 Rabindranath Tagore by Nandita Chaturvedi Our time is the era of the civilization-state, when India and China, along with other nations such as South Africa, Vietnam, are establishing the independent civilizational paths of their societies towards modernity. Yet, our concept of civilization remains amorphous and ill-defined. There are those who see civilization in older colonial and white-supremacist terms and champion liberal democracy as the only true democracy. On the other hand, many think of civilization in vague cultural, anthropological terms, placing emphasis on clan structures and ‘values’. There are also some who speak of the achievement of Asian and African aristocracy as the basis of dark civilization. When Asian nations won their political freedom, revolutionary movements that led the people’s struggle for freedom took over the state. In the case of China, the new state saw a strong and accentuated rupture from the old as a ‘people’s republic’ was established. In India, Nehru’s government took over the colonial state, wielding it for the benefit of the Indian people in a way that was in tune with Gandhi’s ideas and the Indian freedom struggle. As Nehru himself said, his government sought not to “destroy their past or uproot them (the people) from their social fabric. We have to balance the forces of continuity with those of change.” Nehru called the period after Indian independence the ‘authentic Gandhian era’. He said in an interview with Russi Karanjia, “Gandhiji always sought to function within the social fabric in which the masses had been living for centuries and tried to bring about gradual but revolutionary changes, instead of destroying the fabric or uprooting the people from their soil. He insisted on continuity with the past and he accepted the existing social system as a base for his political and social strategy.” Thus, the Indian state post-independence was a civilization state, seeking to champion development yet placing non-violence at its center. Here we will examine the ideas of Rabindranath Tagore and W.E.B Du Bois on civilization and modernity. Both these thinkers, born 7 years apart in 1861 and 1868 respectively, witnessed the collapse of Europe in the two world wars. They both analysed the root causes of war and tied them to colonial exploitation, materialism and human greed. They studied the West deeply, tracing the revolutionary edge of the renaissance and enlightenment, yet finding it absent in their treatment of colonies and slaves. They were both also witnesses to the human experiment of the Russian revolution, as well as the great democratic upsurge of the anticolonial movements in Asia and Africa. They both studied the emergence of Japan, and the Euro-Asian experiment she undertook in her own society. Both were deeply connected also to China, visiting her several times and studying the trends and changes in her society. All of these great events of the 20th century shaped their thinking on civilization. They lived through a time when humanity undertook leaps towards expanding democracy, when nothing was certain, and possibilities for human kind were open. We could argue that we are entering such a time ourselves. The last 70 years, and especially the last 30 have been a period of a US led hegemonic world order. As is apparent to anyone paying attention, this is fast changing. Coming time will bring with it dynamic possibilities, but also grave dangers that humanity will have to grapple with. We look towards two of our greatest thinkers for inspiration. Democracy For both Tagore and Du Bois, civilization was tied intrinsically to an emerging democracy. Both saw ordinary people, workers and peasants, as the makers of civilization. They did not trace art and music to imperial courts or ruling class museums and conservatories, but to the uncovering and realization of talent among the mass of men and women. As Du Bois says through his protagonist Mathew Towns in the novel Dark Princess, “And suppose we found that ability and talent and art is not entirely or even mainly among the reigning aristocrats of Asia and Europe, but buried among millions of men down in the great sodden masses of all men and even in Black Africa?" Later in the same section of the novel Mathew goes on to proclaim, “some of the noblest blood God ever made is dumb with chains and poverty,” before he breaks into song, singing “Let My People Go”, a Negro spiritual. Dark Princess paints a picture of Du Bois’ conceptualization of civilization and democracy. Early in the book, he argues that the experiment in America was showing the world that “ability and capacity for culture is not the hereditary monopoly of a few, but the widespread possibility for the majority of mankind if they only have a decent chance in life.” The Dark Princess was written in 1928 and would be followed by Du Bois’ exploration of this idea in Black Reconstruction in America in 1935. In Black Reconstruction, Du Bois begins with the idea of the ‘Black Worker’, not slave-workers, but an enslaved proletariat. This was a revolutionary breakthrough in theory, and Du Bois faced backlash for daring to argue that the enslaved were workers with agency. Du Bois laid out in Black Reconstruction how the Black proletariat executed a general strike during the civil war. After emancipation these Black men and women went on to establish a dictatorship of the Black proletariat in some southern states. To many, dictatorship and democracy may seem at odds. Yet for Du Bois they did not pose a contradiction. As he says, “The current theory of democracy is that dictatorship is a stopgap pending the work of universal education, equitable income, and strong character. (..) But always the temptation is to use the stopgap for narrower ends, because intelligence, thrift and goodness seem so impossibly distant for most men. We know perfectly well that most human beings have never had a decent chance to be full men. Most of us may be convinced that even with opportunity the number of utter human failures would be vast; and yet remember that this assumption kept the ancestors of present white America long in slavery and degradation. It is then one’s moral duty to see that every human being, to the extent of his capacity, escapes ignorance, poverty and crime. With this high ideal held unswervingly in view, monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorships may rule; but the end will be the rule of All, if mayhap All or Most qualify. (...) The opportunity to study a great human experiment was present in Reconstruction, and its careful scientific investigation would have thrown a world of light on human development and democratic government.” Reconstruction was accompanied with the responsibility of universal education being taken up by the state, innovations in the education system, setting up of hospitals, etc. This period where the black masses in the South, recently emancipated from slavery, expanded democracy for all Americans marks an important period of modern history that should be studied more by people all over the world. For Du Bois, this history, when studied scientifically and free from color prejudice, showed the potential of men and women everywhere. For here was a people brutally severed from old world civilization, with no record of the inheritance of blood, caste or even nation, who “enfranchised labor led by educated men and groups of their own blood sought so to guide the state as to raise the worker to comfort and safety.” This was the human experiment that Du Bois was speaking of in Dark Princess, and he saw the implications of this history for all of the colored world. African Americans were and are a unique people, who have shown the world that ordinary men and women can create civilization, science and culture even without an unbroken social inheritance. Their experience showed that the mass of men “could rule as well as be ruled” and “can work as well as be worked, can live as well as be kept alive”. In fact, the lack of caste and tribal bonds and divisions of the old world may have allowed Black people to leap forward into a new modernity. Strikingly, it is a dictatorship of the lowest and most exploited, according to Du Bois, which is in the interests of democracy. Du Bois’ journal The Crisis, of which he acted as editor between 1910 and 1934 acted as a medium for the dialogue of the civilizations of the world, unmediated by the assumptions of white supremacy. The journal would regularly feature articles on the situation of the colonial world, and the anticolonial struggles. It was read all over the world, and Du Bois would become one of the most well known figures among the Darker World. The journal would also carry messages from leaders and thinkers of the anticolonial movements across the world, including Tagore. Similarly, for Tagore, creation was undertaken in all its aspects by ordinary people. As he says in Geetanjali, “Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee! He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil! Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever. Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.” Universal man was at the center of the process of knowledge and civilization. Tagore said in his letters from Russia, “In knowledge, love and activity, my development will reveal the infinite: in this is my fulfillment. The veil of imperfection will fall away from our minds, will and action so that we shall ever prove our kinship with the infinite: this is the religion of man. (...) Man’s evolution consists in the self attained truth, not in the Nature regulated mode of life. Hence it is his difficult prayer that he may reveal the infinite in every respect. Hence he says --bhumaiba sukham --happiness is in greatness: nalpe sukham asti -- in nothing small is there happiness. (...) The manifestation of greatness is another synonym for what we call civilization. The implicit meaning in man, his deepest truth, is being unravelled in civilization.” Tagore saw universal man in the peasantry of India. He devoted his life to two parallel endeavors: a world civilization school for art, literature and music in Shantiniketan, and an experiment in rural reconstruction in Sriniketan. Shantiniketan saw the emergence of great artists such as Ramkinkar Baij, who was the son of a barber with little to no formal education. With Tagore’s ideas and the creative impulse of Shantiniketan he went on to create some of the most profound sculptures and paintings of modern India. It is said that he would sing Tagore’s songs while he painted. Shantiniketan is also home to Cheena Bhavan, one of the great efforts to bridge civilizations in Asia. On the other hand, Sriniketan was an effort to prove that the Indian peasantry could work as well as be worked and rule, as well as be ruled. It was an experiment to realize, in Du Bois’ words, “thinking workers and working thinkers.” In Sriniketan and Shantiniketan the work done was to bridge the gap between folk traditions and modern art forms on the one hand, and to bridge the civilizational traditions of the world unmediated by Europe on the other. In his trip to the Soviet Union, he would compare the experiment of Sriniketan with land collectivization and the education of the peasantry that he saw there. Tagore would be deeply moved by conversations with the peasants of the Soviet Union, and would say, “The dumb have found their voice, the ignorant have cast the veil from their minds, the helpless have become conscious of their own power and those who were in the depths of degradation have come out of society’s ‘black hole’. This is Soviet Russia’s achievement in eight years. They are busy here with three things: education, agriculture and machinery.” He saw the development of the human being as the center of it all, since “ the machine alone is of little use until the machinist himself becomes a man.” Tagore and Du Bois both greatly admired the Soviet experiment and sought to study it for application among their own people. Du Bois would declare, “If this is Bolshevism, I am a Bolshevik.” Tagore would say in his letters from Russia, “I came to Russia at a time when my mind was dark with despair. (...) There I saw mighty efforts being made to provide universally everything of which India is deprived. Needless to say, I have seen it all with my own long hungering eyes.” Like Du Bois’ vision in Dark Princess, Tagore envisioned a great world democracy where each civilization would make a contribution towards the building of a human civilization. In 1929, he would send a message to Du Bois’ journal the Crisis, “What is the great fact of this age? Is it that the messenger has knocked at our gate and all bars have given way. Our doors have burst open. The human races have come out of their enclosures. They have gathered together. We have been engaged in cultivating each his own individual life, and within the forced seclusion of our racial tradition. We had neither the wisdom nor the opportunity to harmonize our growth with world tendencies. But there are no longer walls to hide us. We have at length to prove our worth to the whole world, not merely to admiring groups of our own people. We must justify our own existence. We must show, each in our own civilizations, that which is universal in the heart of the unique.” Thus for Tagore each civilization was not to be self-serving but in service to the expansive project of human knowledge and culture. He saw and appreciated the different strengths of different peoples. In his Talks in China, he would say, “Civilisation cannot merely be a growing totality of happenings that by chance have assumed a particular shape and tendency which we consider to be excellent. It must be the expression of some guiding moral force which we have evolved in our society for the object of attaining perfection. The word ‘perfection’ has a simple and definite meaning when applied to an inanimate thing, or even to a creature whose life has principally a biological significance. But man being complex and always on the path of transcending himself, the meaning of the word ‘perfection’ as applied to him, cannot be crystallised into an inflexible idea. This has made it possible for different races to have different shades of definition for this term.” Indeed, Tagore was an emissary of India to the world, seeking to build bonds of friendship and brotherhood wherever he went. His trip to China opened up a great historic relationship disrupted by colonialism, as he would say, “The world has for long been in its grip,--the exclusive winter that keeps the human races within closed doors. But the doors are going to open. Spring has come.” He would visit America, Europe, Java, Japan, Iran and Russia with the same sentiment. He would create an atmosphere in Shantiniketan where the whole world could feel at home. It was a futuristic endeavour, seeking to rekindle intercivilizational dialogue and friendship in a time when white supremacy mediated all interactions. Modernity and Western Civilization Tagore would declare himself a revolutionary in his talks in China, declaring his opposition to the greed and materialism of Western modernity. He would say, “The impertinence of material things is extremely old. The revelation of spirit in man is truly modern: I am on its side, for I am modern. I have explained how I was born into a family which rebelled, which had faith in its loyalty to an inner ideal. If you want to reject me, you are free to do so. But I have my right as a revolutionary to carry the flag of freedom of spirit into the shrine of your idols,---material power and accumulation.” Modernity, as Tagore saw it then, was related to ideas and man’s spirit, not technology and scientific prowess for material wealth. Even as a young man, Tagore despaired at the condition of the Indian people brought about by colonialism. Throughout his life he studied the roots of this, as well as the British response to it. Criticising the comments of John Simon blaming the condition of India on her people, he would criticise the hypocrisy of white supremacy, “These words are meant to be contemptuous. The ideals by which he has judged India’s needs is not his own. The advantages of unlimited education, opportunities and freedom, which his own people enjoy for producing abundance of wealth, have enriched from many sides their ideal of life in education, action and enjoyment. India in rags, emaciated of body, exhausted by disease and starved of education must not even dream of this ideal. We must carry on as best we can by preventing the increase of our population and limiting our expenses. Beyond this there is nothing more to think; and therefore the entire responsibility of the remedy lies on us: those who make the remedy difficult have little to do.” In his trip to China, he warned the young Chinese revolutionaries of the May 4th movement who protested his visit and upheld Western progress and development, “My warning is, that those who would have you rely on material force to make a strong nation, do not know history, or understand civilization either. Reliance on power is the characteristic of barbarism; nations that trusted to it have already been destroyed or have remained barbarous.” Tagore would criticise the machine civilization and materialism of the West, echoing Du Bois’ sentiment that “Science is a great and worthy mistress, but there is one greater and that is Humanity which science serves; one thing there is greater than knowledge, and that [is] the Man who knows.” In the same address in China, Tagore would say, “It is co-operation and love, mutual trust and mutual aid which make for strength and real progress in civilization. New spiritual and moral power must continually be developed to enable men to assimilate their scientific gains, to control their new weapons and machines or these will dominate, enslave, and slay them. Men have been losing their freedom, their humanity and their lives, to fit themselves for vast mechanical organizations, scientific, political, economic, and military. We see today civilizations of vast power and great intellect veiling in a decent way mere cannibalism. It is the nemesis of Science dominant over, rather than subservient to, the spirit of man ; for the world of mere science is not a world of reality, but an abstract impersonal world of force.” On his 80th birthday Tagore would deliver his address “Crisis in Civilization” in which he expressed his loss of faith in the ability Western civilization to take humanity forward, “I had at one time believed that the springs of civilization would issue out of the heart of Europe. But today when I am about to quit the world that faith has gone bankrupt altogether. As I look around I see the crumbling ruins of a proud civilization strewn like a vast heap of futility. And yet I shall not commit the grievous sin of losing faith in Man. I would rather look forward to the opening of a new chapter in his history after the cataclysm is over and the atmosphere rendered clean with the spirit of service and sacrifice. Perhaps that dawn will come from this horizon, from the East where the sun rises. A day will come when unvanquished Man will retrace his path of conquest, despite all barriers, to win back his lost human heritage.” Tagore was not an idealist or a sentimental figure, he knew well the challenges of poverty before the colonized nations and had studied them among his own people. He spoke of a righteous path to a new civilization well aware of the suffering of these nations, “I speak to you as a member of a nation that has gone under in the race for progress, and I tell you that I am ready to accept weakness and insult and oppression of the body, but I will never acknowledge the defeat, the last insult, the utter ruin, of my spirit being conquered, so that I am made to lose my faith and purpose. My enemies may dominate and slay my body, but they cannot make me adopt their methods, or hate them. The devil helps in the sphere in which he is master, but we must reject such aid if we want to save our life from utter destruction. Seek righteousness even though success be lost.” Tagore based his critique of the West on the ideas of the Vedas and the Upanishads, which he reinterpreted for his times. He would repeat the same couplet from the Upanishad in several of his talks, “By the help of unrighteousness men do prosper, men do gain victories over their enemies, men do attain what they desire; but they perish at the root.” It is based on this philosophy that he defined civilization as dharma, “The Sanskrit word dharma is the nearest synonym in our own language, that occurs to me, for the word civilisation. In fact, we have no other word except perhaps some newly-coined one, lifeless and devoid of atmosphere. The specific meaning of 'dharma’ is that principle which holds us firm together and leads us to our best welfare. The general meaning of this word is the essential quality of a thing. Dharma for man is the best expression of what he is in truth. He may reject Dharma and may choose to be an animal or a machine and there-by may not injure himself, may even gain strength and wealth from an external and material point of view; yet this will be worse than death for him as a man.” Du Bois early in his career, in the Souls of Black folk, would declare himself “bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the veil.” Thus, he spoke from within the West, yet with an epistemology based in the Black poor. He would write of White Folk in Darkwater, “ Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them, I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge which servants have of their masters, or mass of class or capitalist of artisan. Rather, I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know what I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet, as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of fact and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped -- ugly, human.” Thus, for Du Bois, the white and Western world were not externalities that could just be rejected, but their true human assessment was essential to the project of freedom. It is difficult for those outside of the west to truly appreciate what Du Bois’ vantage point was, and a deeper study of the African American situation is needed to see the white world. In his work the World and Africa, he titled the first chapter ‘The Collapse of Europe’, referring to the second World War. He says in the first paragraph, “The collapse of Europe is to us the more astounding because of the boundless faith we have had in European civilization.” Du Bois would go on to describe in the book how the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and, eventually the bending and contorting of Western knowledge for their justification led to the crisis. In his words, “The result of the African slave trade and slavery in the European mind and culture was to degrade the position of labor and the respect of humanity as such.” European civilization would develop a system “first conscious and then unconscious of lying about history and distorting it to the disadvantage of the Negroids” such that the history of Africa ceased to be taught and then in the European mind, to exist. Every field, including “archaeology, history, and biography, psychology and sociology” was used to prove the scientific basis of the color line. For Du Bois, it was not just the European ruling elites, but the whole of European society and civilization, including the European worker that began to want “not comfort for all men, but power over those men for himself.” European civilization gave up its agency to the fetish and lie of whiteness, and “even the evidence of the eyes and senses was denied by mere weight of reiteration.” Their art became cynical and decadent, a far cry from the European renaissance and enlightenment. Like Tagore, Du Bois condemned the machine civilization of Europe where “moral judgement of the industrial process” was made difficult by “the stretch in time between the deed and the result, the work and the product.” He would declare ignorance of the European people to be a colossal crime in itself. He would say, “When a culture consents to any economic result, no matter how monstrous its cause, rather than demand the facts concerning work, wages, and the conditions of life whose results make the life of the consumer comfortable, pleasant and even luxurious, it is an indication of a collapsing civilization.” In a time when European civilization and modernity were just about the only standard for civilization in the world, Du Bois was not afraid to state that he believed “that the trade in human beings between Africa and America, which flourished between the Renaissance and the American Civil War, is the prime and effective cause of the contradictions in European civilization and the illogic in modern thought and the collapse in human culture.” Hence, European modernity was contradictory and hypocritical because of its embracing of slavery and colonialism. In Darkwater, Du Bois would declare of King Leopold's regime cruel and murderous regime in the Congo, “As we saw the dead dimly through the rifts of battlesmoke and heard faintly the cursings and accusations of blood brothers, we darker men said: this is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this is Europe; this seeming Terrible is the soul of white culture--back of all culture-- stripped and visible today. This is where the world has arrived, -- these dark and awful depths and not the shining and ineffable heights of which it boasted.” Further, Du Bois analysed the triumph of the industrial revolution, mechanization and modern European production not as proof of the superiority of Western civilization, but as results of the inordinate and unprecedented profit amassed by the cheap labor of slavery and colonialism. Like Tagore, Du Bois saw the future of human civilization in the East. In his unpublished manuscript Russia and America, he would say of a new system of human organization, “It must, of course, be Marxian in its abolition of industrial profit, toward which family and state communism in Asia already tends, but which has been frustrated by European influence. It must be Marxian in its division of income according to need; but it may be distinctly Asiatic in its use of the vertical clan division and family tie, instead of reaction toward a new bourgeoisie along horizontal class layers which must be the temptation of Europe. It would take a new way of thinking on Asiatic lines to work this out; but there would be a chance that out of India, out of Buddhism and Shintoism, out of the age-old virtues of Japan and China itself, to provide for this different kind of Communism, a thing which so far all attempts at a socialistic state in Europe have failed to produce; that is a communism with its Asiatic stress on character, on goodness, on spirit, through family loyalty and affection might ward off Thermidor; might stop the tendency of the Western socialistic state to freeze into bureaucracy. It might through the philosophy of Gandhi and Tagore, of Japan and China, really create a vast democracy into which the ruling dictatorship of the proletariat would fuse and deliquesce; and thus instead of socialism becoming a stark negation of the freedom of thought and a tyranny of action and propaganda of science and art, it would expand to a great democracy of the spirit.” Today we are in a new period where Europe and America face an unprecedented social and political crisis. We in the darker world must ask ourselves what the future of human civilization will look like. Will we continue to chase after the contorted vision of civilization of the West, or will we take Tagore and Du Bois seriously, to work out the basis of a new civilization? Conclusion This article attempts to put together the ideas of two great thinkers. Yet its scope is too small to fully investigate the worldview of Tagore and Du Bois, which deserves further work in the future. It is illustrative and beautiful to examine the two together, one born of the Indian people’s striving for freedom, and the other of the African American struggle for human emancipation. Both were world-citizens, belonging to all humanity. There are other questions that deserve attention for future thought. This includes the common emphasis of Tagore and Du Bois upon children. While Tagore surrounded himself in Shantiniketan with children and concerned himself deeply with education, Du Bois conceptualized the problem of the modern world as the treatment of the Immortal Child. Further, the most examined subject in Tagore’s Letters from Russia is the reform and innovation in education. Du Bois also was a lifelong teacher, and his essay ‘The Meaning of Progress’ paints a moving picture of the Black poor in Josie, and her striving for knowledge. We hope that this article can form the basis for further exploration of these ideas. Through the discovery of our common inheritance of the movement for human emancipation and the struggle to achieve it we can build a new human civilization. Nandita Chaturvedi is an editor of Vishwabandhu Journal.
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Here we republish an essay 'India and Africa' written by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1931 for the 'Golden Book of Tagore' to celebrate Tagore's 70th birthday.  The great branches of the human family which have their chief dwelling place in Africa and India have much of common history in the past and common interest in the present.
The thing that India and Africa must learn today is that their interests have more in common than the interests of either have with the ideals of modern Europe. Granted that Europe is powerful and still dominant, yet she is today doomed. She has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. On the other hand, the dark millions of India and Africa and their descendants and kinsmen throughout the world, have upon their shoulders the vast responsibilities of remaking this world nearer to the ideals of true civilization and high culture. Two things they forgot in the past and this forgetting gave Europe its chance. These things were: The mastery of the technique of earning a living by subjugating the physical forces of the world. And the other thing was the faith in democracy; that is, the fact that out of the masses of people can be developed just as much power and genius, ability and culture as has in the past been shown by the aristocracy, by the favoured few. Africa and Asia did not know or did not realise these facts in the past and their contributions to civilization were marred by poverty and slavery, on the one hand; and tyranny on the other. Europe has given us the technique of industry. At terrible cost, to be sure, but nevertheless, the machine stands and is a marvellous tool but a horrible master. Europe and America have given us the beginnings of democracy, although with strange inconsistency they have tried to hem democracy in with a colour bar. Here, then, is our chance for the future---our mighty opportunity. We borrow, as we have a right to borrow, and as Europe in other ages has borrowed from us,---the things that in modern days she has taught us. Be we use these things for greater ends. Both Africans and Indians must seek to be rid of the spiritual and physical death of poverty. They must educate and develop the masses of their people. They must welcome genius and ability wherever it occurs---among the lowest and most unlikely, as well as among those who have regarded themselves as the highest. It will be a revelation to see how wide-spread human ability is when it has a chance. And then, with the help and strength which decent income gives, and with the rise of the intelligent mass, the dark millions of Africa and India can go forward to set new standards of freedom, equality and brotherhood for a world which is in desperate need of these spiritual things. It seems to me that no one has had a finer vision of such a future than Rabindranath Tagore. I greet him in his quest for common justice for all ment. We republish here a tribute by W.E.B. Du Bois to Mahatma Gandhi upon his death in 1948.  At his death, Mohandas Gandhi was the greatest man in the world. He was the Prince of Peace and stood among living leaders alone, because of that fact. For his color and his poverty he was despised and rejected by most of the world. He had no form nor comeliness that men should desire him and yet he stood for the one thing which the powerful Christian Church has been supposed to advocate for nearly two thousand years.
It is singular that a man who was not a follower of the Christian religion should be in his day the best exemplification of the principles which that religion was supposed to lay down. While the Christian Church during its two thousand years of existence has been foremost in war and organized murder, Mohandas Gandhi was foremost in exemplifying peace as a method of political progress. I remember once sitting at a large dinner in a New York hotel where there were a number of Christian ministers, including a few from colored Harlem. Madame Pandit, the sister of Nehru, was one of the speakers and as this singularly beautiful woman rose and looked upon that audience, she said with a smile, “You know I am a heathen”; and as a heathen she represented something bigger and finer than those professed representatives of the Christian Church; the church which had defended slavery and is defending, with few exceptions, present color caste; and which was not only foremost in the promotion of the First and Second World Wars but is ready for a Third World War. Since the beginning of this era, the rise of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, the world has increasingly counted upon war as the chief method of social uplift. This is in direct contradiction to the ethics of the Christian religion. It is as far as one can conceive from the Christ doctrine of turning the other cheek, of self-sacrifice, of peace and good will. Yet we have not only insisted upon war as the chief weapon of civilization but our insistence has progressively increased, until today after a World War so total and costly that it well-nigh stopped civilization, we are doggedly preparing frantically for a Third World War and what must be looked upon as a final effort at suicide. Our greatest leaders, with few exceptions, seem to agree with this program. Winston Churchill, ever since he was disappointed at not maintaining control of the British Empire, has not only advocated war but persistently pushed and advised the United States to lead it. I know of very few great leaders who have taken their stand upon the Christian doctrine of peace. Mohandas Gandhi was the one magnificent exception. For years now he has been a leader in the peace movement and also a leader in the rise of the colored peoples. He has changed their attitude. Formerly there seemed absolutely no chance for the majority of people in the world to gain freedom and autonomy except by fighting and overcoming the dominant white race. This trend of thought Gandhi ended. How is it now that among civilized people this kind of contradiction can happen? That you can have an organization and a creed and personal profession standing for one thing and yet actions which entirely contradict them? It is of course because we accept hypocrisy and lying as part of our creed. We became used not only to saying one thing and meaning another, but of professing one belief and acting in contradiction to it, and then neither permitting criticism willingly, nor heeding it if the criticism is made. When this kind of action characterizes an era, its fall and destruction is forecast. It is impossible to maintain integrity and logical balance in the midst of hypocrisy and lying. On the other hand, and no one knew this more than Mohandas Gandhi, the price of standing up against overwhelming world opinion is terrible. Gandhi began fighting for Indians and Negroes in South Africa and there, in the most reactionary and utterly debased of modern countries called civilized, he fought his battle for equality. Then when he went back to India he was faced by the inevitable difficulty when one finds power and wealth in high places, when one finds war and organized murder almost universally accepted as a method of progress. He must, as a result of this, find himself. And he did so gradually but determinedly. He tried at first to follow the faith which influenced so many of us in the First World War. He wanted India to take part in a “War to end all Wars”; in a war to stop the war psychosis. But he found out, as so many of us did, that the First World War was simply a prelude to the second; that it was not a war for freedom but for industrial profit. When Gandhi saw that its results in Asia included massacres like that of Amritsar, and the imprisoning and torture of liberal leadership, he turned to “Passive Resitance.” By inaction and refusal to cooperate in wrong, he tried to compel the governing powers of the British Empire to give India her freedom. He even tried to face and fight the great organization of industry based on the modern machine and accumulated capital. It was a hard and, for long years, a failing fight; but today we see that in the long run the Gandhi doctrine must triumph or modern civilization falls, as the cultures of Greece and Rome fell two thousand years ago. Much depends upon our attitude toward Gandhi and his doctrines. Is it not possible for the world to turn and say, “No more war!”; to reinstate the Prince of Peace as founder and guide of the Christian religion; to acknowledge that it took a heathen to show Christians the way of life, and to refuse to be carried further in this insane determination to commit suicide through a Third World War? He knew, as all men with wisdom know, that peace cannot be obtained through war; that this psychosis of murder, which has gradually gripped the modern civilized world, means its utter suicide; and, therefore, in his great work of emancipating more than three hundred and fifty millions of human beings, Gandhi sought to find the path of peace, rather than the path of war. He carried it out to an extent which no other great group of people, not even the Quakers, had ever attempted before. He led hundreds of millions toward this program of peace and sacrifice. It was not as successful as he had hoped. Nevertheless, at his death he could see that his program was a greater and finer program than anything that the world had tried, certainly during the twenty centuries of Christian leadership. The impact of his magnificent courage and his stubborn standing by principle will not soon be forgotten. This is not to say that Gandhi was all-wise; that, for instance, his fight against capitalism and his laying down of great principles were always unassailable by criticism and logic; but with all of his mistakes, and there were many, his fundamental principles were unquestionable, his unselfishness and spirit of sacrifice were something that the modern world cannot properly evaluate or worship. by Jahanzaib Choudhry.  The ongoing genocide by the Israeli state in Gaza, Palestine is a watershed moment for humanity. We are witnessing brutality, most significantly towards children, and yet we must not be paralyzed by despair. The Israeli state represents the most violent white supremacist state, and we understand its actions in Gaza as the desperate lashing out of a dying white supremacist world order. All eyes are on the American people, to see if a movement for peace in America can disrupt the crucial symbiotic relationship between the Israeli and American states. West Asia must reorganize itself on terms more humane, and we must do our part in educating Asians on the conditions of the Palestinian people. We present here a list of readings, both recent and historical to help understand the crisis in Palestine. Current Genocide and Resistance https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5364286,00.html Interview of Yahya Sinwar with Italian journalist in 2018 covering siege of Gaza, goals of Hamas, and future. https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/osama-hamdan-hamas-interview-podcast-gaza-israel American journalist Jeremy Scahilll’s interview with Osama Hamdan, senior Hamas official in early May 2025. An interview with Osama Hamdan, senior Hamas official who says the Palestinians want to work towards a 5 year hudna, or long term ceasefire and is willing to hand over power to an interim authority to conduct elections and let the Palestinian people choose their leader. https://jacobin.com/2025/02/hague-group-apartheid-israel-genocide ANC veteran and ex-minister of South African government Ronnie Kasrils writes on the launch of the Hague Group of countries to coordinate actions against Israel, the South African case in ICJ and the possibilities of the renewal of anti-colonial solidarity against imperialism. The article is dated February, 2025. https://www.mohammedmhawish.com/p/snapshots-i-spoke-with-20-people “Snapshots: I spoke with 20 people in Gaza after the ceasefire. My heart broke 20 times”, dated February, 2025. https://thecradle.co/articles/trumps-second-term-becomes-a-warzone-between-maga-and-the-deep-state “In Trump’s second term, the MAGA vs neocons battle heats up”, dated May, 2025. Historical https://www.countercurrents.org/pa-gandhi170903.htm “The Jews in Palestine” by Mahatma Gandhi in Harijan, 1938. “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct.” https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/nehrus-word-zionist-aggression-against-palestinians-is-wrong Jawaharlal Nehru on Palestine, 1936 “Palestine was not an empty land fit for colonisation by outsiders. It was a well-populated and full land with little room for large numbers of colonists from abroad. Is it any wonder that the Arabs objected to this intrusion? And their objection grew as they realised that the aim of British imperialism was to make the Arab-Jew problem a permanent obstacle to their independence. We in India have sufficient experience of similar obstacles being placed in the way of our freedom by British imperialism.” https://www.peacedialogue.in/nai-taleem-reading-circle/readings/reading-9 Romesh Chandra on Palestine, 1970s “We think today of the heroic people of Palestine fighting for their just rights. Some very powerful countries threaten us with dire consequences if we dare say, as the United Nations has said, that Zionism is a form of racism. I know that there are many who do not see Zionism in this light. But the fact is that Zionism, the way it is being practiced in the Arab occupied areas and in Israel itself, is, as the United Nations resolutions states, racist in every sense of the word. The struggle against the racist practices of the Israeli authorities is not a struggle separate from the struggle in southern Africa or from the struggle in the United States of America. The struggle against racism is one struggle.” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/open-letter-born-again/ “Open Letter to the Born Again” by James Baldwin, 1979 “But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say that it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of “divide and rule” and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.” https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/38375 Yasser Arafat’s 1974 UNGA Speech. Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, became the first nongovernmental leader to address the UNGA through the support of the NAM. “The world is in need of tremendous efforts if its aspirations to peace, freedom, justice, equality and development are to be realized, if its struggle is to be victorious over colonialism, imperialism, neo-colonialism and racism in all its forms, including Zionism” Jahanzaib Choudhry is a historian of the world peace movement and a member of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation. He lives in Chicago.
by Emily Dong  Corretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr in India All across India, from the lush red South to the cold brown North, the memory of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian freedom struggle lives on. No matter where in India you travel to or how short you travel for, you will meet Gandhi. The North and South are different in languages, facial features, and colors of the soil, but everywhere you will find what the people have built and upkeep to remember not only Gandhi’s name but also his vision for new India. Before entering Raj Ghat, Gandhi’s final resting place in Delhi, all visitors, whether Indians or Western tourists, must face the words of his talisman etched into stone: “Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the most helpless man whom you may have seen and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he be able to gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj or self-rule for the hungry and also spiritually starved millions of our countrymen? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.” Museums describing his impact on the local area, bhavans where public community events are held around his image, statues of him with the children and poor whom he loved dearly, simple markers, and ashrams–small and large tributes to the Mahatma dot India like dandelions in a field, painting the land as his. The Indian independence movement remains a defining reference point for places and people. Each city I visited in my brief trip took pride in letting you know that Gandhi once stepped foot there. They were proud to share what their local role in the Indian freedom struggle was. Bihar, a state in the North, is well known as where Buddha found enlightenment and Ashoka the Great first consolidated India. But in the capital city Patna, a modest Gandhi museum that people put together with care and pride, even making life-size models of Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore meeting, makes it a point to declare that it was Bihar where the first Satyagraha took place. It was peasants in Bihar, forced to grow and sell the cash crop indigo to the British Empire at cheap prices, who in 1917 asked Gandhi to come to Chamaparan and help them lead the first successful mass civil disobedience against the colonial government. The Patna museum proudly proclaims that Gandhi said: “It was Champaran that introduced me to India.” Another seemingly unlikely face can often be seen throughout India alongside Gandhi. This dark face comes from the other side of the world–Martin Luther King Jr. A small bookstore near Raj Ghat, Gandhi’s official memorial in Delhi, solely dedicated to selling books about Gandhi’s teachings also sold books about Martin Luther King Jr.. The museum in Patna began their exhibit on Gandhi by placing large portraits of King next to him. In describing the legacy of Gandhi’s message of nonviolent resistance to free the oppressed, the museum gave two examples: the movement to end nuclear weapons after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Civil Rights Movement in America. It was emotional to see this section of photographs of young Black men and women of America’s last great freedom movement lifted up by this humble museum in India. The museum is small but neat and clean. Bihar itself is known as the poorest state of India. The exhibits are not fancy, poster boards crammed with information, quotes, and photos on the walls of two rooms and covering the building’s exterior walls, but every photo was chosen and included with love and care. The people who put together this museum wanted visitors to know that in America, Black folk waged a great freedom struggle equivalent to the anticolonial national liberation struggle of India and which did justice to Gandhi. Here, halfway around the globe, it is the Indian people who to this day place Martin Luther King Jr. and the ordinary Black men and women of the Black Freedom Movement rightfully in humanity’s grand constellation of freedom fighters. I asked myself: How is it that the Indian people are able to see and know King, love and honor him? How is it that the Indian people, who probably have not met an African American, can see and appreciate the courage, spirit of sacrifice, and nobility of the ordinary Black people shown in the photographs, the poor and sharecroppers of the countryside and the determined young men and women who left their universities for the revolutionary struggle? For the Indian people to see and love Martin Luther King Jr. as they see and love Gandhi, there must be such a thing as the Truth. There must be a universal truth of goodness, justice, and freedom which can be known and made real. India and America have an intertwined historical struggle for freedom, with King applying Gandhi’s philosophy to the struggle for freedom in America. But the ability for India to see, know, and appreciate Black folk who they have never met before shows that there is a human consciousness and philosophy more universal than we sometimes see. There must be a world human consciousness and philosophy that comes from an oppressed people who do not turn their back on the ancient truths of life and existence but synthesize it and transform it in the fires of struggle for national liberation, civilization, and human freedom from the universal evils of white supremacy, war, and poverty. James Baldwin is an African American essayist of American society, but his words could also describe the suffering and human assertions discovered by the world’s anticolonial movements for freedom: “This past, the Negro’s past, of rope, fire, torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worth of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for his women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible–this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering–enough is certainly as good as a feast–but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.” Baldwin is talking about the development of a new human philosophy made by African Americans who specifically experienced chattel slavery and the disappointments after Emancipation from white supremacy continuing in new systemic forms. Yet in this specific experience of Black folk, the Indian people must have seen a human truth that spoke to their own experience of colonialism and the struggle to achieve freedom. This truth is not only the brutality of white supremacy and the degradation of civilization when people subjugate other human beings, but also the truth that an oppressed people’s struggle for liberation is part of the ultimate fulfillment of mankind to make human beings beloved. In this struggle, people become new human beings capable of creating a new world. The fact that the Indian people see and know this truth shows the reality that there is a future for the American people. The American people have a place in the world, ready to embrace us with common dreams of peace and freedom that already linked American freedom fighters W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Martin Luther King Jr. to world humanity. Today, the American people must rejoin world humanity again and break from our ruling elite who have conditioned us to see the world as separate from and in service to us. The American people have yet to completely reciprocate India’s love, because a majority of the American people have not yet learned to see and love each other enough to want to change our society, let alone the world order. While India has poverty that is integrated, where the poor live and work amongst everyone else, America’s poverty is segregated. In India, poverty is a problem that people must see in their daily lives and hold the government and Indian state responsible for alleviating. In America where there remains a lie that every person can “make it” if you try hard enough, poverty is blamed on the individuals who are poor. In a city like Philadelphia, people can choose to never see poverty, because poverty is neatly kept to specific neighborhoods, oftentimes overwhelmingly Black. There is not just poverty, but a distinct Black poverty, where generations of Black folk are kept poor with no chance at individual success offered to all other white and immigrant people. Today, the American people have never been closer in their situations. We materially and psychologically have paid the high costs of a ruling elite mad on war and domination that is no longer sustainable. The American people suffer from poverty, unstable employment or unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, suicide, cycles of incarceration, distrust and cynicism, and social alienation. We need to reclaim King and our revolutionary inheritance to believe there is a better future, a struggle for which will urge us to take responsibility for ourselves, each other, and the reconfiguration of society. Like the Indian people, the American people were forever transformed by the Black Freedom Movement. It was King and the Black Freedom Movement who connected the American people and our democratic struggle to the people all over the world also demanding freedom, peace, and democracy. However, King’s memory has been deliberately erased and watered down by the American state. In India, the phrase “All India” is everywhere – All India Radio, All India Memorials, All India Women’s Conference, All India Institutes and Colleges. “All India” is a concept from the Indian freedom movement describing achieving freedom in substance, not only liberation from the British Empire but also achieving the freedom of individual human beings from poverty. “All India” describes a common vision for a brighter future for all Indians that united the people in struggle. The vision is a powerful force, because it is a confidence that there is a new, better society possible, and the people can fight to win it. The Black Freedom Movement in America was the last people’s struggle in the country to create an “All America” bound by a common moral demand for the end of war, racism, and poverty which required individuals to see each other, take personal responsibility, and change as people - thus to create a new nation which would be the last white nation. The ruling elite had to assassinate King to behead the movement and the possibilities of a real democracy by and for the people. Manipulation through education, academia, media, and popular culture makes us believe we are more divided than we are. White and Black poor across America are more similar than ever in their circumstances, their anger toward the ruling elite, their apathy toward politicians, and the way they respond in electoral elections. Now is the right time for us all to reclaim the powerful history and visions of our revolutionary struggles which already connect us to each other across the world. The memory of our struggle for freedom in America, only 60 years old, can clarify where we the American people are on the clock of the world, not what the ruling elite thinks. When all that we know in America has lost its legitimacy and is in the process of crumbling, the American people must find each other and make our way toward a new future. While old systems fall, we need a vision for a society with new social, economic, and civilizational relationships. Where will we find that vision? We can find it not only in King but also in the music, poetry, philosophy, and art sung by the generations of Black people who gave us King, from W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Frederick Douglass, and James Baldwin to Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, Jacob Lawrence, August Wilson, and Sun Ra. It is these revolutionary thinkers and artists, not Marxism-Leninism or bourgeois liberalism, who provide a worldview which makes it possible for the American people to understand India and her potentiality. They and their ideas, music, art, and poetry not only explain the revolutionary potential that comes from the collision of the strivings of Black folk against the reality of an unjust society in America. They also make you ready to see the reality of the suffering of the poor, but also their humor, ways of greeting friends, songs, devotion to gods, and the beauty of their lives. They connect us to peoples from India to Gaza, who we may never meet face to face, but who we must love as our own dear brothers and sisters. My own trip to India, I thought that I would be able to understand India’s complex past, present, and future because I am Chinese and Asian. But as I saw the tributes to Gandhi and King and met the Indian people who made the tributes, I realized that I could begin to see India and her immense potential because I am an American who knows and loves Martin Luther King, his sacrifice and revolutionary leadership in an incomplete democratic struggle in America, and the revolutionary movement of courageous ordinary people he led which injected the American people with a demand for peace–something we should not take for granted today. It is not that we have not taken Marx, Lenin, or the bourgeois liberal thinkers of democracy seriously enough, but actually we have not taken Gandhi, King, Tagore, and Baldwin seriously enough–or the people they spoke about and their philosophic and artistic expressions of democracy. From this beauty, these strivings, and this struggle to overcome daily and collective suffering does a people’s movement arise for a new world. They provide us with the values of our new civilization, definitions of beauty, and the music our children should hear and make. This vision not only can imbue the American people with the courage and faith to release themselves from worn-out chains of whiteness, but also already connect us to world humanity in India, Africa, Asia, and everywhere people seek a better future for humanity. Around the world, we share the common revolutionary task to make the human being beloved as God intended and eradicate the forces of poverty, hunger, racism, imperialism, and war which threaten her flowering in this incomplete modern era of human history. The task of all who call themselves revolutionaries is to rededicate themselves, like Gandhi’s talisman says, to know the people, the lowest of the low. To know their suffering, resilience, and democratic capacity so we may show with confidence in these times that there is a future and a truth to be honored, and we share it around the world. If we let them, the people of India, Africa, and Asia can renew our confidence in a revolutionary future. We may not see the path toward our future in America, but India, like a mirror, reminds us we have a shared future, one that is wrapped in a single garment of destiny. We have received a gift from two Mahatmas, Mahatma Gandhi and Mahatma King. Emily Dong is a peace activist, an organizer of the Year of James Baldwin 2024, and member of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation. She lives in Philadelphia.
by Archishman Raju  W.E.B. Du Bois The novel Dark Princess, written by W.E.B. Du Bois and published in 1928, is a historical romance between an Indian Princess and an African American man set in the context of the world anti-colonial movement, including the Black struggle in America, as well as the Russian Revolution. The novel philosophically explores the themes of race, class and civilization. It advances the possibility of a unity between Pan Africa and Pan Asia, and hence of the masses of the world. The novel has almost been intolerable for contemporary academic scholarship in the U.S. For example, Gayatri Spivak says “The Dark Princess, exoticizes a “noble” India” [1]. Homi Bhabha calls it a “Bollywood-style bildungsroman” [2]. For Michael Burawoy, Dark Princess is a “romantic account of the ‘darker races’” which embraces a “fictive India” [3]. For Bill Mullen and Cathryn Watson, “Dark Princess, is…mildly, or wildly, depending upon one’s reading, Orientalist affair” [4]. These commentaries on Dark Princess bear comparison with how the white press in the United States reviewed the novel right after its arrival. For example, The New York Post review accused it of “sentimental melodrama” and The New York Times review said “the plot is flamboyant and unconvincing”. In contrast, as Herbert Aptheker notes in his introduction, “Writers in the Black press responded enthusiastically to Dark Princess” on its publication. Alice Dunbar-Nelson found it “completely and eminently soul-satisfying”. For Allison Davis, “Courage is the real theme of Dark Princess” [5]. These contrasting responses reveal how the colour line operates in American society, and it is interesting, though not surprising, to note which side contemporary academic scholarship finds itself on. Those who accuse Du Bois of not being sensitive to the social dynamics within India or orientalizing it seem to have missed the point of the novel, that the experience of Kautilya with the Russian Revolution and her romance with Matthew is allegorical for the possible resolution of those dynamics in a new Indian democracy. The novel argues that the experience of the African American people has a message for the darker people of the world particularly as they come into modernity. Du Bois’ choice to make the princess Indian was not arbitrary but reflected his deep engagement with and theoretical understanding of the anti-colonial struggle. Several times during his life, Du Bois pointed to the anti-colonial struggle in India and the freedom of India as one of the most important processes of the twentieth century. India was therefore central to Du Bois’ overall theoretical understanding of the nature of the world movement, and its revolutionary task. This understanding was not abstract, but concretely rooted in his vast experience and interaction with the Indian Freedom Struggle. This article is written to document Du Bois’ life-long engagement with India and its freedom struggle in detail. Some of these details are known, but the full scope of Du Bois’ closeness to the Indian freedom struggle is rarely appreciated. These connections demonstrate that India was not an abstract entity for Du Bois but a concrete reality that he was intensely engaged with intellectually and politically. Du Bois and India: Early Connections W.E.B Du Bois started following the Indian freedom struggle from very early on. In a journal he edited, The Horizon, as early as 1907, Du Bois had quoted extensively Dadabhai Naoroji, the “Grand Old Man of India” who came up with the drain of wealth theory on how Britain had underdeveloped India and caused its poverty [6]. Naoroji had been elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1906. Du Bois must have known of Naoroji from earlier as he contributed to the Pan African Conference of 1900. At this stage, Du Bois recognized the ongoing struggle in India between the so-called “Moderates” and “Extremists” in the Indian National Congress i.e. between those arguing for continued constitutionalism and those wanting to pursue a more radical political struggle. He also found parallels to this struggle in Afro-America. Similarly, there was already interest in the African American question in India. K. Paramu Pillai, an important figure in the Nair Service Society wrote to Du Bois asking for a copy of Souls of Black Folk [7]. In 1911, Du Bois attended the Universal Races Congress in London where he met Brajendranath Seal, possibly India’s first modern social theorist and philosopher who was extremely influential in the founding of Indian sociology. He also met Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a prominent leader and mentor to Mahatma Gandhi. In the volume of the Crisis dedicated to the Congress, Du Bois wrote that, among others, he was particularly impressed by Dr. Seal, “the Indian scholar, tall and brown, with a flowing white beard, full of simple but wholesome enthusiasm” [8]. During the first world war, Du Bois became close friends with Lala Lajpat Rai. Du Bois wrote later on Rai after his death, “He was at my home and in my office and we were members of the same club. I especially admired his restraint and sweet temper. When a man of his sort can be called a Revolutionist and beaten to death by a great civilized government, then indeed revolution becomes a duty to all right thinking men.”[9] Lajpat Rai extensively quoted Du Bois in his book on the U.S.A and the first page of the book is entirely a portrait of W.E.B Du Bois [10]. Du Bois had asked Lala Lajpat Rai for comments on the draft manuscript of Dark Princess and made edits based on his comments. Lala Lajpat Rai asked Du Bois for assistance when replying to Katherine Mayo’s Mother India with his Unhappy India. It should be remarked here that we are yet to fully understand the impact these two individuals had on each other. For example, his relationship with Du Bois may have impacted Lala Lajpat Rai’s decision to become part of the Trade Union movement as one of the founding presidents of the All India Trade Union Congress. Gandhi was aware of W.E.B Du Bois from his time in South Africa. In 1911, the Universal Races Congress was covered in the Indian Opinion, the newspaper he edited. The role of Du Bois in the congress was heavily featured and the newspaper said “The Souls of Black Folk” should be read by all [11]. Later that year, the newspaper reported again on “Dr. W.E. Burghardt Du Bois, the author of that great classic ‘The Souls of Black Folk.’”[12] Du Bois and the Indian Freedom Struggle As the Indian Freedom Struggle reached its mass stage with the coming of Gandhi, Du Bois started featuring articles on the struggle in India in The Crisis. In his own later testimony, Du Bois said that it was the first world war that introduced him to Gandhi [13]. In the Crisis in 1922, Du Bois wrote an extensive piece on Gandhi and India, writing “No man who is in the least interested in the throbbing mass of peoples of the earth can fail to take notice of this exceptional soul” [14]. Through the 1920s, he was in touch with several Indians in India and in the United States and India was regularly covered in The Crisis. Therefore, by 1927, when he was writing the Dark Princess, Du Bois was closely following the Indian struggle. On the manuscript itself, he asked Lala Lajpat Rai for comments. Similarly, he asked Dhan Gopal Mukerji, possibly the first Indian writer to be successful in America, for comments on the Dark Princess. He explained to Mukerji that Bwodpur was modeled after Jodhpur and he meant the Princess to be Nepali [15]. He likely showed it also to Syed Hossain, later India’s first ambassador to Egypt and sent a copy to Ananda Coomaraswamy, the famous art critic, for comments [16]. In reading his description of the meeting of the darker people for dinner on the invitation of Princess Kautilya, it is clear that Du Bois was inspired by the Universal Races Congress. His description of the Congress in the Crisis has clear similarities with the dinner scene in Dark Princess. In 1928, Sarojini Naidu visited the U.S. on a tour and met Du Bois. She had already served as the Congress President a few years earlier. Soon after, he also met C. F. Andrews who facilitated his contact with Gandhi and Tagore. Gandhi and Tagore were both very important figures for Du Bois. He saw both of them to have world-historical importance. In 1929, Du Bois asked Gandhi for a message to the Crisis. In a reply, Chhaganlal Joshi told him that “all the inmates of the Ashram were keenly interested in the Negro problems” [17]. Gandhi sent a “Love Message” in May, writing that the “future is with those who would be truthful, pure and loving”. In the Crisis issue, he was introduced as “perhaps the greatest man in the world” [18]. That same year he also got a message from Rabindranath Tagore for the Crisis. Du Bois contrasted Tagore’s universalism with the provincialism of America [19]. In the July 1930 issue of the Crisis, by which time the Dandi march had taken place, Du Bois wrote on the civil disobedience campaign in India that “This mighty experiment, together with the effort of Russia to organize work and distribute income according to some rule of reason, are the greatest events of the modern world” [20] . Du Bois met Tagore likely on his visit to America later that year in 1930 and wrote of his meeting, “my talk with Tagore increased my awareness of India and of its meaning to the world” [21]. He sent a letter to Tagore’s secretary Amiya Chakravarty asking for a contribution to The Crisis. Chakravarty replied that he and Tagore had read the issues of the Crisis which Du Bois sent to them and were “deeply…in sympathy” with its “broad human outlook” [22]. Tagore could not furnish this contribution because of constant engagements while in the U.S. but Chakravarty still expressed their support for Du Bois’ “noble propaganda against racial discrimination” [23]. Hence, by January of 1931, Du Bois wrote in the Crisis of “Magnificent India”. India was magnificent because of Gandhi who was truly an apostle of peace unlike the “professional pacificist”. It was magnificent because of Tagore “who lives on high in the midst of a sordid and discriminating world”. Du Bois quoted a speech by Ambedkar and said India exposes the “inner rottenness of European imperialism” [24]. It should be noted that Du Bois was well aware of the complexity of Indian history and society as well as the difficulties the Indian freedom struggle faced. The All India Congress Committee sent its newsletter to Du Bois and he used their information in his publications [25]. He had compiled a chronology of India from 1500 BCE to 1935 [26]. In a lecture he gave in Morehouse College in 1940, he asked for a detailed map and statistics of India to be displayed [27]. Ram Manohar Lohia, as part of the All India Congress Committee, wrote to Du Bois, “We here attach the highest significance to the Negro Front of anti-Imperialism” [28]. This was the same year that Howard Thurman had his famous meeting with Gandhi. Thurman had brought up Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction and explained to Gandhi how it gave a new theoretical understanding of the African American experience [29]. Du Bois donated Black Reconstruction to the All India Congress Committee library in 1938 [30]. Hence, Du Bois was in close touch with the leadership of the Indian Freedom Struggle. Not only was he following the Indian situation closely, his work was well known in India. The wideness of his contact It should be noted that Du Bois was in touch not just with the leadership, but with a wide variety of people in India. For example, Banarsidas Chaturvedi, a journalist close to Gandhi and instrumental in establishing the Hindi Bhawan at Vishwabharati, wrote to Du Bois from the Sabarmati Ashram in 1924, suggesting that Du Bois’ name “is already known to a very large number of educated Indians”. Chaturvedi said “I entirely agree with you when you say that the different colored peoples and more especially the Indians and the American Negroes must get in touch and cooperation with each other” [31]. Chaturvedi later solicited a message from Du Bois for the magazine he edited, Chand, which Du Bois promptly sent. He was a great admirer of Du Bois and later another magazine he edited, Vishal Bharat, carried excerpts from the Crisis. He received an invitation from Prabuddha Bharat, the magazine of Ramakrishna Mission to write on the education of African Americans. He submitted this article which was published in the magazine in 1933 [32]. In 1936, Du Bois submitted an article to the Aryan Path a Theosophical Journal entitled “The Clash of Colour” [33]. He argued that “The great difficulty of bringing about understanding, sympathy and co-operation between the Negroes of America and the peoples of India lies in the almost utter lack of knowledge which these two groups of people have of each other”. Whereas African Americans were unlikely to be educated on India in American schools, educated Indians were likely to believe stories on African Americans spread by white Americans. He told his readers, “Indian visitors must, of course, remember that they will have to make some special effort to see the Negro world. It is a world largely apart and organized; in its churches, industry and amusement, largely separate from the white world.”. However, “for visitors who wish to know Negroes and try to carry out their wish, no great difficulties are encountered. The Negro churches always welcome visitors, and Negro organizations are glad to give them opportunity to speak and to ask questions, and even Negro homes are open to sympathetic strangers.” Du Bois clearly understood the contradictions in India saying “India has also had temptation to stand apart from the darker peoples and seek her affinities among whites…And yet, the history of the modern world shows the futility of this thought. European exploitation desires the black slave, the Chinese coolie and the Indian labourer for the same ends and the same purposes, and calls them all “niggers”. Commenting on the caste system, Du Bois wrote “If India has her castes, American Negroes have in their own internal colour lines the plain shadow of a caste system”. N. S. Subba Rao, the director of public instruction in Mysore State, replied to the article challenging Du Bois’ appeal that African Americans and Indians must unite to challenge European domination. He warned that this path would lead to war and violence and instead, he advocated a “union of colour” essentially arguing for cooperation with Europe to reconstruct society [34]. Du Bois strongly challenged Subba Rao’s assertion that the only two paths available were to accept humiliation or violence. Further, he felt that accepting humiliation would lead to even greater violence and tragedy. This article in The Aryan Path attracted considerable attention in India, and Lohia wrote to Du Bois after reading it. The Freeing of India and the New Indian State In April 1945, Du Bois organized a Colonial Conference at the 135th St. Branch of the New York Public Library. Several Indians were present at this conference and India was featured heavily in the list of speakers. One of them was Kumar Goshal, who became a close friend and associate of Du Bois, and was part of the Council on African Affairs founded by Paul Robeson. Another person present at the Conference was Lawrence Reddick who was to later accompany King on his trip to India. Kwame Nkrumah was also present. The conference demanded the creation of a Colonial Commission at the UN conference to be held in San Francisco [35]. Du Bois himself attended the UN conference and was disappointed that it took “no action concerning colonies” since these were deemed a domestic matter. He dined with Vijay Lakshmi Pandit at San Francisco and again wrote about the political situation in India in the Chicago Defender. Du Bois refused to be photographed with the British appointed Indian delegates who did not represent India and declared his solidarity with the real leadership of India [36]. By 1946 when Ambedkar wrote to Du Bois, as he said, Du Bois was known by everyone “who is working in the cause of securing liberty to the oppressed people” [37]. At this time, Du Bois was probably one of the best known figures from the darker peoples, along with Gandhi. He was well known in Africa, China and India. Nehru gifted him a book on Gandhi’s life and work which he said he would treasure among his most valued possessions [38]. Du Bois had read and reviewed Gandhi and Nehru’s autobiographies. Hence a little after India became Independent, Du Bois wrote in Soviet Russia Today, “I believe that the greatest events of the twentieth century have been the Russian Revolution and the Freeing of India” [39]. However, by 1950, Du Bois expressed unhappiness at the way the Indian state was treating the Indian communists. He published an open letter against Nehru and did not try to meet him when he visited the U.S. in 1949 [40]. It should be remembered that this was the time when the Communist Party of India was following a path of armed resistance against the newly independent Indian state, an approach it quickly abandoned. Later, Du Bois changed his views. In a letter to Nehru in 1956, he thanked him for his visit to the United States. He wrote “At first I was deeply disturbed at the jailing of Communists; but as progress toward Socialism developed I understood better the vast task which confronted you and the courage and persistence with which you were accomplishing the great end of making India a great and leading nation.” [41] Even at the very end of his life, when he was working on the Encyclopedia Africana project, Du Bois wrote to Nehru asking for help in uncovering connections of India and Africa in the past [42] and subsequently contacted faculty at the University of Delhi. Despite the cold-war attack on Du Bois and the attempt to erase his legacy, he continued his contact with India and his popularity in India only rose. This was demonstrated by the constant invitations he received from the cultural and peace movements in India post-independence. Du Bois and the radical Cultural and Peace Movements One person who was a very ardent admirer of Du Bois and did much to spread his name in India was Cedric Dover. Dover had met Du Bois in 1938 and had written then a letter to Nehru describing him, “W.E.B Du Bois is one of the great pioneers, as you already know, of the movement for closer contact between coloured peoples” [43]. He described Du Bois as “the elder brother of the whole coloured family” [44]. He planned a celebration for the eightieth birthday of Du Bois in 1948 at Fisk University where he was then teaching. He also obtained birthday wishes from Nehru and the socialist Yusuf Meherally who called Du Bois the “prophet of a new civilization”[45]. Dover wrote to Nehru after Indian independence asking him to invite Du Bois as a scholar to visit India. Nehru agreed but the visit never materialized. This was one of many invitations that Du Bois would receive to visit India. If his passport had not been confiscated, he would very likely have visited India in the 1950s and received a hero’s welcome. He wrote to Dover that it would be the realization of his life’s ambition to know and see India [46]. Cedric Dover was close to the founding members of the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) in London including Mulk Raj Anand and played a role in drafting the PWA manifesto [47]. When Du Bois was being persecuted in 1951, he, Anand and others would voice their support for Du Bois writing “your name belongs to us too…We pledge ourselves to be worthy of it” [48]. Anand would later meet Du Bois at the Afro-Asian writers conference in Tashkent in 1958. Du Bois was close to the peace movement in India as well as the cultural movement. The All India Peace Council invited him to attend a conference in 1951 [49]. He was invited by the Indian People’s Theatre Association to the first State Conference of the West Bengal Chapter. He replied back explaining that he did not have his passport but that he believed that “folk drama development among the masses of people is one of the best and most inspiring ways of spreading civilization and improving human culture” [50]. Romesh Chandra, president of the All India Peace Council and later to become president of the World Peace Council spoke of him in his speeches. Du Bois became a member of the Tagore Peace festival that the World Peace Council helped organize on the occasion of Tagore’s centenary. One last connection to be emphasized again is the friendship between Du Bois and Kumar Goshal, mentioned previously. Du Bois introduced Goshal to Nkrumah and Azikiwe as a close friend and co-worker. Goshal was the one who introduced E.S. Reddy to the Council on African Affairs. Reddy was subsequently to play a historic role in service of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Conclusion Many times during his life, W.E.B Du Bois referred to Gandhi and Tagore as the two figures whose philosophy was fundamentally important to appreciate in the twentieth century. To appreciate the message of Dark Princess requires that we appreciate Du Bois’ theoretical understanding of the anti-colonial and world-revolutionary movement, and the place he saw for their philosophy in this understanding. Dark Princess must therefore be read as an artistic manifestation of Du Bois’ scientific project. The thesis in the book is further developed in his later works Black Reconstruction, The World and Africa, Color and Democracy as well as his unpublished manuscript, Russia and America. The study of India’s colonization and its struggle for freedom were both an essential part of his project. References: Most of the references are from Du Bois’ personal papers available at the Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries and made digitally available. They are simply referenced with the name of the article and the link. [1] Du Bois in a Comparative Context, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 2018. [2] The Black Savant and the Dark Princess, Homi K. Bhabha, ESQ: A Journal of The American Rennaissance, 2004. [3] W.E.B Du Bois’ Indian Romance, Michael Burawoy, 2023. [4] W.E.B Du Bois on Asia, Introduction, ed. Bill Mullen & Cathryn Watson, 2005. [5] All citations taken from Herbert Aptheker’s Introduction, in Dark Princess, Kraus Thomson ORganization Ltd., 1974. [6] Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United. States and India. By Nico Slate, 2012. [7] Letter from K. Paramu Pillai to W. E. B. Du Bois, June 10, 1908. [8] The Crisis Vol. 2 No. 5 September 1911 [9] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to the editor of The People, January 10, 1929. [10] The United States of America; a Hindu's impressions and a study, Lala Lajpat Rai, 1916 [11] Aug 26, 1911 Indian Opinion [12] Sep 9th, 1911 Indian Opinion [13] Gandhi and the American Negroes, W.E.B. Du Bois [14] March, 1922 The Crisis [15] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Dhan Gopel Mukerji, November 7, 1927. [16] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to A. Coomaraswamy, November 14, 1927. [17] Letter from Chhaganlal Joshi to W. E. B. Du Bois, April 13, 1929. [18] July, 1929, The Crisis Vol. 36 Iss. 7 [19] October, 1929, The Crisis Vol. 36 Iss. 10 [20] July, 1930. The Crisis, Vol. 37, Iss. 7 [21] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Tagore Centenary Peace Festival, October 14, 1960 [22] Letter from A. C. Chakravarty to W. E. B. Du Bois, November 17, 1930 [23] Letter from A. C. Chakravarty to W. E. B. Du Bois, December 27, 1930 [24] January, 1931, The Crisis Vol. 38 Iss 1 [25] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to All India Congress Committee, November 7, 1940 [26] Chronology of India, ca. 1935 [27] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Morehouse College, January 8, 1940 [28] Letter from All India Congress Committee to W. E. B. Du Bois, July 20, 1936 [29] “With Our Negro Guests,” 14 March 1936 [30] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to All India Congress Committee, November 25, 1938 [31] Letter from Benarsidas Chaturvedi to W. E. B. Du Bois, November 9, 1924 [32] Memorandum an Article for Prabuddha Bharata on Negro Education in the United States, ca. 1931 [33] March, 1936, Aryan Path Vol. 7, No. 3 [34] May, 1936, Aryan Path Vol. 7, No. 5 [35] Colonial Conference resolution, April 6, 1945 [36] A statement by W. E. B. Du Bois, author of color and democracy; colonies and peace: supplementary to that book, ca. 1945. [37] Letter from B. R. Ambedkar to W. E. B. Du Bois, ca. July 1946 [38] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Jawaharlal Nehru, November 7, 1946 [39] The most helpful state in the world today, ca. November 1947 [40] Circular letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to unidentified correspondent, October 10, 1949 [41] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Jawaharlal Nehru, December 26, 1956 [42] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Prime Minister of India, April 17, 1961 [43] Letter from Cedric Dover to Jawaharlal Nehru, February 1938 [44] Letter from Cedric Dover to W. E. B. Du Bois, November 29, 1947 [45] Telegram from Yusuf Meherally to W. E. B. Du Bois, February 18, 1948 [46] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Cedric Dover, June 23, 1948 [47] Mulk Raj Anand Remembers, Indian Literature, 1993 [48] Transcript of message to Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, October 2, 1951 [49] Letter from All India Peace Council to W. E. B. Du Bois, August 28, 1951 [50] Letter from W. E. B. Du Bois to Indian Peoples' Theatre Association, March 29, 1955 Archishman Raju is an editor of Vishwabandhu Journal.
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