Nobel gazing

Back in 1913, the Nobel Prize for literature was awarded for the first time to a non-European. The 8216;Anglo-Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore8217; accepted it gracefully through a one-line telegram that was read out instead of the awardee8217;s customary Banquet Speech: 8220;I beg to convey to the Swedish Academy my grateful appreciation of the breadth of understanding which has brought the distant near, and has made a stranger a brother.8221; It was not about poetry, or individual achievement. It was a celebration of cross-cultural understanding and the brotherhood of man.

Today, as we strive to shrink our understanding, cramp ourselves into sinister, narrow compartments of socio-political constructs and make brothers into strangers, we hardly have the right to share the glory of this superior intellect. Forever defying artificial boundaries between people and ideas, he stood for openness, for free thought, for a world based on the equality of human beings, refreshed by cultural exchange, alive with intellectual curiosity, a compassionate world that nurtures human development in every possible way. Through his poetry, songs, essays, fiction and plays, Tagore emphasised the importance of humanism over all other considerations, even patriotic nationalism. Fervently against slotting people by religion, race, caste, gender, language or nationality, the poet-philosopher who believed in the 8216;Religion of Man8217; would have died a million deaths if he saw us perform today.

Through our growing sectarianism, the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the sickening Gujarat carnage, our abysmal literacy figures, continuing dowry deaths, and most of all by our blinkered minds, we seem determined to destroy his vision. As we charge through the unwatered, underfed, powerless, uneducated villages and towns of Bharat Mata in our myth-inspired crowns and chariots in search of Ram rajya, we race further away from the Tagore of Ghare Baire The Home and the World. Its protagonist Nikhil, unmoved by the sound and fury of the nationalistic fervour that threatened to trample individual rights and human justice in its patriotic rush, admits that he could only worship the right and the just, not his country, for 8220;to worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.8221; We ignore Tagore8217;s lectures on Nationalism, urging us to remove social injustices in order for India8217;s freedom to be meaningful. And pointing out the absurdity of our hoping to be treated justly, as equals, by the more powerful nations when we ourselves are unable to offer that treatment to our own people. We disregard his pleading for the rights of women, challenging the rules of a male-dominated society in Streer Patra The Wife8217;s Letter. And forget his play Muktadhara The Free Stream, where he warns against the dangers of sectarianism, mindless education and sacrificing humanity at the altar of political expediency, and celebrates life and freedom as the real abode of God.

Tagore had started Visva Bharati, the World University, 8220;To study th mind of man in its realisation of different aspects of truth from diverse points of view.8221; It was a tribute to diversity and pluralism. And it was built to nurture intellectual curiosity, to share Tagore8217;s profound wonder at the marvel of creation, the awe and joy of being part of the universe, to recognise the preciousness of life. For one who could hear the music of the cosmos, ossified social custom and the amoral logic of expediency were too limiting for the human spirit. Today8217;s separatism, sectarianism and deliberate conservatism militate against everything Tagore believed in. Our education system, far from opening up our minds to the world, has even failed to make us literate: India8217;s total literacy rate is 65 per cent 54 per cent among women. Our women are not allowed the option that Mrinal, of Streer Patra, snatched for herself 8212; of choosing her own destiny and feeling herself blossom like a tree in spring. We turn a blind eye to the environmental degradation that Tagore tried to stop with his vriksharopan or tree-planting ceremony. We reject Tagore8217;s beliefs, spurn his ideas, dash his hopes, ignore his prayers.

We fail to protect our cultural heritage in every sphere, by allowing monuments to disintegrate, by encouraging our political structure and system of justice to collapse, by rewriting history. And we rise in indignant rage over the loss of a medal.

8220;The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings.8221; This was Tagore renouncing his knighthood after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. He may have said the same after the Gujarat massacre in 2002. 8220;But to lose one8217;s confidence in humankind is a sin,8221; he wrote as he expressed his greatest despair at the bankruptcy of 8216;civilisation8217; in Sabhyataar Shankat 8216;The Crisis in Civilisation8217;. And hoped that 8220;one day undefeated man will overcome every hurdle to march on in search of victory, to win back the great dignity of humankind.8221;

The badge of honour may have been lost, but we can still try to keep Tagore8217;s vision alive.

The writer is editor, 8216;The Little Magazine8217;