Tagore and Gandhi, while holding each other in very high regard, nevertheless had a running and inconclusive debate on nationalism and the freedom struggle.
What might Tagore be telling Gandhi in heaven as both reflect on their own ideas with the hindsight of history on Independence day?
“I told you so!
“I warned you against domestic tyrants. Your Independence is not the freedom I envisaged. You insisted that independence was above all about reclaiming state power from foreign tyrants. My concept of freedom, enshrined in Gitanjali 35, was more broad-based and of greater relevance today:
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
Gandhi might have retorted to Tagore:
“l wasn’t simply struggling to capture state power, even though that was an essential part of the freedom struggle. l was pursuing Ram Rajya, which was not very different from your concept of freedom. I might add it was far removed from the Hindu Rashtra of Savarkar and the Hindu Right that sought to exclude certain citizens from its ambit. Ram Rajya, like your concept of freedom in Gitanjali, is an inclusive and just society that is not jingoistic. I dedicated August 15, 1947, to contemplation and soul searching and not to a celebration of removal of foreign tyranny. That was only a pre-condition, and not a sufficient one, for freedom. The freedom struggle was to continue after Independence, but I was not allowed to pursue it”.
To which Tagore might have replied:
“How could you possibly have hoped to achieve Ram Rajya if, after capturing state power from foreign tyrants, it was to be handed over to domestic bigoted men of straw? The kind of people who – with notable exceptions like Nehru – ran independent India, and including our present leadership? Now the country will need to struggle for freedom all over again, this time from domestic tyrants”.
In response, Gandhi might have then turned to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru, and reminded Tagore that the onus lay on these two to carry forward their vision for independent India. Ambedkar drafted the constitution of India, the institutional framework within which the new republic functioned, and Nehru was its first helmsman for over a decade and a half. As a last resort he had left behind a powerful political tool that could be used against petty domestic tyrants. Non-violent satyagraha was powerful enough to bring the mightiest empire in the world to quit India.
“The constitution I drafted,” Ambedkar might well have said, “set in place a sound framework for the just and inclusive society that both of you, as well as Nehru and I, desired. It placed all religions on the same footing, guaranteed fundamental rights to all citizens, with special safeguards set in stone for those socially ostracised for long, and for whose rights I personally championed, and gave directives to the state to ensure social justice. I did the best I could to balance power between the executive, parliament and the judiciary to keep domestic tyrants at bay”.
Nehru might have spoken on his own behalf as follows:
“I was no doubt given a constitution that had all the features that Ambedkar spoke of, but what could I do if my own colleagues were not fully committed to the values of secularism, individual liberty, rationalism, social justice or even to personal probity? I had personally taken up the cause of the peasantry against oppressive zamindars during the freedom struggle, but I got little support for implementing zamindari abolition effectively, and also the Hindu Code Bill. The constitution gave the Prime Minister and the central executive adequate powers, but I wished to operate in a democratic manner and not become the brown-skinned domestic tyrant that Tagore warned us about. I lament that my own daughter, who should have known better, was the first chief executive to misuse the powers given to the central government to undermine democracy. It is to her credit that she backtracked quickly, but she nevertheless showed the template that tyrants subsequently built on. My grandson Rajiv, despite carrying forward my vision of a modern India, did not have the moral courage to taken on the dark clouds of religious bigotry that were gathering afresh over the Republic.”
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After hearing Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru, this is what Tagore might have concluded:
“My original argument was that the leadership of the Congress party, with notable exceptions like Gandhi and Nehru, were not prepared to take up the mantle of a free India. I held no brief for the British Raj, but transfer of power was only the beginning and not the end of the freedom project. Gandhi and I agreed on this. My fear was that this project could be abandoned as soon as India became independent from foreign rule. The Mahatma would no doubt have carried the project forward if he were physically able to do so, but perhaps Nehru who had the desire as well could have secured freedom far better had he concentrated less on the ‘commanding heights’ of both the physical and soft (educational) infrastructure, and devoted his attention, and more resources, to the cutting edge of society where the roots of freedom are nurtured.
“Ambedkar drafted a fine constitution, but he was perhaps too focussed on social justice, and too little on liberty, it seems on account of the fear of the new Republic falling prey to fissiparous tendencies that had long characterised Indian history. India was still a ‘nation in making,’ newly forged out of a number of ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse states that had centuries of independent political histories, with all India empires being few and far in between, and relatively short-lived. In order to strengthen the Centre the constitution gave it sweeping powers, including in the appointment of key constitutional positions with all-India remit that were expected to safeguard the integrity of the constitution, and keep its key institutions at arms length from the executive.
“This was ultimately self-defeating, as this structure flew in the face of Indian history that was characterised by substantial regional autonomy on account of its diversity. Whenever all-Indian empires tried to centralise, like the later Tughlaqs or Aurangzeb, the empires quickly collapsed. The British ruled essentially through three separate Presidencies and not from Delhi or London, while over a hundred subordinate states had their own rulers and administration. There were inadequate safeguards to keep determined autocrats and demagogues at bay. In contrast, the focus of the founding fathers of the American constitution, that Ambedkar also drew upon, was on defending freedom from would be demagogues who could use the will of the people to undermine democracy, drawing on the experience and associated debates in ancient Greco-Roman polity and philosophy. American institutions consequently have so far held up well in the face of would be demagogues and autocrats, while in India they collapsed quickly. Since the leaders of the new Republic were still unprepared or not mature enough to exercise power, democratic safeguards should have been all the more stronger.”
When we were fighting for Independence I was filled with hope. If I were to rewrite Gitanjali 35 with the benefit of hindsight, it might read as follows:
Where the mind is filled with fear
and the head is crestfallen;
Where knowledge is controlled,
Where the world is broken
and fragmented by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come out from
the depths of falsehood;
Where tired hands stretch out
their arms with diminishing hope;
Where the clear stream of reason
has lost its way in the dreary
desert sand of bigotry and dead habit;
Where the mind is led backwards
into ever-diminishing thought and action –
From that Slough of Despond my Father,
shake my country awake.
Alok Sheel is a former civil servant and writer.
