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Mystics Matched

The Gandhi-Tagore debate is rich in ideas but irrelevant.

By Swapan Dasgupta

It is by now well recognised that the Indian freedom struggle wasn't a movement motivated by idealism alone. The confrontation with the Raj involved many elements: political powerplay between elites, constitutional brinkmanship, localised tensions, intrigue and even a tussle for the Indian market. Yet, of the numerous struggles against Empire, one facet of the Indian nationalist movement was perhaps unique: the exceptionally high level of its intellectual discourse. Beginning with Raja Ram Mohan Roy and culminating in Jawaharlal Nehru, the awakening of India was much more than a voyage of political self-expression. Indian nationalism also went hand-in-hand with an Indian renaissance.

Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi were prominent figures of both the nationalist movement and the larger renaissance. Using songs, poetry and prose, Tagore moulded generations of Bengalis with his early nationalism and subsequent cosmopolitanism. Gandhi gave the freedom struggle its focus, mass character and ethical underpinning. What brought the two together was not merely mutual respect, but a common utopianism. Like Gandhi, Tagore was one of the few Indians who was only nominally influenced by western political ideas. Yet, both were sceptical of westernised modernism and professed belief in the uniqueness of the east.

This did not prevent the two from engaging in a fierce battle of ideas, particularly over the meaning of swaraj and the significance of the charkha. It was in the nature of an intra-utopian dispute, with each being as abstruse and woolly as the other. They are of little relevance today. In fact, they are positively irrelevant. But they do indicate that Indian nationalism was much more than a battle for loaves and fishes.

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