 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. You are watching Present, Past and the Future. It is very difficult these days in India to find leading public figures debating and discussing issues, their agreements and disagreements with any amount of civility. Abusive quality of political discourse during elections is the new constant. This erodes deliberation on vital issues confronting the nation. It also results in policy formulation bringing the brain wave of a single leader or his chosen confidant. There, however, is a template of how friends can also be intellectual adversaries yet work towards making the nation more vibrant, its people stronger and in control of their destiny. I am talking about the three and a half decade long interaction and correspondence between Mahatma Gandhi and Gurudev Ravindranath Tagore. Their intellectual exchange began in 1914 and 15 when Mahatma Gandhi, along with the students of his Phoenix school in South Africa, visited Shanti Nikita. At that time, Tagore's school was not yet 15 years old. He himself was just 53 and had just received the Nobel Prize just a year ago. Gandhi, eight years younger, was yet to attain national stature in India although his work in South Africa was widely known. There were many striking contrasts between these two personalities. For one, Gandhi was the archetypal ascetic in loincloth while Tagore was the divinely handsome poet in his flowing robes. One's primary concern was the creation of a moral utopia while the other was the high priest of life's many splendours. Yet, they found common chord and struck a friendship. It lasted till 1941 when Tagore died. Four years later, Gandhi visited Shanti Nikita one last time in his own life. He said at the conclusion of the visit, I started with a disposition to detect a conflict between Gurudev and myself but ended with a glorious discovery that there was none. As early as February 1915, Tagore began referring to Gandhi as Mahatma and Gandhi readily adopted the form of addressing Tagore as Gurudev. Despite disagreements, the two never doubted greatness in the other. From matters related to the country's freedom to boycotting foreign cloth, their letters had it all. The correspondence between Tagore and Gandhi, the two greatest Indians in the first half of the 20th century, contains much of the moral and political dilemma of the country and its people. The matters they debated often related to nationalism, a theme which troubled Tagore greatly as he saw the rise of chauvinistic nationalism in many parts of the world. These debates hold lesson for much of what is happening in India now. Tagore founded, in a way, the award wopsy gang by renouncing his knighthood. Because of the enormity of the measures taken by the government, Tagore said, it was time when badges of honour make our shame glaring. To discuss this remarkable intellectual exchange between Gandhi and Tagore, I am joined by the preeminent scholar of modern Indian history, Brindula Mukherjee. Among other facts, she will also enable us to understand the high philosophical plane on which they elevated political debate and how the two were constantly willing to learn from one another. Their greatness was in being small before the other, despite being towering personalities. Welcome, Brindula. It's a pleasure to have you. Let me begin with what I was saying. You know, this constant contrast between the present and the past. You know, what we find is that at the time of Gandhi and Tagore, the beautiful relationship they had over three and a half decades, possibly one of the most intellectually vibrant partnership that one can say, there was never any game of one-up man-ship. Now, what do you think were the most dominant features or the characteristics of their interaction? Well, I think first and foremost, I would say that the relationship was based on a great amount of mutual respect and admiration. In fact, if you see the language they use for each other, it is always in superlatives. For example, Ravindanath Tagore, of course, he was a poet and he wrote beautifully. So I could begin by just quoting a line from how he described Mahatma Gandhi and what Gandhi meant, his coming to India and the national movement meant. And this is when he's criticizing him. In an essay in which he's criticizing him, he says, at this juncture, Mahatma Gandhi came and stood at the cottage door of the destitute millions, clad as one of themselves and talking to them in their own language. Here was the truth at last, not a mere quotation out of a book. So the name of Mahatma, which was given to him, is his true name. Who else has felt so many men of India to be of his own flesh and blood? And as soon as true love stood at India's door, it flew open. All hesitation and holding back vanished. So he describes the advent of Gandhi on the Indian political scene, that how before that there were great leaders, but they could not touch the people in that kind of way. So he's trying to explain what it was about Gandhi ji. Tell me, you know that in 1914-15, when Gandhi's greatness is not yet known, what was it that drew Tagore to Gandhi? What was it that made him start calling him Mahatma? Well, I think, you know, we often make this mistake of thinking that before Gandhi becomes active on the Indian scene, people in India didn't know him. Fact of the matter is, he'd been working for 20 years in South Africa. He used to come every year to India, and he attended most sessions of the Indian National Congress, and he toured India, and he brought the troubles of the Indians of South Africa to the people of India through these various fora. In fact, by about the middle of the first decade of the 20th century, when the movement there had matured and actually taken the form of Satyagre, and then it became a big mass movement, I think by then, political India certainly knew Gandhi. Secondly, what Gandhi ji was doing in South Africa was extraordinary, even when you compared it with the political movement in India. For example, Satyagre which started in 1906, already had civil disobedience. Not just passive resistance, but at that time what they called it, but civil disobedience as a form of struggle where people burnt their certificates and rejected what the government of the day was asking them to do. A little while later, he took thousands of those indentured labor who were there, very poor, very destitute. He mobilized them into a strike, and he marched 2,000 of them across the border and then they were all imprisoned and spent more than a year in jail. So that kind of politics which went much beyond the elites, much beyond the middle classes, much beyond even the lower middle classes, actually went to the poorest sections because you couldn't be poorer than an indentured laborer. But Gandhi didn't come to India and immediately start trying to replicate what he had been doing. Obviously it would take time for his politics to become mainstream politics. Yet somebody like Tegos still understood that he had the qualities of Mahatma that it was possibly just a matter of time before he would begin replicating what he had been doing. So I think that already what he had done, this is what I was trying to say, that in a way in South Africa Gandhi had already shown the future of Indian politics. And I think perceptive minds in India could see that. It is not for nothing that Gokhale was such an admirer of Gandhi. He went all the way to South Africa to help him actually. Gandhi immortalized himself completely as a disciple of Gokhale. Gandhi of course thought himself, thought that he was his political guru. But it was very mutual, that kind of admiration. You know when Gandhi first reached India and when we all know he went on this tour in a third class railway compartment all over India. And he pointedly captured in Richard Attenborough's film. That's right. So he went to Haridwar which was one of the first places he went to. And they were themselves amazed because crowds collected to see him. So his name had become a household name before Champaran. I think this is what is very significant. How does otherwise Rajkumar Shukla, a peasant of Champaran, start following him around the country to say, Mahatma ji please come to Champaran and solve our problems of the tenants of Champaran. Because he already had that image as a mascot of the poor. So I think that is very important. You know Mirdullah when we read about the exchange between Gandhi and Tagore it comes across very clearly that there were large areas of disagreements also. Yet you know despite and all that this is in the public domain you know Tagore had disagreements with the way in which Satyagraha was conducted. He was not very certain about the strategies used during the non-cooperation movement. All those are part of his articles, the letters, the communications which are there. Yet there was the commonality at the core of their world view. In fact, let me read out what Javala Nehru had said. He said that no two persons could probably differ as much as Gandhi and Tagore. Both men with so much in common and drawing inspiration from the same welts of wisdom and thought and culture should differ from each other so greatly. Now Nehru said this because of what I quote again, the richness of India's age-old cultural genius which can throw up in the same generation to such master types typical of her in every way yet representing different aspects of her many-sided personality. Now you know we need to understand that yes but what was it that really brought Tagore and Gandhi together? You know I am asking this question because today everybody swears by Indianness and what they call you know Indian nationhood. Everybody has their own definitions of it but Gandhi and Tagore had something different going what really brought them together. What was it? Well at a very abstract level I would say what brought them together was a relentless pursuit of the truth. You know by that I mean pursuing something that is authentic in your life and pursuing it to the end regardless. The honesty, the conviction that both of them had in what they were doing. Tagore went after his Swadeshi phase where he was a very active political person but then he had certain disagreements with the Swadeshi movement itself right in 1905. In fact much of his disagreement with Gandhi actually is a product of that experience and he brings that experience. What exactly were these disagreements? See he for example he was not happy with the boycott of foreign cloth and he expressed it right then. He had said that what will Indians wear? That was one and he felt that it was kind of coercive on the poor. So you know he was also a little disillusioned with some of the radical groups within the congress. At that time Tagore's opposition to the call to boycott government schools during the non-corporation movement. That's right and they had had that kind of trend in the Swadeshi movement which he had objected to. So he did not think that without an alternative you should ask children to come out of school. So one was concrete kind of differences that they might have. But I think to go back to what would be the commonalities. I mean just look at for example their similarity when it comes to the issue of education. After all Tagore's major energy was spent in setting up Shanti Nikhetan. Gandhi also did this very well. Which was his alternative to not just the British governmental type of education but any formal type of education which an industrial society has brought about. And so was Gandhi deeply opposed to it. He had his own variations the Naitha Lim for example. He also did something similar in Savarmati Ashram in a very limited way. That's right. So one was I think you know there was that very common concern and discomfort with some of the rigidities and standardization that come out of a modern state system. I think somewhere they were both suspicious of the modern state. In some ways anarchists. Gandhi was more you know back into the idyllic rule. But Tagore was also a great admirer of rule. In practice I don't think there was that much difference. Where Gandhi did a critique he did it from a vantage point. But when it comes to actual practices Gandhi was not really wanting to go back to ancient India. He knew you couldn't. That was not. It was his suspicion of the big daddy modern state. You know where he felt that autonomy and villages being able to produce on their own regions being able to be itself. It's today we say I've got my produce from the nearest farmer. You know if somewhere some of the things are now becoming very popular by way of the environmental movement. But some of Gandhi's ideas today are very contemporary. Right. You know but apart from that I think I also think that though their views at a point there's a huge argument on what is the meaning of nationalism and in the context of what is happening at that time. I think basically they were both ardent Indian nationalists. I also believe that Gandhi was as much of an internationalist as Tagore was. The debate which takes place between them which starts off with the Gurudev making his points about after his experience in Japan his visit to Japan where he can see the early rise of the militaristic type of nationalism. What is happening in Europe the emergence of fascism. What happened in the first world war the jingoistic kind of nationalism. You can see that he is getting uncomfortable with that kind of nationalism but Tagore sort of generalizes it. And in him it gets expressed as a suspicion of nationalism. And Gandhi then defends himself and Indian nationalism and in fact the words he uses are very contemporary. Our's is not an exclusionary rationalism. It is an inclusive one. In fact it is based on the welfare of the poor and then he also makes that famous statement of his in a letter to Tagore where he says I want the winds of the whole world to blow through my house. I want all my windows to be open. But I don't want to be swept off my feet. So he says very clearly to speak what is good for us but not be guided by them and try to prove us ourselves. In fact let me just quote Gandhi on this when he is countering Tagore's criticism. He says that he was not taking an isolated view of the country. He says our non-cooperation is neither with the English nor with the West. Our non-cooperation is with the system that the English have established because Indian nationalism is not exclusive. It is humanitarianism. So he is taking it to the whole of human society. And he then says patriotism for me is the same as humanity. See the two. Both of them make a constant distinction between patriotism and nationalism. This is something which gets blurred all the time in contemporary India. But you know sometimes the words may be different but the meaning which Gandhi is putting into the term nationalism or Indian nationalism put into the term nationalism is not different. Again he says it is the narrowness, selfishness and exclusiveness which is the bane of modern nations which is evil. And through the realization of freedom of India I hope to realize and carry on the mission of brotherhood of men. But what the distinction I think which Gandhi emphasizes he says you cannot help your neighbor if you can't stand on your own feet. So there is no internationalism without first standing on strong If you have to make yourself stronger you have to take care of the poorest of the people. That is very important. So I think here but I think what you first started out with you know the quality of the debate is so uplifting. It is so not just enlightening but it makes you feel as if you are in the presence of something which is so fantastic. Reading the letters you actually get transported back in the 1920s, 30s you know that entire period. That actually this kind of debate is what democracy is really about. There is something you know you are talking about what democracy is all about and debate you know. Whenever there is such an exchange between people to what extent between these two was there you know how much did they change their respective positions how much did they explain their position on which the other disagreed and how much of it was actually a bit of both. They would have both changed their positions listening to the other because both were very committed democrats. So it's not that they decided this is the truth with which I am sitting. I am not going to alter my position. I think the first principle of such a debate and discussion if it is to be meaningful at all has to be openness on both sides. Be willing to change one's position. First of all be willing to understand what have to be open to understand what the other person is trying to say and then try and come to terms with it and also then be concerned enough about the other person's opinion to actually explain your position. In fact because I think because Tagore objected for example so strongly to the Charqa and what he thought was Gandhi's exclusive emphasis on the Charqa the way Gandhi clarifies his position on the Charqa which you probably would not have got otherwise because here he is dealing with somebody who is an outstanding person intellectual man poet I mean you know he is not talking to anybody just any person down the street so here he is also then constrained to in a sense rise to that and be able to explain to somebody the intellectual caliber of Tagore. That's right and there is also some very nice barbs at each other if you read it carefully with good humor but they are sharp so it's not as if it's a very woolly woolly kind of debate it's a sharp debate where nothing is spared but it's done in a polite language with respect for each other but no concession at the intellectual level I mean that is what is the beauty of the debate as I see it and in fact of a different kind as you know is Nehru's critique of Gandhi you know in the autobiography almost half the book is actually an argument with Gandhi so this quality of the freedom struggle that they being together yet also having different opinion you know that is something which is very important to the freedom struggle and mutual respect despite of the same but that is the only way that you can actually build what shall I say a country or a movement and a future with a vision which is expansive which actually is meaningful because no one person can have all the qualities and the answer and a sort of secret road to the truth and the only way you can do this is through sharp arguments but with respect and then build a consensus I think the word consensus is extremely important consensus does not mean unhealthy compromise consensus means actually accommodating many positions genuinely accommodating them understanding their value thinking maybe this person really has a point and my position will benefit from that this is something which we are actually seeing you know in you know being totally short a characteristics which is not there in today's political leaders I know in fact adversary you use the word adversary I would say adversary or you know whatever debating partner if you like but not enemy they were not enemies they were all part of the same agenda they had a common goal a common objective absolutely you know you sometime ago you were talking about how Gandhi and Tagore both said you know that the opening up the hearts you know and the windows to the entire world now if while reading we find you know that even people like Romarola you know who did have a very vibrant relationship with Tagore specifically you know he described the debate as you know between the two as a very noble one and he said you know that it embraces the whole earth and that the whole humanity joins this august dispute which means that you know the intellectual giants of that time were very much enamored by the kind of debate and discussion and being able to understand through their dialogue being able to understand what was there in the minds of these two intellectual giants why is it that in today's world you know when we talk about Gandhi you know the entire country has been talking about 150 years of Gandhi but we have not heard about this relationship much why is it forgotten and to what extent is it necessary for us to resurrect this debate and this dialogue which continued from 1914 to 1941 Well I think as with a lot else we really need to resurrect it I couldn't agree with you more but I think the fact that we have lost a lot of it and we don't know a lot of this legacy is also the reason why we have been going wrong and we have been straying from that true path which was set for us by the freedom struggle and I mean that not in terms of just blindly copying or you know in a routine kind of way just going about doing things which were set by our predecessors but in terms of actually debating, discussing and reliving those values which are so crucial I mean for example what is associated with this kind of debate and discussion I think of values such as the value what is the meaning of democracy at the heart of it lies this how are human beings going to govern themselves when we say these were at a high philosophical plane is because they are raising very fundamental questions about civilization challenges their own perception Exactly so I think that forgetting that means that we have just got sucked into the routine of this thing and in the meantime malevolent forces around us are walking away with our institutions walking away with what we have taken for granted I think we became sanguine we thought that because we have been a functioning democracy with all its ills and faults for so many years We thought we could continue to stumble along Exactly without actually That's right we'll go through highs and lows but we never anticipated or prepared for a situation where you could be completely derailed and I think world not just in India but I think it's important to see this is so relevant because in so many parts of the world this is happening people have let their guards down and others have come in and stolen the baby Well I hope that this little short conversation between the two of us would possibly you know at least you know our viewers whoever are watching us would possibly go back and actually pick up this the dialogue between Tagore and Gandhi for three and a half decades It's really a pleasure to speak to you all the time Thank you very much Thank you For Tagore the national movement was also one of emancipation of man from national egoism which we were talking about It is a tall order in today's India at a time of competitive populism In Gandhi's 150th birthday anniversary it is appropriate to recall what Tagore said about the man who the British once dismissed as a half naked fakir Although frail in body and devoid of military resources Gandhi called up immense power of the meek that has been lying waiting in the heart of the destitute and insulted humanity of India We require the spirit of Gandhi or a reincarnate to raise the history of man from the muddy level of physical conflict to the higher moral attitude do imbibe this lasting friendship which is also a mutual challenge Thank you