‘Milan’ in the age of Capitalism: A Marxist Reading of selected poems from Tagore’s Gitanjali

Abstract

The article will engage with select poems from Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali (Song Offerings) to understand Tagore’s concept of Milan, or union between self and the divine self, in a Marxist perspective. As Marx’s focus was always on unity for a revolution to change the existing order of social structure, in this article I will try to show how this notion of unity has been influential in shaping Tagore’s notion of milan, and the internal revolution that Tagore has earnestly urged. As the 20^th Century Bengal was on the verge of becoming a capitalist metropolis and the process of capitalization of the native mind had already been started, especially with the babu culture earlier, this paper will argue how through Tagore’s call for milan with the divine (other) self, a sense of collective, communalism and solidarity is born which stands as a direct critique of individualism of capitalist modernity.

Thinking Tagore to be residing amidst capitalist metropolis or somewhere on the verge of becoming so, calls for a renewal which might help to pave the way to investigate Tagore’s understanding and critique of the growing problem of modernism, individualization and capitalism. Before the advent of Industrial Revolution which brings with it modernity, the culture was more accommodative, democratic and communal and was connected through miracles, rituals, beliefs, festivals and celebrations. With modernity the old-world order changed. Modernity brought with it technology, capitalism and machines which gradually created a distance between man and nature. As exchange value got replaced by the capitalist trance of profit-loss pursuit, a sense of competition was born which replaced community with individuality. Profit, capital and machine quickly shifted the whole culture to an artificial, abstract and hollow epistemological factory producing commodity which begets repetition, monotony and predictability in the society.

My contention here is to argue how the sense of collective, communalism and unity in Tagore’s selected poems in Gitanjali (Song Offerings) can offer a Marxist perspective which acts as a critique of this growing issue of individualism, compartmentalization and social alienation in modern city life. The word ‘Unity’ or the verb ‘Unite’ is always important in Marx as his very agenda lies in the unification of the masses for a revolution. If revolution in Marx acts on a socio-economic plane concerning the collective, Tagore focuses on the individual and targets his individual self-fashioning to make it collective within, through inner revolution. The Marxist sense of revolution is understood as the destruction of the old and the re-invention of the new, thus creating a new world order. In continuation with Marx, it can be noticed that Tagore’s call for re-invention of mind to become collective and selfless is more than to reject nationalist agenda but also a mean of decapitalization of the mind.  Tagore’s Gitanjali, which won him the Nobel Prize in 1913, is remarkable as the structured lines posit themselves between song and poetry. Tagore himself has remarked that what he has written in Gitanjali are not poems but songs. It is important here to focus and try to understand about the genre of Gitanjali as it may help us to understand the mindset of Tagore at a time of modernization in India. In 18^th century, the rise of novel officially ended the sense of democracy and collective in aesthetic domain as well as in socio-political plane. In the age of drama, as the genre itself demands collective participation, the sense of communalism was always there. Though the class hierarchy must be taken into account, but novel proves to be more individualistic and very much symptomatic to the capitalist modernity. Poetry on the other hand acts simultaneously on individual and on collective plane. Tagore’s genius lies exactly here when he removes poetry from its tradition and bestows it the quality of a song. As a genre, song from a long time is a collective and communal aesthetic practice. Heavily influenced by the tradition of Baul and their eternal quest for the unity of the self and the divine self, Tagore’s concept of ‘Milan’ or ‘Punormilan’ reverberates Marx’s idea of unity.

The position of Tagore as a Marxist was always debatable. The contemporary as well as later critics have rejected Tagore as a Marxist for his lack of focus on class distinction and his almost entire engagement with the middle class. We should, however, keep in mind that in spite of his adherence to middle class, Tagore was a major and important critic of the Babu—a cultural re-appropriation of the bourgeoise in 19^th Century Bengal. Compared to writers and poets like Manik Bandopadhyay, Premendra Mitra or Sukanta Bhattacharya, for whom class and socio-economic struggle in daily life, as well as in crisis with realist representation, was of primary concern, Tagore appeared always as an alienist intellectual not bothered for materialistic concern of the lower class. This distance between intellectual and common mass was emphasized again and again by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth which stands as an obstacle for revolution. My contention here, however, is not to judge Tagore in Marxist temperament in a traditional way, but to enquire if any part of Marx has something to offer in shaping Tagore’s call for Milan or union of the capitalist mind in the capitalist era.

In this paper, I will take four poems of Tagore from Gitanjali and try to analyze the concept of Milan in Marxist lens. Every single poem here deals with the desire for the unification of the soul with God or the inner self with the divine self. This interpretation has for a long time been understood in a spiritual or in divine terms. Going back to the songs of Lalon and coming to Tagore to trace Lalon’s influence on him, one can find the change in culture and socio-political plane in Tagore’s time. As Baul, in terms of class, falls under the lower section of society, their influence on Tagore somehow suggests Tagore’s contact with the lower class, if not always for a social revolution. Tagore always believed internal introspection is the key for the external revolution. Individual needs to transform and become collective and therefore, the individual’s mind must be reconstructed and collectivized in the milieu of individualistic capitalist society.

“Tagore also finds the emphasis on and defence of individualism problematic. In capitalism, ‘the production of wealth, its distribution and enjoyment are supposed to be entirely personal matters. Here he is unwilling to curb his egoism, his self-indulgence. Here his attitude is that of an isolated individual.’ This ethic of individualism produces, in his words, unbounded greed, cruelty, iniquitousness, inhospitality, and an insatiable desire to make money at the expense of others. The social reproduction of greed as a legitimate pursuit ensures ‘that the enjoyment of wealth by the employment of large capital [remains] the monopoly of selfish individuals.’ Competition becomes not simply the prerogative of capitalists but also the dominating medium through which people as individuals learn to communicate and act vis-a-vis one another. Far from criticizing individual creativity, he questions the way the subject, otherwise socially decentred and polymorphous in its fundamental mode of being in this world, is reduced to an asocial abstract individual by the logic of capitalism.” (Chakrabarti and Dhar, 492-93)

The four poems, ‘Thou hast made me endless,’ ‘Leave this chanting and singing,’ ‘I am like a remnant of a cloud,’ and ‘In one salutation to thee,’ are connected with one single thread, that is the impossibility of an alienated self to exist and its eternal desire to unite with the divine self. In the first poem, the very word ‘endless’ stands as a critique to limit, one and individual mind of capitalist temperament characterised by the ability to measure, control and rationalise. The very first line expresses the surrender of the self to another self (divine). From the very beginning the sense of collective is established and the notion of individualism is rejected. The acceptance of one’s limitation is a direct critique of the capitalist mind of cartesian subject—the all-knowing, all powerful, humanistic ideal of human being. The second poem ‘Leave this chanting and Singing’ is a direct attack on the futility of preparation and the capitalist means through which a middleman comes between man and god in institutions like Mandir, Masjid or Darga. The concept of un-embellishment or Anarambhar calls for going back to the soul and mind only, rather than depending on any spiritual commodities of capito-religious sentiment. Tagore’s engagement with class is probably most clear in this poem when he wrote, “He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path maker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust” (Tagore Gitanjali, 2003: p 48-49). A Marxian perspective will elucidate how Tagore here is not only depending on other or big other but acknowledging the impossibility of individual to even exist. He, therefore, acknowledges the need for an other for a better living. This need for other, either divine or earthly, invites the sense of communalism, oneness and harmony. Unity, therefore, is essential, Tagore emphasizes with an other. The third poem, ‘I am like a remnant of a cloud’ brings back the pantheistic sensibility of the Great Romantics like Wandsworth, Shelly and Keats. Influenced by the notion of freedom of the French Revolution, the Great Romantic idea of natural and spiritual unity is very much noticeable in the poem. The common man’s simple prayer for higher glory and the ultimate need for the higher other to exist and even to die, challenge the false pride of individual compartmental existence. As Tagore was a follower of Nirakara tradition which believes in the fluidity of infinite, this abstraction and limitlessness challenge the form, limit and control of modernity over individual. In the poem ‘In one Salutation to Thee,’ again the need for the other is very much visible. The concept of milan or eternal unification here advances to another dimension. It is no more a choice or need (Marx) to unite but it is the fate and without it there is no freedom either from the world or from within the self. As ‘salutation’ denotes a sense of greeting or acknowledgement towards someone’s arrival and departure, the concept of individualism is completely rejected.

Marx’s notion of revolution is always militant, urgent, direct and to quote Fanon, it is always ‘violent.’ Tagore’s notion of revolution, however, is very internal, but the knowledge or ‘Moksha’ can be destructive too, as it can devastate the mind and the body. From a social perspective, the need for unity or the need of the self for another—a dialectical development from Hegel—offers Tagore to critique Marx. Whereas Marx argues social alienation, between two individuals, Tagore is more nuanced to detect the dialectic of self and other in the individual mind itself. Thus, Marxist notion of unity and Tagore’s notion of Milan function both on external and internal plane with the hope to destroy capitalism as well as capitalist mind in the age rapid urban and technological expansion. But Tagore is more systematic towards constructing the individual first with a sense of the collective, which Marx had taken for granted that man is by nature collective. Marx did not acknowledge if that individual at all wants to connect with the other or not. Tagore therefore focuses first on the internal formation of the collective mind in individual which will automatically earn the power to connect. Then there will be no need for an external ‘call for unity’; it will be instinctive. Tagore’s call for milan, therefore, addresses freedom from the self or the ego as through this freedom the sense of collective can be established in the mind as well as in the society.

Works Cited:

Chakrabarti, Anjan and Dhar, Anup Kumar. “Development, Capitalism, and Socialism: A Marxian Encounter with Rabindranath Tagore’s Ideas on the Cooperative Principle.” Rethinking Marxism, 20:3, 487-499, p 492, 2008.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, Translated by Richard Philcox, New York, 2004.

Tagore, Rabindranath. Gitanjali, edited by Sobhan Som, Kolkata, 2003.