Limits of nationalism as Gandhi, Tagore envisioned it

Chennai: One may see this as both a retrospective and prospective review. They unveil the setting, the letter-writing and the cable ‘wires’ being only a mode of self-expression, of profoundly troubling and changing times in pre-Independent India, in which as the author puts it, the letters exchanged, amid the “differing perceptions which they had of major national issues,” also throw light “upon the relationship between these friends and adversaries in debate.” Dr Bhattacharya’s work is an exemplar of scholarly austerity and fidelity to original sources in bringing out the range and depth of exchange of ideas on developments of the day, between these two great, yet contrasting personalities. Tagore from the perspective of a grand poet, artist and a philosopher of the creative spirit with the ‘tanha’ to transcend the limitations of an insulated view of culture and history, and Gandhi freely daring to “experiment with Truth”, hitching his thought and praxis to the destiny of the Indian masses in seeking to restore their self-respect from foreign yoke, a journey that began in South Africa. Gandhi’s perhaps sharpest rebuttal of Tagore was his response to the poet’s brilliant, encyclopaedic article, ‘The Call of Truth’, published sometime in 1921, where Tagore dons Hegelian proportions in analysing the contemporary political situation including key issues like the non-cooperation movement, everyone taking to the spinning wheel, boycott of foreign cloth, goods, and last but not least, the question of Nationalism. Dr Bhattacharya writes in his introduction: “Of more than historical interest, is the debate between Gandhi and Tagore over certain issues and questions which continue to be relevant to this day and age.” “This intellectual exchange began in 1914-15 when Mahatma Gandhi along with the students of his Phoenix School in South Africa visited Tagore’s Santiniketan.” Gandhi recalled later: “It was here that members of my South African family found warm hospitality in 1914, pending my arrival from England, and I too found shelter here for nearly a month.” Dr Bhattacharya’s work should hopefully help in keeping that quest of free and open-minded exchanges going in a ‘New India’.