The Message of Tagore

“The song that moves a nation’s heart, is in itself a deed,” wrote Lord Tennyson. There is hardly any doubt that the songs and other writings of Tagore moved the nation’s heart and continues to do so even now. Modern India owes a great debt of gratitude to him. Dr. Radhakrishnan very aptly pointed out: “We do not know whether it is Rabindranath’s own heart or the heart of India that is beating here in his writings. In his work, India finds the lost word she was seeking. The familiar truths of Indian philosophy and religion, the value of which it has become fashionable to belittle even in the land of their birth, are here handled with such rare reverence and deep feeling that they seem to be almost new.”

There is no denying the fact that Rabindranath’s writings have been receiving extended critical attention from great minds, yet one feels that the relevance of some of his writings relating to the realities of India as well as his contribution to the moral regeneration and social uplift of the country have not been adequately discussed. In this article an humble attempt has been made to refer to some notable aspects of his writings relating to the rude and sordid realities prevailing in India.

At the very outset however it should be pointed out that the message of Tagore is not narrowly national in spirit. It is imbued with much wider spirit. To put it more simply, Tagore does not speak only to Indians but the world at large. At the same time however it can be pertinently pointed out that some of his writings have particular relevance to us for the simple reason that those are related to certain problems specific to India and the people of the country.

Rabindranath was not only a great poet, he was also a great seer. He foresaw the possible religious problems facing his motherland. He also foresaw that the bewildering variety of faiths and creeds flourishing in the country could create enormous and insurmountable problems. Therefore in several writings he presented to us a vision of India where different religions won’t divide the people but unite them. He pointed out again and again that this could only be possible when all Indians would realise that it were only the externals of religious worship that divide us, the deeper care of religious truth always bind us together. The Sufi mystics, the Christian divines and Hindu sages all realised this. The religious message that emerges clearly from the play “Fruit Gathering” makes us aware of this fact. We realise that the path of real happiness lies in clinging to religion and let religions go. In this play he also teaches us to try to free ourselves from exhausted traditions, meaningless religious rites and rituals, dogmas and superstitions.

In one of his writings published in The Modern Review (June 1913) he expressed his hope that “Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians will not fight each other on the soil of India; they will here seek and attain a synthesis. That synthesis will not be un-Hindu, it will be peculiarly Hindu. Whatever its external features may be, the resultant harmony will be Indian in spirit.” It is a great pity that this hope has been belied. Religious bickerings still divide us. Yet one fervently hopes that a careful study and analysis of his works would one day make us aware of the true significance of religion and a realisation would dawn upon us that the soil of our motherland contains the dust our true saints, Hindus and Muslims and Christians alike, who made India their home and dedicated themselves to the well-being of the country, thus making our land sacred where religious bigotry and fanaticism should be considered nothing less than a sacrilege.

We can hardly deny the fact that these days we find ourselves shackled by exhausted traditions and spent forces. We engage ourselves in idle rites and ceremonies. Dogmas and superstitions blind us our intellects fail utterly to free ourselves from snobbery and meanness. Men in authority lack humility. They are plagued by pride and prejudice of authority. Tagore in his several writings stated that India must be made free from all these besetting sins.

In several essays published during the years 1911-14 in the reputed journal The Modern Review, Rabindranath expressed his views about the caste system prevalent in India. According to him, there was a time when the caste system served some useful purpose. Today, however, it has proved a positive hindrance to the spiritual faith within and social progress outside. This system hinders nobility of mind and the flow of life. It would perhaps be quite a surprise to many readers that in one of his numerous letters he referred to the problem of population explosion in India and gave his considered opinion that the family planning measures were a must in India and other poverty ­stricken countries of the world. This would surely give us an idea of his awareness of the problems concerning India and there is hardly any doubt that his writings give us hints to the solution of many problems confronting the country.

Rabindranath cautioned us again and again against adopting a materialistic attitude to life. According to him such an attitude invariably generates social discontent and unrest. In this connection, a noted philosopher L. P. Jacks rightly observed: “The root evil is that a community, which makes wealth its object and pursues it on the terms laid down by the economic machine, is living under conditions which satisfy no body and against which all men are by the higher human nature born rebels.” Unfortunately for us now-a-days in our country we find that whereas, on the one hand, the vast majority of the people are steeped in due poverty, on the other, a sizeable section of the people have become shameless worshippers of mammon. Their lives are dominated by money culture. The craze to acquire material objects rules the roost. A spiritual vision of life has given way to material point of view. The solution, therefore, lies in attaining spiritual individuality. Rabindranath aptly observed: “If India becomes free in soul and preserves her spiritual individuality, then all other things shall be added into her. Then in India, province will join province, race will join race, knowledge will be linked with knowledge, endeavour with endeavour: then the present chapter of Indian history will end and she will emerge in the larger history of the world.”