Rabindric Fundamentalism

Author(s): G. P. D.
Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 31/32 (Aug. 5-12, 1995), p. 1952
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4403069 .
Accessed: 07/02/2011 05:23
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=epw. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Economic and Political Weekly.
http://www.jstor.org
OF LIFE,
LETTERS AND POLITICS
Rabindric Fundamentalism
GPD
We will condewin even a remotely disapproving remark- about
Rabindranath Ta gore as blasphemous whi'e merrily naming chairs in
our universities after Jbreign prime ministers. Sureiy, Calcutta could
have done better than that.
TIHERE is a sizeable class of people, in
absolute numbers though not as a proportion
of the total population,
which uses,
understands or misunderstands English in
our country. It is this class which probably
recognises either the Adivasi languages or
rnglis^ as thd onily Indian languages. Going
bx the remark made at a recent seminar in
Del, toe 'i-indiwalas. have,. inherited the
mca T. ci this C as .A t Ce c i;em In fact
-is'.-a tii that it vv
t0 a .r-iatter (*f good fortune
1Th t h Ca, N s the word used) that
N'aharashtua and Guiarat were now Hindi-
speakinl !o bez.t . -arhicLilarly ,ood either
a Ei-ioish or Rashth ;sh Hin-i, we have
tlendcd to ignore tncst c 5c I is o r t he plea that
we do not und>erstan-d. themr. But then-i we had
hopedthatthegrelat Indian writers inEnglish
would leave the dalit and OBC languages
like Marathi and Ben"ali alone. Onic does
not anv tonoer minu that this English' elite
wakes up to the f-act ,hat Roshan Seth is a
tood actor recause pe rx. formns in London
atnd with some-Europcan, aictress. One does
anot tnind, that Nase<CerUU dm,1n Shah s cr-edentials
as an acto,r are Iifi ly going to be established
when he plays the iead par: in a French play
translated into English in London. A
Shomhnthu Mitra or a Shreeratm Lagu or a
T'ripti Mitra or a Sulabha Deshpande may
spend all their lives doing theatre in the dalit
languages, btut the DD and our so-called
inational' dai'ies would have little or no
space for them. The only saving grace in the
situation so far was that they had left people
working in minor third world languages
alone. IThey made their pounds and dollars
and there the matter stood. It involved mutual
non-recognition and it was to everybody's
good or so one had thought.
There is an Indo-Anglian author called
Khushwant Singh. We heave riot read any
work by him and therefore cannot say what
kind of author he happens to be. If he happens
to be the same person whose column appears
in every other newspaper then we can claim
some knowledge of his authorial capabilities,
hut obviously not cnough to pass any
judelment. What is curious is that this author
who has never used any Indian language
(apart from English that is) for his creativee
enterpriscs should suddenly choose to make
comments on Rabindranath Tagore. He
probably did that to raise a storm. We are
tempted to believe that now that a storm has
actually been raised, he is privately enjoying
it. The question still remains, however, as
to why/ these Indo-Anglian writers do not
leave the minor languages and literatures of
India alone. An idea could be floated that
all 'native' writers (or as many of them as
possible) give it in writing that they subscribe
to the view that the Shobha Des and the
Khushwant Singhs (or any other writer) of
the Indo-Anglian world are far greater than
Tagore, Jibanananda Das, Ketkar, Tukaram
and the like. Maybe then they would leave
us alone.
The tendency to take the natives lightly
cannot be much of a surprise in the post-
colonial world where the colonised mind
still reigns supreme. Not so long ago a
Bombay paper carried an article on Shivaji
and the Queen of Jhansi by an Indo-Anglian
journalist. Normally anywhere in the world
personalities of the 17th and 19th centuries
would be the concern of historians. But these
rules do not apply to those in English
journalism, or so it would seem. There was
predictably a storm. The issue was this
journalist's 'freedom expression'. There was
inr fact a meeting in Delhi which we had the
misfortune to attend. We had defended
Pandharinath Ranade's right to say what he
did on Shivaji (which had also created a
storm then) because a histprian has a right
to hold a view, favourable or unfavourable,
on Shivaji. We did not see how a young
graduate in English literature could make
bold to speak on a subject which she should
not have been speaking on. She even cited
a Marathi book of the 19th century. There
was a critical article in a Bombay Marathi
daily questioning her use/understanding of
the text. But our notion of democratic rights
does not necessarily cover academic
responsibility, certainly not towards material
in a native language! Bengali's case is slightly
different, one reckons, as that language has
at least one Nobel prize. This might explain
why the journalists and intellectuals who
were keen to defend Adjania's (the author
we have been talking about) right to freedom
of expression did not come out in defence
of Khushwant Singh's right to freedom of
expression! This is so in spite of the fact that
the Maharashtra assembly did not pass a
resolution against Adjania while the West
Bengal assembly has against Khushwant
Singh.
One would have thought that the Bengali
elite was the most advanced of the Indian
elites. (Before our English-speaking elite
object, let us clarify that we mean elites
belonging to the native or better still the
vernacular languages. We dare not say one
word against those who -.;., speai and
read English. And, more importantly, even
if we did, it would not matter really.) As such
the Bengali elite would ordinarily take
comments on Rabindranath Tagore in its
stride. But they have reacted to what
Khushwant Singh has said in much the same
manner as Islamic fundamentalists have
reacted against Alavi recently or against
Salman Rushdie. Are we witness to some
kind of Rabindric fundamentalism? One can
easily see that many would take even a
remotely disapproving remark against Tagore
as blasphemous. But an author (even an
Indo-Anglian one) has a right to say what
he thinks ot'another author. In fact the liberty
should extend to all artists generally. Shaw
did not think much of Shakespeare. Nor did
Rex Harrison either of Shakespeare or of
Stanislavsky. While Khushwant Singh is no
Shaw or Harrison, the important thing is that
neither the British nor the Russians were
unduly perturbed by scepticism about
Shakespeare's or Stanislavsky's standing.
One is, therefore, required to conclude that
it is Rabindra fundamentalism which is
causing this furore.
This becomes all the more apparent when
one notices that Bengal politicians and the
Bengali elite were not upset when a chair
in economics was sought to be instituted in
Calcutta University in the name, of all
persons, of the prime minister of Singapore!
The only objection raised by the university
syndicate members was that the Rs 15 lakh
offered for the purpose was not acceptable.
At least Rs 25 lakh should have been offered,
argued the syndicate members. If the
countries of west Asia and Pakistan are any
guide, 'fundamentalist' critiques of 'western'
societies do not extend to money or arms.
Much the same is the case with cultural
fundamentalism. We will condemn criticism
of our cultural icons and we will merrily
name our academic chairs after foreign prime
ministers! Surely, Calcutta could have done
better than this. One had hopcd that it would
have. Meanwhile Kb 1' .it Singh and Goh
Chok Tong (thbe ..Ingapore prime minister)
are probably naving a hearty laugh as the
bhadralok wallow in their Rabindric
fundamentalism.
1952 Economic and Political Weekly August 5-12, 1995