History

Source: TW

विस्तारः (द्रष्टुं नोद्यम्)

This is an English translation of the essay “Bharatbarsher Itihas” by Rabindranath Tagore, to be found in his anthology of Bengali essays entitled “Bharatavarsha”. The anthology contains several of Rabindranath’s longish essays concerning historical, cultural, and political dimensions of India, all written between 1901 and 1905, a period which can be described as the zenith of Bengal’s (and in turn, India’s) rebirth in the Modern Era. Each of these essays, though deeply embedded within the historical context of the author’s time and space, is largely relevant for all of India today.

January 24, 2023 Sreejit Datta

India’s History By Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore
Translated from the original Bangla by Sreejit Datta

The history of India that we get to read and memorise in order to pass our examinations, is merely the account of a nightmare from a dark period when India’s sun had set. Certain people arrived from somewhere, a chaotic fight and massacre ensued; fathers and sons and brothers began competing with each other for the throne; no sooner had one group exited this chaotic scene than another arose out of nowhere – such a nightmare as this has only been made more and more complex by a motley crew of Pathans, Mughals, the Portuguese, the French, and the English.

The Real India does not come into sight when the country is looked at through the misty shroud made of the bloodstained, ever-changing scenes of this nightmarish dream. Neither do these historical accounts provide an answer to the question as to where the Indians are to be found. The Indians do not, as it were, exist at all, and only those that have indulged in the fighting and the bloodbath, do.

And yet, even in those times of trouble, these fightings and killings were by no means the most important happenings in India. Despite its roars, the storm cannot be considered the most important event of a stormy day; even on such a day when the skies are obscured by the rising dust, what is of paramount importance for the people is the incessant flow of birth and death and joys and sorrows that continues within every household in the countryside, despite these being hidden from view. But to the foreign traveller, this storm is the most important thing; to his eyes the clouds of dust seem to be all-pervading – because he is not inside the house, he is outside. This is why, in the historical accounts written by foreigners, we only get to read about this dust and this storm, but nothing about the affairs of our home. Reading that history, it seems that India did not exist then, only a raucous whirlwind of Mughals and Pathans wandered from north to south and from west to east, carrying a banner of dead leaves. But when the foreign came to our shores, our country was still here – or else who gave birth to the likes of Kabir, Nanak, Chaitanya, and Tukaram amidst all that oppression and disturbance? Not only were there Delhi and Agra at that time, but Kashi and Nabadwip were there too. No description is found in this history of the current of life that was flowing, the wave of effort that was rising, the social change that was taking place at that time in the Real India.

But we share a bond with that India which is kept outside the current textbooks. When the age-old historical connections of that bond are lost, our heart finds no refuge. We are not unwanted weeds on the Indian soil, nor are we parasitic plants living off the beautiful tree that is India; through hundreds of centuries, our hundreds of thousands of roots have occupied the very heart of India. And yet, unfortunately, we have to read such accounts of our history that our children forget that very point. We are made to feel as if we are nothing to India – and the outsiders are everything.

When we learn that our relationship with our country is so insignificant, where do we draw our vital subsistence from? In such a situation we feel no hesitation at all in setting the foreign in the place of what is our own – we can then no longer feel an awful shame at India’s disgrace. Without flinching, we then say that we had nothing of our own before, and we must now beg and borrow from the foreigner all his habits of food and dress, his manners and his customs.

People from more fortunate countries discover their eternal motherland right inside the historical accounts of their lands; in their childhood, history itself acquaints them with their respective countries. In our case, it is the exact opposite. The country’s historical accounts have themselves obscured our motherland. From the invasions of Sultan Mahmud to Lord Curzon’s boastful belches of imperialist pride – the entire bulk of historical records here is merely a variegated screen of mist shrouding the face of India, which in no way helps our vision to discover our relationship with the motherland, but only makes it hazier. It casts an artificial light on such peculiar spots that the very aspect of our country is pushed into the dark, away from our sight. In that blindfolded darkness, the dancing girl’s jewellery sparkles in the light issuing from the lamps of the Nawab’s pleasure dome, the foaming scarlet of the Badshah’s wine goblet appears like the red of the wakeful flashing eyes of the frenzied; and the darkness shrouds the spires of all our ancient temples, while the minarets on the ornate ivory-white marble mausoleum, entombing the grave of the Sultan’s paramour, rise high on above, kissing the celestial sphere in that darkness. The sound of the horse’s hoofs, the elephant’s trumpet, the clamour of weapons, the shimmering white of the sprawling military camps, the golden hue of the kincob overlays, the bubble-shaped stony domes of mosques, the quiet stillness of mysterious palace chambers in the zenanas that are guarded by eunuchs – all these elements create a colossal illusion with their diverse sounds and colours and moods; but what is the point of calling this illusion India’s history? It keeps the scrolls of India’s sacred mantra tucked away inside a fantastic Arabian romance – no one opens the scrolls, and our kids end up memorizing each and every line of this Arabian romance only.

Later on, at a cataclysmic hour of doom, when the Mughal Empire was at death’s door, and a wake of vultures descended upon the graveyard from afar and began a series of intrigues, deceptions, and scramble for power between themselves – is that India’s history either? And ever since then we have the British Rule, chequered into five-year divisions like in a chessboard, within which the space allotted to India is even less. In fact, the only difference between the chessboard and this regime is that, unlike the former, its chequering does not consist of an equal number of white and black squares – ninety-five percent of these squares happen to be just white. Good governance, good judicial system, good education: we have, as it were, consented to buying all these ‘goods’ from a large department store of Whiteaway Laidlaw¹, simply because we’ve been guaranteed a morsel of bread for our subsistence. From law and order to commerce – everything produced in this manufacturing house may indeed be good, but shoved into one corner of its clerk-office, the space allotted to our India is minuscule.

‘History must be the same in every land’ – this is a superstition that we can no longer afford to subscribe to. One who has ripened his wits by studying Rothschild’s life, may demand, while investigating the life of Christ, to see the latter’s balance sheets and office registers – and is bound to grow disdainful when he can’t find any of those, asking: what worth is the biography of a person who himself wasn’t worth a single penny? Likewise, those who become disappointed with Indian history when they cannot find records of royal lineages and documents chronicling victories and losses in India’s state archives – crying ‘where there is no politics, what history can there be?’ – are looking for eggplants in a paddy field, and, failing to find it, they rule out rice from even being regarded as a crop in their frustration. Not every field yields the same crop; and wise is the man who, knowing this, expects to find the right crop in the right place.

One may grow to disdain Jesus Christ if one checks his account book, but when one looks for other things about him, all the account books become insignificant. Similarly, even if India is regarded as poor in terms of state affairs, that poverty becomes trivial from other special perspectives. Not looking at India from its own internal perspective, we, from our childhood, are only disparaging her, and are getting disparaged ourselves. The Englishman’s child knows that his father and grandfather have won many wars, occupied many a country, and carried out extensive commercial activities; and he, in turn, also aspires to win the glories of war, wealth, and kingdoms. We get to know that our forefathers did not endeavour to occupy countries or expand trade and commerce – the sole purpose of the History of India is to tell us only this². Since we don’t get to know what they did, we are at a loss as to what we should be doing. And therefore, we are compelled to imitate others. Who is to blame for this? The way we are taught right from our childhood, it makes us alienated from our country day by day, and gradually a feeling of antagonism towards the country is born in us.

From time to time even the educated people of our country ask, like bewildered fools: who do you call the country, what is the distinctive spirit of our country, where does it reside, where has it been all along? Answers to these cannot be obtained by simply asking questions. Because the matter is so subtle, so vast, that it cannot be apprehended by reason alone. Be it the English, or the French, no one from any country can express in one word what his national spirit is, where the core essence of his country resides – it is as directly perceivable a truth as the life that resides in the body, yet as elusive to definition and conception as life itself. It enters into our knowledge, into our love, into our imagination, through various invisible paths in various forms, right from our childhood. In inscrutable ways it shapes us through its wonderful power; it does not allow a rift to occur between our past and our present; and it is by its grace that we become great, that we are not isolated. How can we explain this wonderfully invigorated, mysterious, and ancient energy to the sceptical questioner by means of a definition in just a few words?

(To be continued in Part II)