Books

THE ESSENTIAL TAGORE edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2011.

FOR a young Bengali girl growing up in Calcutta (as it was then called) and enduring daily lessons at school in Bangla, the figure of Rabindranath Tagore meant rolling eyes and deep sighs. Much of our curriculum centred around poems and stories written by the man Bengalis call ‘Gurudeb’. The stories that were chosen for our consumption were particularly depressing and un-childlike in their orientation. However, it is in my avatar as a student of modern Indian history that I have encountered Tagore as a polemicist and essayist on nationalism, cosmopolitanism and rationalism. It is these themes, emergent from his essays and other works, that make Tagore’s 150th anniversary such a momentous occasion not just in Bengal, but around the world.

In time for these celebrations, Harvard University Press has published a handsome volume titled The Essential Tagore edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty with a foreword by Amit Chaudhuri. It is noteworthy that this is a cross-Bengal production, since Tagore is equally popular in modern-day Bangladesh as he is in West Bengal, India. As the work announces, it is an ‘ambitious collection’ and ‘attempts to represent his work in ten extraordinary genres’ ranging from poetry, songs, travel writings and essays, to novels, short stories and plays. This is an indication not just of the laudable ambition of the editors and translators, but also of Tagore’s range.

The volume contains an eminently readable and lucid introduction by the editors, Chakravarty and Alam, to the life and work of Tagore, from which a few themes emerge. Born in May 1861, Tagore was the youngest of 14 children. The introduction details the varied literary and cultural activities he was exposed to as a child despite his lack of formal education. He grew up in a household where his siblings, including his sister Swarnakumari, dabbled in fiction, wrote plays and even published a newspaper.

However, as Amartya Sen has pointed out, Tagore’s influences at home were not necessarily rooted in his native Bengal.¹ Sen argues that Tagore grew up in a family where a love of Sanskrit and Hindu texts was combined with knowledge of Islamic traditions and Persian texts. As the introduction makes clear, Tagore was influenced by his global travels, ranging from Europe to North America, East Asia and Latin America. The letters section of the volume provides a fascinating insight into Tagore’s travels and his cosmopolitan world view. The letters also highlight a contradiction that began to emerge as Tagore became increasingly well known.

Tagore was introduced to the West most famously by his collection Gitanjali which, with a foreword by W.B. Yeats, earned him a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. The prize, the very first awarded to an Asian, was a surprise since Thomas Hardy and Emile Faguet had been the favourites that year. It was marked by a triumphant tour of Europe by Tagore. But Tagore, who wrote largely in Bengali and only sporadically in English, often translated his own work or published his work via approved translators. As Alam and Chakravarty point out, the response to his translated works varied from initial adulation to later scepticism and indifference as ‘...most of the translations fail to do justice to Tagore’s original writings in Bengali. The poems often lack lyricism, and the English is archaic, removed from everyday life.’

The difficulty of translating Tagore has been well chronicled in the introduction to the volume. The early efforts by Tagore, which can be found in Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson’s anthology, now seem dated to the contemporary reader. More recent translators like Ketaki Kushari Dyson simply tackled Tagore’s poetry. Another prolific translator, William Radice argued that Tagore’s songs with their melodic lilt did not lend themselves to translation. Given the limitations of translating a man whose mastery of several genres compels Amit Chaudhuri to describe him as a ‘Renaissance Man’ in the foreword, this volume does an admirable job of translating a vast corpus of Tagore’s work. What will make this volume a truly essential reference point for Tagore specialists who cannot read Bangla is that it covers not just his prose and poetry but also his travelogues, letters and plays. The decision to involve a large number of translators (there are thirty contributors in all) has enabled the editors to thus produce a final product that is much more comprehensive in scope than previous anthologies. However, the presence of multiple translators does also mean that occasionally the pace falters and the quality of translation remains a tad uneven.

Two particularly admirable features of the volume are the sections on ‘Plays’ and ‘Humour’. Tagore’s satirical works are widely read in Bengal and demonstrate that despite his image as an ‘Oriental wizard’ he was imbued with a sense of humour. Tagore’s plays are widely performed in Bengal, often as dance dramas. The Essential Tagore contains translations of Roktokorobi (originally translated as Red Oleander but the volume keeps the original Bengali title) and Tasher Desh (The Kingdom of Cards). The latter in particular is a rollicking play that appeals to children and adults alike, often for different reasons. It contains exuberant songs and is a trenchant critique of totalitarianism at the same time. I mention this play because despite my childhood reluctance to read Tagore, this play contained some of my favourite Tagore songs.

What is less well known about Tagore is his extensive writing for children, and perhaps an extra section containing stories, poems and works of fantasy that he wrote for children would have been worthwhile to include. His concern for the welfare of children carried over into his educational experiments through the setting up of a co-educational school at Santiniketan near Bolpur in the Birbhum district of West Bengal in 1901. At this school children were educated, weather permitting, outdoors and the lack of a rigid curriculum did not deter its students from partaking in ‘class discussion [which] could move from Indian traditional literature to contemporary as well as classical western thought, and then to the culture of China or Japan or elsewhere.’² Visva-Bharati University was established at the same site in 1921 and became an internationally renowned centre of learning in a wide variety of subjects including Buddhist studies, batik art from Indonesia and works from East Asia.

The university at Santiniketan underlined Tagore’s deep and abiding respect for science, rationality and modernity despite the mistaken western view of him as a ‘mystic from the East’. His grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore (1794-1846) patronized both Presidency College and Medical College. At the latter he wanted to combat the Hindu prejudice against anatomical vivisection by personally supervising students as they performed dissections. Tagore’s belief in science and rationality alongside his questioning of them is underlined again in the letters section through his correspondence with both Jagdish Chandra Bose and Mahatma Gandhi.³

Ramachandra Guha in his introduction to the recent Penguin edition of Tagore’s Nationalism (2009) has commented on how Bengalis have often appropriated Tagore for themselves with a degree of parochial insularity. While the recent spate of Tagore translations, including The Essential Tagore, go some way towards popularizing Tagore outside of Bengal, a case could be made for an equally systematic and rigorous translation of Tagore into other Indian languages. Perhaps then he will cease to be Bengal’s poet alone and become accessible to more of his compatriots.

Antara Datta

 

Footnotes:

1. See Amartya Sen, ‘Tagore and India’ in The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian Culture, History and Identity, Penguin, New York and London, 2005.

2. Ibid, p. 115.

3. In fact, one of Tagore’s more significant differences with Gandhi was on the question of science in colonial India.

 

TAGORE AND CHINA edited by Tan Chung, Amiya Dev, Wang Bangwei and Wei Liming. Sage India, Delhi, 2011.

AT the World Poetry Festival at Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal in January 1989, a Chinese poet, Shu Ting, attracted much attention. She was young, friendly, and polite. After her reading, a Hindi poet asked her who her favourite poet was. ‘Rabindranath Tagore,’ she said, without hesitation. The largely Indian audience applauded vigorously.

Was Tagore really Shu’s favourite poet? That question may seem insignificant, but it is worth reflecting on it for a moment, because it reveals how officials view culture, and how they try to make use of it to advance specific political agendas. Shu was in Bhopal as an official guest. As her profile shows, she was ‘invited’ to be part of the Chinese Writers’ Association, indicating an official approval: besides suggesting that had she not been a member, she may not have been published, it also means that if she didn’t consider Tagore to be an important influence in her life, she may not have made the trip to Bhopal. How spontaneous was her response?

Shu’s own life shows that she had learnt her lessons the hard way. During the Cultural Revolution, she was forced to work in factories even though she was a teenager and should have been at school. To survive, she would have needed the establishment’s approval. Shu was part of the ‘Misty Poets’ movement, who used euphemism, allegory, and metaphors from nature, to make restrained criticism of authorities while constantly being aware of boundaries, during that brief interlude between the Beijing Spring of 1979 and the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 when, before those tanks rolled in, another kind of China seemed possible. Since the crackdown, many of those Misty Poets emigrated; Shu still lives in China.

Shu’s case is interesting because it reminds us of the importance of context in which academia (and, in closed societies, writers) must operate to get an official imprimatur. And it explains this scholarly volume about Tagore and China, edited by the formidable Tan Chung, Amiya Dey, Wang Bangwei and Wei Liming. Much of the volume clarifies aspects of Tagore’s relationship with China, and several essays provide comprehensive insights into Tagore’s understanding and appreciation of China, as well as Chinese admiration for him. But there are parts the volume could have done without, and parts where a more critical, even if speculative, exploration would have been in order.

As its point of departure the volume takes Tagore’s seminal visit to China in 1924, and aims to deepen our understanding of Sino-Indian relations. Published to mark Tagore’s sesquicentennial and 60 years of Sino-Indian friendship and drawn from a Tagore conference at the Beijing University last year, it is weighed by the expectations commemorative volumes bring. Those objectives – those anniversaries – undermine the more interesting explorations that could have been possible, had the mind been able to wander freely, without fear.

Tagore visited China in 1924, a time when both he and China were preoccupied with different concerns. Tagore had opposed the Opium War (and even expressed anguish over the complicity of the Indian merchant class). He was hurt by the Japanese aggression too, and remained deeply sympathetic to China’s vulnerability. He had abiding admiration for China’s civilization, and indeed, at Visva-Bharati he had set up the first centre in India seeking to understand Chinese thought. The West, whose liberal traditions Tagore admired, too disillusioned him: there was the horrific violence of World War I, which had ended only recently. (He treasured a letter from Susan, the mother of the poet Wilfred Owen – who died in the war – in which she had written to Tagore how much Tagore had meant to Owen.)

Besides that war, there were fresh wounds closer home: the Jallianwalla Bagh Massacre of 1919 had shocked Tagore, and he returned his knighthood. He disliked the violent manifestations of modernity, while admiring science and its achievements. He thought more deeply about nation-states, boundaries, universalism and humanity. Even today, his ideas about nationalism remain utopian for those who let realpolitik dictate their thinking.

China had rejoiced when Tagore received the Nobel Prize in 1913, but it was a different country, in a different mood, when he visited China a decade later. The revolution that overthrew Puyi (the ‘last’ emperor) in 1911 was still fresh. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I had handed over Shandong to Japan, and not China, stoking nationalist sentiments, and on May 4 that year, students revolted against the treaty.

China’s younger, radical intellectuals had little time for ancient traditions and spiritual thoughts, which they associated with the establishment that they sought to replace. Those ideas had kept China fossilized, a subject nation. Battle lines were drawn in China when Tagore arrived. His praise for traditions disappointed some radicals. Left-leaning writers challenged Tagore’s idea of venerating the past. Tagore’s decision not to meet Dr Sun Yat-Sen in Guangzhou, while meeting the dethroned Puyi, sent wrong signals to nationalist Chinese. As Amartya Sen notes in his introductory essay: ‘It is well known that the visit generated considerable disapproval and reproach from a substantial number of Chinese intellectuals.’ Indeed, Shen Yambing wrote in 1924: ‘We respect [Tagore] because he is pure in heart. We respect him because he feels for the oppressed and the underdogs. We respect him because he is on the side of the peasants ... But we do not welcome the Tagore who loudly sings the praise of Oriental civilization, nor do we welcome the Tagore who creates a paradise of poetry that has made our youth intoxicated and self-complacent.’ That said, Sen shows the reaction was more complex, and some Communists and radicals spoke or wrote well about Tagore, even welcoming him.

Equally there were many who liked him; Liang Qichao gave Tagore a Chinese name, Zhu Zhendan, and Tagore wrote a poem:

Once I went to the land of China,

Those whom I had not met

Put the mark of friendship on my forehead

Calling me their own.

Tagore was surprised, and hurt, by the way some of his thoughts were received in China. But his interest remained, and this volume builds on that interest by digging deep into Tagore’s relationship with China. For an overview, Uma Das Gupta’s detailed account of how Cheena Bhavana came into being, setting the foundation for the Sino-Indian Studies Centre at Visva-Bharati, is an excellent primer. Together with Swapan Majumdar’s survey of Tagore’s writings on China, those two essays establish the stepping stones.

There are other arcane discoveries of great value to academics, such as an inquiry into the origins of specific documents and inscriptions, leading to a reassessment of some of the chronology and understanding of Tagore’s time in China. There is also exceptional granular detail in some instances, but in the process, the book misses the opportunity to explore larger contemporary questions of political import. Where current events intrude, the incidents are sometimes banal, the narrative almost hagiographic in nature, including a gratuitous reference to Indian President Pratibha Patil’s visit to China last year, when she referred to Tan Yun-Shan’s contribution to Sino-Indian friendship. Tan’s contribution was indeed seminal, but Patil’s reference to his work at an official reception does not enhance his reputation more, nor does the reference that Tan’s daughter-in-law Huang I-Shu was writing an academic article about the Tan-Tagore relationship at that time. That’s not seeing the world in a grain of sand, but enlarging a grain of sand into something much bigger.

Some essays offer a glimpse of what China’s current trajectory might mean. Amiya Dev and Tan Chung examine Tagore’s vision of the East, offering hints about how China might negotiate its emergence on the global scene as a major power such that it is loved, and not feared. Other essays offer substantive discussion of Tagore’s literary, musical, and artistic genius. For Indian readers, more interesting is the discussion about Tagore’s impact on Chinese writing. Tan further explores the influence of classical Chinese poetry, from the Tang and Song dynasties, on Tagore’s own work, which shows Tagore’s poetry in new light.

There are expected mentions of Jawaharlal Nehru, and the slogan, Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai gets an appreciative nod, but there is only a passing reference to the ‘unfortunate’ border conflict of 1962 in foreign secretary Nirupama Rao’s foreword. Jairam Ramesh’s term, ‘Chindia’, gets wider play, even though the kind of ‘Chindia’ Ramesh and GDP-obsessed Indian and Chinese planners seem to have in mind would have been unrecognizable to Tagore, who had a very different idea of borderlessness – where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, but also where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Fans of Chindia want India to become more like China. But it is possible that Tagore would have wanted China to become more like India. With all its flaws, India did not have a Cultural Revolution that sent a teenager like Shu to work in a factory, nor a Great Leap Forward that caused starvation deaths. Sen has himself written about how China dealt with the famine in the 1960s, and how the crisis worsened without fundamental freedoms. And Tagore would have sung with the peaceful students at Tiananmen Square, with his head held high.

Salil Tripathi