Independence Day Special, 1964
KINSHIP OF TAGORE AND NEHRU (Part I) - By Late Shri Abani Mukherjee M.A.
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“To Gandhiji the thing is right, therefore, it is rational,
To Nehru the thing is rational therefore, it is right”.
Gandhiji, Nehru and Tagore all admitted spiritual element in life; all sought to exclude narrowness in their approach to her. All of them tried to enrich man and woman with wisdom and humanism. That flaring up of passion that enables a man to see the whole was with all of them. Yet Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru are so unlike in their temperament and Tagore and Nehru are so profoundly linked. It sounds strange; but it is true. Common man who swims on the surface may miss it, but one who dives deep, and drinks life’s holy water will find Nehru as compliment to Gandhiji and not like him.
The universal soul radiated all of them but she manifested in Gandhiji in intuition, moral courage and vitality, more than in intellect. Intuition often over flooded his intellect and it is Nehru who then reduced Gandhism to an intellectual equation. A perfect balance between intuition and intellect existed in Nehru and Tagore and it is this sense of balance radiated by universal spirit with an urge for poetry that made them so similar in their essential lives.
Many are not aware of the fact that the basic urge of Pandit Nehru was for poetry. He threw it in the background and responded to the call of the country; yet Nehru, the poet has always shone as a polestar and guided him as a beacon light in whatever field he has traversed.
The all consuming passion for a romantic poet is humanism, freedom love and youth. All these essentials were in abundance in both of them. Freedom to Nehru meant mainly to free India from the British Yoke, whereas the same for Tagore was to free the soul from human bondage. They are both crusaders and have embarked on the bold voyage of soul, - one in politics and the other in literature. The horizon of both of them was known and unchartered. But fear they knew not. The same is true of Gandhiji; but he laid more emphasis on intuition than on critical intelligence as guide in the unknown journey.
Both Nehru and Tagore were born with silver spoon in their mouths. But the loveliness of the purple pomp of life did not blind them to sorrow which is inherent in it. Development of inner loveliness and meditative mind enabled them to see something of the wonder of both. Simultaneously a new perspective opened before their mind’s eye. Both found humanity in trouble. Both saw the crisis of spirit: Pandit Nehru analysed the cause of the trouble in capitalism and Imperialism whereas Tagore found the crushing power in crude materialism, and irrationalism.
Both realized that soul’s expression is joy and that is to be won in the struggle of life, Pandit Nehru said “the real joy of life is to live for an ideal. Life without struggle for great cause is stupid and silly.” Similarly Tagore says in his Reminiscences – “The soul’s expression is joy but if one wants to have joy only he will have none”. In the symbolic Drama ‘The King in Dark Chamber’ Sudershana wanted to see the King in light but she did not succeed unless he came in the open. The idea of struggle and courage is embodied in the thinking of both and both arrived at the conclusion that success can come only to heroic and brave not to weak and cowards. As a necessary concomitant of this theory, both of them advocated strong energy and vitality in the attainment of the ideal. Pandit Nehru says “Better the honest man of evils who sins consciously and knowingly with strength that is in him. Because when he is reformed he will be the tower of strength in the cause of good, but the hypocritically good can be of no use to the cause.” Tagore harps on the same tune and in his symbolic drama ‘The King’, Nakshyatra hai, the villain of the piece, is reformed and becomes the tower of strength which enables him to see the king, whereas the other timid people could not see Him.
Spirit of adventureCombined with this vitality and energy the spirit of adventure manifested in both of them in dazzling splendor in their lifelong struggle against bigotry, untouchability, materialism and other crude acquiescence to irritimalism. Nehru had a deep appreciation of Tagore’s theory of education against the narrowness (race, religion and colour). The basis with both of them was Man. They never forget him in their struggle, and they developed a perfect synthesis between idealism and realism. Just as Nehru did not cripple himself in the deadly realism of Politics but kept its windows and doors open for the vision to enter similarly Tagore though scared very high on the wings of imagination never forgot the mother earth. He emphatically laid down his theory of literature “My purpose of literature is not to please the eye and ear but to guide the man in the struggle for existence”. He impresses his poetry and dramas with vigorous ideas, of resisting civil power by a calm and dignified suffering in the name of God. Malini and Chitrangade are love episodes sweeping away caste, prejudice, wealth and everything that stand in the way. In Achalaytan, and Chandalika he has delineated at length the ills of conservatism and untouchability. In Rakta-Karabi, Nandini the life force has triumphed over materialism.
Real Man
Thus the joy of attaining the Infinite within the finite was be-all and end-all for both of them. Tagore wanted to exalt the real man not by denying life but by accepting it. Same is true with Nehru. World renouncing Mahatma was not his ideal too. He always though of real Man, possible only when slavery and poverty are removed. But in the eradication of it he never allied himself with and emotion not allied to humanism like Stalin, Hitler and many other directors. Communism attracted his as a doctrine but could not make him appreciate its means which are not always human. His sense of humanism wanted a synthesis between Western concept of democracy and Marxist socialism. He did not like ‘individual to be submerged by the leviathan of an important government’. He did not like individual to be devoured by the mass man of Erust Toller.
This sense of balance between individual, and community between finite and Infinite, between body and mind, between material and ideal is the Keystone round which all his activities revolve. The same is true of the great poet Tagore.
Both Pandit Nehru and Tagore underwent a transformation to arrive at this integrated view of life. The sunrise at Darjeeling transformed Tagore and the same was brought about in the case of Nehru by his contact with the peasants in 1920. In this year he was served with externment order from the bill station of Mussourie. He made then an excursion into villages, “Ever since then” he writes “mental picture of India always contains the naked hungry man”. He wept for them. He bled for them and Oscar Wilde has aptly remarked –
Who never throughout thee night’s sad hours
Hath sat in tears upon his bed.
He knows ye not, ye heavenly Powers”.
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