of nationalism. e outrageousness of the government action
and the tragedy of Jallianwala Bagh generated intense political activity in
the country and led to some irrevocable anges in the aitude regarding
the general direction of the national movement. e response of Tagore to
the massacre at Amritsar and the repression in all of Punjab has become
memorialised, as being reflectional of his moral courage and of a kind of
timeless statement of national self-respect, in contemporary discourse in
Indian history. It is particularly significant in any analysis of Tagore’s
relationship with mainstream nationalism. According to Harish Trivedi,
‘Tagore’s response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre constitutes perhaps the
most decisive nationalist act of his whole life.’65 For most of his biographers,
it is seemingly evident that Tagore was considerably more forthright and
courageous than Gandhi by the issuing of a public statement and therewith
courting the danger of penal action provided in the Defence of India Act
during a time of unfeered state repression. As a prominent Tagore solar
has wrien, men in those times had been subjected to very harsh sentences
from the government for venturing to make far less blunt protest. Public
positions taken by the Congress leadership on the Punjab repression are
thought to be aracterised by a general timidity, and it is indubitably
implied as well that Gandhi can be unproblematically included in this
category of diffidence and timidity that was in display during this period.66
Biographers of Tagore have described his anguish at the silence of the
leaders as the horrific details of martial law began to gradually seep through
the censorship in Punjab. Travelling to Kolkata from Santiniketan, Tagore
tried to get the political leadership to organise a public meeting to express
formal protest against the persecution by the government in Punjab but
received at best a dispirited response. P. C. Mahalanobis, a prominent
intellectual, has alleged that he was told by Tagore that even C. R. Das was
hesitant to involve himself with an open protest against the government.67
Tagore wrote his famous leer to Viceroy Chelmsford, reportedly on the
night of 29 May 1919, sending it and releasing it to the press within a couple
of days. Prabhat Kumar Muhkopadhyaya mentions − somewhat contrary to
Mahalanobis’s claim of having been immediately privy to its contents – that
Tagore did not disclose it even to his son Rathindranath, and it was only
with C. F. Andrews that he ose to share the writing of his leer.68 Wrien
purportedly because of the listlessness of the political leadership, the leer
was however hailed publicly and discussed widely in the press. Ramendra
Sunder Trivedi, a respected solar and outspoken nationalist of Kolkata was
particularly moved on reading a Bangla version of the leer in the daily
Basumati. Trivedi who was then on his death bed, sent a message to his
elder friend Rabindranath that he wanted to pay his respects, in fact to do
obeisance to him as in his own words: ‘I want the dust of your [Tagore’s]
feet’ (my translation). Tagore visited Trivedi and read out to him the original
text at his bedside. Aer staying a while, Tagore le with Trivedi offering
him the traditional pranam. According to Mukhopadhyaya, Trivedi then
lapsed into drowsiness and shortly thereaer passed away in his sleep.69
Justifiably moving as these accounts are, it is disappointing that almost all of
them are aracterised by analytical neglect of the cargo of ideas that
Tagore’s leer carried along with its obviously symbolic value. In opting for
an individual protest, Tagore was foregrounding the principle of individual
responsibility, whi was also for Gandhi absolutely inalienable from the
concept of nationalism. However, in the absence of a contentual scrutiny, the
leer risks the danger of being ultimately highlighted on the grounds of
mere stylistic flourish and emotive value. ite naturally, Tagore was aware
of the perils of a merely eulogistic reception to his leer. Some years later, in
1925, he was to write in the Modern Review on the unabated discussion on
the relinquishment of his knighthood, underlining that it was prompted
solely by the atrocities in Punjab and that he intended not the slightest show
of discourtesy and conceit in the returning of an honour that had been
conferred on him for his literary aainments. He, perhaps, also cautioned
against the tendency to privilege form over content: ‘I greatly abhor to make
any public gesture whi may have the least suggestion of a theatrical
aracter. But in this particular case, I was driven to it when I hopelessly
failed to persuade our leaders to laun an adequate protest against what
was happening at that time in the Punjab.’70 Sadly, an uncomfortable
suggestion whi persistently emerges from the aitude of a prominent
section of Tagore solarship in this context is its regard simply for
establishing the moral superiority of Tagore’s response over that of Gandhi
concerning the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh.
Although the text of the leer is well known in its detail, a delineative
reference to its argument will be useful to the discussion. Marked by its tone
of courtesy, the statement deplores the repressive measures whi were
‘without parallel in the history of civilised governments, barring some
conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote’. But, rather than locating it only
on abstract principles of hurt and redressal, Tagore makes it almost into an
effective legal interrogation of the government on the basis of the principles
of the civil state, confronting therein the arguments that would be advanced
by the government regarding public lawlessness and its own obligation to
restore peace and justice. e draconic acts of a militarily dominant power
on a ‘disarmed’, disheartened and hapless population, whi it was
normatively enjoined to protect, could ‘claim no political expediency, far
less moral justification’. at the numerous insulting measures suffered by
citizens was rooted in a racist bias of the authorities was coupled with and
manifestly proven by the denial, through censorship, of the freedom of
expression whi could otherwise have provided a hope of justice, and the
simultaneous and disproportionate indulgence towards ‘most of the Anglo-
Indian papers, whi have in some cases gone to the brutal length of making
fun of our sufferings’, was another instance of depriving citizenry of their
right of equality before law. Blinded by the ‘passion of vengeance’, the
government was losing sight of its ‘nobler vision of statesmanship’ and
debasing its obligation to ‘magnanimity’ that was appropriate to its
‘physical strength and moral tradition’. As if puing the government to test
on its observance of the rule of indiscriminative procedure of law with
regard to all citizens, Tagore declared that he was perfectly prepared to
endure the consequences of his protest against the submission of an entire
people to silence and fear, and it was to open himself to su penalty by
discarding any special status that he was with regret returning a title whi
he had in the past felt honoured to receive.71
Gandhi’s response to the Punjab tragedy has so far been unfortunately
under analysed for its content of ethical positions. It should be underlined at
this point that almost not a single position, even though at times admiing
of ange and even then in very few instances, taken by Gandhi is ever
improvisational. Also, as he was the major aritect of the nationalist
movement, his view of any political eventuality comprises more than one
dimension and its evaluation naturally requires a wider scrutiny of the
aggregate as well as contiguity of his views. A study of his role in the
months leading to the Rowla agitation and in the subsequent Congress
inquiry into the Punjab atrocities provide an enlightening indication of his
assessment of the nature of protest and political liberty as well as that of the
vitality of Satyagraha in even the most inclement political climates. By
Mar 1919, Gandhi had been frankly puzzled as to the options of protest
available to the country if the government ignored the agitation against the
Rowla Bill and enacted it into law. He was in Madras on the invitation
prominently of Kasturi Ranga Iyengar, and in what was his very initial
series of meetings with Rajagopalaari at Iyengar’s residence he discussed
extensively with him the ethos and the ramifications of non-observance of
laws promulgated by the state. ‘I felt myself at a loss to discover how to offer
civil disobedience against the Rowla Bill if it was finally passed into law.
One could disobey it only if the Government gave one the opportunity for it.
Failing that, could we civilly disobey other laws? And if so, where was the
line to be drawn? ese and a host of similar questions formed the theme of
these discussions of ours.’72 e idea of the hartal (general strike) whi
commenced the Rowla Satyagraha was to come to Gandhi in a dream, and
he regarded the hartal as an act of self-purification wholly appropriate to a
sacred fight. He later stated that he was unsure of the whole country and
would have been reasonably satisfied if it had been correctly observed in the
provinces of Bombay, Madras, Bihar and Sind. As it so happened, the hartal
came to be a success in almost the whole of India. Gandhi was on a tour of
northern and western India during the first week of April, by whi time
with the Satyagraha gripping the imagination of the country the
government was already beginning to use force against civil resistance. e
restive and then afing gatherings began to turn violent, notably in Delhi,
and Gandhi’s presence was being sought in different parts of the country to
variously enthuse − as by Dr Satyapal regarding Amritsar or to pacify the
people − as by Swami Shraddhanand in Delhi. Gandhi planned a strictly
private visit to Delhi on 9 April and invited Satyapal to come to Delhi for a
meeting. Gandhi was immediately turned into a restrictee by the
government, with a series of orders the issuance of whi prohibited him
from entering Delhi and Punjab, and confined him to Bombay. On non-
compliance, he was arrested en route to Delhi and transported to Bombay.
Gandhi had throughout stressed upon the leaders to take special care to
prevent rowdyism and violence in public processions and meetings, but
nevertheless violence erupted in Delhi and Ahmedabad with the news of his
arrest. During 10–11 April in Ahmedabad, some Europeans were beaten up
by mobs, whi then began to destroy government property. More than fiy
government buildings were burnt and a European army officer was killed.
Viramgam and Nadiad were similarly wraed by violence and instances of
looting of government property. ese occurrences were, however, milder
than the public violence followed by government repression whi engulfed
Amritsar beginning 10 April 1919.73 Released in Bombay and horrified at the
incidents of violence in Gujarat, Gandhi was severely critical of crowd
behaviour and violence in his spee of 11 April at a mass meeting on the
Chowpati bea. He pointedly praised the courtesy accorded to him during
his detention and was unable to understand the mass resentment against it,
terming the form of protest as ‘worse than duragraha’ (opposite of
Satyagraha). Invoking the metaphor of dharma, he declared that he was
opposed to any effort to obtain the release of persons connected with violent
activity, as Satyagraha required deference to penal provisions consequent to
the violation of law: ‘It is breach of religion and duty to endeavour to secure
the release of those who have committed deeds of violence’ (emphasis as in

the original).74 Almost prophetically, even as violence during mass protest

started inflicting a kind of collateral damage, he outlined the duties of a
satyagrahi and unequivocally declared that he would not hesitate to modify,
oppose and ultimately stop any of his own political campaigns in the event
of a single casualty involving any individual other than a civil resister − ‘The
time may come for me to offer satyagraha against ourselves’ (emphasis as in

the original).75 He had heard that Englishmen had been injured by mobs and
apprehended and that some of them might have succumbed to their injuries.
He clarified that although sorrowed at the death of a satyagrahi, he would at
the same time regard it as a sacrifice in the struggle. But not one satyagrahi
could be absolved from the responsibility of any injury done to a non-
participant, even an opponent of the movement. He considered his own
responsibility to be a ‘million times heavier’ in su an event and declared
that he had commenced on his political journey with full awareness of ‘su
responsibility’. He was categorical that he would treat these incidents as sins
that were ‘simply unbearable’. And then Gandhi followed with a statement
that needs detailed reference since it frames his position during crucial
public moments throughout his life, evidenced as in the immediately
subsequent events, and as equally through instances like Chauri Chaura to
his martyrdom in 1948.
But I know how to offer satyagraha against ourselves as against our rulers. What kind of
satygraha can I offer against ourselves on such occasions? What penance can I do for such sins?
The satyagraha and the penance I can conceive can only be one and that is for me to fast and if
need be by so doing to give up this body and thus to prove the truth of satyagraha (emphasis as in
76
the original).

He declined to comment on the behaviour of the police as being irrelevant

to the occasion, other than to laud them for withholding firing on the
protestors so far. It is noteworthy that Gandhi applied a very significant
phrase regarding the practise of non-violent resistance when he emphasised
on the essentiality of the satyagrahi’s learning the way to ‘undergo
intelligent suffering’ (emphasis as in the original). e next day, he released
instructions including the ‘inviolable principles’ concerning Satyagraha that
were expected to be ‘strictly obeyed’. Civil resistors were injuncted against
processions, demonstrations, hartals and violence of any kind, as well as
instructed to observe ‘perfect stillness’ at public meetings and not to clap
hands or to shout slogans of any kind.77
Returning to Ahmedabad on 13 April, Gandhi issued a message to the
citizens appealing for the resuming of their normal routine of work and for
immediate suspension of all protest activity in order to facilitate the
restoration of normalcy and to effectuate the redundancy of martial law in
the city. e following day, he wrote to J. L. Maffey (private secretary to the
viceroy) that he felt the ‘deepest humiliation and regret’ for the sheer
lawlessness of the situation in whi Englishmen and women in Ahmedabad
had been compelled to abandon their homes for more secure dwellings. He
conceded that he had erred in appraising the present rea of the ideals of
Satyagraha on the public mind and that he had mistaken the ‘power of
hatred and ill will’. Although his personal faith in Satyagraha was entirely
unaffected, he was temporarily retracing his steps on the offering of
Satyagraha against the Rowla Act. He stated that he would not aempt to
travel to Delhi and Punjab until he felt reassured in the capability of his
colleagues in the movement to restrain and pacify the crowds of followers,
and that his Satyagraha would at this juncture be ‘directed against my own
countrymen’. He was, however, convinced that his restraining order had
been ill advised and had possibly contributed to the unrest, even though
Amritsar might well have been an exception insofar as the incidents there
were unconnected with Satyagraha. It must be mentioned here that Gandhi
would be referring to incidents prior to the firing at Jallianwala Bagh.
Gandhi expressed the hope that the withdrawal of the Rowla Act would
indicate the goodwill of the government and would assist in the restoration
of peace and order. It is not without meaning that at a time of racial
antagonism, Gandhi felt it suitable to express his confidence in the
continuance of his erished friendship with Maffey and of the necessity of
passing his thoughts to him, as well as expecting Maffey to ‘do what you
[Maffey] like with them’.78 ereaer, Gandhi addressed a mass meeting at
Sabarmati Ashram announcing therein his decision to atone for the loss of
life and property of Englishmen and women. Notwithstanding his
continuously repeated assertions that violence and Satyagraha were
fundamentally discordant, he said scathingly that the residents of the city
had indulged in extortion, pillage, incendiarism and killing. ‘If deeds su as
these could save me from the prison-house or the scaffold, I should not like
to be so saved.’79 Gandhi announced, as atonement, a collection for the
families of those Englishmen who had been killed by the acts of Indians, and
‘ea of us’ was asked to contribute a minimum of eight annas to the fund.
He hoped that none would evade contributing to the fund on the grounds
that he was not one of the perpetrators, as non-resistance to wrongful action
amounted to participation. e determining of responsibility of violence in
Ahmedabad on to Indian protesters, it is needless to say, was an act of rare
courage in the face of the most despicable massacre known to English India,
and accounts of the incident of the previous day were already fast
circulating in spite of censorship. Gandhi anowledged that his own
responsibility was a ‘million times greater’. He anowledged what was to
him the rather limited validity of the allegation that he had hastily
motivated huge numbers of people for Satyagraha and that this was largely
responsible for the descent to mass violence. He had in response to this
perception already performed penance by postponing his visit to Delhi for
offering himself for arrest, and also by partially retracting Satyagraha.
Although these two steps were ‘more painful to [him] than a wound’, he
had in addition decided to fast for seventy-two hours. Any public empathy
with his suffering, thereupon, would best be translated into complete
abstinence from violence in the future. e country ought to take his word
that it could not win freedom or serve itself through ‘violence and
terrorism’. ‘I am of opinion that if we have to wade through violence to
obtain swarajya and if a redress of grievances were to be only possible by
means of ill will for and slaughter of Englishmen, I, for one, would do
without that swarajya and without a redress of those grievances. For me life
would not be worth living if Ahmedabad continues to countenance violence
in the name of truth.’80
On 18 April, Gandhi announced through a leer to secretaries of the
Satyagraha Sabha, whi was released to the press that he was being
compelled to temporarily suspend civil disobedience, not due to any of loss
of faith on his part but following his undiluted faith and his understanding
of the laws of Satyagraha. He believed that it was the pervasiveness of
Satyagraha that had, if in very small measure, exercised restraint upon the

aggressivity of the mob.81 Tagore hailed Gandhi’s position in a leer wrien

to Andrews on 26 April from Santiniketan. Deploring the needless
vehemence of the protest against government repression, Tagore reflected on
the teaing of Gandhi regarding the transcendence of victimisation through
a fearless endurance. Tagore felt that now − when Gandhi was being
disowned equally by those who desired rapid success without being inclined
to meet the value required in the adherence of ideals, and by those who
were because of their timidity propendent towards sycophancy and endless
supplication, ‘Gandhi’s personality shines before us with greater glory than
when his light was blurred by the dust storm of popularity’.82
Amidst public addresses and a series of leaflets issued by Gandhi
regarding the atonement for violence and the ethos of Satyagraha, the
political community naturally became preoccupied with the details of the
Amritsar tragedy and the subsequent public torture through martial law in
Punjab. e accounts were initially indistinct and deficient due to censorship
in the province, and it was only by early June that the full picture of the
tragedy conveyed itself to Gandhi. Incredulous at first of the magnitude of
the killing, he was incensed particularly over the enforcement of the
crawling order in Amritsar: ‘Before this outrage the Jallianwala Bagh
tragedy pales into insignificance in my eyes, though it was this massacre
principally that aracted the aention of the people of India and of the
world.’83 It is said that every year thereaer he fasted for twenty-four hours
on the anniversary of the massacre.84 Concerned by mid-May over the
denial of the freedom in Punjab and at the punitive actions against eminent
journalists B. G. Horniman and Kalinath Roy, Gandhi conveyed on 16 May
his disquiet to Maffey, observing notedly that he had refrained from uering
a single word on the recent incidents in Punjab ‘not because I have not
thought or felt over them’, but because in the absence of authentic
information he had ‘not known what to believe and what not to believe’. He
said that he had been expecting an early and ‘fullest investigation made as
to the causes of disturbances and the measures adopted to quell them’.85 As
he was being both advised for and dissuaded from immediately travelling to
Punjab, he called a discrete meeting − the related circular whi was issued
to select individuals on 21 May was not meant for publication in the press −
of some prominent satyagrahis in Bombay on 28 May to consider the
extension of Rowla Satyagraha to repression in Punjab.86 e truncated
meeting (not all invitees aended) found itself largely unable to agree, on
the planes of tenicality and practicality, with Gandhi’s view of the
appropriateness and feasibility of Satyagraha in the current situation.
Gandhi himself was of the view that every individual satyagrahi needed to
consider the extendability to Punjab of the Satyagraha Pledge regarding the
Rowla Act. However, he was himself without doubt as to the practicability
of Satyagraha in the present situation and had no apprehension of an
inevitable accompaniment of violence with civil disobedience. He did not
favour any kind of demonstration or strike as part of the civil disobedience,
not even upon the arrest of a prominent leader during the movement. Very
significantly, he sought the opinion of the commiee on his proposal for him
to approa the viceroy for seing an impartial commiee of inquiry into
the circumstances of the Punjab disturbances and martial law and for the
revision of sentences from the Martial Law Tribunal. In the event of su
demands remaining unaieved even aer public agitation and
representation to the secretary of state for India, Gandhi recommended the
practise of Satyagraha. is idea was approved. e note on this meeting,
dated 30 May and signed by Gandhi, was once again marked not for
publication in the press.87
Accordingly, on 30 May, coinciding with the date of Tagore’s leer to
Chelmsford, Gandhi wrote to S. R. Hignell, the private secretary to the
viceroy. He addressed his appeal to the viceroy, already made as he said in
the press, for instituting an independent commiee of inquiry regarding
Punjab and whi would also review the sentences passed on the alleged
perpetrators of violence. e public mind, as his own, was disturbed at the
unduly heavy sentences passed by the Martial Law Tribunal, the official
response on public floggings and the numerous restrictions enforced on
civilian activity. Censorship of the press had only contributed to the public
anxiety about the reality of the situation. He reiterated that in the absence of
‘reliable data’ he had abstained from publicly speaking on the Punjab
disturbances even ‘at the risk of being misunderstood by my countrymen’.
Importantly, he stated that he ‘was not prepared to condemn martial law as
su’ and neither was he inclined to deduce that ‘martial law measures
would be unduly hard’ from Miael O’Dwyer’s record of severity of
governance in Punjab. ‘No one can dispute the right of the State to declare
martial law under certain circumstances, but it will be conceded on behalf of
the State that it should justify to the public the measures adopted under it,
specially under circumstances described above.’88
Reading the official aitude as unanged, Gandhi suggested to the
Satyagraha Sabha within the fortnight that it consider his proposal to renew
civil disobedience by July 1919. In his opinion, the earlier arguments
advanced by members against its resumption were no longer operative,
given the improvement in public awareness as to its norms and the
preparedness of the government to control any violence that should as
remote possibility occur during the same. He recommended a movement
completely under his personal guidance, both regarding its area and scope
and its participants. One argument that he offered in favour of its
resumption can also be understood as a response to the apprehension that
was to be repeatedly expressed by Tagore, beginning April 1919, of civil
disobedience disintegrating into public violence. However, it should be
mentioned that su assurance was invariably joined with his faith in
Gandhi’s moral power and his capacity to stand against public degeneration.
Gandhi declined to be perpetually constrained by the ever present risk of a
sabotage of a non-violent movement by provocateurs: ‘A movement like
Satyagraha, designed as it is to work a moral revolution in society so far as
the method of aaining reforms are concerned, cannot be stopped for the
vague fear of unscrupulous or ignorant persons misusing it. At the same
time, every possible precaution must be taken by us against any su
misuse.’89 Gandhi was to reiterate his position on both issues – that mass
reaction was, however difficult, avoidable in early April in Amritsar and
that civil disobedience was unendingly contingent on the risk of fringe
violence – in his leer of 8 August 1919 to Abdul Aziz. But he admied that
it would be mere calculus to apportion blame for Punjab violence without a
full and proper inquiry of the circumstances around the incidents.90 Gandhi,
meanwhile, had taken over the editorship of two journals, Navajivan and
Young India, and he focussed them on crucial contemporary concerns. He
had been tirelessly petitioning for justice to Kalinath Roy along with the
withdrawal of the Rowla Act, and on 18 June communicated to the viceroy
through a leer to Hignell that he planned to resume Satyagraha in July
unless these concerns were adequately addressed by the government. He
was confident that Satyagraha did not have any destructive value, and far
from vitiating Indian society with racial hatred for the English, it was
actually ‘designed to remove acerbity between two members of the Empire’.
In the event of a renewal of civil disobedience, Gandhi assured the
government that its practise would be limited to his own individual self.91
is was followed by a telegraphed representation to the same effect to
Secretary of State Edwin Montagu on 24 June. While Gandhi was engaged in
preparing for civil disobedience involving circulars to potential civil
resistors, the government communicated to him its intention to meet with a
heavy hand any aempt at resuming civil disobedience, mentioning the
moral responsibility that must lie with the leaders for the serious
consequences that would inevitably accrue with the movement. However, it
simultaneously conveyed that it would be seing up a commiee of inquiry
on Punjab and that the viceroy had commuted the two-year prison term of
Kalinath Roy to three months. Gandhi must, of course, have deferred his
decision on civil disobedience not at the threat of punitive action but at the
meeting of two of his most important demands from the government. Aer
the viceroy’s announcement in the Legislative Council on 3 September, the
commiee was constituted under Lord Hunter on 24 October. e
introduction in September of the Indemnity Bill effectively providing
immunity to officials from penalty for their role in public repression had
resulted in a heated debate and opposition in the Council. Gandhi was, on
the other hand, as ever realistic in his expectations from government per se
and not overly enthusiastic about demanding systemic anges within the
procedure of the system itself. His evaluation of the idea of state was
singularly unromantic, and he was with foresight recognising the juridical
norms of the independent Indian state. With aracteristic honesty, he
refused to expect su provisions − even from a government that he opposed
– as he was sure a future Indian government as well would find itself unable
to extend towards citizenry. Gandhi was clear that officials could not be
immunised from departmental action, including dismissal from service for
incompetence or misconduct. But for him, it was inadvisable to expect
officials to be made liable to criminal arges, su as that of murder, for
having disarged functions in a purely administrative capacity. It should in
parenthesis be mentioned in this connection that an official acquiescingly
assisting in pogroms or ethnic cleansing would automatically be excluded
from this category as any deliberate action conceived against norms of
humanity by itself contravenes, according to the general philosophy of
government, the definition of constitutional obligation or administrative
duty. Gandhi was pointing out that, as things stood in the present, even if
su demands were to be made with force and conviction, there was no
ance of their being met. In this, he was interrogating the concept of the
modern state, and inviting serious introspection as to the enormity of the
anges that would be necessary and the path that would have to be
travelled for instituting alternative protocols of government and state, if the
Indian political community was really sincere in aspiring for a reasonably
equitable and representative political apparatus in the future Indian nation.
Every state needs su protection. Even when we come to enjoy swaraj, the state will retain this
power. e officers will then too commit grave mistakes and the public will get excited; even
under swaraj the people will resort to violence; if the spirit of pure satyagraha has not come to
prevail in India by then, there will be Martial Law and firing, followed by appointment of
Commissions. Even under swaraj Indemnity acts will be passed to protect the authority of the
state. But then, as now, the actual provisions will need to be looked into.92

e Punjab Sub-Commiee nominated by the Congress in June 1919 was

already in Punjab assembling evidence related to atrocities during martial
law, and aer deciding by November that it would not associate itself with
the Hunter Commission, it formed further a group of commissioners,
including Gandhi, to collect evidence for a report by Congress on Punjab.
Gandhi had wrien to Hignell on 30 September for rescission of restriction
on his entry into Punjab and the orders were withdrawn on 15 October.93
Gandhi reaed Punjab by the end of October and remained in the province
with the Sub-Commiee for the next three months, touring affected areas,
including remote villages, conducting hearings and preparing the Congress
report. A series of Punjab leers wrien by him during this period
constitute a valuable record, whi in those days informed public opinion,
and in the present serve to illustrate the principle of the extension through
the openness of a leadership of the representative aracter of proceedings
of su commiees. Although compiled and signed jointly by Gandhi, C. R.
Das, Abbas S. Tayabji and M. R. Jayakar, we have it on Jayakar’s authority
that the Congress report, entitled Report of the Commissioners appointed by
the Punjab Sub-Committee of the Indian National Congress, in its conception

and draing reflects primarily the personal agency of Gandhi.94 e report

indicted the government for its violation of the basic principles of law,
justice, governance and public morality. It censured O’Dwyer and a host of
officials and suggested their dismissal from their position in the government
and recommended the recall of Viceroy Chelmsford. Remarkably for an anti-
colonial investigation into colonial excess, the report absolved, on the
grounds of inexperience and their less brutal conduct, two junior officers
from public action whom it otherwise found guilty of gross dereliction of
their duty. As a document of record, it was appreciated for its probity, clarity
and brevity in the legal community.95
e fact-finding tour of Punjab translates the nationalist response, craed
mainly by Gandhi, to an administrative calamity, from the petitionary to the
juridical. is is distinctive of an alternative or shadow government and
thus equates a public movement with the methodology of a state effectively
establishing parity in maers of policy and structure. In this respect,
Gandhi’s utmost concern with fairness and restraint linked with his
complete distrust of hyperbole and exaggeratory propaganda, and the
permanent inhabitancy of this value in nationalist leadership during
Gandhi’s lifetime, becomes illustrative of the larger cosmopolitan concerns
of Indian nationalism. Equally important, the raising by Gandhi of a fund
for English victims of nationalist violence and his fasting for seventy-two
hours as atonement strengthened the ethical presence in the public domain
at a critical juncture of nationalist politics in India. is was in stark
contrast to the frenzy among a section of English society and the Indian
press for subscribing to the Morning Post fund for General Dyer, even aer
he had been subjected to disciplinary action by the government. As almost
always in history, the general reaction on both the sides was not, however,
entirely without nuance. In 1920, writing in the aermath of the agitation,
Gandhi warned the Indian public that the tendency to raise impulsive
demands and use discourteous language in relation to individuals and offices
even during inflamed situations would degrade public concerns and ill serve
the national cause. In England, the debate on Dyer’s conduct, and the
criticism of the raising of the Morning Post fund, evidenced the democratic
concerns and complexity of English politics.96 e agitation against the
Punjab repression culminated into Gandhi’s ‘real entrance into Congress
politics’, and he was frequently invited to informal meetings to envisage and
dra crucial resolutions for the Subjects Commiee. He was finally
entrusted with draing a constitution for the party. He also involved himself
actively with the building of the Jallianwala Bagh memorial.97
It proceeds, perhaps inescapably, from the discussion that it is futile to try
to establish any moral hierary in the responses of Tagore and Gandhi. Any
su exercise will fail to avail of the opportunity to realise the essence of
their respective, and perhaps broadly similar, positions concerned with the
first principles of nationalism and freedom. We have earlier in the discussion
mentioned Tagore’s caution against memorialising hatred in the nationalist
discourse. His refusal flowed also from his anguish that the Punjab tragedy
did not embody courage on the part of the victims, and that neither the
oppressors nor the oppressed reflected any trace of heroism in their
conduct.98 Gandhi, while taking a leading role in the construction of the
memorial, as with him in all maers, meditated on the appropriate plane of
memorialisation. He considered it as a potential site of nationalist secular
pilgrimage drawing Indians of all faiths and denominations, as compared to
religious sites whi appealed only to a particular community. Writing in
the Navajivan in April 1920, he opined that the contributors to the fund for
the memorial wished only to honour the innocent dead and not to
perpetuate ill will. Many of them believed that the site would inspire
Hindu–Muslim unity. He, then, recalled the wisdom of Tagore’s counsel:
‘What Sir Rabindranath Tagore has said is perfectly true, that we shall
certainly not advance by keeping alive the memory of General Dyer’s
cruelty. To perpetuate the memory of truth, firmness, courage and
innocence, wherever these may be found – that is the people’s real duty and
in doing so lies the nation’s regeneration.’99Solars have traced Gandhi’s
almost absolute disillusionment with the democratic credentials of the
British government to its aitude to the series of events that constituted the
Punjab tragedy. Rabindranath also anged in course of time his early belief
in the British traditions of fairness and decency in politics. By August 1920,
in preparing the country for a sustained civil disobedience campaign,
Gandhi returned his Kaiser-i-Hind medal to the government and advised all
title holders to do likewise. In this, he perhaps pointedly evoked the phrase
whi Tagore had used in the same context, when he described government
titles as ‘badges of honour’. He might have been consciously suggesting the
emulation of the step taken by Tagore, and Gandhi referred to erstwhile
distinctions bestowed by the government as ‘badges of dishonour and
disgrace when we really believe that we cannot get justice from this
government’.100
Before concluding this discussion, we would like to draw aention to
another statement by Gandhi to hierarical oppression made during his
address to the Suppressed Classes Conference at Ahmedabad on the
anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh in 1921, whi for him was a day that was
‘hallowed by the memory of innocents’. Speaking to the gathering Gandhi,
however, invoked the act of massacre to point to its similarity to the terrible
cruelty of untouability that continued to be practised by Hindus over the
disprivileged classes, and thereby reaffirmed that not sanctimony but moral
responsibility represented the core value of nationalism. He prioritised for
the nationalist agenda the difficult question as to whether it should be a test
of the national conscience that the violation of its moral universe be found
invariably to generate a righteous anger on the part of the nation.
We are guilty of having suppressed our brethren; we make them crawl on their bellies; we have
made them rub their noses on the ground; with eyes red with rage, we push them out of railway
compartments − what more than this has British rule done? What arge that we bring against
Dyer and O’Dwyer may not others, and even our own people, lay at our door? We ought to purge
ourselves of this pollution. It is idle to talk of swaraj so long as we do not protect the weak and the
helpless, or so long as it is possible for a single swarajist to injure the feelings of any individual.101

Responsible nationalism
Khilnani has mentioned the ‘anti-statism’ ‘that had animated the thinking of
both Tagore and Gandhi’ and how the ‘state was a dispensable nuisance’ for
them.102 We have seen Gandhi’s realistic assessment of the nature of the
state. Tagore’s aitude to law, and thus presumably the state was complex.
His rejoinder in 1928, to a polemical claim regarding an academic institution
and involving issues of social ethics and law, might be illustrative of his
regard for the occasional necessity of arbitral law for preserving the social
fabric of the nation. It is also noteworthy that the said incident held very
disturbing connotations for the future Indian state. In early 1928, students
residing in the Ram Mohun Roy Hostel of the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj-
administered City College in Calcua suddenly became zealous for
performing the annual worship of the Goddess Saraswati inside the hostel
premises. e Brahmo-managed institution, fully consonant with its
established tenets of prayer and ritual, had no prior tradition of idol worship
in its premises and was naturally opposed to the inauguration of any
religious practice whi was in contravention of its essential standards of
religious ceremonies. It was reported that a rising but still junior political
personality in Calcua with grander ambitions was the soul of this
unprecedented project of the students. e situation was doubly awkward as
the hostel was named aer Ram Mohun Roy, who was known for his
lifelong opposition to idol worship. e authorities of the college aempted
to forcibly prevent the performance of Saraswati Puja in the hostel. Certain
politicians were industrious in creating a ri between the Hindu community
and the Brahmo Samaj and exploited the latent anti-Brahmo feeling in
orthodox Hindu circles. e already disputatious atmosphere was further
aggravated with the Brahmo Samaj invoking the rights of minorities in this
regard. Orthodox Hindu opinion began citing the Brahmo aitude in this
case as an evidence of its illiberality.
Tagore made a public intervention in the debate through a detailed essay
in May 1928. He described the claim of the students as reprehensible
according to the principles of religion, public morality, social ethics, legal
norms and on the encroament on religious freedom. e obstreperous
assertion by votaries to publicly worship their deity amidst an unwilling
milieu in reality signalled the votaries’ disregard for the deity. Tagore was
disturbed at the quietude of the political class before an obviously pernicious
sectarian mobilisation and stated that he would not avoid the risk of
confronting discourteous behaviour in the fulfilling of his public obligation
as a citizen. Transcending its own history of sectarian conflicts, modern
Europe had been able to aieve both ‘social order and political power’ by
successfully establishing protocols of diversity and unity. He defined swaraj
as being aracterised by individual and group self-restraint and in the
recognising of the limits of liberty. As he had similarly said elsewhere, he
cautioned that religious differences had historically been of a far serious
degree in India and that this was the gravest allenge to the union of the
country, and the cultivation of a maturity of view to preclude further
antagonisms of this nature was crucial to the creation of ‘national life’.
‘Where a multitude of men live in the same country, social adjustment and
freedom of self-determination become for them the greatest fulfilment. And
every great people strives with disciplined effort and sacrifice to aain this
fulfilment.’103 He reminded the readers of the tenets of Hindu worship,
whi prohibited the worship of a deity in any place whi was not
appropriate to the ceremony and whi might give annoyance to adherents
of a different form of the divine. e believing Hindu thus would commit a
grave transgression in doing otherwise, as was sought to be done by the
Hindu students in this case. Along with the religious injunctions, Tagore
focussed on the significance of the rules of social behaviour for internal
polity and upheld state intervention in disputes involving religious
sensibilities: ‘If a particular religious community has arge of a certain
college, then mere gentlemanliness dictates that the students of su a
college should not wound the religious beliefs of that community. And if
there be some amongst the former devoid of this quality, then it becomes a
case for the external social force called law. It is the fear of this law that
prevents any member of society from taking it on himself to forcibly discard
the rights and privileges of any other members.’104 Su demands were
tantamount to Hindu students aempting to ritually worship the icon of
Kali in the Aligarh College, whi would be in addition to a social
discourtesy an act ‘against the law’ whi ‘no civilised society’ could allow,
and along with suffering ‘inward shame’, the ‘culprit’ would ‘be liable to the
outward penalty prescribed by law’. And for deciding on questions of
legality of the demands of the students as raised by them in this instance,
reference must be made by the students in a ‘constitutional way’ to the
overaring institution as the university in su cases or to a court of law,
but ‘never to their own boisterous wilfulness’.105 Moreover, would Hindus be
willing to accept the sacrifice of a cow by Muslims as part of their ritual in
the City College? Obviously, the same arguments would be deployed by the
laer in support of su an act as had been deployed by the Hindus. He
compared the current Hindu orthodox intimidation of a marginal sect to the
traditional domineeringness of the bridegroom’s family over the bride’s
relatives in Indian society and drew aention to the danger of an identical
aitudinal permeation in religion, politics or ‘national work’: ‘Should it not
rather be a source of the gravest anxiety to the national Leaders?’106 It was a
bad augury that a thoughtless aempt was being made to overwhelm
through a ruus an institution that had so far been regarded for its
indiscriminative aitude towards students of all denominations. It was being
unfortunately obscured that the entire campaign would ultimately end in
the lasting embierment of a minority group of compatriots: ‘Would that be
a hopeful outlook for our thousand-times divided people? Would it amount
to a cultivation of the spirit of Swaraj whi is to give legitimate freedom of
self-expression to all natural differences in the communities that come under
it?’107
As it subsequently happened, the students were provoked by some
cliquish political leaders to piet, in the name of ‘satyagraha’, the house of
a wealthy Hindu lady to whom the college authorities had pledged the
building of the college against a loan from her to construct its present
premises. e lady was compelled to ask the college for immediate
repayment of the loan. e Visva-Bharati rescued the college from acute
financial distress by advancing as investment the fund of one lac rupees,
whi had been donated to the Visva-Bharati by the Nizam of Hyderabad
for pursuing Islamic Studies. Tagore wrote in a highly critical vein in a leer
in May 1929 of the unholy alliance of orthodoxy and ambition, whi had
launed the campaign against the city college:
ose who have accepted as the only aim of their efforts the national unification and liberty of
India, when even they are encouraging by their partisanship this religious conflict, when even
they are diffident of expressing even the slightest trace of opposition to the conduct of the students
 whi is against the tenets of one’s rule of one’s self, then I clearly see that the tenique of
realising the spirit of politics in our country, due to its own cowardice and weakness, is standing
on the road leading towards its own futility.108 (my translation)

A mining of the stratum of his conceptual and literary writings may reveal
that his ideas on the nation state are neither ahistorical, nor are they
reducible to crude and absolutist assumptions. He was opposed to the
modern commercial/capitalist/expansionist complex, whi had donned the
mantle of the nation, rather than the geographical/ethnic units whi
congeal together on the basis of shared aracteristics that to an extent
ensure the sustenance of a viable national entity. is conclusion seems
logical if we look at his constant references to a particular genius that
distinguishes every ethnic group in the world, and his sympathy for the
emancipative struggles of people across continents. He had a great
admiration for Asian nations like Japan and China, and he appealed to their
intellectual communities to nurture the spirit of reconciliation, whi could
be manifested in their governments’ general national and international
policies. Some critics, however, would be doubtless led to infer that Tagore
was generous in his criticism of Eurocentrism, but he refrained from a
similar critique of Indian history and tradition because of his own
orthodoxy and hegemonic inclinations. His pragmatism regarding the nation
state is evident in his position on national armies, as in one of his lectures
delivered in Japan: ‘I do not for a moment suggest that Japan should be
unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self-protection. But this should
never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of self-preservation.’109 However,
he went on to clarify that ‘e living man has his true protection in his
spiritual ideals whi have their vital connection with his life, and grow
with his growth’.110 We should mention that he might appear to be
somewhat in proximity to Immanuel Kant’s conceptual universe regarding
the community of nations. Kant can be said to, in some measure, combine
the idealistic and the pragmatic in his study of the possible norms of
fraternal association of states that would facilitate abiding peace in the
world. War, in the employing of human beings by the state to destroy
human life, entails the abrogation of the autonomy of the self as human
beings surrender to the state their inalienable right over their own person.
Inordinate accumulation of resources by a state was similarly considered
undesirable by Kant, since states regarded monetary power as the most
dependable weapon available to them, and therefore the financial resources
were objects of plunder and appropriation. Kant had suggested that the
practice of maintaining standing armies by states should be discontinued
with time. Standing armies heightened the belligerence of states and
provoked them into confrontation, and as this continuous process of
acquiring parity in military capability became progressively more
burdensome to the finances of the state, open war appeared preferable to
them rather than the interminable struggle for superiority. However, he
conceded that ‘the periodic and voluntary military exercises of citizens who
thereby secure themselves and their country against foreign aggression are
entirely different’.111
Defining the ultimate goals of his nationalistic movement for Swadeshi,
Gandhi was writing to a correspondent in January 1928 amid allegations in
India and abroad that his movement was exacerbating elements of
xenophobia within the country: ‘Swadeshi does not mean drowning oneself
in one’s own lile puddle but making it tributary to the ocean that is the
nation. And it can claim to contribute to the ocean only if it is and keeps
itself pure. It is therefore clear that only su local or provincial customs
should have a nation-wide vogue as are not impure or immoral. And when
once this truth is grasped, nationalism is transmuted into the enthusiasm of
humanity.’112
ere is an altruistic core to the nationalistic idea, insofar as it extends
beyond the strictly individual, towards identifying itself with a wider group
and occasionally, even frequently, it therefore involves some degree of
selflessness on the part of the nationalist. But it becomes self-centred when
rights for a group are demanded by individuals, primarily because of the
realisation that the benefits would thereof automatically flow to them in
their individual capacity. is constitutes auvinistic, amoral nationalism.
However, the kernel of altruism in the idea of nationalism retains its
significance even when it is precariously placed between the ‘two great
powerful and aractive fallacies’, as Isaiah Berlin called them, the
imperialistic preaing of internationalism to the powerless; on the other
hand, the compulsive desire of the weak to ‘declare themselves bankrupt,
and be stru off the roll, and lay down the burden of freedom and
responsibility’.113 In a climate of shallow internationalism paralleled with
militarism, Tagore appreciated the basic fact of internationalism, whi has
been highlighted in a different context by Berlin when he writes:
‘Internationalism is a noble ideal, but it can be aieved only when ea link
in the ain, that is, every nation, is strong enough to bear the required
tension.’114 In regarding the equation of the ideas of internationalism and
nationalism, as obtained in the views of the leadership of the Indian national
movement, it may be illustrative to refer to Gandhi’s argument whi he
offered to Tagore in the explaining of the premises of his concept of non-
cooperation. Gandhi argued that non-cooperation was on the part of Indians
a refusal of any servility to colonial definitions imposed on them and not the
rejection of cosmopolitan values. In fact, su servility as he refused to let be
continued any longer was inimical to the formation of a principled and
moral world order, where communities could only exist independently in
the relationship of roles and ideas and not, as devised to happen in a colonial
system, in a relationship of benefactor and beneficiary. ‘We must refuse to
be lied off our feet. A drowning man cannot save others. In order to be fit
to save others, we must try to save ourselves. Indian nationalism is not
exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. It is health giving, religious and
therefore humanitarian. India must learn to live before she can aspire to die
for humanity. e mice whi helplessly find themselves between the cat’s
teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.’115 Within a nation,
willed selflessness would ideally be the norm. In conceiving nationalism
occasionally in familial terminology, Gandhi was at once using a
reductionist turn to access the idea at more tangible levels of cognition and
also opening the accessible terminology of family to a wider meaning
involving mu larger allegiances. ‘Aer all, the truest test of nationalism
consists in a person thinking not only of half a dozen men of his own family
or of a hundred men of his own clan, but considering as his very own the
interest of that group whi he calls his nation.’116 Of course, Tagore swayed
neither towards sentimental traditionalism nor towards vague
cosmopolitanism. Berlin, for one, affirmed this in his lecture at the
centennial conference on Rabindranath Tagore in Delhi in 1961. But I am
equally interested in Berlin’s argument in the same city eleven years later, in
the inaugural Humayun Kabir Lecture in 1972 rather intriguingly entitled
Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism. Illustrating the many
connotations of the concept of nationalism, Berlin had argued that there
was, howsoever paradoxical, a connection and a ‘traceable line of influence’
between Kant’s ideas and the ‘rise of nationalism’. Kant’s expectable horror
at su a connexion, if he were by any ance to traverse ronology and
come to learn of su a linkage, did not rule out the fact that romantic
nationalism was but ‘two steps’ away from ‘Kant’s impeccably enlightened
rationalism’.117 It is noteworthy that Berlin had also argued that the
responsibility of the later extension of Kant’s ethical and political ideas
could not and should not be ascribed to Kant. ‘Ideas do at times, develop
lives and powers of their own and, like Frankenstein’s monster, act in ways
wholly unforeseen by their begeers, and, it may be, directed against their
will, and turn on them to destroy them. Men, least of all thinkers, cannot be
held responsible for the unintended and improbable consequences of their
ideas.’118
Berlin’s apology for Kant is similar to the presumption in Tagore’s case,
inasmu as general opinion agrees that Tagore’s relationship with the
Swadeshi movement was complicated and apparently vexed, given his early
support to the nationalist cause followed by his recoil at its developing an
overtly violent and a dangerously communalist aracter. One of the
prominent instances, recently advanced by critics in support of this theory
of vexedness, is the supposed criticism of Tagore by some of his
contemporaries – particularly in an essay wrien in 1908 in the Prabasi by
Ramendra Sunder Trivedi − for incipiently extending unqualified support to
Swadeshi, whi had included composing songs for its propagation, before
Tagore’s withdrawal from the movement aer noticing its increasing
coerciveness: ‘When the fire of swadeshi ignited, the pen of Rabindranath
did not fail in spreading the fire.’119 However, if Ramendra Sunder Trivedi’s
essay is read in entirety, it will be extremely difficult to support the
contention that he was a critic of Tagore’s early support to Swadeshi. It is
well known that Trivedi was aggressively patriotic and very strongly in
favour of Swadeshi, both politically and culturally. As an instructor in the
University of Calcua, he desired to give his lessons by reading from his
treatise in Bangla, and on being refused permission to tea in the language,
declined to give lectures till he was specially permied by the vice
ancellor to do so. Trivedi was one of the most gied essayists in Bangla
and his prose writings are distinguished by their range of themes,
exceptional erudition and remarkable articulacy. is evaluation of Trivedi
by Sukumar Sen, a highly respected solar of Bengali culture, might be
consequential for our discussion: ‘As an intelligent prose writer and as a
nationalist he was considered as second only to Tagore.’120 is drawing of a
nationalistic kinship between Tagore and Trivedi may not be entirely
incidental. Trivedi had earlier wrien another and more famous essay
entitled Bangalakshmir Bratakatha in protest against the partition of Bengal
in 1905.121 It was on his proposal that arandhan (a traditional Hindu festival
in Bengal of abstaining from cooking every year on the last day of the
month of Bhadra) was observed throughout Bengal in protest against Lord
Curzon’s partitioning of the state. But to return to Trivedi’s essay in Prabasi
wrien as rejoinder to Tagore’s essay Byadhi o Pratikar, Trivedi could not
agree with Tagore that there was no specific path to independence and that
liberty could only be realised by liberating the mind whi could be
aieved only through difficult, constructive work and not political and
cultural mobilisation. Trivedi, rather humorously, observed on the early
enthusiasm and volubility of the Swadeshi movement and its subsequent
waning at the strictness of the government, and said that Tagore, being
pained at this dampening of public ardour and the general weakening of the
movement, was now suggesting a more reserved aitude with the arting
of more arduous paths to social upli and political liberty. He recalled, it
must be mentioned with the highest regard, Tagore’s contribution in the
awakening of public opposition to Lord Curzon’s decree and how Trivedi
shared wholly the nationalistic passion, whi was intensified with every
song and poem that Tagore then was writing regularly for the Swadeshi
movement. ‘He has never advised for a futile and pointless movement; but
in generating the violent excitement that had occurred at that time in
Bengal, Rabindranth’s aievement was not entirely inconsiderable’ (my
translation).122
But even in the midst of his partly acerbic criticism of Tagore’s later
refusal to support the political campaign for Swadeshi, Trivedi did not fail to
hail Rabindranath for presenting by personal example an alternative aitude
to nationalism through his initiatives in the realm of education and rural
reconstruction: ‘Robi Babu is not merely increasing the volume of the
screaming by repeating, “work, work”, but is also illustrating some
appropriate ways of doing that work by taking them up in his own
hands’(my translation).123 Along with this appreciation of Tagore, Trivedi
simultaneously underlined what appeared to him as a fallacy in Tagore’s
prescription of a ‘constructive’ operation of the present national emotion
and his argument that the agency of the country’s actual development ought
not to be transferred into the hands of its rulers. Trivedi said that in the
present circumstances of colonial rule that option was not practically
available to the country, as the opportunity for initiative and space for
constructive work could any time be denied to the people of the country by
an indifferent and powerful government wielding untrammelled authority.
However, since we have alluded to Berlin on the issue of nationalism, and
especially the apology for Kant’s relationship with nationalism, it may be
appropriate to our discussion to again refer to his essay titled ‘e Bent
Twig’ on the positive aspects of nationalism. In this essay, Berlin has
mentioned Siller’s description of nationalism as a ‘bent twig’ and has
traced nationalism as occasionally an inevitable condition among subject
peoples with memories of hurt and aspirations of assertion and very
importantly not rejected the possibility of its non-belligerence. ‘Nationalism
is an inflamed condition of national consciousness whi can be, and has on
occasion been, tolerant and peaceful.’124 is, for Berlin, does not entail the
ruling out of the terrible excesses of violently nationalistic regimes around
the world, and the undeniable fact that the hideous instances of ethnic
cleansing in the twentieth century have proven the dangers of a heady
combination of nationalism and atavism. e socialist revolutions have also
failed to effectively substitute with ‘progressive’ thinking what appeared to
them as mere ‘reactionary, bourgeois’ sentiment, and the pull of what
constitutes national feeling continues to be strong. Nationalism may be
construed as a variegated theme in collective psye – nostalgia for
imaginary pasts; desire for imagined moral orders; idyllic lives without the
degrading conditions of post-industrial revolution, modern labour; and also
to erstwhile suppressed ethnic groups it may represent ‘the straightening of
bent bas, the recovery of a freedom that they may never have had (it is all
a maer of ideas in men’s heads), revenge for their insulted humanity’.125 It
is paradoxical that in the West, to whi is ascribed the genesis of the
modern nationalistic emotion, the araction of nationalism was thought to
be the weakest in countries that had been able to maintain their political
freedom for longer duration, and whi have enjoyed the distinction of
national accomplishments also in culture, science and knowledge. Political
philosophies advancing theories of social restructuring in the West have not,
according to their assessment of the phenomenon, considered nationalism
either an effective ally in their cause or a significant obstruction in their
plans, particularly given that nationalism was viewed by su philosophies
as an instrument of class oppression. is rivetingly analytical and
suggestive passage on nationalism’s career by Berlin also indicates the
variety of nationalism:
In fact, nationalism does not necessarily and exclusively militate in favour of the ruling class. It
animates revolts against it too, for it expresses the inflamed desire of the insufficiently regarded to
count for something among the cultures of the world. e brutal and destructive side of modern
nationalism needs no stressing in a world torn by its excesses. Yet it must be recognised for what it
is – a world-wide response to a profound and natural need on the part of newly liberated slaves –
‘the decolonised’ – a phenomenon unpredicted in the Europe-centred society of the nineteenth
century. How did the possibility of this development come to be ignored? To this question I
volunteer no answer.126
Critics, Ramaandra Guha among them, have somewhat over-read Tagore’s
contrition over his own role in the Swadeshi movement. Guha particularly
has seen some of Tagore’s later essays on the theme as an autocritique.127
But there is no consequential departure of ideas in his later and prominent
writings su as Raja Praja, Samuha, Swadesh and so on. In fact, Tagore
reiterates in these writings that Indian society has still continued to suffer at
the hands of rulers the indignity accruing from the staple colonial aitudes
of racial superiority, typically exemplified in the depictions of Indian life by
writers like Kipling. at colonial rule was an artificial barrier and a
hindrance to the normal development of the country, even if it was not the
only one, was a fundamental idea in his writings, as it is in most su
nationalist writings. Political liberty and autonomy of government may not
in all su cases, and certainly not in the world view of Tagore, be an
aspiration towards hegemony in the dominant native class; autonomy is
rather perceived as a means of the general improvement of the socio-
economic standard in the country. Even the portion of his leer to
Aurobindo Mohan Bose that Guha cites as example is preceded by
statements that reject the absolutist assumptions and modus operandi of the
Swadeshi movement, not the idea of nationalism itself. Responding to the
critique of his article entitled Deshhit, Tagore stated clearly that he had
nowhere said that ‘boyco should stop’, only that ‘unjust, untruthful and
unrighteous methods’ would ultimately not be beneficial for the country and
its people. Equating patriotism with God and thereby making it the supreme
ideal would result in patriotism becoming ‘the blindest of superstitions,
similar to the belief in omens about sneezing and lizards croaking, or the
worship of goddesses to ward off olera and skin diseases’.128 e undue
primacy of patriotism in the public imagination paradoxically disfigures the
idea and deprives it of all redemptive value. Interestingly, an article by
Tagore’s renowned Santiniketan colleague Kshitimohon Sen, whi
instances the mutual regard of Rabindranath Tagore and the ar-nationalist
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, compares Tagore’s aitude towards his nation as a
kind of praxis or devotion exclusive of all other goals, calling Tagore’s
nationalism rashtriya sadhana. It is likened to the ant-like approa of the
ascetic towards true realisation: the pipilikadrishti of munis. is signifies
the quality of meticulous dedication in Tagore’s worshipful aitude towards
his nation. Sen revealed that Tagore had recorded in his own hand his
detailed advice and a kind of a plan of action regarding the fulfilment of the
essential duties of citizens towards their local community as well as to the
nation. is handwrien manuscript had been in the possession of his
friends, who unfortunately came to regard it as an incriminating document
and destroyed it through fire at their fear of its being discovered during the
regular police sear of houses during the Swadeshi movement.129 is fact
accomplishes two things: first, it dispels the notion of Tagore having at any
point unconsciously subscribed to xenophobic nationalism; second, that the
imagined shi in his aitude indicated the unintended consequences of his
ideas with regard to the excesses of the Swadeshi movement. It both defines
and defends his national sentiment and effectively emphasises his distancy
from the pathology of nationalism.
e remoteness of Gandhi and Tagore from the pathology of nationalism
is also marked in the civility of their political language and their unfailing
social courtesy to the functionaries of the political regime to whi they
were implacably opposed. During crucial moments in the national
movement, Gandhi consistently sought to purge any impression or element
of intolerance and ethnic animosity, as in his stating on the occasion of the
public boyco of the Prince of Wales during his visit to India in 1921 that it
was intended on the maer of principle and not a show of disrespect: ‘e
boyco was purely a question of principle and directed against what we
have held to be the unscrupulous methods of the bureaucracy.’130 We have
earlier seen Gandhi’s scathing criticism of the uncivil language used for
Lord Chelmsford by some delegates at the Amritsar Congress. He reacted
strongly to reports of hooliganism and social coercion on the part of non-
cooperators, in an article wrien in January 1922 entitled Beware of
Ourselves. He said unsparingly that it was a contradiction in terms for the
non-cooperators to claim country-wide support and then aempt ostracism
of countrymen for non-participation. Any deviation from the ideals of non-
cooperation, tolerance and respect of opponents being the most prominent
among them, would accrue in ethical disaster.
We have more to fear from ourselves than from the violence or mistakes of the Government. e
laer if we use them aright, do us good, as they have already. Our own violence or untruth will be
veritable death for us. If we are not able to set our own house in order, we shall certainly destroy
ourselves. Non-co-operation will be a by word of execration and reproa.131

Non-violence and any kind of discourtesy were naturally incompatible for

Gandhi as well as Tagore. Even theoretically, this indissoluble binding of the
two values receives dissent and might thereupon admit the possibility of
one’s own fallacy. is was prominently reflected in Gandhi’s impression of
the violence of Chauri Chaura and his acceptance of almost sole
responsibility for the incident: ‘I am in the unhappy position of a surgeon
proved skill-less to deal with an admiedly dangerous case.’132 He
anowledged that it was the bierest humiliation for him but recognised it
as God’s warning that the country had still not acquired the mental quality
appropriate for practising non-violent mass protest. It was doubtful that
even if in the event of the government granting self-rule consequent to the
Bardoli Satyagraha – whi he withdrew aer the violent outbreak at
Chauri Chaura – violent elements would have become uncontrollable in the
absence of a morally commied political community. Even if at all
politically erroneous, the withdrawal of the campaign was morally
discerning and valuable, and the ‘country will have gained by my
[Gandhi’s] humiliation and confession of error’.133 For Gandhi personally,
the current withdrawal of his political programme was not adequate
penance, as more was required from an aritect of a political edifice. ‘I
must undergo personal cleansing. I must become a fier instrument able to
register the slightest variation in the moral atmosphere around me. My
prayers must have mu deeper truth and humility about them than they
evidence. And for me there is nothing so helpful and cleansing as a fast
accompanied by the necessary mental co-operation.’134 He expected that his
penance might encourage his followers and co-workers to aspire for self-
restraint and non-violence in ‘thought, word, and deed or the spread of that
spirit’.135
ere was an occasion in the case of Tagore when he had to confront non-
cooperation from some of his own valued colleagues at Santiniketan for
extending hospitality to the Governor of Bengal Lord Lyon, who was
particularly unpopular for his severity and imperiousness. On being
communicated that Lyon wished to visit Santiniketan, he was formally
invited by the poet in 1922 when general feelings were still running high in
the aermath of the non-cooperation movement. Tagore respected the
wishes of senior colleagues, su as the highly respected Bidhushekhar
Shastri, to abstain from the ceremonials but nevertheless received the
governor ritually and with perfect courtesy in the famous mango grove in
observance of the traditional welcoming rites of Santiniketan. Similarly, in
1925, Lyon came to Santiniketan on a personal visit while returning to
Calcua from an official tour, and just aer a bier correspondence between
Tagore and himself over his support of police brutality on nationalist
protestors in Dacca, but Tagore was as ever the perfect host. He was assailed
in some newspapers for having shared a meal with the governor. Tagore’s
public courtesy was put to further nationalist test during Viceroy Irwin’s
visit to Santiniketan in December 1925. For the first time in the history of
the institution, police entered the premises with Tagore’s approval. e
employees had to wear ore-coloured robes for easy identification by the
police. Tagore accepted these conditions as necessary for reasons of
feasibility and propriety.136
Returning to the issue of the genesis and extension of the idea of
nationalism in unlikely epistemic climates, Tagore unlike Kant was still
living during the nationalistic apotheosis in his nation and could thus
respond to its positions and ideology. To mention yet another difference in
the case of Tagore, the idea of ‘the autonomy of the will of a nation or a
society’ had been already launed on the political plane, and he was in
effect also refining these ideas. Berlin’s essay on Kant and Nationalism
foregrounds the possibility of an inclusive, liberal and democratic
nationalism, as in Mazzini and Mielet. Berlin has stated that the
nationalist consciousness was rooted in ‘the uniqueness of particular
traditions, languages, customs – of occupation, over a long period, of a
particular piece of soil on whi intense collective feeling is concentrated’.137
It is undeniable that Indianness, embodying some unique qualities, was
precious to Tagore, whether it is called love of homeland or local
aament. He ascribed at times very noble features to the subcontinent,
whi it should be remembered became three nations. For instance, he wrote
in the Swadeshi Samaj in 1904 that the ‘realisation of the one in many,
aaining unity in diversity – this is the inherent quality of Bharatvarsha’.
For him, this India never equated difference with animosity and did not
deem aliens to be enemies. Because of this, it aspires to accommodate
everybody within a wide system, mindful of the importance of ea in its
assigned place: ‘Since India possesses this quality, we will never imagine any
society to be our enemy and be fearful. With ever new conflicts we will
aspire for the expansion of ourselves. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims,
Christians will not die fighting ea other in the case of India – here they
will discover a harmony. is harmony will not be non-Hindu; in fact, it will
be Hindu in its essential sense. e limbs and organs of this harmony may
come also from alien countries; however, its life and soul shall be Indian.’138
is love for a homeland is considered by solars of nationalism, su as
Boehm, to be ‘an ethical concept fundamental to all nationalism’.139 It is
significant that this love acquires a universal aracter in Tagore. It is, of
course, evident that it does not allow any scope for auvinism; overzealous
patriots by trying to cite it for their benefit will inevitably cause the
vandalism of the entire idea. But it still remains that Tagore erished a
regional-national sentiment, whi has elsewhere been defined as being
‘conducive to nationalism of a defensive and intensive rather than of an
aggressive and extensive nature’, and an idea whi ‘in regions of mixed
nationality … may serve as a unifying element for rival nationalities and
also as a e on the development of a conscious and too ardent
nationalism’.140
Gandhi was likewise a consistent defender of composite nationalism.
Although he personally continued with his reservations regarding the
salutariness of religious conversion, he was absolutely clear that conversion,
even if to other faiths than the faith of the numerical majority, was never
inimical to national loyalties, indicating thereby his other prominent
concern with the nation as a secular state and indeed a secular nationalism.
In a public spee in 1927 at Tinnevelly, he referred to a communiqué from
the Indian Christian Association whi stated their identification with the
national movement. Gandhi affirmed his position on religion as a personal
virtue, without even the least of nationalist overtones. ‘ere is no doubt in
my mind that it is as it should be. Acceptance of Christianity or any other
faith should never mean denationalization. Nationalism need never be
narrow or inconsistent with internationalism. at nationalism, whi is
based upon pure selfishness and the exploitation of other nations, is indeed
an evil. But I cannot conceive of internationalism without a healthy and
desirable national spirit.’141 It may be in this connection relevant to add that
Gandhi in stating some years aer that the earthquake in Bihar was a
‘divine astisement’ for the sin of untouability, may have invoked the
category of moral nationalism inasmu as the universal Godhead ooses
not to extend benediction on military adventures, but to rebuke a people for
its violation of human norms.142 is indicates at a societal conscience and
introduces the principle of the morality of the nation/state. e origins of
Gandhi’s concept of the ethical state can perhaps be traced also to the Jain
niti tradition, particularly the tenets pertaining to the moral duties and
obligations of a ruler in Laghavarhnniti composed for King Kumarpala in
twelh-century Gujarat, by his minister Hemandra who like Gandhi
belonged to the Modh Bania community of the Kathiawar region.143 In 1944,
Gandhi’s interview to Stuart Gelder of the News Chronicle was published in
the Times of India. His position in the interview on the issue of a possible
national government in India assisting in the war effort became
controversial and it was alleged in some quarters that Gandhi had shied his
position from the August Resolution of the Congress. Gandhi, during a
subsequent press conference in July at Pangani, mentioned his detractors’
allegation that he had ‘betrayed’ the Congress at the behest of the affluent
lobby. It is extremely significant that Gandhi said that he now welcomed the
premature publication of the interview whi he had till then criticised as ill
timed. He was now pleased that it provided him an opportunity to state his
position on his political affiliations:
I do not want to sail under false colours. e country as well as the Government should know me
exactly as I am. I have never concealed the fact that I am a friend of everybody – moderates,
moneyed men, English-men, Americans or any other, irrespective of caste or colour or persuasion
… I may say that the favourable war situation had nothing to do with my proposal, if only for the
simple reason that, in the flush of approaing victory, my proposal was not likely even to receive
a fair hearing. But as a lover of peace, not merely in India but peace among all mankind, I could
not but make a proposal for what it is worth. Aer all, there is su a thing as world opinion,
apart from the opinion of authorities.144

is ethical position is more crucially evident in Gandhi’s fast against the
decision of his country’s independent government to freeze Pakistan’s share
of the common assets during the Kashmir war, culminating in the
government’s revocation of its earlier decision and the release of the funds.
e fast probably precipitated the insane passion that his fundamentalist
opponents had nurtured against his moral authority, into plans for his
assassination. We should perhaps profitably, for our discussion, recall the
remark on Gandhi that Romain Rolland had made in his diary in 1922,
whi reflects on the moral stature of Gandhi in the history of nationalism:
‘I see in Gandhi something quite different from an internationalist of my
type: he is a nationalist, but of the greatest, the loiest kind, a kind whi
should be a model for all the pey, base, base, or even criminal nationalisms
of Europe. An idealistic nationalist who wants his nation to be the greatest
in spirit – or nothing’145.
e convergence of Tagore and Gandhi, on the morality of the state and
the ethics of nationalism, aests as mu the category of their nationalism
as it perhaps does the open texture of nationalism itself.

Notes
 1. Sabyasai Bhaaarya, ed., The Mahatma and the Poet (Delhi: National Book Trust, 2005), 216.
2. Rabindranath Tagore, Letters from Russia, trans. Sasadhar Sinha (Calcua: Visva-Bharati, 1984),
203.
3. Rabindranath Tagore, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, 4 vols. (Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 1994–2007 [hereaer Writings]), 3: 966.
4. A common example is the open texture of the term mother in the case of in vitro fertilization,

where the producer of the ovum is different from the bearer of the foetus and in cases even from
the one who rears the baby. e question of the ‘real mother’ thus becomes inapplicable, since the
term is inadequate under the anged circumstances. I am aware of the dimensions introduced
into this issue by custody suits as in the celebrated custody case of Melissa Stern, or Baby M.
However, it only reinforces the appropriateness of the example rather than dispute it.
5. Toynbee states: ‘e spirit of nationality is a sour ferment of the new wine of democracy in the old
boles of tribalism.’ According to Toynbee, Western democracy tries to reconcile the contradictory
principles of fraternity and militant tribalism. See Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (London:
ames and Hudson, 1995), 34.
6. Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background (New Brunswi, NJ:
Transaction Publishers, 2005), 19.
7. Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of
Nationalism (London: Methuen & Co., 1977), 465.
8. Margaret Moore, The Ethics of Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 33.
9. Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Malden, MA: Blawell Publishing, 1993), xiii–xiv.
10. Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (London: Lawrence & Wishart,
1936), 8.
11. See Earnest Renan, ‘What Is A Nation’, in ed. Geof Ely and Ronald Grigor Suny, Becoming

National: A Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 42–55.

12. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism (London: Verso, 2001).

13. James M. Blaut, The National Question: Decolonizing the Theory of Nationalism (London: Zed
Books Ltd., 1987), 153.
14. Blaut, The National Question, 148–149.
15. Blaut, The National Question, 88.
16. Max Hildebert Boehm, ‘Nationalism: eoretical Aspects’, in ed. Edwin R. A. Seligman et al.,

Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 15 vols. (New York: e Macmillan Company, 1963), 11: 231.
17. Julian imagined a France that is at once spiritual and material, to the extent that he would
probably not have felt spiritually depleted even if, hypothetically, the whole world perished with
the exception of France. He collapsed entire periods into recent memory, so that ‘in the twinkling
of an eye, the scientific Western historian of the Neolithic age has been transfigured into the
Fren patriot in AD 1918’. See Toynbee, A Study of History, 36.
18. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 56.
19. Congress Presidential Addresses, ed. A. M. Zaidi, 5 vols. (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied
Political Resear, 1986–1989), 2: 114–115.
20. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and

20th Centuries (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1965), 30.

21. Tagore, Nationalism, ed. Ramaandra Guha (Delhi: Penguin Books, 2009), 73.
22. George Steiner, ‘e Cleric of Treason’, in George Steiner, A Reader (Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books, 1984), 195–196.
23. Lincoln wrote to Speed: ‘Our progress in democracy appears to me to be prey rapid. As a nation
we began by declaring “all men are created equal”. We now practically read it “all men are created
equal except negroes”. When the know nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal
except negroes, and foreigners and Catholics”. When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to
some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where
despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy’. Carl Sandburg, Abraham

Lincoln: The Prairie Years (New York: Dell Publishing House Co. Inc., 1960), 205.
24. Plato, Crito, reproduced in Jewe’s translation, in ed. Doris A. Hunter and Krishna Malli,
Nonviolence: A Reader in the Ethics of Action (Delhi: e Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1990), 35–36.
25. Tagore, Nationalism, 80. Goethe had somewhat similarly asked Luden during the German
uprising: ‘But is the people really awake? Does it know what it wants and what it can aieve?
And is every movement an uprising? Does he arise who is forcibly stirred up? … You say Freedom.
Perhaps it would be beer if you were to call it liberation … ’. Rudolph Roer, Nationalism and

Culture, trans. Ray E. Chase (California: Roer Publications Commiee, 1937), 204.
26. Tagore, Nationalism, 59.
27. Tagore, Nationalism, 41.
28. Tagore, Nationalism, 43.
29. Amartya Sen, ‘Foreword’, in ed. Krishna Dua and Andrew Robinson, Selected Letters of

Rabindranath Tagore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xx.

30. Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali (125th anniversary edition), 15 vols. (Kolkata: Visva-
Bharati, 1986–1992 [1393–1398 Bengali Era]), [hereaer cited as Rachanabali], 5: 790. All citations
are in translation from Bangla, and have been translated by myself, unless otherwise specified.
31. Rachanabali, 9: 606.
32. Writings, 3: 423–424.
33. William Chester Jordan, ‘ “Europe’ in the Middle Ages’, in ed. Anthony Pagden, The Idea of

Europe: From Antiquity to the European Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 73.
34. For a very thoughtful and informative study of early cosmopolitanism in Europe, see Margaret C.
Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

35. Jordan, ‘ “Europe” in the Middle Ages’, 83.
36. Seyla Benhabib, ‘e Philosophical Foundations of Cosmopolitan Norms’, in ed. Robert Post,
Another Cosmopolitanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 17.
37. Jeremy Waldron, ‘Cosmopolitan Norms’ in Another Cosmopolitanism, 83.
38. Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, ‘Introduction: Conceiving Cosmopolitanism’, in ed. Vertovec
and Cohen, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 15.
39. Peter Van der Veer, ‘Colonial Cosmopolitanism’, in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 174.
40. Robert Fine and Robin Cohen, ‘Four Cosmopolitan Moments’, in Conceiving Cosmopolitanism,

155.
41. Rachanabali, 9: 592.
42. Elie Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory (New York: Shoen Books, 1995), 135. In his famous
study on aggregate memory, Halbaws has offered a reason for nostalgia for the early years of
one’s life, in the fact that the past has noticeably less obtrusiveness on one’s life, and does not in
the same measure as the present does, represent the pressures of society in our everyday living.
is ‘retrospective mirage’, as Halbwas calls it, is more evident in one’s recollections of
ildhood and youth while one convinces oneself that the beer portion of one’s life is already
behind oneself. is may be the case even in the lives of those who have suffered considerably
during their early years. According to Halbwas: ‘at faraway world where we remember that
we suffered nevertheless exercises an incomprehensible araction on the person who has survived
it and who seems to think he has le there the best part of himself, whi he tries to recapture.
is is why, given a few exceptions, it is the case that the great majority of people more or less
frequently are given to what one might call nostalgia for the past.’ Maurice Halbwas, On
 Collective Memory, trans and ed. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: e University of Chicago Press, 1992),
49.
43. Wiesel, From the Kingdom of Memory, 140–145.
44. Rachanabali, 5: 675–676.
45. Writings, 3: 544.
46. Congress Presidential Addresses, ed. A. M. Zaidi, 5 vols. (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Applied
Political Resear, 1986–1989), 2: 57.
47. M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and other Writings, ed. Anthony J. Parel (Delhi: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 48.
48. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and other Writings, 49.
49. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and other Writings, 50.
50. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and other Writings, 52–53.
51. M. K. Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 vols. (Delhi: Publications Division,
Government of India, 1958–1994) [hereaer Collected Works]), 35: 497–498.
52. Collected Works, 25: 359.
53. Collected Works, 61: 27.
54. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj and other Writings, 115.
55. Collected Works, 22: 88–89.
56. Gandhi said: ‘I repeat for the thousandth time that it is not hostile to any nation or any body of
men, but it is deliberately aimed at a system under whi the Government of India is being today
conducted and I promise that no threats and no enforcement of threats by the Viceroy or any body
of men will strangle that agitation or send to rest that awakening.’ Collected Works, 22: 88–89.
57. Tagore, Nationalism, 64.
58. Tagore, Nationalism, 83. It may be pertinent in this connection to refer to Ambedkar’s spee of 25
November 1949 to the Constituent Assembly: ‘ere was so lile solidarity in the U.S.A. at the
time when this incident occurred that the people of America did not think that they were a nation.
If the people of the United States could not feel that they were a nation, how difficult it is for
Indians to think that they are a nation. I remember the days when politically-minded Indians,
resented the expression “the people of India”. ey preferred the expression “the Indian nation”. I
am of opinion that in believing that we are a nation, we are erishing a great delusion. How can
people divided into several thousands of castes be a nation? e sooner we realize that we are not
as yet a nation in the social and psyological sense of the world, the beer for us. For then only
we shall realize the necessity of becoming a nation and seriously think of ways and means of
 realizing the goal. e realization of this goal is going to be very difficult – far more difficult than
it has been in the United States. e United States has no caste problem. In India there are castes.
e castes are anti-national. In the first place because they bring about separation in social life.
ey are anti-national also because they generate jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste.
But we must overcome all these difficulties if we wish to become a nation in reality. For fraternity
can be a fact only when there is a nation. Without fraternity equality and liberty will be no deeper
than coats of paint.’ Constituent Assembly Debates: Official Report, 5 Books. (New Delhi: Lok
Sabha Secretariat, 1950; rpt. 1999), 5: 980.
59. Tagore, Nationalism, 70–71.
60. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, ed. and trans. Sonja Bargmann (London and New York:
Crown Publishers Inc., 1954), 181.
61. For an analysis of Einstein’s nationalistic views, see Isaiah Berlin, ‘Einstein and Israel’, in ed.
Henry Hardy, Personal Impressions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 66–77.
62. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 181.
63. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 183.
64. Writings, 3: 753.
65. Harish Trivedi, ‘Tagore on England and the West’, in ed. G. R. Taneja and Vinod Sena, Literature

East and West: Essays Presented to R K DasGupta (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1995), 169.
66. is argument is common in Tagore solarship. Two of the prominent instances whi may be of
helpful reference are Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 4 vols. (Kolkata:
Vishvabharati Granthanbibhag, 2008 [1415 Bengali Era]), 3: 16–24; and Nepal Majumdar, Bharate

Jatiyota o Antarjatikata ebong Rabindranath, 6 vols. (Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 1988 [1395
Bengali Era]), 2: 34–48.
67. Majumdar, Bharate Jatiyota o Antarjatikata ebong Rabindranath, 2: 35.
68. Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 3: 20–21.
69. Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 3: 23.
70. Majumdar, Bharate Jatiyota o Antarjatikata ebong Rabindranath, 2: 48.
71. For the full text of the leer, see Tagore, Selected Letters, 223–224.
72. M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad:
Navjivan Publishing House, 1988), 533.
73. For a concise account of public violence and government reprisal in the states of Bombay, Punjab,
Bengal and Delhi during the Rowla Satyagraha, see Sushila Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi: India

Awakened (Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House, 1994), 266–287. For a detailed and useful, if
 very slightly pro-government, narration of the events leading to the firing at Jallianwala Bagh and
martial law in Amritsar, including the debate in the English House of Commons, see Alfred
Draper, Amritsar: The Massacre that Ended the Raj (London: Cassel Ltd., 1981).
74. Collected Works, 15: 211.
75. Collected Works, 15: 211.
76. Collected Works, 15: 212.
77. For details, see Collected Works, 15: 213–214.
78. Collected Works, 15: 218–220.
79. Collected Works, 15: 221.
80. Collected Works, 15: 223.
81. Collected Works, 15: 243–245.
82. Tagore, Selected Letters, 221.
83. Gandhi, An Autobiography, 548.
84. Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Rupa, 1997), 342.
85. Collected Works, 15: 311. Gandhi recounted that he faced a dilemma on offering Satyagraha in this
regard, as his requests for rescission of the preventive order against his entry in Punjab were being
rejected, and in this situation any aempt to enter that province would at the most be limited to a
symbolic act. ‘I therefore decided not to proceed to the Punjab in spite of the suggestion of friends.
It was a bier pill for me to swallow. Tales of rank injustice and oppression came pouring in daily
from the Punjab but all I could do was to sit helplessly by and gnash my teeth.’ Gandhi, An

Autobiography, 548–549.
86. Collected Works, 15: 314–315.
87. Collected Works, 15: 332–333.
88. For the text of the leer, see Collected Works, 15: 334–335.
89. Collected Works, 15: 364–365. Tagore had wrien on 12 April 1919 in answer to Gandhi’s
solicitation of his opinion on the ensuing civil disobedience against the Rowla Bill: ‘Power in all
its forms is irrational, it is like the horse that drags the carriage blind-folded. e moral element in
it is only represented in the man who drives the horse. Passive resistance is a force whi is not
necessarily moral in itself; it can be used against truth as well as for it. e danger inherent in all
force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation. I know your
teaing is to fight against evil by the help of the good. But su a fight is for heroes and not for
men led by the impulses of the moment.’ The Mahatma and the Poet, 49.
90. Gandhi wrote to Aziz: ‘I miscalculated the capacity of the people to stand any amount of suffering
and provocation. It was possible for the Punjab people to remain quiet in spite of the provocation
offered by the arrests I have mentioned. But what happened was beyond endurance. e people of
Amritsar could not restrain themselves and brook the deportation of their leaders. Neither you nor
I can apportion blame for what followed. Satyagraha apart, the question will have to be solved
whether the people were provoked into madness by the firing or whether the military were
provoked to action by the mob.’ Collected Works, 16: 15.
91. Collected Works, 15: 377–378.
92. Collected Works, 16: 141.
93. For details of the relevant order, as well as short extracts from confidential government reports on
the subject, see Collected Works, 16: 239–241.
94. For the full text of the report, see Collected Works, 17: 114–292. Gandhi later anowledged that he
was entrusted with the draing of the report. He recommended the report as a historical
document whi accurately records the atrocities in Punjab without any kind of exaggeration and
unsubstantiated statement. ‘Not a single statement, regarding the validity of whi there was the
slightest room for doubt, was permied to appear in the report … So far as I am aware, not a
single statement made in this report has ever been disapproved.’ Gandhi, An Autobiography, 554.
95. Jayakar recounts what Inverarity, one of the luminaries of the Bombay High Court, commented
aer reading the report: ‘It is a damaging document, and you know its effect is largely due to the
very careful way in whi you have presented your facts and the restraint with whi you have
drawn your conclusions … And you can take it from me that, when this report is read in England,
it will produce a far greater effect than in India, where people delight in hyperboles.’ M. R. Jayakar,
The Story of My Life, 324–326.; cited in Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi, 296.
96. Gandhi was particularly severe in his comment on the tone of some of the delegates in the
Congress session at Amritsar, saying that the speees for the recall of Lord Chelmsford were
‘shameful and deserve condemnation’: ‘To regard Lord Chelmsford unfit for his post is one thing;
but it is quite another to insult him and to use discourteous and unmannerly language about the
Emperor’s representative. We shall lower ourselves in the estimation of others thereby and su
language, if it became common among the people, would be a blot on the virtues of humility,
courtesy and magnanimity whi still remain ours. I just do not believe that the nation can gain
anything through exaggeration. Exaggeration is a particularly bad species of falsehood; even if the
nation can advance through untruthfulness, it would be beer for us to refuse to advance in su a
manner because, ultimately, su advance will bring about our fall.’ Collected Works, 16: 467.
 Speaking in the English House of Commons, Montagu faced a generally hostile audience as he
ripped into Dyer’s conduct as having been essentially against the norms of democracy and the
code of government, but also as ultimately inimical to the relations between India and England: ‘I
invite this house to oose, and I believe that the oice they make is fundamental to the
continuance of the British Empire and vital to the continuation, permanent, I believe it can be, of
the connection between this country and India.’ Montagu’s viewpoint was shared only partially by
Winston Churill. e general bierness against Montagu was noticeable and was commented on
by some in the British press. A Jew by denomination, Montagu probably also received a share of
racial animosity in the bargain. It was even alleged that he had exercised undue influence in the
Indian government against Dyer. On Chelmsford’s reported offer to divulge their private
correspondence in order to demolish this allegation, Montagu significantly replied: ‘Public life
becomes impossible if, because a minority ooses to believe in the bad faith of a Viceroy or a
Secretary of State, correspondence not intended for publication has to be produced. If we are not
to be believed we should be dismissed.’ For details, see Draper, Amritsar: The Massacre that Ended
the Raj, 227–235. For references to hostility in the House linked to Montagu’s Jewish origins, see
Arthur Herman, Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged our

Age (London: Hutinson, 2008), 254–255.

97. Gandhi, An Autobiography, 564–566.
98. Majumdar, Bharate Jatiyota o Antarjatikata ebong Rabindranath, 2: 46–47.
99. Collected Works, 17: 322.
100. Collected Works, 18: 151.
101. Collected Works, 19: 572.
102. See Sunil Khilnani, The Idea of India (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 167–181.
103. Writings, 4: 392.
104. Writings, 4: 393.
105. Writings, 4: 393.
106. Writings, 4: 395.
107. Writings, 4: 395.
108. Cited in Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 3: 345.
109. Tagore, Nationalism, 20.
110. Tagore, Nationalism, 20.
111. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace [1795] (Minneapolis: Filiquarian Publishing, LLC, 2007), 9.
112. Collected Works, 35: 505.
113. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Rabindranath Tagore and the Consciousness of Nationality’, in Isaiah Berlin, The

Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and their History, ed. Henry Hardy, (New York: Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, 1999), 265.
114. Berlin, The Sense of Reality, 264. Gertrude Himmelfarb takes a more conservative even if not
entirely anti-cosmopolitan position on the balancing of modern democracy with nationalism.
According to her, identities are not options but inheritances of a kind, and a crossing over in this
area of living can cause critical deficiencies in ones consideration of public situations. ‘e
“protean self”, whi aspires to create an identity de novo, is an individual without identity, just as
the person who repudiates his nationality is a person without a nation.’ Gertrude Himmelfarb,
‘e Illusion of Cosmopolitanism’, in Martha C. Nussbaum, Love of Country, ed. Joshua Cohen
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 77.
115. Collected Works, 21: 291. It might be relevant to refer to Seton-Watson’s criticism of the
superciliousness and the ‘unconscious nationalist prejudice’ against the nationalist aspirations of
‘newer nations’ on the part of many of the powerful nations, who have enjoyed political
independence and economic prosperity for many generations: ‘e unconscious, though obvious
and unmistakable, arrogance with whi they view those nations whi they regard as tiresome
upstarts, leaves an unpleasant Pesniffian taste.’ Seton-Watson, Nations and States, 466.
116. Collected Works, 35: 321.
117. Isaiah Berlin, ‘Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism’, in The Sense of Reality ed. Henry
Hardy, 242.
118. Berlin, The Sense of Reality, 234.
119. For this reference and a gist of Trivedi’s critique of Tagore, see Rachanabali, 5: 819. For a slightly
more detailed summary, also see Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 2: 212.
120. Sukumar Sen, History of Bengali Literature (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1992), 293.
121. A Bratakatha is a narrative concerning a deity and includes the vow of devotion, the method of
austerities and worship of the deity, along with the description of the fruits whi are bestowed on
the devotee for the practice of the recommended austerities. Bangalakshmir Bratakatha described
Bengal as a deity to be worshipped and recommended the method of nationalistic devotion and
the fruits of selfless nationalism.
122. Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 2: 212.
123. Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 2: 213.
124. Isaiah Berlin, ‘e Bent Twig: On the Rise of Nationalism’, in Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of
Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (Princeton: Princeton University
 Press, 1990), 245.
125. Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 261.
126. Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 261.
127. See Ramaandra Guha, ‘Introduction’, in Tagore, Nationalism, vii–xviii.
128. Tagore, Selected Letters, 71–72.
129. Kshitimohon Sen, ‘Rabindranath o Tilak’, in ed. Pronoti Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindranath o

Santiniketan (Kolkata: Punasa, 2009), 218.

130. Collected Works, 22: 88.
131. Collected Works, 22: 258.
132. Collected Works, 22: 419.
133. Collected Works, 22: 417.
134. Collected Works, 22: 419.
135. Collected Works, 22: 420.
136. Mukhopadhyaya, Rabindrajibani, 3: 186, 249, 366.
137. Berlin, The Sense of Reality, 232.
138. Rachanabali, 2: 640.
139. Boehm, ‘Nationalism’, 234–235.
140. Boehm, ‘Nationalism’, 234–235.
141. Collected Works, 35: 92. It appears that Gandhi was addressing a prevalent concern in political
circles and allaying apprehensions in this regard. Nehru was to comment on the pro-British
aitude of the Chur of England in India around 1936: ‘A recent instance of how the Chur of
England indirectly influences politics in India has come to my notice. At a provincial conference
of the U.P. Indian Christians held at Cawnpore on the 7th November, 1934, the Chairman of the
Reception Commiee, Mr. E. V. David, said: “As Christians we are bound by our religion to loyalty
to the King, who is the Defender of Our Faith.” Inevitably that meant support of British
Imperialism in India. Mr. David further expressed his sympathies with some of the views of the
“diehard” Conservative elements in England in regard to the I. C. S., the police, and the whole
proposed constitution, whi, according to them, might endanger Christian missions in India.’
Jawaharlal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru: An Autobiography (London: e Bodley Head, 1942), 376n1.
Gandhi in 1922 mentioned a contrary example that of the All India Christian Conference passing a
Swadeshi resolution, whi included the condemnation of government repression, the urging of
amnesty to political prisoners, the suspension of non-cooperation for a possibility of a round table
conference and prohibition. e resolution was prefaced by a declaration of national faith: ‘We
 must demonstrate by words and deeds that Christianity has made us neither un-Indian nor un-
national. Can it be for a moment conceived that we as a community shall dissociate ourselves
from our brethren, Hindus and Mussulmans, whatever differences there may be in our religious
convictions?’ Collected Works, 22: 169.
142. In Jewish history, Amos had reminded Jews that being the osen people meant in reality that they
qualified for greater punishment for transgressions rather than for being privileged for especial
rewards. More recently, Maxine Hong Kingston, linking imperial havoc with natural havoc,
somewhat conflated a natural disaster as the fire in California with the regular exploitative
military actions of the United States around the world. For details, see Maxine Hong Kingston,
The Fifth Book of Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).
143. Jain canon is generally very critical of the hard state and compares its enforcers, su as policemen
and executioners, to robbers and murderers, and describes war as a form of organised and large-
scale brigandage. For details, see G. C. Pande, Jain Political Thought (Jaipur: Prakrit Bharati
Sansthan, 1984).
144. D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 8 vols. [1951–1954] (Delhi: e
Publications Division, Government of India, 1963), 6: 260–261.
145. ‘Extract from Romain Rolland’s Diary’, in Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence (Delhi:
Publications Division, Government of India, 1976), 5.
 IV
In argument
Considerance of the political

The debate between Gandhi and Tagore frames their larger and common
concerns regarding the political community. e usual observation
regarding the apparency of a fundamental divergence between their
viewpoints might actually be more of a speculation rather than a decisive
conclusion. Occasionally, even separate intellectual categories may seem
appropriate to the two personalities – that of the moral activist and the
moral philosopher – whi are suited to two distinct activities. e two
activities have been distinguished philosophically as ‘the activity of the
moralist, who sets out to elaborate a moral code, or to encourage its
observance, and that of a moral philosopher, whose concern is not primarily
to make moral judgements but to analyse their nature’.1 One may, in haste,
be inclined to understand Gandhi as primarily a moralist and Tagore as a
moral philosopher. It is, perhaps, more worthwhile a position to study both
of them as a combination of the moral philosopher and the activist,
inasmu as they are engaged simultaneously in reasoning a moral
vocabulary and using it to ethical purpose. e debate between them can
perhaps be meaningfully understood on the plane of a conversation shared
by two individuals with similar ethical imperatives and accomplishments
that involve the determining of proper means of thought and action in
pursuit of their ethical purpose. e conversation is thus relevant to the
study of ideas with having not merely arival or exegetical value but as
also being illustrative of the conception and operation of political thought.
An early evaluative comment in 1925 by Romain Rolland in his diary, who
had been receiving impressions of Gandhi’s movement from various sources,
reflects the opinion that the aitudinal difference between Gandhi and
Tagore was irreconcilable. Rolland’s comment on Elmhirst’s support for
Tagore’s criticism of Gandhi’s politics is at once interesting and also
anticipative and a rebutment of some points of the later criticism of Gandhi:
But the whole of Gandhi’s policies meet with Tagore’s disapproval. L. Elmhirst, who reflects him
in this, speaks of them (following his master) with obvious hostility and lile understanding. e
thinker who does not act finds it easy to point out discrepancies, at least apparent discrepancies,
between the doctrine and the actions of a man who has the responsibility for 300,000,000 men. He
even goes so far as accuse him of betraying the cause of the untouable because, in order not to
complicate the present entente between the Indian parties over immediate action, Gandhi did not
speak about the untouables at the last Congress. One senses at the boom of this the invincible
antipathy between the free mind in love with all forms of life (and with a fair dose of dileantism)
and the puritan who imposes rules of mortification, asceticism and harsh disciplines on his
disciples – so as to build them into a militia ready for any sacrifice. Gandhi’s indifference to
suffering – to his own as to that of others – when it is offered as a sacrifice to a noble cause,
revolts Tagore to the point of injustice. It seems that he refuses to recognize its moral grandeur.
Elmhirst presents Gandhi’s unmoved reaction to the strikes that he decreed and the resultant ruins
as the sign of a cold politician. He could hardly misunderstand more the soul of this heroic
believer. Tagore, Gandhi: two worlds, moving further and further apart.2

ere are, however, insistent and perceptible indications of a convergence

relating to the genealogy and the influence of their aspirations and concerns.
Tapan Rayaudhuri has traced their intellectual and ethical kinship to the
‘shared concerns of the nineteenth-century Indian intelligentsia trying to
work out world-views and agenda in the context of their colonial
experience’.3 Rayaudhuri has outlined the similarities of their thought on
the plane of rural upli and social reconstruction, as well as in the
contiguity of their aitude to Western civilisation. ‘Gandhi had described
Indian infatuation with the West as moha, the high road to cultural suicide.
e poet compared the western impact with disease.’4 Even Tagore’s
opposition to any rejection of a culture was not directed against Gandhian
principles but was actually the articulation of his misgivings regarding the
imminence of cultural auvinism. It is therefore necessary to carefully
consider the content of their criticism of the cultural enslavement that was
an inalienable component of the intellectual dominance of Western models.
e argument between Gandhi and Tagore − especially significant in the
context of the conflicting interpretations being advanced of the quintessence
of ‘Indian civilization’ in support of political claims − was centred on the
vital issues of the day, and wherein the ‘higher human ideals are confronted’
and whi almost seems to be, in Rolland’s words, ‘a controversy between a
St. Paul and a Plato’ that ‘embraces the whole earth’.5 Perhaps, they were
able to hone their views, by the ‘debate their differences compelled them to
enter’.6 On one plane, the debate appears to be located on the political plane
in its criticism of Gandhi’s political programme, and apparently posits
Tagore as an opponent of Gandhi’s nationalism. However, even while
speaking of Tagore’s opposition to nationalism, his universalism ought not
to be confused with mere cosmopolitanism. His was more a faith in the
harmony of influences and traditions and spoke of the ‘web of unity’ in
Indian culture, ‘whi binds all of us’ without our ‘knowing or not knowing
it’, and the ‘truth of whi was not contingent on our knowledge and
anowledgement of it’. In 1915, drawing an outline of his own identity, he
emphasised on the retaining of the distinctiveness of traditions in building
bridges between culture. Gandhi’s position was identical. And even if their
differences were, as some have contended, fundamental, why should thus
there be an overriding aspiration to reconcile their respective positions? e
cordiality of their relationship, whi remained undiminished by Tagore’s
criticism of some of Gandhi’s essential positions, indicates the nuances of
the nationalist idea, besides being instructive in a world of acrimonious
political difference.
I do not propose to describe the details of the very substantial content and
extent of the debate but only hope to look at the outline and delineate some
basic issues. It should also be mentioned at this point that the separately
published compilations of the debate so far are yet not fully inclusive of all
the nuances of the arguments that were stated, both because in certain cases
some of the leers have been rather inexplicably shortened, excluding
crucial portions, and because a study of the debate needs to examine parallel
correspondences that explain concerns and positions. It is also necessary to
mention that the debate was on occasions mediated through leers to
counterparts, su as C. F. Andrews, and regarding whi detours into
related correspondences become necessary. e arguments similarly impinge
on significant public expressions by leading personalities, most notably the
Congress Presidential Addresses, su as in the presidential spee by C. R.
Das in the Gaya Session of 1922, defining the Congress’s ideal of
nationalism, whi was as mentioned earlier also probably in part aimed at
Tagore’s apparently implacable opposition to the principle of nationalism.
In a sense, Tagore along with Gandhi, is the embodiment of the spirit of
his own country or home, representing almost the essence of its culture –
starting from the Upanishads and the first principles of the thought of
Buddha and continuing through the medieval Bhakti tradition, particularly
Kabir, the other Indian languages, and the aspirations born of the cultural
and ideological contact with Europe in the nineteenth century. Tagore
welcomed secular knowledge along with an interlocution of traditions, and
it was anathema to him that Western science should be rejected because it
‘belongs to the West’. His debate with Gandhi delineates his differences and
his underlying affinity with him over the nature of the ‘home’ of a
community.
e study of the debate between Tagore and Gandhi can be gainfully
prefaced, relevant to our discussion, by Tagore’s comment made early in
1909 on the nature of political difference in contemporary times. Tagore
stated that the debate on the respective merits of diverging ideas of the
politically beneficial and the best means of aieving that end has never
been concluded in any country. He said that in human history, this debate
has resulted in bloodshed and its subsidence on one plane had been
paralleled by a continual regeneration in other guises and directions. In the
generally controlled atmosphere of political activity in the closing years of
the nineteenth century, before the commencing of the Swadeshi agitation,
the articulacy of differences regarding the welfare of the country had till
now been largely confined to discussions in meetings and in the papers of
the press and was comparatively tame and merely smouldered, without as
he said igniting with the ‘flame’ of conviction. However, as in the present,
viewpoints were generally perceived to be imminently linked with the
welfare of the country and not as merely the eoing of poetic metaphors;
he could not be unhappy if there was occasionally certain rudeness in the
protest against his own views by those with whom he had had
disagreements. He felt that it was an auspicious sign of the times that
nobody was let off easily on expressing a view on the affairs of the country,
and with politics becoming more intense and active, there was he said in
maers of political difference an auspicious element of acrimonious
articulation in political discourse. Very significantly for his own and
occasionally fundamental later differences with Gandhi, Tagore stated for
his critics in 1909 (years before the debate) that howsoever intense be the
excitement of the argument with those whom he had occasion to differ – as
there was no reason to doubt their genuine dedication to aaining the
welfare of the country – it was necessary to clearly understand ea other’s
statements and volition. To be either annoyed at the outset or to become
suspicious of the sanity of the other’s mind would perhaps deceive one’s
own mind. Tagore felt that as the disagreements arose from an intensified
concern with the affairs of society, there was no cause to doubt the basic
commitment and the soundness of reasoning that underlay the differing
point of view.7 It is worth mentioning that the only notable exception that
he made in his life to this belief was arguably with regard to the path of
violent political method, and this aitudinal exception was perhaps
essentially due to the fact that political violence on behalf of an ideology
never accepts the possibility of its ideological fallibility. It was Tagore’s
expressed belief that ‘it can never be true that to respect the difference in
opinion was to disrespect one’s own discernment’.8

Issues in the debate: the programme of the

national movement
e debate between Gandhi and Tagore is located squarely on the political
plane – the way of developing the aracter of the people of India and with
reference to some aspects of the national movement, particularly boyco
and arkha. Most critics have seen the initial period of their disagreements
as ‘the one time in their lives when there surfaced real tension between
them. It was during this period [1920–22] that the differences became
manifest and if they were to disagree thereaer this would be the norm for
their mutually respectful dissent’.9 e debate also can be described almost
wholly as arising from Tagore’s criticism of some of Gandhi’s positions and
Gandhi’s explanation of his ideas while replying to Tagore’s criticism. Some
of Tagore’s criticisms, beginning 1921, were almost foundational in some
respects and quite severe, expressing reservations about Gandhi’s policies,
who always responded with grace and sincerity to the critical positions
taken by Tagore.
Tagore’s first major and publicly critical statement on Gandhi’s
programme of action related with the idea of non-cooperation and boyco,
particularly of government sools, was conveyed in 1921 in his leers to C.
F. Andrews, whi were subsequently published in May 1921 in the Modern
Review. Gandhi’s response to Tagore’s position, through a couple of articles
in June 1921 in Young India, drew a rejoinder from Tagore in the Modern
Review, and whi were further responded to by Gandhi in three articles in
the Young India, all within the same year. Bhaaarya views the
differences as arising from Tagore’s ‘abhorrence [of] an instrumentalist view
of satyagraha’, and his unhappiness at the Mahatma being used by the
political class as merely ‘a stratagem in politics’.10 It may be appropriate to
indicate at the outset that Tagore’s criticism of the instrumental view of
Satyagraha was also addressed to Gandhi himself, and hence it may be
necessary to clarify that as regards the instrumentality of Satyagraha,
Gandhi had ever since the earliest phase of his political programme in South
Africa aempted to explain, particularly in comparison to the Western idea
of civil disobedience, the programmatic inclusivity of Satyagraha. A recent
study has referred to the epistemic gap in this respect between India and the
West, inasmu as Satyagraha was persistently seen in a limiting way as a
political tenique whi was akin to oreau’s concept of civil
disobedience.
Gandhi himself was familiar with oreau’s work. He reproduced the American’s essay in his
own publications, and used the concept of ‘civil disobedience’ routinely, and with great care. For
Gandhi, oreau’s term referred to ‘deliberate opposition to law’. is was a particular version of
non-violent protest, and it represented but a fraction of the Mahatma’s practice. Indeed Gandhi
repeatedly stressed that the concept of ‘civil disobedience’ did not convey ‘the full meaning’ of the
Indian struggle. As he put it most bluntly: ‘Satyagraha does not mean civil disobedience only and
nothing else.’11

Even in India, perhaps mainly because of its primarily political

manifestation, Satyagraha was generally perceived almost exclusively as a
mobilisation of mass protest. For Tagore, Satyagraha with its emphasis on
boyco of English education became representative of the agitational
politics and the militant spirit of the West. Even as he eulogised Gandhi, for
rousing the ‘immense power of the meek’ reposed in the ‘destitute and
insulted humanity of India’, he pointed out his hopes for the essential
destiny of India: ‘To raise the history of man, from the muddy level of
physical conflict to the higher moral altitude. What is swaraj! It is maya, it is
like mist, that will vanish leaving no stain on the radiance of the Eternal.
However, we may delude ourselves with phrases learnt from the West,
Swaraj is not our objective.’
12 Tagore protested that the non-cooperation

movement’s natural spirit was in places manifesting itself in social boyco:

‘We have no word for Nation in our language. When we borrow this word
from other people, it never fits us.’13 He thought that Western science should
not be rejected just because it ‘belongs to the West’. e boyco of sools
and colleges constituted ‘arrogant nationalism’. Tagore continued in bier
vein, likening the current movement to a midnight orgy of potential
violence. ‘e idea of non-cooperation is political asceticism. Our students
are bringing their offering of sacrifices to what? Not to a fuller education but
to non-education. It has at its ba a fierce joy of annihilation whi in its
best form is asceticism and in its worst form is that orgy of frightfulness in
whi human nature, losing faith in basic reality of human life finds a
disinterested delight in unmeaning devastation, as has been shown in the
late war and on other occasions whi came nearer home to us. No in its
passive moral form is asceticism and in its active moral form is violence. e
desert is as mu a form of himsa as is the raging sea in a storm, they both
are against life.’14 He thought it would be impossible to recompense the
injury that was being inflicted upon the careers of the boys, who were for
him real persons and not ‘phantoms’, by calling them out of sools for an
abstraction. It was for him, and statedly, an unhappy destiny that in
opposing the non-cooperation movement he was compelled to go against his
natural instinct as a poet to identify himself fully with his surroundings and
instead ‘ply my boat where the current is against me’. But believing as he
did in the convergence of the East and the West, the idea of rejection of
culture stirred him deeply to protest. ‘Love is the ultimate truth of soul. We
should do all we can, not to outrage that truth, to carry its banner against all
opposition. e idea of non-cooperation unnecessarily hurts that truth. It is
not our heart fire but the fire that burns out our hearth and home.’15 ere
was also, however, an ethical question, whi was for Tagore involved in a
hypothetical situation wherein he could contemplate supporting the non-
cooperation movement, and this was that of individual responsibility. is
ethical principle is consistently reflected in Tagore’s political thinking. It
may be recalled that as has been discussed earlier, all throughout beginning
with his initial writings on the country’s political movement, he had been
severely critical of the leadership class for their remoteness, in actual living,
from the people of the country and their consequent disconnect from the
real issues in the public domain. He was especially critical of the political
elites of the country for having, since the very beginning of ‘modern
politics’, indulged in a ‘non-aributive discussion of patriotism that
excluded the people of the country’ and the monetary resources for whi
were provided by either the landlords or the industrialists; the language for
this was supplied by the lawyers.16 In the quote in question, he referred to
the insistent ethics against advising others on a sacrificatory course of action
without being prepared to offer one’s own self for the same end. His
endorsing of the politics of non-cooperation would require his own
readiness to forsake their position of rent collectors, without whi any
appeal to others to sacrifice their profession or property would be immoral.
Tagore conveyed this clearly in his leer of 5 Mar 1921 to Andrews. e
entire paragraph stating his ethical dilemma needs to be quoted in full,
particularly since the edited version of the leer subsequently carried in
May 1921 in Modern Review inexplicably omied this crucial portion, and
subsequent compilations have generally reproduced the version in Modern
Review, presumably to protect Tagore against any aspersion of pusillanimity.
In fact, this introspective statement actualises Tagore’s commitment to
ethical politics and demonstrates the normative relevance of the debate
between Gandhi and Tagore. e statement is as follows:
While I have been considering the noncooperation idea one thought has come to me over and over
again whi I must tell you. Bara Dada and myself are zamindars, whi means collectors of
revenue under British Government. Until the time comes when we give up paying revenue and
allow are lands to be sold we have not the right to ask students or anybody else to make any
sacrifice whi may be all they have. My father was about to give up all his property for the sake
of truth and honesty. And likewise we may come to the point when we have to give up our means
of livelihood. If we do not feel that the point has been reaed by us then at least we should at
once make ample provision out of our competency for others who ready to risk their all. When I
put to myself this problem the answer whi I find is that by temperament and training all the
good I am capable of doing presupposes [a] certain amount of wealth. If I am to begin earning my
living, possibly I shall be able to support myself but nothing beer that that. Whi will mean not
merely sacrificing my money but my mind. I know that my God may even claim that, and by that
very claiming repay me. Uer privation and death may have to be my ultimate sacrifice for the
sake of some ideals whi represent immortality. But so long as I do not feel the call or respond to
it myself how can I urge others to follow the path whi may prove to be the path of uer
renunciation? Let the individuals oose their own responsibility of sacrifice, but are we ready to
accept that responsibility for them? Do we fully realise what it may mean in suffering or in evil?
Or is it a mere abstraction for us whi leaves us untoued [by] all the concrete possibilities of
misery [for] individuals? Let us first try to think [of] them as the nearest and dearest to us and
then ask them to oose danger and poverty for their share [in] life.17

In addition to these concerns that motivated his opposition to non-

cooperation, Tagore stated further objections to the assumptive principles of
non-cooperation, saying that contrary to being swamped by foreign
influence, India, having been so long insulated practically from the essential
principles of her own culture, had lost the energy necessary for cultural
transaction and her view of Western culture was extensively biased. On the
plane of culture, he implied, the constitutive vision of non-cooperation was
skewed. ‘When we have the intellectual capital of our own, the commerce of
thought with the outer world becomes natural and fully profitable. But to
say that su commerce is inherently wrong, is to encourage the worst
forms of provincialism, productive of nothing but intellectual indigence.’18
However, Gandhi was equally unrelenting on his position on non-
cooperation and on the discriminatory potential in the over-use of the
English language. He pointed out that the principle of non-cooperation
principally or even practically, with a few disapproved exceptions, did not
entail disrespect and boyco of other cultures. He referred to Tagore’s
misperception on this score and cautioned him against ‘mistaking its
excrescences’ for the movement itself: ‘How mu beer it would have been,
if he had refused to allow the demon doubt to possess him for one moment,
as to the real and religious aracter of the present movement, and had
believed that the movement was altering the meaning of old terms,
nationalism and patriotism, and extending their scope.’ He stated that the
English language had been reduced to a commodity for social advancement
and that boys learnt English only insofar as they understood its employment
possibilities. Gandhi outlined the contemporary situation for girls that even
today is so apparent to many teaers of English in small towns and rural
colleges in India: ‘Girls are taught English as a passport to marriage. I know
several instances of women wanting to learn English so that they may be
able to talk to Englishmen in English. I know husbands who are sorry that
their wives cannot talk to them and their friends in English. I know families
in whi English is made the mother tongue…. All these are for me signs of
slavery and degradation. It is unbearable to me that the vernaculars should
be crushed and starved as they have been…. [Tagore had been saying exactly
the same in many of his writings.] I hope I am as great a believer in free air
as the great Poet. I do not want my house to be walled in all sides and my
windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about
my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. I
refuse to live in other people’s houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave. I
refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for
the sake of false pride or questionable social advantage. I would have our
young men and women with literary tastes to learn as mu English and
other world-languages as they like, and then expect them to give the benefits
of their learning to India and to the world, like a [J C] Bose, a Roy, or the
Poet himself.’19 e mastery of Gandhi’s language is unqualifiedly
impressive, and it is almost as if he is solemnly bearing witness and with
cadences reminiscent of an Edmund Burke.
Gandhi in his second article on the topic welcomed, as he said, the Poet’s
misgivings regarding any blemish to India’s reputation on the count of
xenophobic rejection of Western culture during non-cooperation, whi
Tagore had understood as ‘a doctrine of separation, exclusiveness,
narrowness and negation’, and stated that ‘No Indian can feel anything but
pride in the Poet’s exquisite jealousy of India’s honour.’ However, he
categorically rejected all apprehensions regarding the possibility of cultural
atavism in non-cooperation.
Nor need the Poet fear that non-co-operation is intended to erect a Chinese Wall between India
and the West. On the contrary, non-co-operation is intended to pave the way for real, honourable
and voluntary co-operation based on mutual respect and trust. e present struggle is being
waged against compulsory co-operation, against one-sided combination, against the armed
imposition of modern methods of exploitation masquerading under the name of civilization. Non-
co-operation is a protest against an unwiing and unwilling participation in evil.20

Gandhi was adamant on the boyco of state-run sools. e education

provided by the government had only assisted the reinforcement of colonial
systems and cultivated the psyology of imitating Western mores and
systems, contributing to the first principle of colonialism, the willingness of
the colonised to associate with their own colonising. State sooling, in
obstructing aracter building and increasing discontent and despondency,
had ‘unmanned us, rendered us helpless and godless’. ‘I hold that as soon as
we discovered that the system of government was wholly, or mainly, evil, it
became sinful for us to associate our ildren with it.’21 Gandhi, in this
regard, expressed his understanding of the Poet’s instinctive objection to
anything that was negative in aracter and said that Tagore’s main
opposition to boyco of sools was that it, like non-cooperation, was a
negative act, and as su was devoid of redemptive value. He referred to
Tagore’s statement that he could not accept even negative doctrines su as
the Buddhist concept of nirvana as it evoked allusions to denial and
extinction, and that whereas terms su as mukti indicated to positive
aitudes, nirvana directed aention to the ‘negative side of truth’. Gandhi
reiterated that rejection had equal value as an ideal along with acceptance.
He differed with Tagore on the question of nirvana, saying that all religions
postulate that ‘the human endeavour consists in a series of acceptances and
rejections’, and suggested that ‘the Poet has done an unconscious injustice to
Buddhism in describing Nirvana as merely a negative state … mukti,
emancipation, is as mu a negative state as Nirvana … Neti was the best
description the authors of the Upanishads were able to find for Brahma’.22
He concluded his argument by emphasising the constructive possibilities of
non-cooperation, inasmu as it was a harbinger of a different era, with
equality instead of hierary becoming the determinant in international
relations. And only in this would India be able to realise the swaraj of ‘the
Poets dream’. ‘Non-co-operation is intended to give the very meaning to
patriotism that the Poet is yearning aer. An India prostrate at the feet of
Europe can give no hope to humanity. An India awakened and free has a
message of peace and goodwill to a groaning world. Non-co-operation is
designed to supply her with a platform from whi she will prea the
message.’23
However, Tagore’s experience of the Swadeshi movement in Bengal only
strengthened his unease, and he had a tangible premonition that Gandhi’s
non-cooperation movement could also lead towards the growth of atavistic
passions in the country. By August 1921, he was reading in Bangla his
critique of Gandhi’s movement, Satyer Ahovan, in a public meeting in
Calcua. Gandhi visited Tagore’s Jorasanko residence in September to
‘persuade Tagore to give open and active support to his political
programme’. Only C. F. Andrews was privy to their unrecorded
conversation. Even while it was in progress, there were intemperate displays
of xenophobia by non-cooperation enthusiasts, who burnt foreign clothes in
Tagore’s courtyard. Seeing this, Tagore reportedly wondered at Gandhi’s
confidence that his movement would be non-violent. However, in spite of
their vital differences on this issue, they ‘parted as friends, agreeing to
disagree’.24
Tagore’s idea of India, detailed in the English version of his above
mentioned lecture, Satyer Ahovan, wrien again apropos Gandhi in 1921
entitled The Call of Truth, subverted the prevalent idea of nation and
identity and relatedly the defining premises of movements of liberation.
Tagore questioned the impulse of non-cooperation as being necessarily
marked by a reaction and not a creative aspiration. is interrogation of the
credentials of an idea was also related essentially with his central concern
regarding the freedom of conscience, and he perceived an unreasoning
acquiescence in the participants of the movement. is deferment of one’s
own discernment on the part of his countrymen defeated his own ideals of
Swaraj, whi Gandhi had claimed non-cooperation was a means of
aieving, and in a way he directly addressed himself to Gandhi’s position
on this: ‘ey have not aieved Swaraj in their own nature, and so are
deprived of Swaraj in the outside world as well.’25 He preferred an emphasis
on the evolution of the personality and not on sudden, passionate
mobilisation whi comes far easier. Peoples’ movements were easily
appropriated if they were founded on ‘hatred of the foreigner, not love of
country’. For him, the nation was not centred round flags and emblems; it
was an experience subtly varying from individual to individual, yet binding
them together. India was and it was not. Its spirit had to be realised by
people aware of the true quality of freedom, through service and
renunciation: ‘e Creator gains Himself in His universe. To gain one’s own
country means to realize one’s soul more fully expanded within it. is can
only be done when we are engaged in building it up with our service, our
ideas and our activities.’26 Tagore recalled that enunciation of su ideas in
Swadeshi Samaj in 1905, made not only ‘the hooligans of journalism’ but
also ‘men of credit and courtesy … unable to speak of [him] in restrained
language’. But eventually, those who had practised terror in those times
‘realized at length that the way of bloody revolution is not the true way;
that where there is no politics a political revolution is like taking a short cut
to nothing …’ He, however, paid tribute to them for offering themselves as
the ‘first sacrifice to the fire whi they had lighted’: ‘eir physical failure
shines forth as the effulgence of spiritual glory.’ Perhaps it was their first step
towards self-realisation.27 Tagore presented here the virtue of reasoning,
whi he traced as a aracteristic value of Western thinking. is premise
cannot, however, be seamlessly incorporated into Tagore’s overall position
on Western education and on Eurocentric values. But this was not the only
occasion when he had criticised the implicit conformity of Indian social
thought, and this absolute criticism compared to his anowledgement of
the progressivity of Western traditions is fundamentally opposed to
Gandhi’s rejection of any claim of a civilisational modernity on the part of
the West. Tagore linked the urge of non-cooperation to an unthinking
compliance to a doctrine, whi he said would aggravate a tendency ‘under
whi our country has all along been languishing’. ‘So far, we have been
content with surrendering our greatest right – the right to reason and judge
for ourselves – to the blind forces of shastric injunctions and social
conventions. We have refused to cross the seas, because Manu has told us
not to do so. We refuse to eat with the Muslaman, because prescribed usage
is against it. In other words, we have systematically pursued a course of
blind routine and habit, in whi the mind of man has no place.’28
is essay acclaims the countrywide awakening brought about by Gandhi
– non-cooperation was more extensive than the Swadeshi campaign. But
Tagore was disappointed that Gandhi, endowed with a vision largely
unknown to political leaders, did not initiate a movement whi would be
more edifying. e earlier political leadership was obsessed with English
parliamentary mores and practices unconnected with the reality of their
country, whi was only ‘the bookish aspect’ of the British history of India:
‘Su a country was merely a mirage born of vapourings in the English
language, in whi flied about thin shades of Burke and Gladstone,
Mazzini and Garibaldi. Nothing resembling self-sacrifice was visible.’29
Nehru’s well-known description of Gandhi’s political arrival appears to eo
Tagore who wrote that Gandhi ‘was the truth at last not a mere quotation
out of a book’: ‘Who else has felt so many men of India to be of his own
flesh and blood? As soon as true love stood at India’s door, it flew open: all
hesitation and holding ba vanished. Truth awakened truth.’30 But the true
import of Gandhi’s message was drowned in the orus of obedience set up
by leaders desiring immediate results, stifling dissent: ‘When I wanted to
enquire, to discuss, my well wishers clapped their hands over my lips
saying; Not now, not now.’31 is apprehension arose from the ambition for
aieving results within a time frame. Tagore reminded his readers that the
poor had suffered economic hardship because of a similar ambition on the
part of the Swadeshi leadership in Bengal, when they were compelled to
make sacrifices ‘not always out of the inwardness of love, but oen by
outward pressure’.
e experiential metaphysics of Tagore, perhaps, inspired a particular
language and style whi involved a constant tussle with words to express
the essentially inexpressible. e essay on non-cooperation contains the idea
of preparing the people for real freedom, arguably akin in principle to the
idea of revolution; Lenin remonstrated with Italian communist leaders that
they wanted to ‘reap a revolution [that they had] not sown’. Gandhian
revolution too needed great sacrifice. It included, but did not stop at,
political freedom. ese aspirations were thwarted by boyco. Burning
cloth, where thousands suffered the indignity of nakedness, betrayed
insensitivity.
Even today, our worldly wise men cannot get rid of the idea of utilizing the Mahatma as a secret
and more ingenious move in their political gamble. With their minds corroded by untruth, they
cannot understand what an important thing it is that the Mahatma’s supreme love should have
drawn forth the country’s love. e thing that has happened is nothing less than the birth of
freedom. It is gain by the country of itself. In it there is no room for any thought, as to where the
Englishman is, or is not. is love is self-expression.32

It was as if a novice musician of the vina (Tagore), who is on a sear for

a master player rather than skilled crasmen and on ultimately meeting one
su master (Gandhi) whose very first notes melt away the ‘oppression
within’, is offered a eap substitute for the exacting art of making a perfect
vina. Tagore found this unacceptable. e master ought to tea the art
instead of offering palliatives. e cult of charkha and boyco were easy
substitutes for the arduous task of realising Swaraj, in whi ‘the economist
must think, the meanic must labour, the educationist and statesman must
tea and contrive’: ‘Above all, the spirit of inquiry throughout the whole
country must be kept intact and untrammelled, its mind not made timid or
inactive by compulsion, open or secret.’33 Gandhi was endowed with ‘the
voice that can call, for in him there is the Truth’. But his call, ‘spin and
weave’, was simplistic.34 For Tagore, this represented the substitution of a
dictum for an argument. He returned here to his concern for freedom, and
his statement is highly significant for realising the meaning of intellectual
freedom and for the working of modern democracy. It is worth indicating at
this point that his apprehension was perhaps not so mu motivated from an
innate disquiet with mass politics as is generally understood but with the
overriding concern for the working principles of politics itself.
If nothing but oracles will serve to move us, oracles will have to be manufactured, morning, noon
and night, for the sake of urgent needs, and all other voices will be defeated. ose for whom
authority is needed in place of reason, will invariably accept despotism in place of freedom. is is
like cuing at the root of the tree while pouring water at the top. is is not a new thing I know.
We have enough magic in the country, magical revelation, magical healing, and all kinds of divine
intervention in mundane affairs. at is exactly why I am so anxious to re-instate reason on its
throne. As I have said before, God himself has given the mind sovereignty in the material world.
And I say today, that only those will be able to get and keep Swaraj in the material world who
have realised the dignity of self-reliance and self-mastery in the spiritual world, those whom no
temptation, no delusion, can induce to surrender the dignity of intellect into the keeping of
others.35

Tagore reasoned that the burning of foreign clothes symbolised similarly

the predominance of injunction over reason. e overloading of, what was
and should have been treated as, a primarily economic question with
emotive principle was indicative of a fatal tendency in his countrymen, and
the remedying of whi should be uppermost in the country’s agenda as
untruth was not merely materially debilitative but ethically incapacitating.
Tagore found himself unable to obey the ‘command to burn our foreign
clothes’, both because it was obligatory on his part to resist what essentially
subverted his freedom of reasoning, and he could not burn clothing that did
not belong to him but to those who were in critical need of them, and
among the needy were included women who were confined in their homes
because they did not have sufficient clothes in whi to go out of their
homes. However, he reiterated that he was a willing follower of the
Mahatma in his campaign against the pressing and worldwide domination
of the maine over human life. But Tagore cautioned against any action
that denoted the acceptance of unreason and illusion, whi had in fact been
generative of the greatest misfortunes of the country. ‘Here is the enemy
itself, on whose defeat alone Swaraj within and without can come to us.’36
He hoped that India would not turn paroial at the hour of its awakening.
Gandhi, in his reply through the Young India in October, welcomed from
the ‘Bard of Shantiniketan’ the ‘brilliant essay on the present movement’
and gave a reasoned argument in support of his own position, fully
appreciating at the outset the unquestioned significance of Tagore’s
warnings of the dangers of slavish followings.
I am quite conscious of the fact that blind surrender to love is more oen misievous than a
forced surrender to the lash of a tyrant. ere is hope for the slave of the brute, none for that of
love. Love is needed to strengthen the weak, love becomes tyrannical when it exacts obedience
from an unbeliever. To muer a mantra without knowing its value is unmanly. It is good,
therefore, that the Poet has invited all who are slavishly mimicking the call of the arkha boldly
to declare their revolt. His essay serves as a warning to us all who in our impatience are betrayed
into intolerance or even violence against those who differ from us.37

Gandhi, however, refused to concede that non-cooperation was despotic

and affirmed that he had in his political mobilisation appealed consistently
to reason and not to emotional loyalty, and that it was his considered belief
that the charkha had come to be accepted by the country aer deliberation
and not merely in momentary enthusiasm. Maybe even somewhat
provocatively, he exhorted Tagore to take up spinning as it was the need of
the times, indicating possibly at what he considered the superfluity of
engaging in overfine distinctions on a course of action regarding whi he
himself had no ethical doubts whatever. Firmly locating the village as the
central consideration in any political programme for India, Gandhi traced
the recurrent crises in villages to systemic failures of modern government
that neglected to understand that famines were generated in villages because
there was no employment for the villagers. He was confident that non-
cooperation and the spinning wheel represented a remedy on the economic
as well as on the cultural plane, and that ensuring of the means of
livelihood, whi would feed the hungry, was the noblest vocation in a land
of the poor su as India. Addressing Tagore’s arguments for progressivism,
innovation and absolute intellectual freedom, Gandhi responded: ‘I do want
growth, I do want self-determination, I do want freedom, but I want all this
for the soul. I doubt if the steel age is an advance upon the flint age. I am
indifferent. It is the evolution of the soul of to whi the intellect and all our
faculties have to be devoted.’38 He anowledged that he did not distinguish
between ethics and economics, and considered economics harmful, whi
were deleterious to either the individual or the nation, and that he felt
morally bound to advocate and restore su relegated economic practices as
weaving and spinning, as they, were beneficial to the nation. He was
obviously emphasising that his own position on individual responsibility
was as equally insistent as that of Tagore. To Tagore’s crucial objection on
burning of clothing that was not one’s own and that too in a land severely
afflicted by scarcity of clothing, Gandhi’s response was unqualifiedly direct:
I venture to suggest to the Poet, that the clothes I ask him to burn must be and are his. If they had
to his knowledge belonged to the poor or the ill-clad, he would long ago have restored to the poor
what was theirs. In burning my foreign clothes I burn my shame. I must refuse to insult the naked
by giving them clothes they do not need, instead of giving them work whi they sorely need. I
will not commit the sin of becoming their patron, but on learning that I had assisted in
impoverishing them, I would give them neither crumbs nor cast-off clothing, but the best of my
food and clothes and associate myself with them in work.39

is was similar to his statement of a few months ago in July, wherein he
had replied to his critics’ ‘rebuke regarding the burning of foreign cloth’.
Even though the Provincial Congress Commiee had made it optional for
burning foreign cloth or despating it to places like Smyrna, Gandhi had
felt constrained to unequivocally declare that ‘destruction is the best method
of dealing with foreign cloth’, and that the ‘propriety of destruction depends
upon the intensity of one’s belief in the necessity of discarding foreign
cloth’.40 Gandhi’s position here on the value of causal suffering towards
superior aims was somewhat affinitive to revolutionary ideologies, and he
said that it would be derogatory towards the deprived to think of them as
being unsuitable for sacrifice because of their deprivation, and to thereby
construe that they were any the less disposed to abnegation as they were
otherwise compelled to perpetual situational denial. He had maintained that
foreign clothing could not be gied to the poor, and the objection was so
mu more potent when the clothing was being discarded as a mark of
slavery.
Should not India’s poor have a sense of patriotism? Should they not have feelings about dignity
and self-respect in the same manner as we have? I would not have the meanest of us remain
without a spirit of true patriotism. Just as we would or at least ought to recoil with horror from
giving them roen food or food we will not eat, so should we feel about giving them foreign cloth.
A moment’s thought would also show that mu of the finery we are throwing away is perfectly
useless for the poor … But I do not base my argument for destruction upon the uselessness of the
clothing discarded. My argument goes mu deeper if only it is based upon a sentiment on whi
alone the noblest in us is and can be reared … What harm is there in gaining a million by
concealing my faith for a moment? But I am not for the kingdom of the world. For exactly the
same reasons we may not use foreign cloth for the poor in India.41

In his reply to Tagore’s critique on the count of the exclusionary aracter

latent in non-cooperation, Gandhi claimed that far from being an exclusive
doctrine, non-cooperation was India’s message to the world community and
to be so anowledged must appropriately be accepted and practised first in
India. Su a message would also contribute to anging the usual image of
India, whi in the present was only known as the land of deprivation and
disease. e ancient Indian philosophical texts, available in print and in
many editions for readership, were neglected by the world as India itself did
not practise the principles of living detailed in its own texts. He stated that
the present India was different than the vital images presented by the Poet. It
was a famished land without the energy to soar on the wings of
imagination, and required material nourishment to survive, and not in the
shape of arity or benefice but the scope and the means to earn its
nourishment. ‘For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance. It is an
indescribably painful state whi has to be experienced to be realized. I have
found it impossible to soothe suffering patients with a song from Kabir. e
hungry millions ask for one poem – invigorating food. ey cannot be given
it. ey must earn it. And they can earn only by the sweat of their brow.’42
In a note a few days later, Gandhi clarified that Tagore himself was not
against the principle of spinning but objected to expectation that every
Indian must spin as patriotic duty and economic remedy. Gandhi, however,
added that given the general enthusiasm for the idea, he was certain that the
whole country including Bengal would come to accept the charkha as an
effective instrument for the elimination of poverty in India.
Tagore’s position in the debate was given further and nuanced expression
in his play Muktadhara,43 whi he wrote in 1922 within a year of The Call
of Truth, and whi centres in a major way on the theme of leadership, with
renunciation as the keynote of the play. Kripalani found it ‘in a sense a noble
tribute to the personality of Gandhi and his campaign of non-violence’.44
e dialogue of the play offers valuable insights into Tagore’s views on
leadership; the relationship of Gandhi and his followers; and more
importantly, into Gandhi’s viewing of his relationship to his followers and of
his own duties. Tagore, in his insightful way perhaps, presented a true
picture of Gandhi and his mind. Towards the close of the play, the denizens
of Uarkut, unable to find their prince, Abhijit, who has sacrificed himself to
the maine so as to break the maine designed by the royal engineer,
Bibhuti, whi was installed by Abhijit’s father, fall on Dhananjaya, binding
him with ropes, while saying that he was neither saintly nor their leader.
Dhananjaya retorts with a line that is highly suggestive: ‘You are fortunate. I
know some miserable wretes, who have lost their teaer by following
him.’45 It may be worthwhile to recall that within a few days of the
publication of the Muktadhara, Tagore, explicating its underlying
psyological themes in a leer wrien to Kalidas Nag, stated that criticism
of the ‘maine’, in this implying perhaps also device, constituted a portion
of the play. ‘It is a terrible plight to those who hurt people with maine –
because the humanness that they kill is also within them – it is their
maine that is killing their own inner human being.’46 Tagore stated that
Abhijit could break the maine whi hurts life only by giving up his own
life, and that in the play the aracter of Abhijit depicted the tortured inner
human being of the torturer, and that he gave up his life to free himself from
his own tool. ‘And Dhananjaya is the inner human being of him that is
being hurt by the maine. He is saying, “I am above damage; hurt does not
rea me – I will overcome injury by not being affected, I will ward off the
blow by not striking in return.” ’47 Tagore wrote that he who was being
stru could through that strike upon him pass beyond injury, but the
tragedy of the soul was visited on the person who was inflicting hurt, as it
was he who would have to undertake the praxis of freedom, it was his
responsibility to break with his life the maine. e wielder of the maine,
or mainator, desired to be victorious by inflicting injury. e counsellor
exhorts the mind to aieve victory by moving beyond the instinct of
retaliation, and the human being that was captive to its own maine
aspired to freedom from its maine by giving up its own life and to give
freedom. ‘Bibhuti is the mainator, Dhananjaya is the counsellor, and the
human being is Abhijit.’48 Ira Zepp has described the play as ‘Tagore’s
mature objection to political tyranny in the name of the humanizing energy
unleashed by the Buddha’.49 Zepp’s interesting comment on Tagore’s
reading of the political psyology of non-cooperation and concluding
speculation regarding a historical hypothetical is equally relevant for the
later discussions between Tagore and Gandhi.
We are not certain that Gandhi read Mukta-Dhara. However, Gandhi already knew of Tagore’s
sympathetic treatment of Ahimsa, including non-cooperation. But it might have been to the
Mahatma’s advantage to have studied carefully the aracter of Dhananjaya. In the laer, Tagore’s
more calculating, detaed analysis, especially about leadership of the Indian masses, could have
helped Gandhi see the deficiencies in his symbolic leadership and take more seriously what kind
of political legacy his Satyagraha was bequeathing to India. It is problematical, however, whether
the power and communicating skills of the dramatist would have been any more convincing than
the conventional prose of the Calcua verandah.50

However intensely sensitive to the issue of idolatrous public followings,

Gandhi had throughout the national movement, and particularly during the
mobilisations for the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements,
shared with the readers of his journals and his interlocutors across the
country his apprehensions regarding the perils of unquestioned acceptance
of his proposals. Almost coincidentally with the writing of Muktadhara,
Gandhi stated in Mar 1922 in the Navajivan that even though he was
essentially an optimist, he was cruelly disappointed at the automatic
acceptance of his proposals in the Working Commiee in its recently
concluded meeting in February at Bardoli. is scepticism is striking and
wholly unaracteristic of a masterful leader, who would have been
reasonably satisfied at the ideological and programmatic deference that was
offered to him by the apex body of the pre-eminent political organisation of
the country. He suspected that the commiee had accepted his constructive
programme without commensurate faith, and he felt ‘crushed under the
weight of majority opinion’. He conveyed his dislike of shouts of salutation
and that he had had to literally blo his ears. He reminded his readers that
it was with su slogans that mobs had engaged in murder and pillage in
Ahmedabad, Viramgam, Amritsar, Chauri Chaura. e members had
supported his proposal without inward approval, and this degeneracy of will
was portentive for the future maturity of public opinion. e form and
circumstances of his individual victory, he felt, had relegated truth and
principle:
How far will the wagon go, having thus to be pushed all the time? My soul testifies that, even if
we do not accept non-violence in thought, word and deed, that is, even if we regard non-violence
only as a maer of expediency, we should see, as clearly as we do the full moon, that aer Chauri
Chaura, there can be nothing but the Bardoli resolutions. And yet if the Bardoli resolution has
been confirmed [by the A. I. C. C.], it was not on its merits but for my sake. e sailors, who
without knowing the directions continue to pilot their ship relying solely on their pilot, will see
their ship sink if the laer happens to die or they lose faith in him. It would be dangerous to sail in
a ship piloted by su men. Similarly, those who pass Congress resolutions without understanding
them will see the ship of the Congress go down.51 (parenthesis as in the original)

To revert to the issue of individual discretion regarding charkha, the

Congress passed, two years aer Muktadhara was wrien, a resolution
instructing members to wear Khadi and to submit a stipulated length of
cloth woven personally on their charkha to the Congress office every month.
Gandhi envisaged that this would extend the rea of the charkhaand, in a
sense, transform the Congress leadership. Predictably, Tagore did not agree
with su a move. Purportedly, he was among those who were prominently
indicted in an article by the venerable Aarya P. C. Ray.52 Tagore called it
‘censure in printer’s ink’, and responded with The Cult of Charkha in The
Modern Review explaining his position, while recording his agony at having
to differ from the Mahatma on a maer of conscience. Tagore commented
that the injunction of the Congress on charkha and the unqualified
enthusiasm for it around the country reflected the habitual and absolute
deference by Indians to dictums emanating from morally irreproaable
personalities, and su dictums were especially aractive if they held out
shortcuts substituting arduous efforts to serious goals. He observed that this
was contradicting the natural, since the natural variety of temperament and
oice should be sought, as in the advocacy of charkha spinning, due to
ambition for certain goals kneaded variety ‘into a lump of uniformity’. e
absence of rebellion to su enforced uniformity caused concern, as it
represented the loss of the possibility of alternatives. In this, he was
reiterating his concern with the freedom of conscience. ‘If in any country we
find no su symptom of su rebellion, if we find its people submissively or
contentedly prone on the dust, in dumb terror of some master’s bludgeon, or
blind acceptance of some guru’s injunction, then indeed should we know
that for su a country, in extremis, it is high time to mourn.’53 e caste
system, based on the theory of Karma, had been one su instrument and
reflection of the subservience of the individual conscience by Indians in
general to the astute and the holy. ‘From age to age they have been assaulted
by the strong, defrauded by the cunning, and deluded by the gurus to whom
their conscience was surrendered.’54 Acutely conscious as he was of the
extremity of his political isolation, he nevertheless asserted his moral right
to abide by his conscience and follow his own dissenting path, instinctively
feeling that, as with any other ideal, it was among the most vociferous
adherents of charkha, that there could be counted those who were among
the grossest cynics and unbelievers to the principles of austerity and
dedication. It were the constitutive defects of the Indian psye that were
the cause of deprivation and poverty, and here he unaracteristically
referred to the depredations of foreign rule, ‘Moghul and Pathan’, and the
capitulation of ‘jerry-built edifices of Hindu sovereignty’ before the foreign
invaders during an age when there had been no dearth of ‘thread’, only
perhaps the communitarian will enliven our life with renewed effort and
replenishing ideas. He indicated at our ‘la of vitality, our la of union’.
Tagore, at this point, apparently rejected the notion that modern colonialism
had destroyed the self-sufficiency of the pre-colonial economy, and that even
during Muslim rule when Indians did not have sovereign power, the villages
were at least provided with the bare necessity. It needs to be pointed out that
his position on this issue around ten years later, in his writings on
traditional political structures, had been directly opposed to this. At the
present, however, his line of argument virtually dismissed the virtues of
indigenous political systems in India, saying that any apparent qualities of
traditional adequacy could only be functional during times that had been
lived in insular fashion and were markedly unsustainable when confronted
with the infusion of ideas and organisations. e luxury of seclusion was
appropriately no longer feasible in the modern world; ‘No longer will it be
possible to hide ourselves away from commerce with the outside world;
moreover su isolation itself would be the greatest of deprivations for us.’55
He, thus, reinforced his argument against insulating the country from
modern science and tenology. e predominance of a meanical device
smothered creativity and introduced simplistic ideas of national
regeneration. Also, the unilateral imposition of a principle implied silencing
dissent; this held an added danger in the case of judgmental error on the
part of the leader. e primary aim of introducing the Charkha, of enabling
the poor to fulfill one basic necessity of life – clothing – was belied as
spinning became a mere ritual. It was also artistically disagreeable insofar as
the ritual involved the muscles and not the mind: ‘at is why in every
country, man has looked down on work whi involves this kind of
meanical repetition.’56 It may be mentioned that spinning was not an
organic cra like weaving, where paerns reflected the artistry of the
weaver. Ruskin had stated that the work done by the head was superior to
the work done by the hand. Tagore, however, referred to Carlyle: ‘Carlyle
may have proclaimed the dignity of labour in his stentorian accents, but still
a louder cry has gone up from humanity, age aer age, testifying to its
indignity.’57 Regarding the argument that Charkha was but one component
of regeneration, Tagore argued that the reticence about other means
indicated otherwise. He questioned the capacity of the Charkha to absorb
the multifarious talents of the Indian community. 58 Tagore emphasised that
religion was an improbable platform for aieving unity in India, and the
fruition of the recent aempts at political unity though practicable would be
long in coming. e earliest effective unity in the country could only be
possible in the domain of economics, and economic cooperation provided
scope for the eradication of the instinct of competition and struggle.
Cooperative ventures, in leading to the realisation of the indivisibility of
existence, helped to instill values essential for a non-violent world order.
‘Co-operation is an ideal, not a mere system, and therefore it can give rise to
innumerable methods of its application.’59 He admied that recommending
as he was a solution, whi would involve unflagging devotion and arduous
labour on an unimaginably large scale over the years and the inevitable
setbas before nearing accomplishment, he anticipated scepticism. But he
was certain that superior aims could never be accomplished through easy
methods. Tagore was not against the concept of Charkha as a means of
fulfilling a basic need; however, it was ‘doing harm because of the undue
prominence whi it has thus usurped’.60 He frankly confessed the
poignancy of his engaging in a debate with Gandhi over fundamental
positions:
It is extremely distasteful to me to have to differ from Mahatma Gandhi in regard to any principle
or method. Not that, from a higher standpoint, there is anything wrong in so doing: but my heart
shrinks from it. For what could be a greater joy than to join hands in the field of work with one
for whom one has su love and reverence? Nothing is more wonderful to me than Mahatmaji’s
great moral personality. In him divine providence has given us a burning thunderbolt of shakti.
May this shakti give power to India, − not overwhelm her, − that is my prayer! e difference in
our standpoints and temperaments has made the Mahatma look upon Rammohan Roy as a pygmy,
while I revere him as a giant. e same difference makes the Mahatma’s field of work one whi
my conscience cannot accept as its own. at is a regret whi will abide with me always. It is,
however, God’s will that man’s paths of endeavour shall be various, else why these differences of
mentality?61

Tagore concluded by renewing his stand that howsoever frequently and

powerfully his esteem for Gandhi had moved him for enlisting himself as a
votary of charkha, his conscience had motivated him to desist in ascribing to
charkha a disproportionate value, and thereby from extending the deflection
of the aention of his countrymen from issues that were greater than
spinning cloth. He was, however, confident that Gandhi would understand
his position and retain his affection as always for him.
Gandhi replied to this critique in The Poet and the Charkha in November
1925, anowledging the unease that Tagore’s criticism had generated in
some quarters and the desire on their part that he should respond at the
earliest possible opportunity. Gandhi, however, took quite a long time to
respond, not the least because he desired an intervening break in the
dialogue to ensure a dispassionate readership for understanding the two
differing points of view. He mentioned that as Tagore had informed him that
he might not be pleased at his writing on charkha, he had been expecting a
critical statement from him. Gandhi pointed out that the variety of views
were an essential condition of life and disagreements need not indicate
displeasure. ‘On the contrary, the frank criticism pleases me. Friends to be
friends are not called upon to agree even on most points. Only
disagreements must have no sharpness, mu less bierness, about them.
And I gratefully admit that there is none about the Poet’s criticism.’62 His
reply was brief, and he responded on the counts of uniformity and
superficiality, prefacing his argument with a caution that the poet in Tagore
had indulged in poetic license and his arguments had involved
magnification of the dangers of the advocacy of charkha. ‘ose therefore
who take the Poet’s denunciation of the charkha literally will be doing an
injustice to the Poet and an injury to themselves.’63 Mildly ironical, he
clarified that the excesses of the charkha were largely imagined on the part
of Tagore, based as his knowledge of the movement was largely on table talk
due to a perhaps perfectly understandable unawareness on his part of
Gandhi’s arguments through the Young India. He clarified that he had never,
as alleged, advocated the charkha to the exclusion of all else: ‘So far is this
from truth that I have asked no one to abandon his calling, but on the
contrary to adorn it by giving every day thirty minutes to spinning as
sacrifice for the whole nation … If the Poet spun half an hour daily his
poetry would gain in riness. For it would then represent the poor man’s
wants and woes in a more forcible manner than now.’64 He dismissed the
misgiving that charkha would impose a barren uniformity upon the country
as misplaced and asserted that the charkha being adopted as a general mode
would no more displace the variety of talents and dispositions than the
universally anowledged essence of human life displacing the multifarious
activities of humanity. He asserted that an exploitative Europe may fail to
realise the significance and vital action of personal labour as it was presently
able to live off other peoples, implying thereupon that it was because of
Europe’s neglect of the virtue of bodily labour that modernity could be
portrayed as inimical to supposedly primitive forms of economic activity. He
was relocating the question of labour in a climate that was fast becoming
mainist. ‘Mainery has its place; it has come to stay. But it must not be
allowed to displace the necessary human labour.’65 e charkha could induce
people towards cooperation by opening them to the value of physical labour,
and cooperative initiatives could be imagined, as had indeed in cases
occurred, in rural areas regarding eradication of malaria, sanitation,
communitarian adjudication and other economic and civic activities. Gandhi
specified that he did not intend to respond extensively to Tagore’s critique as
their positions were not diametrically opposite, and as regards their
positional similarity ‘there is nothing in the Poet’s argument that I cannot
endorse and still maintain my position regarding the charkha. e many
things about the charkha whi he has ridiculed I have never said’.66
Gandhi, however, entered a note of wounded sentiment regarding Tagore’s
riposte on his o-mentioned comment on Rammohan Roy, to whi we will
return presently in slightly more detail. At this point, a reference to
Gandhi’s response becomes necessary. Gandhi stated: ‘One thing, and one
thing only, has hurt me, the Poet’s belief, again pied up from table talk,
that I look upon Ram Mohun Roy as a “pygmy”. Well, I have never
anywhere described that great reformer as a pygmy mu less regarded him
as su. He is to me as mu a giant as he is to the Poet.’ Gandhi mentioned
that he had only once made public reference to Rammohun, and in the
context of Western education wherein he referred to the easy possibility of
high cultural accomplishment without the advantage of Western education,
and mentioned Roy as a pygmy before the authors of the Upanishads. He
maintained that su comparison as he had made between great
personalities was not a disparagement but an appreciation. ‘If I adore the
Poet as he knows, I do in spite of differences between us. I am not likely to
disparage the greatness of the man who made the great reform movement of
Bengal possible and of whi the Poet is one of the finest fruits.’67
Before studying his position on Rammohun, it might be appropriate to
revisit the outline of Gandhi’s stated views on charkha since, in what tells us
both the importance of the arkha and the layers of his relationship with
and consideration for Tagore. He continued on occasions to explain, even
aer Tagore’s passing away, the nuances of the similarity of Tagore’s and his
position on charkha. Before the above mentioned statement of November,
Gandhi had shared in January with his readers the approbation for charkha
by the elder brother of Rabindranath, Dwijendranath, whom Gandhi in deep
regard called Boro Dada (elder brother). As is evident in Gandhi’s note,
Dwijendranath was among his staunest allies. ‘Baro Dada Dwijendranath
Tagore as the reader knows has a weakness for me. Almost everything I say
or do appeals to him with an irresistible force. e reader is therefore
entitled to discount his approval of my ideas and semes. But he cannot but
admire Baro Dada’s zeal and devotion for his country whi make him keep
in tou with the current thought in our politics.’68 Dwijendranath had
referred to the charkha as a visionary seme and had said that even though
it might appear improbable to less insightful people, the charkha could be
the single most important means of advancing the cause of India’s economic
freedom. On 9 January, Gandhi, to college students in Bhavnagar, likened
the charkha to any initially bier savoured remedy that as enjoined in the
Gita provides immortality and offered it as the greatest yajna (sacrifice) in
contemporary times for bringing peace and spiritual value to a student’s
life.69 Some months earlier, he had responded in detail to M. N. Roy’s
criticism of spinning as a waste of energy, and his argument that the leisure
of the peasantry that was sought to be otherwise occupied by their spinning
was sorely needed for their rest and recuperation. Gandhi’s tone had been
implicitly different from that in his responses to Tagore: ‘It appears to me
that the critic has lile if any experience of the peasantry in India. Nor has
he been able to picture to himself the way arkha would work, and indeed
is working today.’70 Peasantry throughout the world depended on a
subsidiary income from leisure time to make their ends meet, and in India
particularly, women traditionally spun coon to earn and occupy
themselves. e experiment of charkha could not be evaluated merely from
the failure of the contemporary workers, and experiences from certain parts
of the country even now demonstrated the resilience of the idea, and su
instances held concrete hopes for a ronically famine-afflicted country su
as India, especially in parts like Orissa where hunger and unemployment
had resulted in beggary as practice among the peasantry. Regarding Roy’s
suggestion for improved agriculture, Gandhi explained that charkha was not
exclusive of agricultural innovation and would in all possibility be the
harbinger of progress in a sphere of economy whi was hampered by
government neglect and peasant apathy. He enumerated eleven points of
merit for the arkha in this respect. ‘If there is one activity in whi all is
gain and no loss, it is hand-spinning.’71 Gandhi, in a subsequent writing a
few months later, shared a formative experience he underwent in Puri in
witnessing, on the one hand, a group of ildren from famine-strien
families in an orphanage who were now energised and well and happily
engaged in cras like spinning, weaving, basket making; and on the other,
hundreds of emaciated and torpid adults who appeared without hope and
life and somehow just managed to eat the food that was aritably
distributed among them. ey did not want to work and apparently
prepared to die in that state. ‘ere is on the face of earth no other country
that has the problem India has, of ronic starvation and slow death – a
process of dehumanization. e solution must therefore be original.’72
Institutional and behavioural solutions would require years to activate and
only the spinning wheel represented something of an immediate answer to
the problem, wherein educated and well-provided sections will have to in
practice demonstrate the value of spinning. is would, in turn, require a
transcending of class inhibitions and identification with deprived and
demoralised compatriots: ‘An ocular and sincere demonstration by
thousands who need not spin for themselves cannot fail to move these
starving men and women to do likewise.’73 Four years later, Gandhi
advanced into exploring possibilities of principled partnership with domestic
industry in extending the scope of charkha and boyco, notwithstanding
apprehensions by many of his colleagues in the spinning movement that he
was ‘coqueing’ with mill owners. Characteristically, he was prepared to go
alone, demonstrating his principled pragmatism. Gandhi’s explanation for
this move both answer old questions of profiting mill owners through
boyco and indicate issues of programmatic partnership between
entrepreneurial ability and social conscience. e mills could augment the
production of khadi for those who were not self-spinners, while the rural
demand could be met by self-production. It could hopefully extend into
effecting sartorial preferences in favour of khadi, provided the khadi
workers were prepared to dedicate themselves completely to this aim. ‘I
have “coqueed” with mill-owners and discussed the possibility of
immediate boyco of foreign cloth in association with them, in order to
show that if they mean it they can give themselves the privilege of serving
the nation at the same time that they serve themselves.’74 He saw the
weaving of khadi as an ‘empirical science’ whi crucially had an ethical
imperative. Similar to the textile mills, whi depended and had developed a
sophisticated science of manufacturing cloth, khadi would need an exact
science of production extending from the gathering of coon to the weaving
of cloth, and in this khadi workers would need more aention to even those
details whi were usually not included in the science of mill production,
su as the ecological sensitivity to the maximal utilisation of the entire
process from gathering to ginning. He pointed out that unlike the mills
whi felt no need to utilise the remains of the ginned seeds, khadi workers
would need to exercise utmost caution in even these and similar aspects,
su as ensuring the retention of organic residue in the coon seeds, whi
would be used for oil extraction and then for cale fodder. It was of the
utmost significance for khadi workers to be ever mindful that khadi was a
national service and maintain a strict work ethic even in the environment of
the khadi units from whi all structures of punitive discipline were entirely
absent. e ideal khadi worker should aspire to erish his calling similar to
the dedication and passion that a J. C. Bose brought to his scientific pursuit
whi was without any kind of desire for external reward, save that for
acquiring of knowledge and the satisfaction of performing a duty, and the
khadi worker with knowledge of the science of khadi and with devotion
would, too, derive a cognate happiness that was of a divine origin. However,
Gandhi insisted that sheer knowledge would not be enough to accomplish
the mission of khadi:
Mere knowledge would be useful in mills only. We need aracter in addition to this knowledge.
You have come here not for earning your livelihood but with a desire to serve, to dedicate your
life to the cause of khadi, and for this aracter will be very essential. How will you go among the
people without aracter? Who will accept your service? Nobody bothers about the aracter of
people working in the mills but everybody will enquire about your aracter. You have to go to
the people as servants, not as tyrants. If possible, you have to be labourers living in their midst.
For doing this a disciplined life is needed.75

Over the years, the national movement developed through events and
situations, and Gandhi increasingly located social initiatives in the centre of
his political programme. Expectedly, this was not received uncomplicatedly
by congressmen, and Gandhi publicly shared his introspection on the role of
his social agenda in the movement for Swaraj. By the close of 1939, amidst
intimations of a decisive convergence of circumstances regarding the future
direction of the freedom movement, he stated: ‘I swear by the old
constructive programme of communal unity, removal of untouability and
the arkha.’76 For Gandhi, non-violence could not sustain without
communal amity and the eradication of untouability, and the charkha and
its allied programmes involving the village cras were of central importance
in the upliment of the villages. e indifference of the congressmen to
charkha signified either that they totally laed any inclination for non-
violence or that Gandhi himself was entirely ignorant of the working of
non-violence. It is an indication of his core identification with these themes
and that this unsure aitude of the Congress towards his social initiatives
was causing a deep unease in him that Gandhi felt it necessary at this stage
to unequivocally declare: ‘If my love of the arkha is a weakness in me, it is
radical as to make me unfit as a general. e wheel is bound up with my
seme of swaraj, indeed with life itself. All India should know my
credentials on the eve of what can become the last and decisive bale for
swaraj.’77 Soon aer, he conveyed to Barin Ghosh (the younger brother of
the former revolutionary and now recluse Aurobindo) that leadership
entailed not merely the accomplishment of certain political ends but also the
convincement of people as to the integrity of the political cause: ‘e
difference about the arkha is not immaterial. My whole life is bound up
with it. If you cannot support it, you cannot whole-heartedly support non-
violence. And of what use am I without non-violence?’78 About a year later,
it was with his growing doubts about the charkha’s acceptance within the
Congress that Gandhi continued with explaining that the humble spinning
wheel was for him not a whimsical obsession but the central link with a
human instinct for equanimity as well as the epitome of non-violence:
e spinning wheel is a symbol of non-violence for me. e wheel as su is lifeless, but when I
invest it with symbolism it becomes a living thing for me. Its sound, if it is musical, is in tune with
non-violence. If it is unmusical, it is not in tune with it, for it indicates carelessness on my part.
e steel spindle one can use as a deadly weapon, but we have put it there for the best possible
use. So we have to be meticulously careful about every part of the wheel. en and only then will
it produce fine music and spinning will be a true sacrificial act.79

In 1944, Gandhi, during a meeting of the Charkha Sangh held aer two
years of governmental persecution of the Sangh, traced the inception and
development of the charkha to outline its indispensability for the country
and to therefore impress upon the significance of the Charkha Sangh to its
members. He had contemplated on the correctives required for the
programme that had become necessary, insofar as he had until now allowed
the meanics of spinning to disproportionately dominate the outlook of the
Sangh over the vision and the spirit of the movement. He admied that his
reflection on the many dimensions of the programme of charkha had been
inadequate. But with his experience over the years, and since his recent stay
in jail when he had thought intensively on the subject, he was now beer
placed for making a realistic assessment and conceptualise the future of the
Sangh. ‘e fault is not yours but mine and when I say this, it is not so mu
to blame you, but to whip up your intelligence and my own. We plied the
arkha but meanically, not intelligently. Had you yourselves appreciated
the full significance of the arkha, you would have given it the same
importance as I do. It also has political significance. It has however no place
in the dishonest game of politics. More than any other thing it is the arkha
that stands for clean, noble politics.’80 e real import of the charkha had
eluded the khadi workers, as also the larger nation, because in spite of their
sacrifices offered in the course of the national movement Indians in general
had failed to become non-violent, and thus failed to grasp the true meaning
of spinning. ey were, therewith, unable to realise the full scope of the
movement for khadi. is situation was especially disappointing at a point
when the aieving of political freedom was assured, was possible ‘perhaps
sooner than we believe’. Gandhi urged the members to consider his proposal
to disband the Sangh and distribute its properties, so that it could continue
not as a resourced organisation but as an ideal in the houses across the
villages of India and also become a source of employment and discourage
migration to the cities. ‘e problems of Hindu–Muslim differences,
untouability, conflicts, misunderstandings and rivalries will melt away.
is is the real function of the Sangh. We have to live and die for it.’81 is
aim was based in the universal dignity of labour and the idea of su a
dissemination of physical labour as manifested in the charkha underlay the
philosophy of new education or Nai Talim. A complete faith in charkha was
required for this, and this faith along with the innate vastness of the idea
would endure the disbanding of the Sangh, and with it dissipate the most
appalling fears of possible persecution from the government. ‘If they want to
liquidate us we shall submit to it eerfully. And what does it maer if a few
million of us are done away with? An ocean does not dry up if a few drops
evaporate.’82 Within a couple of days, there was a marked intensification in
Gandhi’s arguments for the charkha. He proceeded to a decisive position
regarding the future of the Charkha Sangh, asking its members to evidence
principled adherence to the charkha. He emphasised that the charkha had
only been accepted by the Congress for its deference to him, and that with
the prevalent aitude towards it he had no answer to the socialist critique of
the idea. e charkha, producing in the past muslin for the ri, so far a tool
of oppression and slave labour in the history of India and reduced to a
symbol of ‘poverty, helplessness, injustice and forced labour’, had been
sought to be transformed by him as the symbol of ‘mighty non-violent
strength, of the new social order and of the new economy’. ‘We want to
ange history. And I want to do it through you.’83 He emphasised that
believing in the charkha as a realiser of non-violence would require a
different kind of perception on the part of his followers wherein they would
‘approa it with a heart like [him]’. In this, he demonstrates a complete
awareness of Tagore’s point regarding the facilitating of aitudinal ange
as being the aim of leadership and was himself introducing once again the
issue of the psyology of politics, not, it should be mentioned, to be used as
a stratagem but as a possibility of anging the aracter of politics itself. He
served an ultimatum to the Sangh to reconstitute both their perception and
priorities, and thus follow him in belief and practice or else renounce their
association with him, but not to fake understanding and continue under his
leadership as with an illusion. ‘ere are a thousand fields in whi we can
serve the country. Why then remain in arkha work and sail under false
colours. Please do not therefore remain under an illusion. Let me go my way
alone. But if it were found that I was myself suffering from an illusion and
that my belief in arkha was mere idol-worship, either you may burn me to
ashes with the wood of the arkha, or I myself would set fire to the arkha
with my bare hands.’84 He likened the disbanding of the Sangh, in this case,
to the dispelling of a mist by the sun. He hoped that the remaining few
volunteers of the charkha would be sincere believers and would become
effective agents of ange. He offered his considered thinking on the charkha
to those who were confident of their faith in charkha, and with finality
invited those who had really understood his philosophy of charkha to
formally pledge themselves to faith su as he deemed necessary. ‘ose of
you who want to remain with me give me in writing that you regard the
arkha from today as the emblem of non-violence. You have to make your
decision today. If you do not or cannot regard the arkha as the emblem of
non-violence and yet remain with me, then you will thereby put yourself in
an awkward plight and also drag me down with you.’85
However, once again, his followers were to disappoint him. With his
aracteristic honesty of perception and position, Gandhi recognised facts as
they presented themselves to him and was beginning to conclusively
determine the abiding difficulties of creating any principled and enduring
public activity, and he anowledged within a month’s time that the arkha
had not really been used in the way he had envisaged:
I first introduced khadi and only later studied its implications and experimented with it. I find that
I have been deceiving myself. What I gave to the people was money but not the real substance –
self-reliance. I gave money in the form of wages and assured them that it contained Swaraj. People
took me at my word and believed me, and continue to believe me. But I have now my own
misgivings as to how far su Khadi can lead to Swaraj. I am afraid that Khadi has no future if we
continue it as today.86

Unfortunately, in 1925, Mahatma had responded to Tagore’s remonstrance

with an appeal to relinquish his doubts and spin like others, as it was the call
of the times. Tagore had persisted with his disagreement, although it was
‘extremely distasteful to [him] to have to differ from Mahatma Gandhi in
regard to any maer of principle or method’.87 He had noticed the
hypocritical aitude of many a supporter of Charkha, whi Gandhi
tragically perceived later, and terming it a great wrong to the country
appealed to his supporters: ‘Not to deceive me in the evening of my life.’ e
fact, however, remains that in their basic approa the two men were in
broad agreement, but their experience of Swadeshi and boyco was
dissimilar. eir reluctance to engage in a debate whi threatened to
become unpleasant, perhaps limited the scope of dialogue on Charkha. It
may do appear to some that in this debate, they occasionally fail to address
ea other and some of the issues raised were not adequately examined in
their immediate context. However, Gandhi returns to Tagore’s interrogation
of the charkha even years aer the debate and many of his positions
indicate a broad empathy with Tagore’s concerns. In his statements to the
Charkha Sangh in the years around 1944, wherein he notes the perils of
being accompanied by an unintelligent political community, Gandhi
resembles so mu like Dhanajaya admonishing his followers in
Muktadhara. But it can hardly be over-emphasised that the issues in their
debate over non-cooperation and charkha are intrinsic to the central
concerns of their political thought whi was, equally for both, the
exploring of the means to institute ethics and truth as the first principles of
political philosophy and action.
Interestingly, Tagore refused to endorse any relaxation in literary canon
under accusations of elitism and in the pretext of people’s culture. Being
criticised since a couple of decades for being insufficiently sensitive towards
mass literary sensibility, he retorted in a series of writings around the 1920s
that the pursuit of literature was autonomous and not amenable to any
criteria other than that of aesthetic bliss. e finest literature was universally
salutary across social classes, and hopefully the common literary audience of
the future would be able to appreciate what it had been unable to
understand in the present. e prince and the peasant alike needed to apply
themselves to deserving aesthetic delight, although the former had leisure to
do so, whereas the laer had none. But this argument pertained to social
systems, albeit necessitating appropriate social remedy. He felt that the true
artist, while creating rasa (aesthetic impressions), was aware of only the
categories of truth and excellence and did not recognise anything else.
Tagore never believed that the aristocracy and the proletariat should be
offered different qualities of artistic nourishment. Shakespeare might, in
prevalent hearsay, be regarded as a public poet, but Hamlet was hardly a
play appealing to common tastes. Similarly, notwithstanding the habitual
approbation of Kalidas as a poet by the general public, a recital of his
Meghdoot would probably be somewhat of an oppressive experience to an
uninitiated village audience, Tagore opined. Mehgdoot was, in fact, equally
intended for the common village audience, but that they should be enabled
to artistically deserve and savour it was the responsibility of who had been
positioned above the common public. Artificiality was undesirable for all
art, but the proposition that genuineness consisted only in its being
effortlessly understandable to everybody, and that anything requiring a
refinement of the mind for its understanding was artificial, was for Tagore
not worthy of deference. He believed that only a broad disrespect towards
the people was evinced from the exclusion of the general public from the
metaphorical aesthetic banquet where, like the servitors in the traditional
feasts given by the zamindars, the populace were relegated to the outer
courtyard and offered simply curd and pared rice, while the oicest
delicacies were saved for those who were considered to be respectable.88
Tagore’s position on art is relatable to his views regarding mass
participation in politics, insofar as he was opposed to expedient
circumvention of difficult questions during large-scale political
mobilisations. Familiar arguments of public unpreparedness or eagerness cut
no ice with him. He was, therefore, markedly reserved in his aitude to
mass campaigns, su as Swadeshi and the non-cooperation movement,
preferring a prior preparation of public agency against ethical and cognitive
lapses su as violence. Gandhi, with an evident and complete similarity of
position on ethical preparation, travelled beyond Tagore’s reading of the
present mental state of the political community. He regarded public
preparation as subject to both mobility and versatility, and not necessarily
because of this also prone to ethical leniency. For Gandhi, preparation and
mobilisation were joined in complementarity and were well served by
political exigence.
However, even with the distinctions that may be evident in their
respective viewpoints on art and culture, a study of the argument between
Gandhi and Tagore perhaps makes it fairly clear that some of their expressed
differences of opinion regarding concepts and individuals, including those
whi have been frequently highlighted by critics, are incidental and
essentially peripheral to their concerns and their dialogue.
One su peripheral but public difference of opinion occurred between
them regarding Raja Rammohun Roy, with a rather sharp correspondence
on the issue. Gandhi, earlier to his controversial reference to Rammohun in
Cua in Mar 1921, had while writing a aracter sket on the great
reformer educationist Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar in the Indian Opinion in
1909 referred to Rammohun appreciatively as a one of the ‘heroic’ reformers
of Bengal. is sket was one of a series of morally instructive writings on
the lives of ‘good men and women’, the emulation of whom he thought to be
desirable among the young generation, and notwithstanding this reference
to Rammohun, the absence in this series of a sket devoted entirely to him
has puzzled solars: ‘Why he did not include Rammohun among these
“good men” it is difficult to say.’89 Admiedly, the omission of a separate
article on Roy, along with a mention of his contribution with Vidyasagar,
makes apparent both the facts that Gandhi was undoubtedly more
reverential to the laer even when he remained respectful towards the
former. Kripalani’s speculation on the omission reflects the difficult nature of
even solarly perception regarding the Gandhi–Tagore relationship. It
should be mentioned that Gandhi’s reference to Rammohun during a public
meeting in Cua was in a response to a sceptical comment to him, whi
pointedly questioned the core belief of Gandhi that the possibilities of
Western education in reforming and modernising India were rather limited.
One of his auditors had commented: ‘English education has gone to the
boom of our national life, brought about unity among various Indian
peoples and it can abolish untouability. So is it an extra evil? Are not
Tilak, Ram Mohan Roy, yourself products of English education?’90 Gandhi’s
response was sharp and perhaps all the more so because, as he said, this was
a ‘representative view’ in a large section of the people and was an active
psyological obstacle to the national movement. ‘We must conquer the
bale of swaraj by conquering this sort of wilful ignorance and prejudice of
our countrymen and of Englishmen.’91 He called the prevailing system of
education an ‘unmitigated evil’, for the destruction of whi he had
deployed his strongest effort and he did not see India as having derived any
advantage from it. ‘e present system enslaves us without allowing a
discriminating use of English literature. My friend has cited the case of
Tilak, Ram Mohan and myself. Leave aside my case; I am a miserable pigmy.
Tilak and Ram Mohan would have been far greater men if they had not had
the contagion of English learning.’92 He called Rammohun and Tilak as
pygmies compared to saints su as Chaitanya, Shanker, Kabir and Nanak.
He referred to instances of martyrdom in Indian history and said that
Western education by itself had been unable to generate su dedication as
witnessed in Indians, who have been without the disadvantages that
hampered those who had received Western education. He lamented his la
of knowledge of Sanskrit and Hindustani, the enablement of whi would
have otherwise given him access to epistemic resources so essential to any
Indian. English education had, in reality, loaded the Indian society with
weakness and curbed the natural flow of sensitivity and intellect and had
tremendous potentialities of lasting enslavement. He, however, declared ‘I
highly revere Tilak and Ram Mohan. It is my conviction that if Ram Mohan
and Tilak had not received this education but had their natural training they
would have done greater things like Chaitanya.’93 Some weeks later,
explaining his censure of English education and presumably also that of
Tilak and Rammohun, he wrote in appreciation of the contribution made by
them in adverse circumstances and this time and even though he maintained
that to them English education was a disadvantage and that he believed
personalities su as Chaitanya, Kabir, Shivaji were greater men, he desisted
from using the term pygmy in their connection. ‘Ram Mohan Rai would
have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak would have been a
greater solar, if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think
in English and transmit their thoughts iefly in English. eir effect on
their people, marvellous as it was, would have been greater if they had been
brought up under a less unnatural system.’94 He aempted to disabuse his
readers of the illusion that the ideas of liberty could have been introduced to
the Indian mind only by English education, saying that he considered the
education system to be the most serious reflection of the misgovernance of
the country by England and whi would have the more lasting ill effects if
not begun to be remedied at the earliest possibility. e official educational
policy evidenced that the tendency of the colonial government has been to
‘dwarf the Indian body, mind, and soul’. Clarifying that the aim of his
comparison of Roy and Tilak with some other great personalities had not
been an indication of disrespect on his part, Gandhi extolled the value of
their contribution to Indian life: ‘I know that comparisons are odious. All are
equally great in their own way. But judged by the results, the effect of Ram
Mohan and Tilak on the masses is not so permanent or far-reaing as that
of the others more fortunately born. Judged by the obstacles they had to
surmount, they were giants, and both would have been greater in aieving
results, if they had not been handicapped by the system under whi they
received their training. I refuse to believe that the Raja and the Lokmanya
could not have thought the thoughts they did without a knowledge of the
English language.’95 Critics have normally been unsparing to Gandhi over
his controversial reference, with an obviously unnecessary and unhappy
oice of word, regarding Rammohun. Krishna Kripalani, who has been a
secretary of Tagore and a biographer of both Tagore and Gandhi, has even
accused Gandhi of economising with the truth: ‘e Mahatma was no doubt
a votary of truth. But his truth had many angles and many facets, and he
saw at any time what he ose to see. Like Nelson he had no compunction in
puing the telescope on the blind eye. e uerances relating to Rammohun
have many contradictions and half truths, and a half truth can be as
misleading as an untruth.’96 e impression is thus heavily inclined against
Gandhi for allegedly indulging in slanted argument for scoring a political
point, and that any reasonable account of Rammohun’s career will dispel
any notion of an anti-pathetical viewing, on his part, of Sanskrit and the
vernaculars regarding the future seme of education in India. Critics have
also identified, as has been hinted earlier, the significant similarity in the
educational outlook of Gandhi and Tagore:
In hindsight, the Mahatma’s critique and the subsequent batraing seem quite unnecessary, for,
over the question of the alienating effects of Western education, there is really lile to separate
Gandhi from Tagore. Indeed, in his autobiographical fragment (Jeebonsmriti, 1912), Rabindranath
had observed that Western education had acted like a heady intoxicant whi excited the mind
without also producing enduring convictions that could meaningfully ange people’s lives. Both
Gandhi and Tagore bemoaned the fact that this education had led the new intelligentsia to look
outside itself for strength and inspiration, rather than inward at its own intellectual and cultural
resources.97

It is apparently perplexing why Gandhi ose to ignore the well-known facts

regarding Rammohun’s early education and his proficiency and writings in
classical languages and some of the Indian vernaculars. It is appropriate to
mention at this point that in addition to his well-known writings in the
classical languages, Rammohun was a versatile author in the vernacular and
significantly for the discussion on cultural nativity is credited with the
authorship of some of the earliest Hindi writings.98 It is in this context that
Sen has observed: ‘Historically speaking too, Gandhi’s critique appears to
have suffered from certain apprehensions. First, the Mahatma erred in
assuming that his advocacy of the English language and Western-style
institutions precluded Rammohun Roy from using the vernacular. ite to
the contrary, for it is now established that Roy consciously used the
vernacular to democratize knowledge that had hitherto been the captive of
upper-caste society. In the process, he had hitherto contributed meaningfully
to the development of modern Bengali prose.’99 It was perhaps the outcome
of the political climate of the times and the deliberate, and misplaced,
pointedness of the question addressed to Gandhi that led him to take an
absolute position in Cua, as it was the intensity of political discourse that
caused his repeated affirmation of his respect for Rammohun’s greatness and
contribution to be obscured among the allegations of angular statement.
at Rammohun was a great venerator of tradition and Indian philosophy
and learning is recorded and incontestable. It might, therefore, be helpful
towards understanding Gandhi’s comment on Rammohun’s predominant
advocacy of Western education, to locate Rammohun’s forceful petition to
Governor General Amherst in 1821 in the context of the intense aspiration of
the times for the modernisation and upli of Indian society and its
unshaling from the constraints of aged doctrines. Rammohun’s appeal to
Amherst, arguably this petition that must have provoked Gandhi to include
him with su conviction in the genealogy of Western education in India,
was singular in its advocacy against governmental standardisation of
traditional education, particularly Sanskrit and philosophy:
e Sanscrit language, so difficult that almost a life time is necessary for its acquisition, is well
known to have been for ages a lamentable e to the diffusion of knowledge, and the learning
concealed under this almost impervious veil, is far from sufficient to reward the labour of
acquiring it. But if it were thought necessary to perpetuate this language for the sake of the
portion of valuable information it contains, this might be more easily accomplished by other
means than the establishment of a new Sanscrit college; for there have been always and are now
numerous professors of Sanscrit in the different parts of the country engaged in teaing this
 language, as well as the other branes of literature whi are to be the object of the seminary.
erefore their more diligent cultivation, if desirable, would be effectually promoted, by holding
out premiums and granting certain allowances to their most eminent professors, who have already
undertaken on their own account to tea them, and would by su rewards be stimulated to still
greater exertion.100

Rammohun proceeded to reject any contemporary general virtue in the

study of Indian philosophy, whi he thought to be most unhelpful for
instituting a modern society for whi he wholly preferred English
instruction and traced English improvement directly to the discarding of
medieval solastic philosophy for the progressive Baconian philosophy. ‘In
the same manner the Sanscrit system of education would be the best
calculated to keep this country in darkness, if su had been the policy of
British legislature.’101 Rammohun made a noticeable exception to the
specialised study of classical language and philosophy in his general
criticism of traditional education. His criticism of classical philosophy, in
general, followed surprisingly his mastery of the Sanskrit language and
extensive conversancy with the classical texts that included his writing of
the Vedantasara, a Sanskrit edition of the Brahmasutras, a Bengali version
of the Atmanatmaviveka and, arguably, the Vedanatagrantha. ese works
were not, however, uncritically accepted by the contemporary cognoscenti.
Robertson, in his erudite analysis of Rammohun’s religious thought, has
referred to his ‘controversial career as an interpreter of the vedanta’.102 It is
noticeable − while being descriptive of the colonial context of the cultural
interaction between East and West − that in the anging world Rammohun,
the harbinger of the Indian Renaissance, did not consider classical learning
to be a normally possible means for general ‘improvement’, even though it is
generally anowledged that ‘Sanskrit was necessarily a part of the
intellectual life of those who created the nineteenth century Indian
Renaissance’.103 It can be said that his view of the possibilities of socio-
economic improvement did not entail a personal assessment of the value of
classical learning. It might also be easily demonstrable that beginning his
effort of national upli in the early days of the colonial situation in India,
and even while contributing to the creation of a modern indigenous political
consciousness, Rammohun, as with many others of his generation, did not
actively seek to effect immediately a radical ange, whereas Gandhi was
commied not only to the political liberation of India, but equally to enact a
comprehensive ange in the climate of the Indian mind. Tagore’s
commitment was similar. e urgency of their situation occasionally
imperated on the reformers a oice of terms that signalled a break within
their views, whereas the undertone had all along been one of detectable
convergence.

Truth and democracy

A discussion on the Gandhi–Tagore debate naturally confronts the
possibility of any degree of bierness between the two, because of the level
of their disagreements regarding basic principles of policy, and the feeling
that the warmth and veneration that otherwise aracterised their relations
may not have been entirely genuine and that there could have been
effectively an element of hypocrisy in their professed regard for ea other.
e detailed discussion of their debate as above perhaps helps to dispel any
possibility of insincerity in their respect and affection for ea other. Zepp
has designated the Gandhi–Tagore differences over non-cooperation as a
‘lover’s quarrel’: ‘[b]oth words are to be emphasised, but “love” is the
stronger and enduring term’ (parenthesis as in the original).104 Rolland’s
leer, wrien on 19 October 1925, to Kalidas Nag is an insightful portrayal
of the sincerity of Gandhi and Tagore towards their own ideals, whi
compelled disagreements in their intimate friendship and whi make the
considerable differences testamental of the riness and the moral quality of
their imagination of modern India. Rolland writes of the sadness and
solitude of Tagore’s mental seclusion from Gandhi concerning the political
movement of the times. ‘I understand him; they ea have their own
mission, and neither of them can or may give it up. at of Tagore is loier
and more remote; it is aimed at the soaring human spirit, beyond all barriers
of classes, nations and centuries. at of Gandhi seeks to adapt itself to the
passing necessities of one people and one age (yet without renouncing for
himself and his Ashram disciple the strict observance of an intransigent
faith). It is natural that this mixture of holiness and politics should oen
sho you. (In reality it is not a mixture, but a juxtaposition of these two
different “orders”.)’105 Rolland argues that this juxtaposition is not uniquely
incongruent in human history and some of the greatest saints in the West,
su as St. Benedict, St. eresa and St. Francis of Assisi, were inspired to
combine the two missions. Individuals su as Tagore and Rolland himself
were unable to do so, as their ‘mission’ was more in the realm of
contemplation and knowledge than in that of thought and action, and
Rolland referred emotively to Pascal’s definition of the laer mission as the
‘order of arity’, mentioning at the same time that the order of knowledge
was in the case of the evolved souls the ‘supreme arity’.
But we should be grateful to the saints who are capable of other missions, less pure and more
stained with concessions to human weakness, for without them, to what depths would human
weakness fall! It needs an ideal within its rea, an ideal whose practice is easy and workaday, an
ideal whi can be aieved by men’s hands (for most men think only with their bodies, in action).
It is in this sense that I believe Gandhi’s arkha useful (in the religious sense) despite everything,
like the more or less meanical exercises of the monastic orders. e supreme ideal of man is
Liberty. But there is a whole hierary of Liberty (as in living souls), from the infinitely small
whi is hardly distinct form automatism, to the limitless and formless liberty of the victorious
Buddha. Life is of infinite riness and diversity; none of us can reduce it to a unity.106

at the relationship, founded as it was on the reverence for the

truthfulness of the other, endured perfectly the divergence of views is
avowedly communicated in this exange during a time of mutual
disagreement, as Tagore wrote to Gandhi on 27 December 1925: ‘You have
my assurance that even if you ever hit me hard in the cause of what you
think as truth our personal relationship based upon mutual respect will bear
that strain and will remain uninjured.’107 Gandhi anowledged this leer in
kindred spirit: ‘I am thankful for your sweet leer. It has given me mu
relief.’108
e debate also has explicit significance for the meaning of democratic
imaginings of the nation. It might be useful for a history of ideas to refer to
a representative comment on the genealogy of the idea of the nation as
perceived with regard to the emerging nationalities of what has been rather
inadequately termed as the ‘ird World’. Edward Said, a theorist whose
ideas regarding evaluations of identities in the colonial world have had
enormous influence, and not only in the West but also in the erstwhile
colonial world itself, offered a controversial definition of the nationalistic
idea in India. According to Said: ‘In India, for example, the Congress party
was organized in 1880 and by the turn of the century had convinced the
Indian elite that only by supporting the Indian languages, and commerce
could political freedom come; these are ours and ours alone, runs the
argument, and only by supporting our world against theirs –note the us-
versus-them construction here – can we finally stand on our own.’109 e
Gandhi–Tagore debate contradistinguishes the plurality and inclusivity of
Indian nationalism from the axiomatic and motivational animus that is
embedded in the definition of Indian nationalism in the formulation of
Edward Said.
As indicated earlier in this study, the issue of the imagining of an ethical
state is intrinsically linked to the necessity of truthfulness in politics. Miel
Foucault has so valuably demonstrated, in the context of ancient Athens, the
crucial importance of the notion of parrhēsia, whi he translates as truth
telling, in the functioning of democracy. Foucault has underlined and
described the relationship that is essential to make parrhēsia possible in a
society, and this can be typified by su conversation between two
individuals.
us the true game of parrhēsia will be established on the basis of this kind of pact whi means
that if the parrhesiast demonstrates his courage by telling the truth despite and regardless of
everything, the person to whom this parrhēsia is addressed will have to demonstrate his greatness
of soul by accepting being told the truth. is kind of pact, between the person who takes the risk
of telling the truth and the person who agrees to listen to it, is at the heart of what could be called
the parrhesiastic game. So, in two words, parrhēsia is the courage of truth in the person who
speaks and who, regardless of everything, takes the risk of telling the whole truth of what he
thinks, but it is also the interlocutor’s courage in agreeing to accept the hurtful truth that he
hears.110

e correspondence between Tagore and Gandhi testifies to their

willingness to speak the truth for what they thought were the first principles
of politics – ethics and truth. Foucalt has distinguished between mere
rhetoric, whi he feels imposes a constraining bond between the partners in
dialogue, and truth telling whi requires very different conditions of
correspondence. ‘Parrhēsia, on the other hand, involves a strong and
constitutive bond between the person speaking and what he says, and,
through the effect of the truth, of the injuries of truth, it opens up the
possibility of the bond between the person speaking and the person to
whom he has spoken being broken … e parrhesiast, on the contrary [to
the rhetorician], is the courageous teller of a truth by whi he puts himself
and his relationship with the other at risk.’111
Judging by what they had to say to ea other, and how ea received
what was said between them, the debate between Gandhi and Tagore
signifies their devotion to truth and democratical values and also the scope
for future theoretical possibilities regarding ethical politics that is contained
in the conversation.

Notes
1. Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (London: Routledge, 2002), 12.
2. ‘Extract from Romain Rolland’s Diary’, in Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence (Delhi:
Publications Division, Government of India, 1976), 44–45.
3. Tapan Rayaudhuri, ‘Gandhi and Tagore: Where the Twain Meet’, in Tapan Rayaudhuri,
Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India’s Colonial and Post-Colonial Experiences (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 148.
4. Rayaudhuri, ‘Gandhi and Tagore’, 143.
5. ‘Romain Rolland to Rabindranath Tagore on 2 Mar, 1923’, in eds. Alex Aronson and Krishna
Kripalani, Rolland and Tagore (Calcua: Visva-Bharati, 1945), 36–37.
6. Sabyasai Bhaaarya, ’Introduction’, in ed. Sabyasai Bhaaarya, The Mahatma And The

Poet: Letters and Debates Between Gandhi and Tagore 1915–1941 (New Delhi: National Book Trust,
2005), 216.
 7. Rabindranath Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabali (125th anniversary edition), 15 vols. (Kolkata: Visva-
Bharati, 1986–1992 [1393–1398 Bengali Era]), [hereaer Rachanabali], 5: 678. All citations are in
translation from Bangla and have been translated by myself, unless otherwise specified.
8. Rachanabali, 5: 678.
9. Ira G. Zepp, Jr., ‘Tagore and Gandhi on Non-Violence: A Lover’s arrel Represented by
Dhananjaya’, in Ira G. Zepp Jr., Rabindranath Tagore: American Interpretations (Calcua: Writers
Workshop, 1991), 173.
10. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 7.
11. Sean Scalmer, Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest (New Delhi:
Cambridge University Press, 2011), 82–83.
12. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 55.
13. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 55.
14. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 57–58.
15. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 59.
16. For a discussion on political method particularly, see Rachanabali, 12: 652–664.
17. Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, eds. Krishna Dua and Andrew
Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 261.
18. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 62.
19. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 100 vols. (Delhi: Publications Division, Government of
India, 1958–1994), [hereaer Collected Works], 20: 158–159.
20. Collected Works, 20: 162.
21. Collected Works, 20: 162.
22. Collected Works, 20: 163.
23. Collected Works, 20: 164.
24. For details, see Krishna Kripalani, Tagore: A Life (Delhi: National Book Trust, 2001), 167–172.
25. The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, 4 vols. (Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1994–2007
[hereaer Writings]), 3: 413.
26. Writings, 3: 414.
27. Writings, 3: 416. Tagore mentioned some of the revolutionaries turning to yoga: ‘From the writings
of the young men, who have come out of the valley of the shadow of death, I feel sure some su
thoughts must have occurred to them. And so they must be realizing the necessity of the practice
of yoga as of primary importance; − that form whi is union in a common endeavour of all the
human faculties.’ Writings, 3: 417. He was probably referring to Aurobindo Ghosh.
28. Writings, 3: 417.
29. Writings, 3: 418.
30. Writings, 3: 418.
31. Writings, 3: 419.
32. Writings, 3: 418.
33. Writings, 3: 421.
34. Writings, 3: 421.
35. Writings, 3: 422.
36. Writings, 3: 423.
37. Collected Works, 21: 288.
38. Collected Works, 21: 289.
39. Collected Works, 21: 289.
40. Collected Works, 20: 432.
41. Collected Works, 20: 433.
42. Collected Works, 21: 291.
43. His English translation, The Waterfall, appeared the same year in the Modern Review. e
complete English version was produced by Marjorie Sykes as the Free Current.
44. Kripalani, Tagore, 175.
45. Writings, 2: 197.
46. Rachanabali, 7: 743.
47. Rachanabali, 7: 743.
48. Rachanabali, 7: 743.
49. Zepp, Rabindranath Tagore: American Interpretations, 174.
50. Zepp, Rabindranath Tagore: American Interpretations, 184.
51. Collected Works, 23: 5.
52. e English translation of Ray’s writing can be found in the Young India of 2 February 1922,
carried with Gandhi’s approbation as a ‘closely reasoned preface of Sir P. C. Ray to a Bengali
booklet on arkha’. Collected Works, 22: 316. e text of the preface, not reproduced in the
Collected Works, does not refer to Tagore by name. It, however, has a similar analytical evaluation
as Tagore’s on Swadeshi. Gandhi, in his aforementioned comment, also concurred with the
evaluation: ‘I entirely endorse Dr. Ray’s remarks that Bengal gained nothing during the first
swadeshi agitation by bringing cloth from Bombay or Ahmedabad instead of Manester or Japan.
In order to enable us to feel the full and immediate effect of swadeshi, we must manufacture yarn
 and cloth in our millions of scaered homes. Swadeshi will bind them as nothing else can.’
Collected Works, 22: 316.
53. Writings, 3: 538.
54. Writings, 3: 539.
55. Writings, 3: 541.
56. Writings, 3: 541.
57. Writings, 3: 541.
58. Writings, 3: 542.
59. Writings, 3: 544.
60. Writings, 3: 546.
61. Writings, 3: 547.
62. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 122.
63. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 123.
64. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 124.
65. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 125.
66. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 126.
67. Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 126.
68. Collected Works, 25: 593.
69. Collected Works, 25: 577.
70. Collected Works, 25: 21.
71. Collected Works, 25: 23.
72. Collected Works, 25: 274.
73. Collected Works, 25: 274.
74. Collected Works, 36: 218.
75. Collected Works, 36: 223.
76. Collected Works, 70: 316.
77. Collected Works, 70: 316.
78. Collected Works, 70: 377.
79. Collected Works, 72: 192.
80. Collected Works, 78: 64.
81. Collected Works, 78: 66.
82. Collected Works, 78: 66.
83. Collected Works, 78: 77.
 84. Collected Works, 78: 78.
85. Collected Works, 78: 78–79.
86. M. K. Gandhi, ‘Discussion’ at the conference of the Charkha Sangh, 7–14 October 1944, in Khadi

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87. Writings, 3: 547.
88. For the details of Tagore’s argument, see Nepal Majumdar, Bharate Jatiyota o Antarjatikata ebong
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90. Collected Works, 19: 476.
91. Collected Works, 19: 477.
92. Collected Works, 19: 477.
93. Collected Works, 19: 477.
94. Collected Works, 20: 42.
95. Collected Works, 20: 43.
96. Baruah, Raja Rammohun Roy and the New Learning, 16.
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Commemoration Volume of the Rammohun Roy Centenary Celebrations, 1933, part II (Calcua:
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99. Sen, Rammohun Roy, 3–4.
100. Rammohun Roy, The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, ed. Jogendra Chunder Ghosh, 4 vols.
(Delhi: Cosmo, 1982), 2: 472–473.
101. The English Works of Raja Rammohun Roy, 2: 474.
102. Bruce Carlisle Robertson, Raja Rammohun Ray: The Father of Modern India (Delhi: Oxford
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103. R. K. DasGupta, ‘Rammohun Roy and the New Learning’, in ed. B. P. Baruah, Raja Rammohun Roy
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104. Zepp, Rabindranath Tagore: American Interpretations, 174.
105. Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence, 49.
106. Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence, 49.
107. Sabyasai Bhaaarya, The Mahatma and the Poet, 98.
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109. Edward Said, ‘e Clash of Definitions’, in Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and other Literary

and Cultural Essays (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2001), 575–576.
110. Miel Foucault, The Courage of Truth: The Government of Self and Others II, ed. Frederic Gros;
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 Index

agitation 131, 136, 146

ahimsa 58, 82–3, 83, 85, 89, 191
Ambedkar 33, 166
Amery, Jean 6
Anandamath 16
Andrews, C. F. 42, 131, 133, 134, 140, 175, 177, 180, 183
Antipov, Pasha 66
Arendt, Hannah 42–4, 48, 64, 79, 89–91, 93–5, 100, 101
Aronson, Alex 52
assassination 83–4, 162
Atharvaveda 10
Atmaparicahaya (Self-Introduction) 124

Bangadarshan 11, 17
Bangadesher Krishak 14, 15
Bangalakshmir Bratakatha 154
Bengal 7, 14, 15, 17, 28, 31, 46, 52–4, 59, 61, 154, 155, 159, 183, 185, 190, 197, 206
Berlin, Isaiah 24, 29, 50, 52, 57, 93, 95, 152, 153, 155, 156, 160
Beware of Ourselves 158
Bharatbarsher Swadhinata o Paradhinota 12
Bondurant, Joan 91
Bonnerjee, W. C. 4
boyco 72, 84, 131, 157, 158, 177, 178, 181, 182, 185, 186, 199, 204
Brahmin 11, 14–15, 25
Buber, Martin 72–4, 76
Buddhism 183
The Call of Truth 183
caste oppression 3–4, 13–14
censorship 134–5, 140–2
Cesaire, Aime 30
Champaran 96–8
Char Adhyaya (Four Chapters) 41, 52, 53, 59, 60, 62, 65, 67
arkha 83, 177, 186–8, 190, 193–204, 212
Charkha Sangh 201, 202, 204
Chaerjee, Bankim Chandra 1–33
Chaerjee, Sharat Chandra 60–1
Chaerjee, Suniti Kumar 63
Chauri Chaura 98, 99, 138, 158, 159, 192
‘Chhoto o Boro’ (‘Small and Big’) 61
civil disobedience 136, 140–3, 178
colonialism 13, 14, 30, 182, 194
communalism 130
Congress 3, 4, 46, 82, 98, 117, 122, 128, 131, 134, 136, 144–6, 158, 161, 174, 175, 189, 192, 193, 201, 202
conscience 1, 7–18, 40–69; freedom of 69–85
cosmopolitanism 48, 50, 119–33
The Cult of Charkha 128, 193
cuspidal imaginings 1–33

Das, C. R. 128–9, 134, 145, 175

Das, Sisir Kumar 7
debate, contemporary 68–9
democracy 211–14
deprivation 25, 27, 189–90, 193–4
‘Desher Katha’ 66
The Destruction of the European Jews 90
dharma 8, 43, 53, 62, 67, 68, 97, 119, 137
Dharwar Social Conference 4
dignity 25–6, 76–7, 187, 189, 194
disagreements 176–7, 196, 204, 211
Discourse on Colonialism 30
Durgeshnandini 17
Dua, Bhupendra Nath 61
A Dying Colonialism 55

education 4, 15, 25, 48, 51, 114, 120, 132, 155, 178, 179, 182, 184, 186, 197, 202, 206–10
Eimann, Adolf 89
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 32
ethical politics 5, 9, 23, 40–1, 180, 214
ethics 16, 18–20, 23, 27, 31, 32, 40–69, 72, 73, 93, 114–62; of community 69–85; and responsibility 114–
62
ethnolatry 116
extremism 59, 61, 62, 72

Fanon, Frantz 55, 56, 62

forgiveness 59, 60, 133
Foucault, Miel 213
freedom 41–3, 52–4, 60, 63, 75, 135, 140–1, 146, 149, 152, 156, 184, 186–8, 191; of conscience 69–85;
political 50, 62, 119, 156, 185, 202, 213

Gandhi, M. K. 41, 69–85, 195, 204; concept 69, 98, 161; movement 5, 72, 173, 183; non-violence 69, 72,
78; position 42, 74–8, 80, 98, 175, 177, 184, 189; statement 70, 83, 98
Gandhi, Rajmohan 79–80, 108
Gaurdas Babajir Bhikshar Jhuli 17
Gelder, Stuart 161
Germany 2, 69–75, 78–80, 82–91, 93, 95, 100
Ghaire Baire 59, 62
Ghare Bhaire 61
Gokhale, Gopal Krishna 4, 5
Government of India 121
Greenburg, Hayem 87–9
Griswold, Charles 2
Grynszpan, Hersel 84
Grynszpan, Zindel 84
Gujarat 137, 161
Gulamgiri (Slavery) 3

Haldar, Gopal 63
Hardimon, Miael 2
Herzen, Alexander 57
Hilberg, Raul 86, 90, 92, 93, 95
himsa 58, 82, 83, 89, 179
Hind Swaraj 69, 80, 83, 89, 129, 131
Hitler, Adolph 70–4, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 85–7, 90, 91, 96
Holocaust 69, 77–8, 87, 89–90, 93, 95, 100, 111–12, 125
Hunter Commission 42

Jewish Frontier 87
Jews 69–76, 78–85, 87, 89–96, 100–1, 106–7, 109–10, 117, 132, 169; extermination of 86–7, 91, 95
Jinnah, M. A. 33, 133
Jordan, William Chester 122

Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Nationalism 153

Kazantzakis, Nikos 6

Lakhnavi, Majaz 56
Levi, Primo 77

Magnes, Judah L. 72–4, 76

Mahatma 41, 73, 178, 186, 187, 191, 193, 195, 204, 208, 209
Memmi, Albert 30
modernity 7, 8, 18, 22, 43, 124, 129, 184, 196
Moonje, B. S. 130–1
moral responsibility 93–4, 93–4, 143, 147
movement: non-violent 82, 143; political 82, 126–7, 179, 211; swadeshi 153–8
Muchiram Gurer Jibancharit 14
Muktadhara 190, 192, 204
Muslims 7, 12–13, 17–18, 33, 49, 79, 111, 121, 126, 130, 149, 160

nation 5, 6, 8–11, 13, 19, 27–33, 35, 47, 49–50, 90–1, 114–21, 128–33, 150–3, 157, 160–4, 166, 169–70,
211–12
nationalism 2–3, 35–6, 50, 65–6, 105, 114–72, 175, 181, 219–21, 223–6; and cosmopolitanism 119–33;
defined 115; ethics of 162–3, 224; pathology of 158; qua reform 2–6; responsible 147–62; violence
and state 133–47; violent 29, 131
national movement 177–211
Nazi 69, 77–8, 82–3
non-violence 40–102; political 69, 84; pragmatism of 69–85; resistance 69, 71, 76, 78–9, 81, 83, 87, 89, 96,
98; and truth 40–102

Pande, G. C. 20, 21, 57, 58

Paramhansa, Ramakrishna 23, 26
parrhēsia 213
Pather Dabi 61
patriotism 16, 27, 31, 35, 62, 120, 128, 157, 179, 181, 183, 189
Phule, Jotirao 3, 13
Plato 43, 58, 60, 116, 175
political community 1–33
politics 40–102; ideological 116; mass 186; philosophy 4, 35, 52; violence 53–5, 83, 177
poltical ethics xvi, xvii
pragmatism 69–85
Prasna 59
protest 1, 2, 21, 40, 50, 60, 61, 66, 68, 69, 72, 76, 80–3, 87, 91, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 133–8, 140, 154, 158,
176
Punjab 133–5, 137, 139, 141–3, 145, 167–8

Rabindranath o Biplabi Samaj 61

Ranade, Mahadev Govind 4
rashtra 10
Rayaudhuri, Tapan 174
renunciation 20–2, 20–7, 74–5, 184, 190
Report to Greco 6
resistance 72, 82, 88–9, 168
responsibility: ethics and 18–20, 114–62; nation 27–33
retaliation 58, 80, 191
revolutionaries 28, 54–5, 57, 59, 61, 63–4, 201, 215; violence 52, 54–6, 59, 62–3, 68, 72
Rigveda 10, 11
Rolland, Romain 42, 162, 173, 175, 211, 212
Rowla Act 139, 141, 143
Roy, M. N. 72
Roy, Rammohun 7, 26, 31, 34–5, 206, 217, 221, 223, 225

sacrifice 48, 63, 95–6, 100, 138, 149, 174, 179–80, 184–5, 189, 196, 198, 202
Sanskrit 8, 10, 207–10
Santiniketan 51, 114, 115, 120, 134, 140, 157, 159
sanyas 20–2, 28, 29
satyagraha 71–3, 75, 78, 87–8, 91, 97, 102, 136–44, 150, 159, 177, 178, 191
Sira, Gauleiter 96
Sehanobis, Chinmohon 61
Sen, Surya 63, 68
shastras 17, 18
shudras 3
Sitaram 16
social conscience 7–18
social/reform 2–6, 13, 19, 23, 26
swadeshi 151–60, 172, 176, 183, 185, 204, 205
swaraj 144, 147, 148, 150, 178, 183, 184–7, 200, 201, 204, 206

tabula rasa 116

Tagore, Rabindranath 26, 37–8, 40–69, 102–5, 114, 124, 153, 157, 162–4; aitude 148, 157; criticism 173,
175, 177–8, 195; leer 134, 142; opposition 50, 61, 174–5; relationship 133, 153; response 52, 133, 135
Tilak, Bal Gangadhar 157, 206–8
Tocqueville, Alexis de 9
Trivedi, Ramendra Sunder 134, 154
truth 40–102, 211–14; and conscience 1, 67; courage of 213; and non-violence 40–102; and politics 43
truthfulness 44, 46, 49, 103, 212–13
Tyabji, Badruddin 4

Upanishad 48, 176, 183, 197

van Baumer, Rael 8

Vidyasagar, Ishwar Chandra 7, 17, 206
violence 54–60, 62–3, 65, 67, 75, 77–9, 83, 85, 92–4, 96, 107–8, 112, 137–42, 158
Vivekananda, Swami 1–33, 38–9, 61, 124

Welts, Robert 84
Wiesel, Elie 77
Williams, Bernard 31, 68
women 11, 15, 17, 40, 52, 62–3, 96–7, 139, 182, 187, 198–9

Yajurveda 10–11, 35, 227

Young India 96, 98, 143, 177, 187, 196