I have long been fascinated by the idea of literature as history. I believe that when literature invokes history through allusions to the behaviour or mentality of the characters, it has a deeper impact on the reader than the recital of historical events as part of the narrative. Distant historical events come alive when they are acted out casually by living, breathing people. I am going to examine three of Tagore's novels, Chokher Bali (1903), Gora (1909) and Ghaire Baire (1916) from this point of view. While re-reading them, I realised that a seemingly insignificant allusion in Chokher Bali , not a historical-political novel like Gora and Ghaire Baire , said more about the constraints of colonial rule on the Indian mind-set than the larger tomes.
Mohendra, Bihari, Binodini and Asha have gone on a picnic to Dumdum. Binodini is eager to see the sunset and Mohendra, eager to do her bidding. But they are forced to turn back earlier because they cannot risk being accosted by gora soldiers. More significantly, their hired coach is taken away by goras without their leave and they have to find another. This injury is accepted casually as a matter of course. No one shows annoyance or comments on it. This aside was a more apt metaphor of the times than a whole treatise.
What attracts me in Tagore's history-telling is the growth of ideas. The nationalism of Gora evolves into a holistic view of humanity in Ghare Baire . Despite the insinuation of ritualistic religiosity in nationalism, Gora remained unique because it chronicled a rare journey of mind. It ended, where it began: In pride in one's country and culture. In between lay a vast territory of intolerance, narrow-mindedness and confusion, which had to be traversed to turn an imperfectly perceived goal into a meaningful worldview. The most moving part came at the end when Gora, a diehard nationalist and staunch Hindu, who equated nationhood and Hindu orthodoxy, discovered that he was neither Hindu nor Indian by birth. In a moment, he became a nobody according to his own precepts. But his regeneration was as heart-warming as unique. Unlike Nikhil in Ghare Baire , he did not take recourse to being a citizen of the world or recant his stand against colonisation or fight for freedom. He reaffirmed his faith in a free and just India. “Today give me the mantram of that deity who belongs to all, Hindu, Mussalman, Christian, and Brahmo alike — he who is the god of India herself!” Of India, not of the whole world!
We have two men in confrontation in all the three novels. Gora and Binoy in Gora ; Nikhil and Sandip in Ghare Baire ; Mohendra and Bihari in Chokher Bali ; childhood friends turned antagonists if not adversaries. Superficially the bone of contention is a woman, Sucharita, Bimala, Binodini. But deep down the quarrel is about ideas. Ideas in a flux, simmering, cooking and changing texture, not stagnant ideology.
Nikhil says in Ghare Baire : “From childhood I have known Sandip to be a wizard of ideas. He has no need for the truth… he thinks he has discovered it whenever he creates new enchantments through mystical formulae of his words, never mind the contradictions... whose vocation is to delude others can not but cheat himself.”
It is the wizardry of ideas combined with the sorcery of words which captivates and destroys people. In Ghare Baire , the romantic and vain Bimala falls prey to Sandip's words of calculated seduction and pays a terrible price for it. One finds it difficult to sympathise with her as she seems a superficial, easily duped woman. But that's because Tagore makes no bones about Sandip's villainy expressed in his own words in his diary. Tagore uses Atmakatha, confessional accounts by all three characters in a way that the reader is left in no doubt about what each person is like. But was Tagore not defeating the purpose by making Sandip an out and out fraud? Did it not dilute rather than bolster the call for refraining from dictatorial handling of political rebellion?
Earlier in Chokher Bali , it was a man, Mohendra, who fell for the flirtatious sorcery of words. Binodini was at fault in her treatment of the simple, trusting Asha. Even when she named her Chokher Bali (mote in the eye), she gave it a double meaning. That's what she planned to be and became. She was saved from committing further injustice by falling in love with Bihari. She was severely punished for her misconduct but only she; ironically Mohendra went free. In fact everyone fell over their feet, eager to make everything come right for him and it did. A tragic beginning which started with Binodini's widowhood ended in the greater tragedy of a life sentence for her.
A question which haunted me when I read Chokher Bali as a young adult bothered me again now. Did all widows, even a widow, as free-spirited and talented as Binodini have to end up in Kashi? Why was even a near-perfect man like Bihari unable to act against the prevailing social dictate? Was widow remarriage so repugnant that it could not find place even in fiction? After all Tagore was not chained to realism. He was a visionary, who had Nikhil expound on corruptibility of nationalism and tyranny of Swadeshi if practiced dictatorially. Why did he shy away from an end, true to the inner logic of Chokher Bali and fall in line with the dictate of the time?
Another interesting conundrum is Nikhil's failure at all innovative ventures of entrepreneurship; planting sugarcane imported from java and Mauritius or broad beans from Japan or foreign cotton in India or making soap and scissors locally. He failed because his business acumen was flawed not his schemes.
Why did he have to be a failed businessman? Had he been shown to succeed, would it not have paved the way for others rather than sealed our instinct to refrain from innovation and entrepreneurship?
Another thing which intrigues me in both Sharat Chandra and Tagore is the preoccupation with food. However horrendous the circumstances, the first question a woman asks a man is, “Have you eaten?” The weirdest moment occurred in Chokher Bali . Binodini is in a state of depression, half demented with agony, certain that Bihari hates her and would never come near her. Yet when he arrives at her doorstep out of the blue, she immediately asks, “Have you eaten?” Mothers, aunts, mothers of friends, wives, casual acquaintances, lovers, whatever the relationship, the woman derives almost an orgiastic pleasure and fulfilment out of serving food and the man in getting her prasad , as the laboriously prepared delicacies are called. I feel that the elaborate and ritualistic depiction of the offering of food by women and their pleasure in seeing it consumed by men was an alternative to depiction of sexuality, which was studiously avoided. The basic precept remained the same. The giver and receiver of food were analogous to the bhogi and bhukta of sex, where the man took and the woman gave; it being their innate impulse of fulfillment!
Considering the far-reaching influence Tagore had on future generations of Indian writers, would not our fiction been more liberal, had he written differently. What if he had allowed Binodini to marry Bihari; painted Sandip as less demonic or Bimala as more astute and not legislated a divide between intense sensual and everyday conjugal love in Shesher Kabita ?
