Sunday 15 May 2022

Tagore vs Gandhi

 Tagore had to take over from his Dad as the head of the Adi Brahmo Samaj. That's why he had to ponce around in a kaftan with a great big beard. Unfortunately, he no longer believed in the Brahmo creed and thus did not bother capitalizing on his fame to entrench his sect in America where, all told, he spent 17 months. It would have been one thing to renounce a Knighthood for religious reasons- Rockerfellers would have understood that- but to do so because a mob had been machine-gunned was silly. American Capitalists were all for Law and Order. 

The Brits similarly turned against Tagore because he had taken to writing what they considered to be 'Babu English' while expressing the shallow and bombastic sentiments of a West Kensington law student.

More damningly, Tagore could achieve little in India because he was obliged to oppose Indian nationalism which would have meant Muslim domination of his own native Bengal. 

 By contrast, Gandhi didn't get his Dad's old job and thus had to strike out on his own. This involved a sojourn in South Africa where Gandhi, first embracing the radical Arya Samaj style of celibacy, gave it an irenic, conciliatory, aspect by grafting Tolstoy's creed onto it. Returning to India, Gandhi- because he came from a Hindu majority province- was prepared to head up a Khilafat-Congress combine based on Hindus conceding much to the Muslims but with the obvious intention of betraying them and ruling the roost once the Brits departed. 

 Both Gandhi and Tagore were selling a crackpot ideology in the Twenties and Thirties. Tagore had the comparative advantage- he was smarter, more aristocratic, less ignorant, more handsome. Also he had a Nobel Prize for Literature and a world wide best-seller in the shape of Gitanjali.

 But Gandhi was an entrepreneur who could adapt to the market- the Hindu Indian one which he almost monopolized whereas Tagore was selling dated shite in disparate markets. He didn't create branch offices of his sect in wealthy Western Cities and thus did not develop the infrastructure which would have enabled him to get scope and scale economies. Neglecting the domestic market, he soon had no audience anywhere. His cult was kept up by middle class Bengalis in the same way that middle class Tambrams kept up Carnatic Music. Both became boring and stupid because they were less and less connected to their roots in Hindu spirituality. However, because Tagore had published too much low quality English prose and poetry, it was Tagore not his Tamil or Kannada or other vernacular equivalents who came to epitomize Babu stupidity and a sententious cashing in on bogus spirituality. 

Both Tagore and Gandhi needed money- Tagore to develop his school into a University, a cause with limited appeal, whereas Gandhi needed cash for his money-pit Ashrams and Khaddar and Nai Talim type nonsense all of which created a captive 'rent-a-mob' for agitational politics. This meant Gandhi was pimping the masses for the benefit of his financiers whereas Tagore was merely prostituting himself in a shameless manner for the sake of the kids Shantiniketan was educating. But, developing into a University, its more talented alumni could go on to make good as musicians or artists. Thus, unlike Gandhi's projects, Tagore's was potentially adding, not destroying, value. Precisely for this reason, Shantiniketan could not provide a big 'rent-a-mob' for political agitation. Gandhian shite could always provide a big crowd of nutters who would meekly line up to be hit on the head or to go to jail or whatever. Thus, though Gandhian shite was stinkier than Tagore's shite, it was better financed. Ultimately Tagore had to bow down to Gandhi so as to get some money to avoid his absurd begging trips. But Gandhi refused to become a trustee of Shantiniketan. Its finances would remain precarious till the Central Government took it over after which it turned into a boring provincial College like any other.

Gandhism started off entrepreneurial and stayed entrepreneurial in so far as it stayed at all. Indira kicked the Gandhian Peace Foundations in the goolies after returning to power but financed Attenborough's Gandhi which made a lot of money and revived interest in the Maha-crackpot. At around this time, Satyajit Ray made the abysmal 'Ghare Bhaire' which put the final nail in Tagore's coffin. Ben Kinglsey became an international star after playing the bania. Victor Bannerjee gained acclaim for 'Passage to India' which came out in the same year as Ray's film in which he was by no means crap. But the film was. 

Merchant Ivory did well out of EM Forster's novels. Ray's Charulatha had been good but people suddenly realized that films based on Tagore were shit because Tagore was a boring shithead. Sharat's 'Devdas' made a lot of money for Bollywood, not Tollywood. Bibhuti's 'Amar Prem' too did well. It wasn't that Bengalis who didn't emigrate had no talent, they just didn't have the entrepreneurial elan to do anything with it other than produce turgid or vacuous shite. Thus Tagore's reputation continued to sink as West Bengal turned into a thugocracy with a merely provincial culture subsidized by a meretricious diaspora.

 Gandhi, on the other hand, would always be supported by the Gujeratis who, because they were ready to master Hindi, ended up supplying Hindu India with the leadership it had long sought. Thus, if only as Sardar Patel's Guru, Gandhi retains salience. Moreover, as the West declines and China rises, Tagore's 'internationalism' is passe. Gandhi's dirigiste nationalism, however, has regained salience. However, it is more muscular and in the style of the 'Iron Man' Patel. The irony here is that Tagore was genuinely interested in raising up the peasant. He was a patriot but felt he had to talk Oriental bollocks to get money from the West. Thus, he fell between two stools. By contrast Ramakrishna and Vivekananda retain relevance for India- if not the world. 

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