One hundred years of Tagore’s Gora
Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora epitomizes the pathologies of Hindu nationalism of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has been rightly called a mirror of the period it has depicted (1880s).
The biggest question that came to my mind after reading the novel was: what if Gora had not been Irish by birth, or if he had never known of his ethnicity? It is doubtful if without this knowledge, he would have embraced a benign nationalism.
On Page 27 (Hindi translation by Ramnath ‘Suman,’ published by Saraswati Vihar, 1989), Gora says, “It is time that we adopted everything that belongs to the country—unthinkingly, with full devotion, so that even skeptics could be influenced. By being ashamed of about the nation we just enfeeble ourselves by the poison of slavery.”
This is Gora’s nationalism. As a highly educated person—he is a post-graduate who has authored books, and his scholarship has earned him a good reputation and a large number of followers—he is not unaware of the social evils, the atrophied social structures, and the rot that has set in the country. Yet, he is intolerant to any criticism of
“Why should we put our nation in the court of foreigners and let it be discussed under foreign laws? We will never be ashamed in front of other or of ourselves for the customs, beliefs, scriptures or society of our country. We will adore with pride whatever the nation bestows on us, and thus will shield us from insult,” he says (P 31). This is the exasperation of the nationalist facing the critics of Hindu society such as the Christian missionaries, Brahmos, and other social reformers; the exasperation becomes frustrating with the knowledge that much of their criticism is not invalid; and the frustration becomes excruciatingly painful for a man of character and courage like Gora. In an earlier journey to the countryside, he takes on the local landlord-police nexus which was responsible for the exploitation and oppression of Muslim peasants; he spends a month in prison for his involvement; he refuses to take the help of his friends and acquaintances, just because it was only for him and not for all those who were suffering because of injustice. He wants to obliterate the distinction between him, a member of the aristocratic class, and commoners.
And, doggedly, he has little sympathy for the social reforms in the way these were being carried out.
Social reform? Reform comes much later. Much more important is patriotism, faith; first of all, we need to unite; reforms will automatically follow. You people [Brahmos, reformers] want to divide the nation. You say, ‘There are rotten values in the country; therefore, we decent people will keep away.’ I assert that I will not be above the others; this is my greatest desire. By becoming one with the people, which tradition would remain and which one would be discarded, let the nation decide, or its leaders decide…
If you people think that we need to discard all customs and values, and then the nation will be united, the endeavor would be akin to trying to do away with the water of the sea before crossing it. You should shun vanity and prejudice and identify with the nation in all humility; the myriad shortcomings and flaws of the nation would bow out. The societies of all nations suffer from shortcomings and flaws, but they become ineffective if the people are united by national pride…
We’ll not tolerate [social reform]. There is a reason for it. If parents ask us to reform, we can tolerate it, but if the watchman asks us to do that, the reform is worse than insult. Such reform will kill humanity. First, you become part of the society, then become a reformer…”
But how does one become part of the society which is atrophied? The society at that time was beyond redemption from within; it was a decomposing mass in bereft of any seeds essential for rejuvenation. After discussions and debates on society, traditions, and customs, Gora moves out of his own cloistered genteel environs; he goes to the countryside—but it is not, to use a contemporary term, ‘poverty tourism.’ He wants to know the conditions of the people, their miseries and wretchedness; he wants to see the soul of the nation. Gora witnessed the rot firsthand. Tagore describes Gora’s journey in the later part of the book. It is not an intellectual pursuit; he does not want to merely understand or interpret the country; he wants to change it.
As he tried to be familiar with the people, he clearly realized one thing: in villages, the stranglehold of society is much stronger than that in Bhadra (high gentry) circles. … He doubted if there could be any other people who were so timid, helpless and incapable of reflecting on their own good. Apart from treading the beaten track, they would neither think of anything else nor were open to any suggestion. What bound them together were the fear of penalty and cliquishness... There was not a single person who could be called compassionate. He could not ignore the sad reality of ruthless exploitation of man by man. In social responsibilities, the individual was absolutely alone, without even sympathy. There was a chap whose father died after long illness and considerable pain. In the treatment, the son had lost everything that he had; nobody helped him. On top of that, the villagers came to the conclusion that the father had met with such a painful death because of some unknown sin he must have committed; so, the son has to undergo repentance [which was a long, elaborate process]. His misery and penury were well known, but he was not spared. This was the pattern… Whether or not one has capacity or income, they have to follow the diktats of society. The groom would ensure that the marriage become a big torture for his father-in-law; the latter, of course, would not get assistance from any quarter. Gora saw that the society would never help the individual, provide no shelter in times of crisis; instead it would ensure that he is further humiliated by imposing a fine.
Living among educated people, Gora had forgotten these realities…
But in villages, where outside forces had not made their presence to a great extent, Gora saw the country’s biggest weakness in indolence and torpor in its stark form. While religion is supposed to strengthen, rejuvenate, and redeem man, in actual fact it draws arbitrary lines of division, torments people, disregards reason, and shuns love; it keeps meddling in every human activity…
Right from the beginning, Gora saw that among lower castes, owing to the adverse sex ratio and other reasons, it was only after paying huge bride price that a man could marry. A large number of men remained unmarried or married at a later stage. On the other hand, there was a strict ban on widow remarriage. This badly affected the health of the society…”
Gora’s reaction to these dark realities was not very encouraging. It never occurred to him that only the universal ideals of Enlightenment could redeem the society; for him, these were still ‘Western’ ideals, the ideals championed by the ruling foreigners. It would be interesting to compare Gora with Swami Dayananda. The former was Westernized (in fact, he was a Westerner himself, though unaware of the fact till the end of the book, and though he deliberately shunned all that was Western), while the Swami was a traditional scholar who could hardly knew English. Yet, the Swami was no worshipper of society. In fact, in 1867, he set up a camp, Pakhand Khandini Pataka (Anti-hypocrisy camp), at
Gora, on the other hand, would have nothing of that sort; he would never challenge Hindu society. His conformism, however, is not the result of any weakness of character or lack of courage; he had the nerve to take on oppression of the Zamindari system on behalf of poor peasants; he even suffered a month in jail because of his daring. It was nothing but the virulence of nationalism that he could not, or rather did not want to, see the rot in society.
His knowledge, firsthand experience, and brooding inexorably lead him to a futile asceticism.
The impression that the events in his life were not fortuitous in nature, or at any rate were not the result of his own volition, became stronger in his mind; they were because of some desire on the part of the Maker, to fulfill whose design Gora was born. Therefore, he tried to find some meaning in the minutest happenings of his life. Today, when he went to Sucharita’s [his ladylove’] home and saw that the door was shut, he concluded that this also has a meaning. Those who show him the way, they have said that the answer is ‘no.’ This means that Sucharita is not on his side. It is unbecoming for a man like Gora to be swayed by desire, for he does not have anything of his own. He is the Brahmin of India. He has to worship God on behalf of
The nationalism Gora espoused (before the revelation of his origins) never had an enlightening rendezvous with the reality. This was also the contemporary Indian nationalism; it was not enlightened by any revelation regarding the importance of individual liberty and reason; in fact, it obstinately turned its back on the principal Enlightenment ideals and values.
In the first half of the twentieth century, and later on, it oscillated between Hindu nationalism and non-Hindu nationalism. Both were intellectual-political constructs, for the Hindus did not have any idea about nation.
Non-Hindu nationalisms were equally, if not more, contrived. Gandhian nationalism was little more than a hodge-podge of rustic sentimentalism, Luddite instincts, untutored populism, and ascetic idiosyncrasies. Nehruvian nationalism was the mixture of Gandhian oddities and Fabian socialism.
In the absence of the revelation of his ethnicity, Gora would have gone resolving the issue of nationalism in the typical orthodox way—that is, overemphasizing the real and imaginary greatness of
Gora was spared this fate because he came to know about his origins in time. Finally, the protagonist embraced a humane, inclusivist version of Indian nationalism, but this embracing did not come by way of dialectics or reasoned brooding over a period of time; it happened abruptly—when his ethnicity was revealed to him. It is in the 400th page of the 406-page novel that Gora comes to know of his real parentage. The long, recondite, and often disturbing arguments of 400 pages about the magnificence of India, about the ills afflicting it and the imperative of identifying oneself with the whole of the nation for redemption, about the nature of duty of the educated class—all these vanish in six pages that follow in which Gora accepts the benign humanism of Paresh Babu, who is the embodiment of the blend of what is best in the East and the West.
At the end of the book, I got the feeling that the real hero of the novel was not Gora but fortuitousness. He reached his salvation (which was still partial salvation, as he espoused a benign nationalism, and nationalism remains full virulence and anti-liberty pathologies) not because he had waged a battle against his own narrow, bigoted convictions; it was not the triumph of reason over obscurantism; it was the triumph of accident over reasoned transmogrification.
No comments:
Post a Comment