THE POET’S ANXIETY

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

 

THE POET’S ANXIETY

 

 

The poet of Asia, as Lord Hardinge called Dr. Tagore, is fast becoming, if he has not already become, the Poet of the world. Increasing prestige has brought to him increasing responsibility. His greatest service to India must be his poetic interpretation of India’s message to the world. The Poet is therefore sincerely anxious that India should deliver no false or feeble message in her name. He is naturally jealous of his country’s reputation. He says he has striven hard to find himself in tune with the present movement. He confesses that he is baffled. He can find nothing for his lyre in the din and the bustle of non-co-operation. In three forceful letters he has endeavoured to give expression to his misgivings, and he has come to the conclusion that non-co-operation is not dignified enough for the India of his vision, that it is a doctrine of negation and despair. He fears that it is a doctrine of separation, exclusiveness, narrowness and negation. No Indian can feel anything but pride in the Poet’s exquisite jealousy of India’s honour. It is good the he should have sent to us his misgivings in language at once beautiful and clear. In all humility I shall endeavour to answer the Poet’s doubts. I may fail to convince him or the reader who may have been touched by his eloquence, but I would like to assure him and India that non-co- operation in conception is not any of the things he fears, and he need have no cause to be ashamed of his country for having adopted non-co-operation.

If in actual application, it appears in the end to have failed, it will be no more the fault of the doctrine than it would be of Truth if those who claim to apply it in practice do not appear to succeed. Non-co-operation may have come in advance of its time. India and the world must then wait, but there is no choice for India saves between violence and non-co-operation. Nor need the poet fear that non-co-operation is intended to erect a Chinese wall between India and the West. On the contrary, non-co-operation is intended to pave the way to real, honourable and voluntary co-operation based on mutual respect and trust. The present struggle is being waged against compulsory co-operation, against one-sided combination, against the armed imposition of modern methods of exploitation masquerading under the name of civilization. Non-co-operation is a protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil. The Poet’s concern is largely about the students. He is of opinion that they should not have been called upon to give up Government schools before they had others schools to go to. Here I must differ from him. I have never been able to make a fetish of literary training. My experience has proved to my satisfaction that literary training by itself adds not an inch to one's moral height and that character-building is independent of literary training. I am firmly of opinion that the government schools have unmanned us, rendered us helpless and godless.

They have filled us with discontent, and, providing no remedy for the discontent, have made us despondent. They have made us what we were intended to become clerks and interpreters. A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed. And if it was wrong to cooperate with the Government in keeping us slaves, we were bound to begin with those institutions in which our association appeared to be most voluntary. The Youth of a nation are its hope. I hold that as soon as we discovered that the system of government was wholly, or mainly, evil, it become sinful for us to associate our children with it. It is no argument against the soundness of the proposition laid down by me that the vast majority of the students went back after the first flush of enthusiasm. Their recantation is proof rather of the extent of our degradation than of the wrongness of the step. Experience has shown that the establishment of national schools has not resulted in drawing many more students. The strongest and the truest of them came out without any national schools to fall back upon, and I am convinced that these first withdrawals are rendering service of the highest order. But the Poet’s protest against the calling out of the boys is really a corollary to his objection to the very doctrine of non-co-operation.

He has a horror of everything negative. His whole soul seems to rebel against the negative commandments of religion. I must give his objection in his own inimitable language. “R. in support of the present movement has often said to me that passion for rejection is a stronger power in the beginning than the acceptance of an ideal. Though I know it to be a fact I cannot take it as a truth Brahmavidya in India has for its object mukti, emancipation, while Buddhism has Nivana, extinction. Mukti draws our attention to the positive and Nirvana to the negative side of truth. Therefore he emphasized the fact of dukha, misery which had to be avoided and the Brahmavidya emphasized the fact of ananda, joy which had to be attained.” In these and kindred passages the reader will find the key to the Poet's mentality. In my humble opinion rejection is as much an ideal as the acceptance of a thing. It is an necessary to reject untruth as it is to accept truth. All religions teach that two opposite forces act upon us and that the human endeavour consists in a series of eternal rejections and acceptances.

Non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good. I venture to suggest that the poet has done an unconscious injustice to Buddhism in describing Nirvana as merely a negative state. I make bold to say that mukti, emancipation, is as much a negative state as Nirvana. Emancipation from or extinction of the bondage of the flesh leads to ananda (eternal bliss). Let me close this part of my argument by drawing attention to the fact that the final word of the Upanishads (Brahmavidya) in Not. Neti was the best description the authors of the Upanishads were able to find for Brahman. I therefore think that the Poet has been unnecessarily alarmed at the negative aspect of non-co-operation. We had lost the power of saying ‘no’. It had become disloyal, almost sacrilegious, to says ‘no’ to the government. This deliberate refusal to co-operate is like the necessary weeding process that a cultivator has to resort to before he sows. Weeding is an necessary to agriculture as sowing Indeed, even whilst the crops are growing, the weeding fork, as every husbandman knows, is an instrument, almost of daily use. The nation's non-co-operation is an invitation to the Government to cooperate with it on its own terms as is every nation's right and every good government’s duty.

Non-co-operation is the nation's notice that it is no longer satisfied to be in tutelage. The nation has taken to the harmless (for it), natural and religious doctrine of non-co-operation in the place of the unnatural and irreligious doctrine of violence. And if India is ever to attain the swaraj of the poet’s dream, she will do so only by non-violent non-co-operation. Let him deliver his message of peace to the world, and feel confident that India through her non-cooperation, if she remains true to her pledge, will have exemplified his message. Non-co-operation is intended to give the very meaning to patriotism that the Poet is yearning after. An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity. An India awakened and free has a message of peace and good will to a groaning world. Non-co-operation is designed to supply her with a platform from which she will preach the message.