Book Details
Rabindranath Tagore
CHIRAKUMAR SABHA (THE BACHELORS' CLUB)
Translated by Sukhendu Ray
217pp. Oxford University Press. Rs450 (£24.99).
978 0 19 809944 4
Amiya P. Sen, editor and translator
RELIGION AND RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Select discourses, addresses, and letters in translation
242pp. Oxford University Press. Paperback, Rs495 (£29.99).
978 0 19 809896 6
The rational spirituality that drove India's literary Nobel Laureate
RINKU CHATTERJEE
"Great books", as Michael Crichton once observed, "aren't written, they're rewritten." A conscientious littérateur, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) evidently believed in the efficacy of revision. He reworked the idea behind The Bachelors' Club through several genres – novel, story, satirical sketches – for more than two decades, before finally publishing it in its final form as a play in 1926.
Even without knowing this, the reader might be justified in seeing Tagore's drama as a rewriting of Love's Labour's Lost: it tells of three young men called Bipin, Shrish and Purno, who vow to follow the example of their leader Chandra Babu by remaining celibate and dedicating themselves to social causes. They do not, however, have any concrete plans for achieving anything. Removed from practical life, their half-baked theories are, at best, farcical; their aim is to eradicate poverty from India, and they contemplate manufacturing matchboxes as a good way to begin. As they while away their time bandying lofty rhetoric, an erstwhile member of the club, Akshay Mukhopadhyaya, now happily married to Purobala, contrives to effect matrimonial alliances between his two sisters-in-law, Nripabala and Neerabala, and Bipin and Shrish, at his wife's insistence. Helped by his brother-in-law, Rasik Chakravarti, an elderly bachelor, and his widowed sister-in-law, Shailabala, who joins the bachelor's club pretending to be a man (Abalakanta), Akshay achieves his aims after a series of comical incidents, which includes driving out unwanted suitors. The seemingly most steadfast bachelor of the club, Purno, falls for the charms of Nirmala, Chandra Babu's niece, thereby giving the play a comedic ending promising multiple marriages.
Although it has the tropes of a romantic comedy, The Bachelors' Club is essentially satirical in tone. Emerging at a time when women were beginning to play a greater role in urban social life, it raises some important questions about the relationship between men and women in the public sphere, as illustrated by Nirmala's impassioned plea for the right to be included in the club: "Those other members who are apparently dedicated to serve the country, who are prepared to renounce the worldly life and yet cannot openly accept a woman, equally inspired by the same spirit of service, as a member, I suggest they better remain family men". The well-educated and otherwise eloquent men, who regularly engage in intellectual debates, display a complete ignorance about the proper etiquette of interaction with young women, and are reduced to tongue-tied incoherence in their presence.
Written during the Indian freedom movement, The Bachelors' Club also satirizes the impractical goals of the many self-appointed freedom organizations that made celibacy and monastic life prerequisites for social work: "the idea of a band of men, after renouncing the world, dressed appropriately, of cheerful countenance, going round the length and breadth of the country, and spreading our message through songs, through speeches ought to be beneficial". Settling down as a responsible householder, Tagore suggests, isn't so bad an idea, either. As in Shavian drama, he persuades us to laugh at the hypocrisies of the genteel middle classes, as well as those of so-called intellectuals. The impressive rhetoric of the debates that Shrish and Bipin engage in essentially lack conviction, and their scholarly discussions concern the common man, even as they display an astounding ignorance about the world they inhabit. The play aims to fulfil the Bergsonian moral role of using laughter as a means to create better human behaviour. While entertaining them, Tagore brings his audience to what Shaw might have called "the melting mood", to make them recognize and accept their follies.
In the introduction to the present edition of the play, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay points out that Tagore's inclusion of songs and poetry "creates a linguistic ambience advantageous to the art of mirth", and also that it can only be fully appreciated in the context of Tagore's literary output, and of the contemporary intellectual milieu in India. This new translation does justice to the spirit of the play, meanwhile, as Sukhendu Ray, aware of the limitations of translating one idiom into another, opts to remain faithful to the meaning rather than metrical strictures of Tagore's verses.
Besides being a rigorous social critic, Tagore was also one of the foremost Indian thinkers of his time. Religion and Rabindranath Tagore illustrates his profound involvement with contemporary leading philosophical ideas, especially those of the Brahmo Samaj (the Bengali Reformist movement founded by Raja Rammohun Roy). Tagore had inherited the legacy of the Brahmo Samaj from his father Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, the leader of the Adi Brahmo Samaj. The speeches and letters in this selection illustrate Rabindranath's thorough knowledge of the Hindu philosophical tradition, especially Advaitism (the principle of non-duality), which is based on
the Upanishads, and which was also largely the basis of the doctrine of Brahmo Samaj. "In the light of the Upanishads which he mastered," Tagore writes in "The Mystics of Medieval India", "Rammohun was able to perceive the Hindu, the Muslim, and the Christian in their true identities. His intelligence and magnanimity of heart enabled him to preach the unity of man in a country marked by acute social differentiation."
As with his fellow reformers, Tagore's spirituality is intrinsically connected to the nationalist movement, which aimed at bringing about social unity. In this regard, the non-duality principle of the Brahmo Samaj, of which Tagore was a staunch advocate, proved very useful, since it emphasized the equality of all human beings, refreshingly different from the divisive influences of caste and religious distinctions. The Brahmo Samaj, moreover, was a key organization that worked towards achieving social changes by helping to "eradicate many malpractices and superstition. In particular, it has helped bring education to Indian women, to generally improve their social status and to bring to them their natural rights as human beings".
Religion or Dharma for Tagore is as much about a way of life as it is about an organized community, and it is based on compassion, a sense of unity and a desire to better one's spiritual existence. In keeping with the beliefs of the Samaj, Tagore emphasizes a personal relation with the Almighty outside any kind of authoritative mediation: "I do not consider the guru to be a mediating symbol. All I know is that God directly manifests himself where man achieves true fulfilment . . .". In a letter to Kadambini Dutta of July 4, 1910, Tagore condemns image worship: "Gods that are conceived or crafted as images are strongly bound up in their personal histories: they are born and they die, they marry and beget children, and are visibly affected by feelings of anger and jealousy. Surely, we abuse our own intelligence when taking such histories to be credible".
In his introduction to this volume, Amiya P. Sen argues that Tagore's endeavour was "to further humanize God and bring out the spiritual potential in men": "Anthropocentrism and not anthropomorphism is perhaps a better description of the nature of this enterprise". Spirituality, for Tagore, is essentially the search for supreme truth. In this pursuit, he uses his vast learning without lapsing into pedantry, and explores the meaning of spirituality and his own existence rationally and relentlessly. In Atmaparichay (1917), an account of his search for self-identity, Tagore states: "I cannot, with any clarity or definitiveness, claim to comprehend what religion means to me. It is not something that is prescriptive, nor written down in the form of philosophical discourse. Once detached from everyday life, it is quite impossible for me to understand this religion". The realization of one's spirituality is not a condition but an ongoing process. The recognition of "Truth", according to Tagore, is an essentially aesthetic experience that can be achieved through the appreciation of nature, and even love. He argues that the saints of the Bhakti movement (a religious reform movement in medieval India, which also advocated an intimate relationship between God and His worshippers), such as Nanak, Kabir, Dadu and Gyandas, were also poets in their own right – their poetry stemming from their unique gift of perception. It was principally for the "poetic thought" of works such as the intensely spiritual Gitanjali (1910), of course, rather than the satirical Bachelors' Club, that Tagore received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.
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