“Did you know that there was a rare meeting between Rabindranath Tagore, Kalidas Nag, Romain Rolland, Bertrand Russell and Hermann Hesse in London in the 1930s, to protest against war, international disorders and killing of innocent people?” asks Ashoke Viswanathan, sipping black coffee in a south Kolkata restaurant.
It is a sultry evening and the thinking director is happy to talk about ‘The Lighthouse, The Ocean And The Sea,’ his latest documentary based on Kalidas Nag, Tagore and Romain Rolland, which has been produced by the I & B Ministry and Ministry Of Cultural Affairs. Ashoke is really excited about this ambitious venture for which he travelled to England, Switzerland, France and other parts of Europe to shoot.
He explains, “The film is a quasi documentary on the relationship between Tagore, Romain Rolland and Kalidas Nag. They discuss controversial issues such as Tagore and Fascism, internationalism, Gandhi and man’s dependence on machines. The influence of an eminent scholar such as Kalidas Nag inspired Rolland to write books on Ramakrishna Paramhansdev and Swami Vivekananda. The Brahmo Samaj founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Debendranath Tagore also forms an integral part of the discussion.”
The documentary outlines the life and times of Kalidas Nag in Paris and Europe and describes the efforts of stalwarts such as Albert Einstein and Tagore in protesting against the cult of fascism. The film is partly dramatised and fictionalised with representative excerpts from “Chaturanga”, “Guare Baire” and “Char Adhyay.”
Ashoke says, “There are interesting re-creations from “Life Of Ramakrishna Paramhansdev and Life Of Vivekananda. It is a cultural document which also presents rare incidents from Tagore’s visit to the Far East.”
Ashoke continues, “You will be astonished to learn that Benito Mussolini was a great admirer of Tagore. He sent an Italian professor as an envoy to the Biswabharti University when Tagore was alive in the late 1930s. In his autograph book Tagore wrote, ‘Forget Thyself’. Later, when Mussolini was arrested, during the period the Axis Powers were losing, the Gitanjali was found under his pillow.”
Did it mean that Tagore supported the Axis Powers? Ashoke replies, “No. It was Rolland who requested Kalidas Nag to inform Tagore that he should never support a destructive force like Fascism. Understanding the view point, Tagore wrote an excellent article in The Guardian protesting against fascist views.” He adds, “Tagore shared an excellent rapport with Mahatma Gandhi. Yet he did not support Gandhi’s clarion call to the nation to do away with anything English. Tagore whole-heartedly supported the struggle for Independence but always preferred that Indians accept good values of the Occident.”
The film ends in the early 1940s when Nag drifted away from Rolland, who started slowly supporting the Soviet Marxist Leninist model, something that was not acceptable to Kalidas Nag.
Ashoke says, “The documentary would never have been possible without valuable contributions from Chinmoy Guha, Ananda Lal, Madhumanti Maitra, Swapan Majumdar and Jharna Bose.” The music for ‘The Lighthouse, The Ocean And The Sea’ has been composed by sarod exponent Tejendra Narayan Majumdar.
