Abstract
This chapter argues that notwithstanding his vital critique of nationalism, Tagore was accountable for invoking the Indian traditions which, according to him, would represent the well-founded moral base of the Indian civilization that could never be sullied by any form of aggressive Western nationalism. Although Tagore has spiritedly rejected aggressive nationalism that is detrimental to the human civilization, he could never detach himself completely from the emotional dimensions of the national sentiment, more so in his writings on language and a sustainable print-community which, consequently, allows him to be affiliated among those who sang for the nation.
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Notes
- 1.
Tagore’s views on assimilation of races into one mighty ocean of humanity, that is Bharat, fall in line with the idea of consolidating national solidarity through the ‘natural process’ of integration and merger. The idea articulated so passionately through those memorable lines in his ‘Bharat-Tirtha’ (1909), where he makes a fervent appeal to all the races which have made India their home, to merge into the mainstream and become a part of the great Indian tradition (‘dibe ar nibe, milabe milibe, jabena phire’) seems like an echo of the concept of ‘God’s crucible’ put forward in the American playwright Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play ‘Melting Pot’. In the last lines of the poem, the image of the mangal-ghat sets up for the abhishek of the mother goddess, even hints at the assimilation of races into a great Hindu tradition.
- 2.
The articles appeared in Punya, Prabasi, Mrinmoyee and Banhi, among others. For a detailed discussion on this debate, see Misra (2011, pp. 180–188).
- 3.
Padmanath ‘Bidyabinod’ of Sylhet, in his presidential address at the ‘Uttarbanga Sahitya Sammilan’ held at Gauripur on 22 January 1910, built up a case in favour of merger of Asamiya and Bangla. He argued that Asamiya literature would gain by being included in the historiography of Bangla literature. His arguments were almost an echo of Tagore’s ‘Bhasha-Bicched’. For details, see Prashanta Chakrabarty, ‘Lakshminath Bezbaroa o Padmanath Bidyabinod: patabhumi o nepathyer katha’, in the Bangla journal Eka Ebong Koekjan, 35.2, Guwahati, 2014.
- 4.
Bezbaroa mentions that he was a member of one such group of the Tagore family called ‘Suhrid Samaj’, see Bezbaroa Granthavali, vol. 1, p. 67.
- 5.
The translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Bhasha-Bicched’ is mine.
- 6.
Translated from the original Bangla by me.
- 7.
For a detailed discussion on this, see Cohn (1994), p. 326).
- 8.
The translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Bhasha-Bicched’ is mine.
- 9.
Banikanta Kakati says: ‘The comparative obscurity of Assamese and the spread of a powerful Bengali literature almost all over the globe gives an impression to foreigners that Assamese is a patois of Bengali’ (p. 6). Kakati establishes with meticulous care that the Assamese language does not show any characteristics of being a dialect of Bengali. Rather, both the languages developed on parallel lines, each ‘with peculiar dialectical predispositions’ of its own. He discusses at length the difference between the two languages in the vocabulary system, in the systems of accentuation, in the case affixes, in the completely different negative conjugations in the Assamese language, in the use of plural suffixes and in other linguistic features.
- 10.
Linguistic Survey of India, vol. 1, Part 1, cited in Kakati (1941), p. 6.
- 11.
Bezbaroa mentions in his autobiographical notes that after the initial years of his association with Rabindranath, he never took part in any acrimonious debates with him regarding the independent status of the Asamiya language and both he and Rabindranath maintained a polite silence on the matter. Bezbaroa says, “Ever since then, till I have reached this ripe old age, the elder Tagore (“Rabikaka”) has never passed a comment on the subject and never took part on any debate with me on the topic. Only once when I met him in Shillong, he remarked rather sadly: ‘People like you are responsible for restricting the spread of the Bangla language by separating Assam from Bengal. Bengali writers today are disheartened and they are not sure whether there is any point in publishing books under such conditions.’ ” [This translation is mine] (Bezbaroa Granthavali, vol. 1, pp. 67–68.)
- 12.
The earliest Bengali grammar was by a Portuguese scholar (1743), followed by those of Nathaniel Halhead’s (1778) and Ram Mohan Roy’s (1832).
- 13.
According to David Washbrook, ‘the notion of language (other than the classical ones) as something that must have an exact standard form with territorial boundaries was unknown to the South Asian intellectual world’. The British colonial rulers, confronted by the bewildering linguistic diversity they found in India, conceded that there might be various dialects in the country but armed by their ‘science’ of comparative philology, and they sought to discover what they considered as the natural form of each language, its standard form (Washbrook 1991 179–203).
- 14.
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983), Hugh Seton-Watson’s Nations and State (1977) or Bernard Cohn’s ‘The Command of Language and the Language of Command’ (Subaltern Studies IV, 1985) discuss the close relationship between language and the rise of national consciousness in Europe and other Western countries in the nineteenth century.
- 15.
Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain, 1977, cited in Anderson, p. 80.
- 16.
The translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Bhasha-Bicched’ is mine.
- 17.
Kandali (2013) ‘Kishkindhyakanda’, in Saptakanda Ramayana, 26: 72–78.
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Misra, T. (2017). Language, Nationalism and Tagore. In: Tuteja, K., Chakraborty, K. (eds) Tagore and Nationalism. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-3696-2_4
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