Re-reading Rabindranath’s Iran Travelogues

Let me confess at the outset that my attention to Parasye was first
drawn by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. In a Special Lecture delivered at the University of Mysore in 1984 he quoted long extracts
from Parasye to establish his point that philosophy is sometimes directly
related to politics. After re-reading Parasye I discovered how radically
Rabindranath changed some of his long-cherished views in the last decade of his
life. In what follows I propose to deal with two such themes:

                                    (a)
Rabindranath’s assessment of the Gita,

                                    (b)
His attitude towards religion.

B

In Baghdad,
Rabindranath and his party came to know from the Christian chaplain of the
British Air Force that some Sheikh villagers were being bombed everyday. He
observed:

The men, women and children, there done to death, meet their fate by
decree of the upper region of British imperialism, – which finds it so easy
thus to shower death because of its distance from its individual victims. So
dim and insignificant do those unskilled in the modern arts of killing appear
to those who glory in such skill! (Journey to Persia 23)

Rabindranath was horrified. He thought:

Christ acknowledged all mankind to be the children of his Father; but
for the modern Christian both Father and children have receded into shadows, unrecognizable
from the height of his bombarding planes; for which reason these blows are
being dealt at the very heart of Christ himself. (Journey to Persia 23-24)

This reference to aerial bombing is significant. From his first
experience of long-distance air travel Rabindranath had come to understand how
easily men, women and children could be killed from above without any risk of
recrimination. The very reality of killing itself became blurred. Rabindranath
writes:

As it (sc. the aeroplane) rises higher and higher, it reduces the play
of our senses to that of one alone – of sight – and even that is not left in
its fullness. All the signs for which we believe the earth to be obviously and
variously real, are gradually wiped out, resolving its three-dimensional
picture into lines of one dimension only. Thus deprived of its substantiality,
its hold on our mind and heart is loosened. And it is borne in on me how
terrible such aloofness can become, once it is found expedient to rain
destruction on the vagueness below. Who is the slayer, who the slain? Who is
kin, who is stranger? It is a travesty of this teaching of the Gita that the
flying machine has raised on high. (Journey to Persia 23)

This translation, although said to have been approved by Rabindranath himself,2
does not reflect the words of the original. Chattopadhyaya translated this
passage as follows:

The philosophy preached by the Gita was also some kind of an aircraft
like this. It carried the compassionate mind of Arjuna to such a dizzy height
from where, when he looked below, there remained hardly any distinction between
the killer and the killed, between the kin and the foe. There are in human
arsenal many a weapon like this made of philosophical stuff. These serve the
purpose of concealing the real. These are to be found among the theories of the
imperialists, in sociology and in religion. Those on whom death is showered
therefrom are left only with one consolation: na hanyate hanyamane sarire – it
[the soul] is not slain when the body is slain. (3)

The Visva-Bharati translation omits all this and dilutes the strong
words of Tagore by interpolating the word ‘travesty’, thereby travestying the
original. Such a travesty of the Gita’s teaching can indeed be found in
Ghare-baire (The Home and the World) in which Sandip justifies robbery by
referring to the same verse (2.20) from the Gita (Rabindra-Rachanabali, 8:97),
but not so in the passage in Parasye.

Rabindranath’s message is loud and clear. He condemns the teaching of
the Gita itself and holds Krishna responsible
for propagating such a view. This is the first time that Rabindranath publicly
censures the message of the Gita. Much earlier (1908) in a private letter he
had noted his disapproval of introducing the concept of the immortal soul in a
book meant to incite Arjuna to battle (qtd. Sen 6-7). But this is not all. The
verse in question is in fact a direct quote from the Katha Upanisad (1.2.18)
with some variants. Chattopadhyaya points out that by condemning the Gita verse
Rabindranath was also indicting the teaching of the Upanishad itself (6). The
Gita, and by implication the Katha Upanisad and the Vedanta philosophy (cf.
Brahmasutra 2.3.16-17) too are subjected to re-examination and found wanting in
human content.

It is not that Rabindranath never quoted from or referred to the Gita in
his works after this. He did. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that he never
alluded to Krishna’s advice to Arjuna again in
his later works, although previously he had referred to the Katha Upanishad
verse approvingly in his Shantiniketan twice (Rabindra-Rachanabali, 14:759-60
and 764). In Parasye, however, he explicitly mentions the Gita and criticizes
the verse in no uncertain terms. The whole of the Gita thus is no longer
accepted as a holy book containing infallible truths.

 It should be kept in mind that
not only Rabindranath but also the whole Tagore family used to revere the Gita
as a sacred text. His father, Debendranath introduced him to this work when he
was barely twelve. Debendranath had made a selection of verses from the Gita
that were later published in Tattvabodhini Patrika and he included many of them
in his Brahmadharma. Rabindranath’s brothers too held the Gita in great esteem.
Dwijendranath wrote a book called Gitapath in 1322 BS (1915-16). Even earlier
Satyendranath had translated the Gita into Bangla (1311BS/ 1904-05) and later
Jyotirindranath rendered Tilak’s Gitarahasya from Marathi into Bangla in 1924.
It is indeed not right to say (as Niharranjan Ray does) that Rabindranath,
unlike Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and Gandhi, did not go to the Gita for his
“ideological sustenance and emotional and intellectual inspiration,” and  that “Tagore’s voluminous writings do not
contain more that half a dozen of references to the Gita” (Ray 35. Qtd.
Majumdar 130). In fact there are no fewer than forty verses of the Gita either
fully or partly quoted or alluded to, directly or indirectly  in Rabindranath’s published works (as Pampa
Majumdar’s  monumental study, 535-42,
amply bears out). Yet Rabindranath in Parasye denounces the verse in the Gita
derived from an Upanishad as a poor consolation for killing humans without any
qualm.

C

The metaphor of the aircraft applied to religion that takes away the
mind from the earth and blurs reality, is not unexpected. In several passages
in Parasye Rabindranath condemns religion as a means of suppression and
exploitation. He had earlier praised the Bolsheviks’ attempt to liberate the
people in the Soviet Union both from religious
delusion and Tsarist autocracy:

The Soviets have saved the country from the insults of the Tsars and
self-imposed humiliation; however much the devout people of other countries may
reproach them, I personally cannot. Far better is atheism than religious
infatuation that darkens the mind and keeps the soul in a dungeon. (Letters
from Russia,11)

Strong words indeed. And we hear an echo of these in Parasye too:

A long enduring creation does not necessarily signify man’s genius,
however great and splendid that creation may be. The temple
of Madura or the mosque of Isfahan document[s] our
past, not our present. If that were so, it would be trespassing. Ancient relics
of the time past, these monuments have become inert, unable to inspire new
creations in their image. It is possible to imitate them but the creative
impulse that fashioned them has long since dried up. (Journey to Persia 68)

But are not these temples and mosques specimens of living religions?
Rabindranath is not convinced of such a defence. He says:

Communalism in religion is a concept hoary with age. In the olden days
the mandatory ruling of any religion was that everyone must, without question,
conform to the laid down beliefs and rituals. The king and the priests worked
in tandem to exercise their control over the people. (Journey to Persia 68)

Rabindranath vehemently condemns this nexus between royalty and
priesthood:

Both these powers had effectively robbed the people of all freedoms –
freedom to opt for self-government, freedom of thoughts, freedom of religious
faiths. If any individual had the gall to follow the dictates of his own
conscience and break away from the imposed bondages, then he was promptly labelled
as a rebel and ruthlessly victimized. (Journey to Persia 68-69)

In spite of all this, Rabindranath is hopeful, for things are changing:

Over the years, however, strong dictatorial rules are gradually being
replaced by people’s democracies, but even so, the old dogmatic strictures
continue their fearsome stranglehold, subjugating people to mindless passivity.
This cannot be allowed to persist. Attempts to preserve all the old symbols of
a communal religion and force feed the people with them will only lead to a
brood of weaklings. They will be as worthless as a child who refuses to grow up
beyond the apron strings of the mother. (Journey to Persia 69)

Should we then dispense with the past and demolish all temples and
mosques? Rabindranath does not suggest so. He says:

It is not my case that the great deed[s] of the past should not endure.
They will, as commemoration of the past, but otherwise serving no useful
purpose. Take for instance the Scandinavian sagas – we accept them as noble
epic poems but not as hallowed texts. Or, say, Milton’s Paradise Lost – to be enjoyed
certainly, but not to accept rigidly what it says. Europe
is full of cathedrals built during the middle-ages following certain religious
sentiments, which have since undergone considerable transformations. (Journey
to Persia
69)

Rabindranath then uses a homely example which, for reasons best known to
the Visva-Bharati translator, has been silently omitted from the English
rendering.3 Rabindranath writes : “The mooring (ghat) is there but the water
has moved away. There is no harm in keeping the boat tied to the mooring but
such a boat is of no use for ferrying people” (Rabindra-Rachanabali 12: 468).

 More instances of such
disparagement of religion can be cited from the Persian travelogues. But enough
has been cited above to show that Rabindranath does not mince his words when he
speaks of both the bigoted Hindus and the Muslims as also the Christians and is
highly critical of all religious rituals and practices. His visit to Iran and Iraq provides him with an
opportunity to vent his innermost feelings about the evil effects of religion
on social life. He considers the ‘inauguration of scientific attitude’ to be
the primary need, as did Kemal Pasha. Rabindranath quotes with approval what
the Turkish Minister of Justice said, “Medieval principles must give way to
secular laws. We are creating a modern civilized nation and we desire to meet
contemporary needs. We have the will to live, and nobody can prevent us.” To
this Rabindranath adds: “Medieval legendary prejudice stands in the way of
total, rational performance of life’s journey. They (Turkey government) have declared
that it is necessary to be ruthless towards it in modern worldly usage.”
(Rabindra-Rachanabali 12: 449. Much of these are left out in the Visva-Bharati
translation, 30-31).

From what has been said above it is amply clear how far Rabindranath
moved from his ideal of Santiniketan Brahmacharyashram, attempting to revive
tradition and upholding purely Hindu values, including the caste (varna) system. In his
Persian travelogues he seeks to promote modernization, secularism and
scientific temper instead. The Letters from Russia has been widely studied for
its political implications but his Parasyayatra and Parasyabhraman, too deserve
particular notice.

The Katha-Upanishad 1.2.18-19:

If the killer thinks that he kills, if the killed thinks that he is
killed, they do not understand; for this one does not kill, nor is that one
killed. (Trans. F. Max Mueller. The Upanishads, Part II. The Sacred Books of
the East, Vol. XV. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1982 (reprint), pp.10-11)

The Gita 2.20:

1 Cf. “Because we are Asiatics, a protest against Europe
seems to run in our blood. Since the last time that its pirates of land and sea
have gone out to exploit the weaker continent from the 17th Century onward, the
European races have irretrievably damaged their own reputation in the East.”
(Journey to Persia
27)

2 Chapters 1 and 3 were translated by Surendranath Tagore and published
in the Visva-Bharati Quarterly in 1937. Chapter 2 appeared in the Modern
Review, October 1932. Rest of the chapters have been translated by Sukhendu Ray
and published for the first time in Journey to Persia
and Iraq:
1932.

3 Similarly the references to Egypt,
Turkey, Iraq and Iran in a passage are absent in the
English translation. Rabindranath here lamented that while religion was
yielding place to human essence (manushyatva) in these places India alone was
still divided between the Hindus and the Muslims (Rabindra-Rachanabali 12:
480).

Works Cited

Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad. Tagore and Indian Philosophical Heritage. Mysore: University
of Mysore, 1984.

Majumdar, Pampa.
Rabindra Sanskritir Bharatiya Rup o Utsa. Kalikata: Jijnasa, 1972.

Sen, Prabodhchandra. Dhammapada-parichaya. Kalikata: Visva-Bharati
Granthalaya, 1360 BS (1953).

Tagore, Rabindranath. Journey to Persia
and Iraq:
1932. Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2003.

––––. Letters from Russia.
Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 1960.

–––– . Rabindra-Rachanabali. Kolkata: Paschimbanga Sarkar, 1980-2001.

Acknowledgements: Amitava Bhattacharyya, Siddhartha Datta and Sanjiban
Sarkar

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 This essay is an abridged version of a paper originally
appeared in Tagore – At Home in the World
(New Delhi: Sage, 2013, pp. 66-74).

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya
taught English at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata and was an Emeritus
Fellow of University Grants Commission. He is now a Fellow of PAVLOV
Institute, Kolkata.

Email
ID: ramkrishna.bhattacharya@gmail.com