independence

Let us, for a moment, forget it is supposed to be a poem.  Let’s not even call it ‘free verse’.  Let us just assume it is prose.  This piece by Tagore:

Where the heart is unafraid, head unbowed, knowledge unbound
Where the Universe has not been smashed, grounded, enclosed within the walls of a house
Where words spring from the heart
Where effort flows in a million boundless streams towards success
Where reason is not dammed by the sands of dogma
Where virility lives
Where YOU lead all effort, thought, and happiness
To jolt Bharat awake into that heaven
Strike, Father. Ruthlessly.

This, to me, is what ‘independence’ is.

Tagore, the poet karmayogi

Every time the national anthem is played in India, a brave nation stands upright to glorify the abstract figurehead that rules over the waves and crests of this vast country. Every time the national anthem is played in Bangladesh, a riverine nation celebrates its love of a golden landscape. Two countries, two anthems – one martial, the other emotional – both composed by Rabindranath Tagore, a man whose life and work embodied the spirit of nationality in universality.

The only poet from India to have ever won the Nobel Prize, Tagore’s influence on the culture of his land is pervasive and deep-rooted. Children are put to sleep by his lilting melodies, youngsters quote his verses during fierce political debates in their universities, random houses and apartment blocks are named after his poem collections, and his songs glorifying the abstract and infinite God are sung at funerals and memorials. The paintings, etchings, sculptures, and clay models created by him and his disciples at his Vishwabharati remain a benchmark for artistes. For generations of people, culture begins and ends with Tagore.

Who was Tagore? Born in 1861, a few years after the Mutiny, Tagore was the youngest child of a wealthy and landed family of 19th century Bengal. His education was irregular. He was home schooled in his childhood and his family’s attempts to get him a conventional education – first at St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta and later at the University College in London – failed. His experience with the extant educational system was what probably guided Tagore to found, in 1921, the Vishwabharati – a school and university that followed the ancient gurukula system (in that, students and teachers live together) with a syllabus and teaching method that was modern by the standards of the times – not only were there no ‘examinations’, students were encouraged to follow non-academic pursuits such as carpentry, weaving, painting, and clay-modelling.

Tagore’s era was the time when the movement for independence of India from Britain was at its peak. When Bengal was partitioned in 1905, Tagore led a seething, teeming mass of protesting people to the banks of the Ganga where he oversaw a Rakhi-Bandhan ceremony – Hindus and Muslims tying a brotherhood band on each other’s wrists to the accompaniment of Tagore’s songs – incomparable in simplicity and inimitable in the melody of their tunes.

Cutting us asunder
When God has put us together
Do you think you have that power?
Such conceit!

The government had to rescind the Partition. Several years later, when Jallianwala Bagh happened, Tagore protested by renouncing his knighthood. Tagore, though deeply committed to the cause of an independent homeland, rejected the theory that everything British was bad. His novel Gora is about an Irish child orphaned during the Mutiny and brought up as the son of a chaste Hindu couple. In Ghare Baire and Char Adhyay, he criticized the violent terrorist movement in Bengal and the Swadeshi movement that saw the burning of British cloth – he disliked this waste in a country where people went naked. Tagore’s vision of freedom was different:

Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!

Tagore had a poet’s heart.

As the night keeps hidden in its gloom the petition for light,
even thus in the depth of my unconsciousness rings the cry
‘I want you, only you’

His Gitanjali, which won him the Nobel prize, has poems with dual meanings.

Away from the sight of your face
My heart knows no rest or respite
And my work becomes a toil in a shoreless sea

The day he passed on to his maker, Tagore composed the last of his poems:

O beguiling Mother! You’ve kept
Your creation so ensnared.
Trapped in a deftly woven mesh of false beliefs
….
The path that your bright star shows, though,
The path of its soul
Is the ever clear path to Infinity.
…
He who has been stoic in all deceptions
Wins from you the right of unbroken peace

Tagore died on August 7, 1941. In his own words:

One day when death will knock at your door
What will you offer him?
Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life —
I’ll never let him go with empty hands.

label

A label is a classifying phrase or name applied to a person or thing, says my dictionary. The word is probably of Germanic origin, from the word lappen, which means rag, cloth, flap, lobe and which, later, came to be used to mean a small piece of paper, fabric, plastic, or similar material attached to an object and giving information about it.

So, for example, in the sentence “The Blues musician John Galt sold 7 million singles last year”, the word “Blues” is a label.

Here is a list of labels, which we freely use in our daily conversation, together with their meanings. It is evident that we use these labels a tad indiscriminately.

• axis of evil: the terrorist supporting nations of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea
• bourgeois: belonging to or characteristic of the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes
• capitalism: an economic system structured upon the accumulation of capital in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets
• centrist: a person who takes a middle-of-the-road political stand, neither left nor right
• communalism: allegiance to one’s own ethnic group rather than to the wider society
• communism: a sociopolitical movement that aims for a classless and stateless society structured upon common ownership of the means of production, free access to articles of consumption, and the end of wage labour and private property in the means of production and real estate
• civil society : 1. all of the civil infrastructure of a Western Liberal state, democracy, trial by jury, rule of law, etc. 2. voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state (regardless of that state’s political system) and the commercial institutions of the market
• democracy: a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state , typically through elected representatives
• direct action: the use of strikes, demonstrations, or other public forms of protest rather than negotiation to achieve one’s demands
• fascist: a person who believes in an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organisation
• feudalism: a social and economic system defined by inherited social ranks, each of which possessed inherent social and economic privileges and obligations
• figurehead: a very public, but powerless leader. Originates from the ancient Greek tradition of putting fearsome gods and sea creatures on the front of their warships
• flag waving: the expression of patriotism in a populist and emotional way
• identity politics: 1. political arguments that focus upon the self interest and perspectives of self-identified social interest groups 2. the ways in which people’s politics may be shaped by aspects of their identity through race, class, religion, sexual orientation or traditional dominance
• lal salaam: 1. a salute, greeting or code word used by Communists 2. the tribute arranged by comrades after the death of a Naxal soldier
• left wing – 1. a radical or liberal political position 2. a politician or citizen who is more liberal than the average person
• liberal: favouring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate political and social reform
• Machiavellianism 1. the principles of government set forth in The Prince by Machiavelli, in which political expediency is ranked above morality and where the use of craft and deceit to maintain authority or to effectuate policy is recommended 2. activity characterised by subtle cunning, duplicity, or bad faith
• Maoism: the communist doctrines of Mao Zedong as formerly practised in China, having as a central idea permanent revolution
• nationalist: 1. a person who advocates political independence for a country 2. a person with strong patriotic feelings, especially one who believes in the superiority of their country over others
• Naxal: a militant communist supportive of Maoist political sentiment and ideology
  reactionary: a person who opposes political or social progress or reform
• realpolitik: realism in politics, especially policies or actions based on considerations of power rather than ideals
• referendum: the State asking the voters if they agree to a specific proposed legislation
• republic: a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch
• right wing: a politician or citizen who is more conservative than the average person
• Sangh Parivar: organizations inspired by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology
• secular: not connected with religious or spiritual matters
• socialism: a theory or system of social organization advocating placing the ownership and control of capital, land, and means of production in the community as a whole
• terrorist: a person who uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims