Tagore: His Philosophy and Poetry and The Issues of The East West Relationship, Modernity and Tradition and Nationalism
Tagore: His Philosophy and Poetry and The Issues of The East West Relationship, Modernity and Tradition and Nationalism
Tagore: His Philosophy and Poetry and The Issues of The East West Relationship, Modernity and Tradition and Nationalism
He who sees all beings in his self, and his self in all the
Beings does not hate any one, and knows the truth
For the Western world also the orient was the other and
our literature, philosophy were located in the context of Indian
culture, especially religious philosophy. West developed a
myopic vision of Indian thought as religious, spiritual and
transcendental. The other, an inalienable entity external to one
self is both a source of terror and an object of desire for the
West.
Sartres famous statement hell is the other carries a
strong echo of Hegel, who always defines ones identity as
identity against the other either to be appropriated or to be
destroyed.
It is true that they (East & West) are not showing any real
sign of meeting. But the reason is because the West has not
sent out its humanity to meet the man in the East but only its
machine. Therefore, the poets line has to be changed into
something like this. Man is man, Machine is Machine and
never the twain shall wed.
But for all practical purposes, one can say that whatever is
western is modern. This kind of an idea is based on a
counterfeit concept very cleverly designed by the colonial
masters that westernization is modernization. There is no
doubt that the largest corpus of ideas, thoughts, modes and
methods, etc., of our life in the present and recent times are
admittedly western by origin, yet the fact remains that in the
process of our becoming modern something was happening
within ourselves, that, in spite of our acceptance of Western
modernization, we were doubtful about its value and results,
and were constantly searching for our own modernity. The
West develops through substitution and it writes itself again
and again. India develops through accommodation. It is, as says
Tagore, like a sea of great humanity where all are merged in
one body. Here new ideas may supplant older ones, but the
older ones linger on. They are allowed to co-exist with what is
new. Here one does not reject to create ones modernity.
He said that the word nation is not in our language. India has
never had a real sense of western nationalism. Society is in the
core of Indias civilization and politics is in the core of western
civilization and hence the importance which Europe gave to
freedom we gave to liberation of the soul. Tagore said, form
yourself into a nation (nation with a small n) to mean society
which was relevant to humanity and stop the encroachment of
Nation with a capital N to mean a nation-state or the nations of
the West which has a i) self destructive tendency, ii)) which
turns violent, iii) snatches ones freedom, iv) spreads a
homogenized universalism and v) makes one selfish and
exclusive.
Tagore did not ignore the state but it was not a deciding factor
for him. State and community both were important for him and
both were complementary to each other.
His statement was that in nation dominated countries the core
of the country resides in its nationhood and in society
dominated countries the core of the country is felt everywhere.
Tagore wanted to revive the society in the society of every
village there remained an inner society (aatmiya samaj) of
friendliness and cooperation. Both Gandhi and Tagore wanted
villages to be brought into the limelight and for that he opted
for swadeshi where still resides the basic values of Indian
culture and which are self-dependent. National unity could
become a reality only when the masses get an instinctive
feeling about it and for that educated classes and masses must
unite into a common programme of work to make the country
our own and prosperous.