One who Lived and Died a Patriot

A born lyricist, Subramarna Bharati, the poet of the Tamil renaissance, was Par excellence a singer of myriad voices. He was a secular poet of patriotism, a devotional poet, a pure poet of simple joys and familiar things, a spiritual explorer and, above all a poet of future humanity, all rolled into one. Beginning as a revolutionary poet, he was transformed into an apostle of non­violence. His audacious poetical exuberance ripened gradually into Vedantic humanism.

However, it was a poet of patriotism and freedom that the bard of Kuyil Pattu. Subramania Bharati, shot across the Tamil literary scene. It was a “freedom poet” that he established rapport with the people of Tamil Nadu. Endowed with a rich, mellifluous voice, Bharati could electrify the masses with his songs on the promise of an early bright future. And the strident power of patriotic songs woke up millions of Tamils from their slumber of sloth and self-complacency and kindled their souls to a passionate love of freedom and the dedicated service of the country. As Prema Nandakumar has rightly pointed out, the cardinal inspiration for Bharati’s patriotic writings came from Bankim Chandra’s “Bande Mataram” which had become a holy chant for nationalists and revolutionaries after the notorious “partition of Bengal”.

Bharati welcomed the ideal patriot as “the Sun that rises over a darkened land”. The true patriot is one who is not daunted by difficulties and sets but strives to achieve his goal undeterred by the sacrifices demanded by the cause. This firm conviction makes Bharati’s poems an undying paean of India’s abiding great­ness. In his lyrics we see the patrio1-poet thirsting for freedom and conveying its nectarean taste to his far-flung, listeners:

Would they that prayed for freedom
be content with lesser gifts?
Those who have aspired for nectar
cannot stoop to liquor.

No doubt, Bharati was very fond of his native Tamil Nadu. He loved his native land and mother-tongue intensely, for it was like “joyous wine” to him:

Of languages
known to us, none
as sweet as Tamil

Honeysweet Tamil
should resound
o’er the earth

The taste of sweet Tamil
can give on earth
the joy divine

He was all admiration for the great Tamil poets:

Among poets of fame,
none like Kamban,
Valluvar, Ilnango,
anywhere on earth.

But, with all this love for his land, language, people and culture, Bharati was no chauvinist, for Tamil was but one of the splendid instruments Mother Bharat used for self-expression. What is more, the land of the Tamils was but an integral part of Bharati’s manifold majesty. In poem after poem Bharati celebrated this concept, this living reality of unified India:

The mighty Himavant is ours–  
There’s no equal anywhere on earth.
The generous Ganga is ours–
which other river can match her grace?
The sacred Upanishads are ours–
what scriptures else to name with them?
This sunny golden land is ours–
she’s peerless, let’s praise her!

At the same time, Bharati was greatly distressed to see a land which was united by Nature from Himalaya in the North to Kanya­kumari in the South, fragmented by race, religion, caste, creed and language, infested with poisonous superstitions and disfigured by the play of avarice and pettiness. He poured out bitterly:

“The heart can stand this no more”.

As for Gurazada Appa Rao, for Bharati freedom meant free­dom for a living concept of India, not the inter-geographical area. Bharat as the Mother was no more metaphor, but an article of religious faith, an experiental reality, now struggling, now hoping, now despairing and now transcending her limitations. Like Whit­man’s, Bharati’s vision dwells in the varieties of common humanity – the boatman, the potter, the shoemaker, the wood-cutter and the ploughboy.

Again, as for Bhagat Singh, for Bharati freedom was a total power and a total blessing ensuring freedom from every possible kind of oppression. Freedom was no luxury for the elite alone, but the prime need of all classes and people in all conditions of life:

Come, let us labour, all
Sparing naught and hurting none,
Walking in the way of Truth and Light.
There shall be none of law degree,
And none shall be oppressed.

Especially women were to be freed from all social taboos so as to enjoy an equal partnership with men in building independent India:

Who would blind one of the eyes
and welcome the lass of sight?
Foster women’s enlightenment
to rid the world’s ignorance.

Thus, from the beginning till he breathed his last, Bharati was a patriot, engaged in projecting India as a whole before our consciousness, a unified vision of India in all her physical beauty and grandeur, and with all her intellectual and spiritual qualities and powers, and, like Shakespeare’s John of Gaunt praising “this earth of Majesty”, “this happy breed of men, this little world” with all his heart:

This, this, is the land that saw
father and mother, live and thrive.
This is the land where countless ancestors
lived their hoary lives and died.
Thoughts a thousand grew
and flourished in this land.

Bharati’s head was ever unbowed and his faith in his voca­tion as writer and poet was unswerving. And he died as he had lived, the hero as patriot and poet bequeathing a new hope, a new self-confidence and a whole new generation looking forward to future. Small wonder, his poetry has become an authentic voice of India speaking to the whole world. To conclude with Manda­yam Srinivasachariar, Bharati “was not merely a poet of Tamil Nadu or of India, but was a singer of the world-happiness towards which humanity is moving onward”.