Abstract
Tagore and Gandhi had engaged in a lively debate on a national question that revealed several complexities in their perceptions of the future polity. A fresh perspective was added to the debate in this period by B.R. Ambedkar, the symbol of social rebellion against oppressive tradition. This paper argues that in the dialogue between Tagore and Gandhi and in the confrontation between the latter and Ambedkar, there are conflicting propositions on how the balance between state and civil society is to be enshrined in the Indian political order.
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Notes
- 1.
See for instance, Safranski (2002). The worry over the triumph of mediocrity bearing the Victorian bourgeois stamp also worried liberals such as John Stuart Mill, except they saw no cure for it other than democratic reforms that would extend the frontiers of participation to all.
- 2.
‘Christianity and Patriotism’.
- 3.
‘Patriotism and Government’.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
The following words are fairly illustrative: ‘God the Father and Teacher of Humanity reveals His law to Humanity in space and time. Interrogate the traditions of Humanity—which is the Council of your fellow-men—not in the confined circle of one century or of one school of thinkers, but in all the centuries and in the majority of men past and present. Whenever the voice of your conscience corresponds with that general voice of Humanity you are certain of the truth, certain of knowing one line of God’s law’ (Mazzini 1862, pp. 40–46).
- 7.
These themes are addressed in an earlier paper by this writer, titled ‘Patriotism Without People: Milestones in the Evolution of the Hindu Nationalist Ideology’, Social Scientist, 22:5/6; May–June 1994, pp. 3–38.
- 8.
See the evaluation of the work of Emil Durkheim by Giddens (1997).
- 9.
This 1920 letter by Mahalanobis is quoted in E.P. Thompson’s introduction in Tagore (1991, p. 3).
- 10.
The literature on this subject is not very ample, perhaps because historiography has been under compulsion to conform with the grand narrative of Indian nationalism. Carroll (1978, pp. 233–250), is an exception.
- 11.
It is clear that Tagore remained an active political (or public) intellectual through the 1930s and retained his contacts with Gandhi and Nehru through the 1930s. He was invited to participate in the AICC session of 1937 and made some remarks there which are yet to be faithfully reported, if at all they have been recorded. There is evidence of a philosophical shift in Gandhi in the 1930s, but not so much in the case of Tagore. Tagore’s actions through the 1930s may have been born in pragmatism or a sense of duty. This needs to be qualified with the observation that unlike Gandhi, Tagore did not have views on issues such as caste and heredity that were so out of step with modernity that they needed to be wound back.
- 12.
‘Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah’.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Thoughts on Linguistic States, 1955.
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Muralidharan, S. (2017). Nation and Civil Society as Spheres of ‘Enlightenment’: The Dialogue of Gandhi and Tagore, and an Ambedkarite Inflection. In: Tuteja, K., Chakraborty, K. (eds) Tagore and Nationalism. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3696-2_18
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