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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent...

Red Romance

For long, the Naxalite in news was recognisable by the gun. But the more insidious version of Naxalism has never needed a rifle. It has thrived in varsity classrooms and newspaper and magazine columns, fostered by men and women sympathetic to it. These academics and other members of the so-called intelligentsia have long enjoyed their status as ‘respectable dissenters’ even when their politics offered intellectual alibis for Naxals carrying guns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent Independence Day warning about “dimaagi Naxals” should therefore not be dismissed as another political label. His larger point was that an insurgency does not survive on ammunition alone. It survives on ideas and people willing to make violence appear morally fashionable. The most revealing feature of India’s Maoist movement was never simply its brutality. It was the strange attraction it exercised over sections of the metropolitan Left elite. The Naxalite with an AK-47 could be transformed into a romantic revolutionary while the policeman he killed became an instrument of an oppressive state. This was not merely naïveté. At its ugliest, it was the intellectual laundering of political violence. The fantasy of the romantic revolutionary has always been seductive. In this narrative, amplified through sympathetic media priding itself on telling ‘truth to power,’ India was not a constitutional democracy struggling with inequality and corruption but an inherently illegitimate state waiting to be overthrown. In the minds of this elite Left, Maoist violence has often been recast as resistance while attacks on infrastructure as blows against capitalism. The armed overthrow of the Indian republic was the liberation they craved for. Some of India’s most celebrated intellectuals have flirted dangerously close to that moral inversion. The issue here is whether intellectual prestige can be used to sanitise an ideology whose practitioners have murdered civilians, policemen and public servants and terrorised some of India’s poorest districts. A university cannot be the place where Maoist romanticism acquires the legitimacy of a fashionable campus cause. Professors who turn armed insurgents into heroic revolutionaries are not merely exercising academic freedom. If they knowingly excuse violence, they are helping to construct the moral vocabulary that makes violence possible. Let’s be clear here. A professor who criticises the Indian state is not a Naxal while a journalist who exposes state excesses is not an enemy of India. But an intellectual who repeatedly excuses, glorifies or rationalises political violence cannot hide behind the word ‘dissent.’ India has paid an enormous price for the Maoist fantasy. Thousands have died. Entire regions were held back by fear while development was obstructed. The people supposedly being liberated were often the first to suffer. The armed Naxal is now being pushed towards extinction. But the Indian republic cannot afford to leave behind the romantic mythology that made the gun respectable. A democracy can tolerate dissent. It should never be expected to tolerate the glorification of those who seek its violent destruction.

What If Rabindranath Tagore Had Stayed a Lawyer?

Updated: Oct 21, 2024

What If Rabindranath Tagore Had Stayed a Lawyer

The remarkable cultural efflorescence known as the ‘Bengal Renaissance’ triggered by Warren Hastings’ appointment as governor of Bengal in 1772 can be bookended between the birth of Ram Mohun Roy (the same year) and the death of Rabindranath Tagore in 1941.

This Renaissance threw up luminaries from William Carey to Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay to Toru Dutt to Swami Vivekananda and Jagadish Chandra Bose. The movement, marked by a synthesis of Eastern and Western intellectual traditions, found its zenith in Rabindranath Tagore. But what if Tagore had succumbed to familial pressures to pursue a career in law rather than the arts?

Born in 1861 into a remarkable and dazzlingly erudite family (the Tagores of Jorasanko), Rabindranath was youngest of Debendranath Tagore’s 14 children.

In his superb and wonderfully accessible book ‘Awakening: the story of the Bengal Renaissance’ (2010) Subrata Dasgupta describes how Rabindranath’s elder brother, Satyendranath, in an exasperated bid to make his precocious 17-year-old brother “professionally respectable, took him to England to study for the Bar.” After two years as a quintessential dilletante, Rabindranath returned to India which he later said was one of “utter disorderliness.”

Yet this decision to forsake a conventional career would mark the beginning of a path that redefined Indian cultural identity. Two years after his return as a lawyer manque, he produced ‘Sandhya Sangeet’ (1882), which was highly regarded by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay. In 1883, he wrote ‘Nature’s Revenge’ and his first novel

These early works set the stage for a career that would eventually lead to the creation of ‘Gitanjali’ — the immortal collection of poems which sent W.B Yeats (and countless others since then) into raptures earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, making him the first non-European laureate.

While he may have still written some luminous short stories or poetry, a full-time career in law would have stifled these creative impulses, leaving a gaping void in both Bengali and global literature.

But the instant recognition and influence of Tagore as composer has even exceeded that of Tagore the poet and novelist. In Rabindra Sangeet, he created a completely new genre of contemporary popular music. India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka would not have had their national anthems had he remained a lawyer and iconic songs like ‘Ekla Chalo Re’ would perhaps not have come into being.

But Tagore’s influence extended far beyond his literary works. His establishment of Santiniketan in 1901 and Visva-Bharati University later on redefined education in India, promoting a learning environment that valued creativity and intellectual freedom over rote memorization. His role in the Bengal Renaissance was not just as a cultural icon but also as an educational reformer whose vision reshaped the pedagogical landscape of India. A life in the courtroom would have precluded these contributions, depriving Indian education of one of its most visionary architects.

Moreover, Tagore’s global appeal—rooted in his ability to bridge Eastern and Western thought—might have been confined to the courtroom. His interactions with legions of Western intellectuals like Ezra Pound, H.G. Wells, G. B. Shaw and his dialogues on spirituality and universalism, created a unique intercultural dialogue that enriched global understanding. Without his towering voice, a vital conduit for East-West exchange would have been lost and India would have been deprived of a profound cultural ambassador.

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