An essay on Tagore - Amartya Sen

From The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen

The Argumentative Indian is a collection of essays on India, and figures from India.

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This year I've tried to read books from/on India more, either through its authors or through its books. One of them is Tagore. Another is Kim/Rudyard Kipling. A friend had suggested essays by Ruskin Bond. Then a little bit of R K Narayan (Guide, and some essays). 

Came across the book Letters from a Young Poet by Tagore in a local library. Such a delight! More on the book elsewhere. But it is the sensibility, the writing, the world-view that makes Tagore such an inviting, humane read. There are authors whose thoughts lend you good sense, a wide-open thinking, an accepting, cosmoplitan, citizen of this world world-view. Something on the other end of spectrum from parochial. Something that lets you echo your humanity and lend tranquility at the same time.

While going through the Argumentative Indian, as my own personal approach to Amartya Sen's writing, I realise he who was educated at Shanti Niketan, and he shares some things about Tagore which anyone reading him would perhaps agree with and which perhaps are a much better mirror for a while and then guide to my thoughts on Tagore. He says it all in such a fine manner. Some excerpts from his essay on Tagore:

He was uncompromising in his belief that human beings could absorb quite different cultures in constructive ways

 

Indeed, in his educational writings the need for synthesis is strongly stressed.

 

There seems to me much force in Rabindranath’s argument for clearly distinguishing between the injustice of a serious asymmetry of power (colonialism being a prime example of this) and the importance nevertheless of appraising Western culture in an open-minded way, in colonial and post-colonial territories, in order to see what uses could be made of it.

Hatred of one group can lead to hatred of others, no matter how far such feeling may be from the minds of humane nationalist leaders like Mahatma Gandhi.

Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.’ (Tagore)

The tragedy, as Tagore saw it, came from the fact that what ‘was truly best in their own civilization, the upholding of dignity of human relationships, has no place in the British administration of this country.’

as a pamphlet under the title Crisis in Civilization, he strains hard to maintain the distinction between opposing Western imperialism and rejecting Western civilization.

Whenever there is the least sign of the nest becoming a jealous rival of the sky[,] my mind, like a migrant bird, tries to take … flight to a distant shore. (Tagore)

 

He had practical, plainly expressed views about nationalism, war and peace, cross-cultural education, freedom of the mind, the importance of rational criticism, the need for cultural openness, and so on.

 

with Tagore pressing for more room for reasoning, and for a less traditionalist view, a greater interest in the rest of the world, and more respect for science and for objectivity generally.

 

Gandhi and Tagore. Two types entirely different from each other, and yet both of them typical of India, both in the long line of India’s great men… . It is not so much because of any single virtue but because of the tout ensemble, that I felt that among the world’s great men today Gandhi and Tagore were supreme as human beings. What good fortune for me to have come into close contact with them.

Sen, Amartya. “The Argumentative Indian.”  This material may be protected by copyright.