Abstract
The “Bengal Renaissance” of the nineteenth century was a watershed phenomenon that substantially shaped the modern Bengali identity in many ways. The passion and urgency for rediscovering/redefining “Bengaliness” experienced in this era of “high colonialism” spilled over into the next century and were further intensified in the wake of the prospect of independence that foregrounded the historical demand for a “post-colonial” Bengali self-fashioning. Along with other discursive spheres in Bengali (and Indian) life, the institution of music also went through some radical shifts in this complex process fraught with many contradictions. This essay attempts an exploration of the interaction of Rabindrasangeet (Tagore’s songs) with the deeply political and ideologically informed sphere of the construction of Bengaliness in late nineteenth century and after. The process of “musical modernization” already underway in this period received a robust thrust from Rabindrasangeet in particular, which, the chapter demonstrates, proposed a direction for the development and self-fashioning of the Bengali race.
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Notes
- 1.
Occasional attempts have been made by a Satyajit Ray (‘Rabindrasangeet-e Bhabbar Katha’ [Things to think about in Rabindrasangeet 1967), or a Ranajit Guha (Kabir Nam o Sarbanam) in this direction. The dearth of such historically informed criticism in the sphere of Rabindrasangeet is particularly surprising, especially seen in comparison with the abundance of such criticism engaging with Tagore’s works of other literary and performative genres. And created parallelly with these works, often on the same day, and with the same or at any rate a close mindset, the songs, which are no less literary, have somehow failed to evoke such ideologically informed critical response. Tagore’s music, in this liberal humanist critical tradition, has thus largely been reduced to a mode of ‘cultured’ high entertainment.
- 2.
For detailed and incisive discussions of the state of Indian classical music and the reformative cultural nationalist intervention in this sphere in the late nineteenth–early twentieth century see Janaki Bakhle’s Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition (Hindustani classical) and Lakshmi Subramanian’s From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music in South India (Carnatic classical).
- 3.
See Kumarprasad Mukhopadhyay’s Khayal o Hindustani Sangeeter Abakshoy (Degeneration of Khayal and Hindustani Music, 2003) and Sudhir Chakraborty’s ‘Bangla Sangeeter Nabojanmo’ (Rebirth of Bengali Music, 2007) for some informative accounts of the culture of classical music in Bengal in the nineteenth century and after.
- 4.
The assimilation of modern English education by the Bengali elite in the first half of the nineteenth century and more, roughly between the foundation of the Fort William College (1800) and Calcutta University (1857), was of course a complex phenomenon giving birth on the one hand to the “baboos,” the rootless and aping comprador bourgeoisie, described by the historian Niharranjan Ray as the “spurious middle class” (See Ray’s Bangalir Itihas: Adiparbo), the custodians and consumers of the dominant culture of the semiclassical Bengali tappas of Ramnidhi Gupta (1741–1839) and various cheaper genres of urban popular music, like kabigan, tarja, panchali and so on and the residual patrons of the baijis. On the other hand, it led to the emergence of a minority of “enlightened,” questioning, and imaginative intelligentsia, mostly Hindu and Brahma, in which the nationalist sensibility—in its conservative and radical varieties—struck its roots. The historian Susobhan Sarkar in his On the Bengal Renaissance talks about two “convenient, though perhaps inexact, labels—Westernism (modernism, liberalism) and Orientalism (traditionalism, conservatism)—to distinguish the two conflicting trends” (1985: 70) in this minority, which of course often came to coexist in an uneasy synthesis, in an individual or a group sensibility.
- 5.
See also Tagore’s discussion with Dilipkumar Roy on March 26, 1938 (Tagore 2004a: 121). And Tagore’s skepticism about the ability of the performing artist in general later spilled over from the realm of classical music into the domain of his own music, so much so that he grew very rueful about the nature of music as an art form itself which makes the singer/performer—apart from the song-writer and composer—an indispensable “evil” entity (p. 98). For a fuller discussion of the problem, see my “Rabindrasangeet Today: A Sociological Approach” (2010).
- 6.
Rajyeshwar Mitra, interestingly, talks about an already existing peculiarly “Bengali” tradition of ragas—that included a “Bengali Behag” with komal nishad and a “Bengali Bhairavi” with occasional application of shuddhaswaras—and Tagore’s creative assimilation and further refinement of this tradition. See his “Puratan Bangla ganer patabhumikay Rabindranath” (Rabindranath in the context of old Bengali music) (1990).
- 7.
See Janaki Bakhle’s book, especially the third and fourth chapters, for a critical discussion of some of the “contradictions” in the nationalist programs of Pt. Bhatkhande and Pt. Paluskar.
- 8.
See “Antar-Bahir,” “Sangeet” and “Sangeeter Mukti” in particular for an idea of Tagore’s comparative understanding of “Indian” music and “European” music. It should be added in fairness that he was wary of constructing and confidently commenting on such a homogeneous category as “European music” and talking about “Indian music” and “European music” in such binary terms (“Antar-Bahir” 27, ‘Sangeet’ 32–3), limited as his knowledge was, as he himself admitted and as critics have noted, of the tradition. He keeps things flexible and open to revision. But that he was not off the mark by far in his intuitive creative understanding of the basic character of European music can be gathered from Satyajit Ray’s article in Ahad and Khatun (1990): 152–76.
- 9.
Tagore’s repeated invocations in Sangeetchinta of the magic touch of the European spirit in all spheres of Bengali (and Indian) cultural life and his passionate urge to his people to make the best of this objective, providential historical force bears ample evidence not just of his creative Europeanism. Being, in fact, the point of seminal concern in a book of 350-odd pages along with the two issues of contemporary crisis and modernisation of Indian (and Bengali) music and the relationship of Bengali history and culture with music, it also cries out to be accepted as the objective solution he had in his mind to the problems plaguing Indian music in his time. Let me cite only two of his comments. He writes in ‘Sangeet’ (1912): “At the root of the recent awakening in our fine arts is also an impulse from the living spirit of Europe. I believe that in music too we need these external associations. We must free our music from the iron safe of convention and exchange it on the world market. It is only when we are well acquainted with European music will we learn to use our music truthfully and well” (37). Again in “Sonar Kathi” (1915), invoking Bankimchandra, he comments: “The prince from the far-off shores has made his presence felt in our literature and painting, but not in our music. That is why music is still waiting to wake up. And yet our life has woken up. That is why the fencing around our music is crumbling down” (42).
- 10.
See Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s Bangali Jibane Ramani (Woman and love in Bengali life) and Atmaghati Bangalee (The self-destroyer Bengali) for some provocatively interesting accounts of the emergence of the new Bengali subject through radical shifts in his emotional, intellectual, cultural, and literary life, shifts Chaudhuri describes as a “revolution” (1999: 15).
- 11.
I have had to consult several volumes for the translations of the first lines of Tagore’s songs referred to in this essay, for no single one of these volumes, for various reasons, includes more than two/three of the selected songs, at times even only one, with the exception of Song Offerings which holds five. While selecting one translation for a song from the available more than one, the order of priority has been following: Tagore’s own translations; those authorized by Tagore; those approved by Visva-Bharati after his death. The volumes consulted are as follows: for translations of “Jethay thake sabar adham,” “Aaji jhoder rate tomar abhisar,” “Tumi kemon kore gaan karo hey guni,” “Ami hethay thaki shudhu” and “Jagate anandajagne amar nimantrano” Song Offerings (21, 47, 7, 31 and 16, respectively); for those of “Sakalbelar aaloy baje bidaybyathar Bhairavi” and “Akash bhora surya-tara, visvabhora pran” Mohit K. Ray (intro.) (361, 355); for those of “Ato din je bose chhilem,” jointly done by C. F. Andrews and Nishikanta Sen, and “Kaal rater bela gan elo mor mone” Nityapriya Ghosh (158) and Sisir Kumar Das (266) respectively; for those of “Amar sonar Bangla” and “Barisho dhora-majhe shantiro bari,” done, respectively by Amiya Chakravarti and Indiradevi Chaudhurani and Hazra (119, 157); for translations of “Aaji barsharater sheshe” and “Mano mor meghero sangi” Pratima Bowes (trans. and intro.) (9, 7) and for that of “Oiyee Bhubanamanomohini” Kshitis Roy (trans.) (114). Some other translations—to my mind at times better—of some of these songs are also available in the Internet. But taken together, the translation enterprises devoted to Tagore’s songs cover only a very small part of his musical corpus. The translations of song-lines without quotation marks are mine.
- 12.
There are innumerable songs which deal with the idea of music as a metaphor for life in Tagore’s musical corpus outside these two subsections. I should have liked to elaborate upon this point, with examples, but for want of space. Also, I have discussed Tagore’s songs on music somewhat more elaborately in Dasthakur (2010). A detailed content-wise classification of his songs, done by Tagore himself and followed till date without any further intervention, was introduced in the Bhadra 1345 B. E. (1938) edition of Gitabitan.
- 13.
Tagore’s passionate love and regard for the English Romantic poets, especially Shelley and Keats, of all European literary artists, is well known, as is the fact that next to Shakespeare, the most popular English litterateurs among the nineteenth and early twentieth century urban middle-class Bengali readership were the Romantics. For an insightful account of Tagore’s assimilation of the European Romantic legacy, especially in his poetry, see Bikash Chakravarty’s Rabindranath Tagore and European Romanticism (2010).
- 14.
For a detailed account of the politics and sociology of the Tamil Isai movement, see Lakshmi Subramanian’s book, especially the chapter on “Contesting the Classical” (2001: 142–71).
- 15.
Tagore uses the terms “dharmanaitik” in “Bhaaratbarsher Itihaas” (1902) and “dharmatantramulak” in “Bhaarat-Itihaas-Charcha” (Study of Indian History) (1326 B. E., 1919) which represents a moral, ethical, and spiritual value system and not a ritualistically oriented religious sensibility. A few years later in “Civilization and Progress”—delivered as a talk in China in 1924 and published in 1925—he would find the closest Bangla equivalent of the western concept of “civilization” in “dharma.”
- 16.
For an insightful analysis of Tagore’s ideas of history and Indian history and tradition, see Niharranjan Ray’s Bhaaratiyo Aitihyo o Rabindranath (Indian heritage and Rabindranath, 2004). Needless to say, there were contradictions and aporias in such a “national”/ethnic imagination, but the twenty-first century Indian subject needs to revisit the ideas in the face of the evident failure of the nation to bridge the yawning gap between the state and the masses.
- 17.
Tagore was ever so sceptical not only of the ability of performers to empathetically render his songs but also of the ability of contemporary listeners to penetrate the “truth content” of his musical art. It is also worth raising the question today, moving one step further, as I have done in a forthcoming chapter, if it is at all possible to meaningfully participate in the life of the “truth content” of Rabindrasangeet today, in the age of fast disappearance of the “non-modern” episteme. I have suggested there that it is difficult, if not impossible, to do so “from an incompatible, almost alien paradigm of consciousness [which we inhabit today] … a critique of which has been the force of this art.” There is a book to be written, as Lakshmi Subramanian has suggested in the very first sentence of her book, on the “history of aurality” in the context of this part of the world (2001: 11).
- 18.
Similar opinions were expressed much earlier, during the heyday of Brahmaism in Kolkata, by Kaliprasanna Singha in Hutom Pyanchar Naksha (1861). See Arun Nag (2012: 120).
- 19.
It is difficult to get across to the non-Bengali reader the implications of this nuanced expression. In a rough and rather inadequate formulation, it represents a detached and absent-minded, materialistically indifferent and intellectually/philosophically absorbed personality located at the meeting point of the tangible world and an intangible one.
- 20.
I am grateful to the editor of this volume, Prof. Debashish Banerji, for drawing my attention to this possible Foucauldian approach to Rabindrasangeet in particular and his critical responses to earlier drafts of this essay.
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Dasthakur, S. (2015). Rabindrasangeet and Modern Bengali Subjectivity. In: Banerji, D. (eds) Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 7. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2038-1_15
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