Mystic Modernity

Tagore and Yeats

Ashim Dutta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000473049
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Asiatische Literaturkritik

This is a transnational and bilingual investigation of the cross-fertilisation of mystical religiosity and modern poetical imagination in the works of the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore and the Irish poet W. B. Yeats. The book demonstrates how their commitments to transnational mysticism deeply form and inform the modernist literary projects of these poets as well as their understanding of cultural modernity. Although its primary interest lies in their poetry and poetics, the monograph also includes some of their relevant prose works. This study begins with a close look at and around the phase of 1912-1913, when Yeats and Tagore met over the collection of the latter's English translations of his spiritual verses, Gitanjali, and took mutual interests in each other's works and cultural significances. The monograph then expands on both sides of that phase, selectively covering the whole career of the poets in its exploration of their parallel mystic-modern cultural-poetical projects.

1 The Formation of Tagore's Mystic-Modern Consciousness

DOI: 10.4324/9781032021263-1

This chapter historicises Tagore's complex cultural and ideological inheritances with particular attention to Hinduism, Brahmoism, and Bengal-Renaissance humanism, before critically exploring his evolving mystic-poetic self fashioning. The first section that follows concentrates on two of the key Renaissance figures in Bengal, Raja Rammohan Roy and the poet's father Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, because of their shared and complementary contributions to the formation of the mystic-modern disposition of Tagore's personality. This also includes a thumbnail account of aspects of Hinduism that are relevant to this and the other chapters of the book. The two subsequent sections then read a range of poems from Tagore's early career up to the English Gitanjali phase in order to trace the poet's search for and construction of a personalised form of divinity as well as its various manifestations. What this chapter suggests is that Tagore's idiosyncratic mystical spirituality gradually forms itself in response to and often discursive reaction against a variety of traditional cultural modes of India: mythological, religious, philosophical, and literary. In this process, the rarified spirituality of the Upanishads and the mystic-humanist lyricism of medieval Vaishnava poets and that of the fifth-century Sanskrit poet-playwright Kalidasa merge seamlessly with the earthy mysticism of the indigenous Baul community of Bengal as well as the spiritual vision of British Romantic poets. Towards the end of the chapter, suggestions will also be made regarding the cultural-political repercussions of this spiritual development of Tagore.

Mystic-Modern Inheritances: Rammohan Roy and Debendranath Tagore

The Bengal Renaissance refers to the progressive socio-cultural and intellectual movement that took place in Bengal in the nineteenth century. Rightly considered as “the most brilliant creative genius” of that movement (Dyson 27), Tagore was born with an already rich inheritance of Bengal-Renaissance modernity. Taking shape from the late-eighteenth to the early-nineteenth century, the Renaissance in Bengal was coeval with the rise of Orientalism in India. In British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance, David Kopf refers to the period between 1773 and 1828 as the time for the most radical transformation taking place in the city of Calcutta,¹ which was made the capital of British India by the Governor-General of the East India Company Warren Hastings in 1773. As part of his radical “Indianization” of the Company administration—with a view, albeit, “to rul[ing] effectively”—Hastings inspired “love for Asian literature” among a group of newly arrived Company officials, the most remarkable of whom was William Jones who came to India in 1783. Hastings also established the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, and thus gave birth to British Orientalism in India (Kopf, British 17, 19, 20–1). In the spirit of Hastings's policy, later Governor-General Richard Wellesley in 1800 established the College of Fort William in Calcutta, which was the first higher education institution in India founded by a European (Kopf, British 6). Coordinating with the Asiatic Society and the Serampore Mission, the college played a vital role in the printing and popularising of Indian classics and vernacular languages (Kopf, British 70–1). Kopf contrasts this “sympathetic Orientalist period” with the later “Anglicist” one, when “Westernizers” like Thomas B. Macaulay pushed forward a thorough assimilation of the “natives” into the culture of their British rulers (British 7–8). Such differentiation is useful in contextualising the complex relationship with Western modernity of such precursors of Tagore as Roy and Debendranath Tagore. Both of them were the founders of the reformist Brahmo Samaj, the religious faith Rabindranath was born into, and massively influenced his sense of modernity as well as his religious perspectives. Brief considerations of the relevant aspects of the lives and careers of these key personalities might therefore be helpful for our understanding of the mystic modernity of the poet Tagore.

Dubbed by Tagore as “[t]he greatest man of modern India” (My Life 8), Roy played a crucial role in the abolition of the Hindu tradition of sati or widow immolation, and initiated the modern reformist Brahmo movement by founding the Brahmo Sabha or Brahmo Samaj in 1828 (Kopf, Brahmo xxi; Collet 239). So far as his religious faith was concerned, it was an eclectic monotheism influenced by diverse religious traditions popular in India at that time, such as Upanishadic Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity (Robertson 26). At an early age, Roy was sent to Patna, the then nerve centre of Islamic learning in India, to learn Persian and other Arabic languages (Sastri 16). During his stay there, Roy studied the Qur’an, the life and teachings of Prophet Muhammad, and the rationalist philosophy of the Muʿtazila school of Islamic theology. He also read in Arabic translation such Greek scholars as Euclid, Plato, and Aristotle, as well as the poetry of Ḥāfeẓ, Rūmī, and others, rich in Sufi thought. These studies laid the foundation for his conversion to a monotheistic faith. He is believed to have travelled to Tibet on foot in order to study Buddhism, which was followed by a journey to Benares where he learnt the Sanskrit language and Hindu scriptures for some years. He also began to learn English on his own around that time. Roy's debut Persian tract, published with an Arabic introduction, was called Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhiddin meaning “A Gift to Monotheists”, wherein he repudiated the idolatrous and superstitious practices of all religions and spoke for a “universal religion” with faith in the unity of God (Sastri 16–20; Su. Dasgupta 14–5). Starting in 1815, Roy published a series of translations of Vedanta and different Upanishads in Bengali, English, and Hindustani (Sastri 28). This began, in Brian A. Hatcher's words, “[t]he genealogy of modern Vedānta” (4). Furthermore, before establishing the Brahmo movement, he ardently supported the cause of Unitarian Christianity in India and helped founding the Calcutta Unitarian Committee in 1821. (Tagore's grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore, a friend and supporter of Roy, also held a membership position in the Committee) (Collet 131–3). While the Unitarian influence on it was inevitable, Roy's Brahmo Samaj based its monotheistic “worship” on Vedic authority and its dress code had recognisable Muslim associations. This theistic and cultural eclecticism disappointed Roy's Unitarian friends while his staunch monotheism antagonised the Christian missionaries (Trinitarians) and Hindu orthodoxy alike (Collet 145, 230, 246–7).

Roy's particular theological as well as cultural-political position problematises any neat theorisation. Kopf argues that for all his ideological “contradictions and inconsistencies”, Roy belonged to “the camp of the Orientalist modernizers” because of “his preoccupation with an authentic Hindu tradition or golden age which he sharply set off against a dark age of popularized religion and social abuses” (Brahmo 11). On the other hand, Partha Chatterjee makes a “conceptual distinction […] between the early modern and the colonial modern” in India, arguing that it is from the “liberal” perspectives of the former that we should judge the more controversial aspects of Roy's career, such as his moderate stance on British rule and the European settler community in India (151–2, 156). Chatterjee proposes considering Roy not as an originator of the “nationalist and democratic modernity” of the latter half of the nineteenth century, but as a key figure of the “short-lived early modern antiabsolutist formation”, appearing in the earlier part of the century (153). This demonstrates a fundamental ambiguity in trying to define the form of modernity represented by such complex cultural leaders as Roy and (by extension) Tagore. However, Chatterjee's “antiabsolutist” early modernity overlaps in part with Kopf's notion of the benevolent Orientalist phase and does not contradict the latter's claim about the influence of Orientalist scholarship on Roy's ideological mould. Both Kopf and Chatterjee tend to see Roy's vision of modernity as one that freely combines the local and the West-borne ideas and discursive traditions. What is more important, this model of modernity is less oppositional and coercive than the later Anglicist, Westernising, colonial, or nationalist model. This significantly influenced Tagore's mystic-humanist model of modernity that combined the liberal, rationalist, and universalist tendencies of Western humanism with the local mysticisms of the Upanishads and other popular spiritual sects and practices of India.

If Roy was the idol of Tagore's vision of modernity, his father Maharshi Debendranath's spirituality made a lasting impression on the poet's mystical sensibilities. Debendranath Tagore played a crucial role in promoting the cause of a monotheistic faith rooted in the ancient Hindu scriptures after the untimely death of Roy in 1833. In his autobiography, Debendranath narrates the story of his conversion to an Upanishad-based monotheism, the process of which began at the deathbed of his beloved grandmother who was a practising Hindu. Having had his first spiritual revelation there in the form of an “unworldly joy”, he fell into a state of detachment from materialist living and, gradually, from the image-worshipping popular Hinduism. Becoming attracted to the infinitude of the God “without form”, he found inspiration in the life and works of Roy, whose religious books had been kept at the personal library of Dwarkanath Tagore. This was followed by a more dramatic conversion experience for Debendranath, issuing from the sudden discovery of a torn scrap of paper with some Sanskrit inscription. With the help of Pandit Ramchandra Vidyabagish (who had been taking care of the Brahmo Samaj since Roy's death), Debendranath learnt that the piece of paper contained a verse from the Isa Upanishad, the import of which was the omnipresence of God and the value of detachment from materialist gain (De. Tagore 3, 10, 12–6; Hatcher 36–8, 40–1).

Taking that as a divine message, Debendranath immersed himself in a deep study of the Upanishads and founded the Tattvabodhini Sabha in 1839 with a view to “gain[ing] the knowledge of God” (De. Tagore 16–7). Hatcher thinks that the importance of Tattvabodhini Sabha is generally overshadowed by the scholarly focus on Roy and the Brahmo Samaj. Although the Tattvabodhini Sabha and the Brahmo Samaj eventually merged into one entity, the former was born out of Debendranath's personal spiritual quest and initially ran as a parallel institution to the latter (5, 11).² Officially initiated into the Brahmo faith in 1843, Debendranath founded the journal Tattvabodhini Patrika a few months later under the editorship of Akshay Kumar Datta (Sastri 90–1). According to Hatcher, the founding of the Tattvabodhini Sabha and its contribution to “the further interpretation of Vedānta for the modern world […] mark a second crucial moment in the emergence of modernist Hinduism” (5). In order to evaluate the foundational influence of all this on Tagore's idiosyncratic spirituality, it is helpful to further unpack the complex cultural-political underpinnings of this “modernist Hinduism”, which will also be useful for the discussions of Yeats's evolving relationship with Hinduism in Chapters 2 and 4.

Philosophical, speculative, or mystical in nature, the Upanishads or Vedanta (literally “the end of the Veda”) refers to the final sections of the four Vedas, the other sections being full of rituals and hymns to a plethora of Vedic gods (Radhakrishnan and Moore 37; Radhakrishnan, Indian 430). The Upanishads, therefore, represent a shift in Vedic Hinduism from polytheism towards monotheism taking place between 800 and 500 BCE (Radhakrishnan, Indian 430; N. Chaudhuri 88; K. Sen, Hinduism 19, 46-9). Shankaracharya's Advaita (non-dualist) Vedanta, often confused with Vedanta as such, consists of his later eighth-century commentary on the Vedanta system, existing alongside other alternative interpretations of the same (Radhakrishnan and Moore 506–9). What Nirad C. Chaudhuri calls the “polymorphous monotheism” of popular Hinduism emerged later in the form of the cults of Shiva, Vishnu-Krishna, and Durga-Kali, known as Shaivism, Vaishnavism, and Shaktism, respectively (88). These, as well as numerous other popular cults, have a predominance of image worship and their deities are held to be of “non-Aryan” origin (K. Sen, Hinduism 58–9). In his chapter entitled “‘Mystic Hinduism’: Vedānta and the Politics of Representation”, Richard King considers the notion of “Hinduism” as a homogenous religion to be “a Western explanatory construct”, resulting from the Western Orientalists’ attempts to canonise certain Sanskrit texts as the sourcebooks of “Hinduism” as well as their “tendency to define Indian religion in terms of a normative paradigm of religion based upon contemporary Western understandings of the Judaeo-Christian traditions” (100–1). King points out the early Orientalists’ ahistorical generalisation of Vedanta, or rather Shankaracharya's school of Advaita Vedanta, as the key doctrine to stand for Hinduism as a whole. Following their lead, Indian reformers such as Roy and others found in Vedanta “an overarching theological framework for organizing the confusing diversity of Hindu religiosity” (128, 132, 134).

Vedanta, of course, did not mean the same thing for all the Indian reformers of the nineteenth century. For Roy, it meant the Upanishadic teachings, and he often took issues with the later interpretations of them (Hatcher 24–5). We have seen how he contributed to the popularisation and modernisation of Vedanta as part of his reformist agenda. In his autobiography, Debendranath echoes Roy's attitude to Vedanta by describing the objective of the Tattvabodhini Sabha as “the diffusion of the deep truth of all our shastras [scriptures] and the knowledge of Brahma as inculcated in the Vedanta. It was the Upanishads that we considered to be the Vedanta” (18; emphasis in original). With a more personal and affective approach to religious truths than Roy's, Debendranath would later prioritise heart over head in his version of Brahmo faith. Growing more and more sceptical about the authenticity of the Vedas and the Upanishads, he eventually founded Brahmoism on “the pure heart, filled with the light of intuitive knowledge[.] […] Brahma reigned in the pure heart alone. […] We could accept those texts only of the Upanishads which accorded with that heart” (De. Tagore 74–5). We will see Rabindranath taking a similar approach to the Upanishadic wisdom he draws upon. As for Shankara's absolute non-dualism, Debendranath considered it incompatible with Brahmoism which, he maintained, was essentially dualist: “Our relation with God is that of worshipper and worshipped” (De. Tagore 75). It is worth noting here what Debendranath's eldest son, the philosopher Dwijendranath Tagore wrote in an article of 1886 or 1887 (“Dvaitavad ar Advaitabader Samanvay” or Synthesising Dualism and Non-dualism): “I subscribe to the separation of God and the world on the one hand, and a deep union between them on the other;—if asked to define my position, I would call myself a dualist-nondualist” (98–9; translation mine).³ Synthesising these affective and philosophical positions in an autobiographical piece written in 1904 or 1905, the poet Tagore defines his personal faith in the following manner:

I am not a theorist. I won’t take part in any battle of words over dualism and non-dualism. I can merely speak of my own feelings—deep within me, I feel my indwelling God's joy of expression. That delight, that love pervades all my limbs, my intellect, my perception of this universe, my immemorial past and my e...