When Gandhi and Tagore disagreed on India’s future

May 9 is Rabindra Jayanti

Abhijit Roy

Mahatma Gandhi, who is called the Father of the Nation, met Rabindranath Tagore for the first time in Santiniketan. During this meeting, several photographs were taken of Tagore and Gandhi sitting together. By the way, Gandhiji went to Shantiniketan eight times between 1915 and 1945. For the first time he reached Shantiniketan with his wife Kasturba on February 17, 1915. But at that time Tagore was in Calcutta, so could not meet him.
At the time when Gandhi started the non-cooperation movement against the tyranny of the British rule, Tagore was on a tour of Europe and was looking for sources of spiritual unity between East and West. Tagore was struck by this militant attitude of Gandhi and wrote a letter to CF Andrews criticizing it. And later on, he openly opposed the non-cooperation movement. According to Tagore, non-cooperation was a negative idea and it also ignored the policy of faith in humanity. Tagore had also termed non-cooperation as ‘a kind of violence’. In response to this attitude of Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a long article in ‘Young India’ on June 1, 1921 titled – ‘Kavivar ki Chinta’. Gandhi wrote- ‘In my understanding, Rabindra Babu had no need to be shocked by the lackadaisical or contradictory side of the non-cooperation movement. We have completely lost the power to say ‘no’.
Tagore had also opposed Gandhi’s campaign to boycott foreign clothes and burn them. He looked at it from a typical economic point of view and said that since a large population of India does not have clothes to wear, it should adopt whatever clothes it gets. While Gandhi was not only looking at it from his own economic point of view, but also considered it as a way of self-purification. So much so that she even burnt a hand-woven foreign cotton saree gifted to Kasturba by her political guru Gopal Krishna Gokhale. In 1934, there was a terrible earthquake in Bihar and there was great destruction. Mahatma Gandhi said in a public meeting in Tamil Nadu that this is divine punishment for the sin of untouchability towards Dalits. Tagore termed this statement of Gandhi as an example of gross superstition. He termed this logic behind the earthquake as unscientific and wrote a satirical article which was published in ‘Young India’ by Mahatma Gandhi himself on February 16, 1934 with his reply. Tagore had written that this kind of argument suits only the opponents of Mahatmaji. In fact, after this statement of Gandhi, different types of statements started coming from the Sanatanis as well. Some Sanatani said that the droughts and famines that occur in the country are actually the side effects of Gandhi’s anti-untouchability movements. Someone said that before Gandhiji’s movements were to be blamed for the earthquake, he took the lead by blaming the upper castes for it. Here Gandhi remained firm on his statement. He not only published Tagore’s critical article in Young India, but also published a counter article titled ‘Superstition vs Faith’. In it he wrote – ‘On my opinion that the crisis in Bihar is related to the sin of untouchability, what Gurudev has just said cannot make any difference to our mutual affection. Owing to the deep respect I have for him, it is natural that I should pay more prompt attention to his criticism than to other critics. But despite having read his statement three times, I stand by what I have written in these columns.
Tagore also opposed Gandhi’s warning against teaching in the English language. Expressing his views on English education in ‘Young India’ of April 27, 1921, Gandhiji said, ‘It is my considered opinion that the manner in which English education is imparted has rendered English educated Indians impotent. . It has put a heavy burden on the minds of Indian students and has made us imitators. … Rammohan Roy could have been a greater reformer if he had not had the trouble of thinking and expressing his views in English. Had this obstacle not come in the way of Lokmanya Tilak, he would have proved to be an even bigger thinker. … I do believe that Chaitanya, Kabir, Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, Shivaji and Pratap were far greater than our Rammohan Roy and Tilak.’ Tagore was annoyed by this talk of Gandhi. On his Europe tour, he wrote a strong letter to the administrator of Santiniketan against this, which was later published under the title – ‘Don’t make Raja Rammohan Roy a dwarf’. Tagore wrote in it – ‘I strongly oppose the insult that Mahatma Gandhi has done to the great personalities of modern India like Ram Mohan Roy in his blind passion to belittle modern education.

(Author is a Jamshedpur based columnist. Views expressed are personal.)