Rabindranath Tagore, w.e.b Du bois and our afro-asiatic future

Archishman Raju

This April is the 100th anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore’s historic trip to China. This trip is an occasion to remember Tagore’s ideas, in particular that of Pan-Asianism or the coming together of Asian nations in peace and mutual understanding. In this essay, I would like to put Tagore’s ideas alongside those of W.E.B Du Bois, one of the founders of Pan-Africanism.

To bring together Tagore and Du Bois is to bring together a poet and a social scientist, Asia and Africa and, in that process, seek out an imagination for a human future. Du Bois is one of the foremost social scientists of the twentieth century who studied the material and ideological foundations of white supremacy and western imperialism. Further, Du Bois had a close interest in the Indian Freedom Struggle as well as the Chinese Revolution. He corresponded with Gandhi, had a close friendship with Lala Lajpat Rai and other Indian revolutionaries. His ideas are essential for an understanding of the modern world.

The contemporary context in which we are discussing ideas of Pan-Asia and Pan-Africa is the present world crisis. The collapse of the Soviet Union was declared as The End of History in Western scholarship, which saw liberal democratic capitalism as the culmination of experiments with social organization and all other efforts as failed. Subsequently, a very unequal world was built up and old hierarchies were reinstated. The subsequent financial crisis, the rise of China, as well as the strong disaffection of the working class in the west has demolished this thesis and made it clear that history has not ended with the Western bourgeoisie. The transformation of the world requires a great ideological effort and democratic struggle.

Many people think that Asia will be the center of this effort and the Western world is recoiling against the rise of India and China. Unfortunately, Western elites seem to have reached the megalomaniacal conclusion that if the world is not in their image, it does not deserve to exist. They have literally become anti-human. On the other side, the majority of humanity is searching for a human future. Tagore and Du Bois are two essential thinkers in that quest. As Tagore said, “You may rely on this prosperity and power of today, but there is tomorrow…I defy today and refuse to let it dominate my purposes. I rely on tomorrow with peace and faith”.

Tagore’s Trip to China and the idea of Pan-Asia

To give some historical background, Tagore’s trip to China came at a period when Chinese society itself was going through a period of intense ideological struggle. The May 4th movement in 1919 had been an expression of the discontent of a section of young Chinese intellectuals with the weak Chinese government. Chen Duxiu, in particular, spoke of the need to welcome “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” to replace traditional Confucian values. Chen Duxiu opposed Tagore’s visit to China arguing that it would strengthen the traditionalists. On the other hand, intellectuals like Liang Qichao and Xu Zhimo strongly welcomed Tagore’s visit. On the whole, Tagore’s visit to China was very successful and was subsequently remembered as such, particularly in China but also in India. In academic discourse, however, a revisionist history that declared the visit to be a failure was published by an obscure American scholar by the name of Stephen Hay in 1970 which has unfortunately affected subsequent discourse despite being challenged several times by scholars from India and China.

Nevertheless, what concerns us here are the ideas that Tagore put forth in Talks in China that directly address the question of tradition and modernity as well as the question of peace and unity in Asia.

First, Tagore emphasized that ideas were revolutionary. He argued that mechanical organization would stifle the spirit of human beings. He said “All great human movements in the world are related to some great idea.” Therefore, Tagore argued against simply associating modernity with material progress. As he said “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.” and further “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.” He then spoke of the “great mystic poets who flourished in India from the 13th to the 16th and 17th century.” and said “I was amazed to discover how modern they were…All true things are ever modern and can never become obsolete”. Having seen the first world war and speaking in the age of colonialism, Tagore thus developed a trenchant critique of European modernity. He observed that it had emphasized material accumulation at a great cost. Thus Tagore challenged the idea that merely because he did not discard his past heritage, he was conservative and defended himself as a revolutionary.

Second, Tagore emphasized the idea of Pan-Asia. He said “Age after age, in Asia great dreamers have made the world sweet with the showers of their love. Asia is again waiting for such dreamers to come and carry on the work, not of fighting, not of profit-making, but of establishing bonds of spiritual relationship.” Tagore insisted that Asia must truly know each other, not as tourists but by forming deep bonds. “In Asia we must unite” he said. Tagore urged against imitating the West and instead asked for Asians to find their true inheritance. He critically examined the concept of civilization and its association with progress. Instead, Tagore argued that civilization is that which binds human beings together.

Pan-Asia is an idea that is associated with the early part of the 20th century and Japanese thinkers like Okakura Tenshin. As Tagore made clear later in his letters with Yone Noguchi in 1938, he was against a Pan-Asianism based on Japanese domination. More importantly, Tagore was against the unity of Asia determined by Asian elites. Instead, he emphasized that he saw the true foundation of civilization in ordinary people and thus the unity of Asia must be based in a deeper relationship, a hard-fought unity which would permeate among the masses of the oppressed. As he said “man cannot reach the shrine if he does not make the pilgrimage”

Du Bois and Tagore

It is here that the ideas of W.E.B Du Bois join with that of Tagore’s. In his novel, Dark Princess, Du Bois had a memorable scene where the protagonist Matthew Towns, a black man from America, attends a meeting of representatives from Asia who discuss the unfairness of European domination. The Japanese explains to Matthew that they agree that “white hegemony of the world is nonsense; that the darker peoples are the best--the natural aristocracy”. In response Matthew questions whether, if the Asian aristocracy replaced White domination, it would mean much unless they question the ideals of civilization itself, particularly the idea of the majority of mankind serving the minority. What if, Matthew asks, “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?”. The culmination of the novel in the marriage of an Indian princess to Matthew Towns in his novel was metaphorical for the coming together of Pan Asia and Pan Africa in a socialistic future.

At the end of the second world war, Du Bois wrote “The World and Africa”, which starts with “The Collapse of Europe”. He argued that the “collapse of Europe is to us the more astounding because of the boundless faith which we have had in European civilization”. Du Bois’ analysis resonates with Tagore’s last address “Crisis in Civilization” where he describes his loss of faith in Western Civilization. Du Bois argued that to understand the calamity, one has to properly understand the role of Africa in world history. “One of the chief causes which thus distorted the development of Europe”, he said, “was the African slave trade”...The result of the African slave trade and slavery on the European mind and culture was to degrade the position of labor and the respect for humanity as such.” This explained the development of Western Civilization whose steps towards science, art and philosophy were marred by the paradoxical need to defend slavery and colonialism. Therefore, for Du Bois, the decadence and paradoxes of modern Europe were to be explained historically by understanding the affect of the slave trade and colonialism on it. As he said “modern life thus was built around colonial ownership and exploitation”. Du Bois argued that “the fire and freedom of black Africa, with the uncurbed might of her consort Asia, are indispensable to the fertilizing of the universal soil of mankind, which Europe alone never would nor could give this aching earth.”

Du Bois developed this idea further in his unpublished manuscript, Russia and America. He spoke of needing to develop a new ideal different from the ideals of the West. This ideal would, he said, “must be Marxian in its division of income according to need; but it may be distinctly Asiatic”.  “It would take a new way of thinking on Asiatic lines to work this out”, he wrote and “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".

It must be emphasized here that Du Bois felt that the philosophy of Gandhi and Tagore would contribute to the development of communism of a new type. Du Bois was well aware of Tagore’s work and had met Tagore during one of his visits to America.  The precise date of this meeting is not clear. It is sometimes dated to 1930, but based on Du Bois’ own description, it may have been earlier in 1916. In any case, what is clear is that Du Bois had studied Tagore and admired his ideas.

Tagore had sent a message for the magazine that Du Bois edited, The Crisis, in 1929, “We must show, each in our own civilization, that which is universal in the heart of the unique”. Du Bois explained to his readers that Tagore “has risen and is rising to something quite above the artificial limitations of race, color and nation.”

In the Golden Book of Tagore, a homage to Tagore prepared for his 70th birthday, Du Bois wrote a piece on India and Africa. “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”. Writing words that Tagore himself might have written he said “the machine stands and is a marvellous tool but a horrible master”. Finally he gave a plea that “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” and ended by saying that “It seems to me that no one has had a finer vision of such a future than Rabindranath Tagore.”

30 years later, in a celebration of Tagore’s centenary, a “peace festival” was organized by the World Peace Council. Du Bois, fittingly joined the committee for this celebration.

Conclusion

We live in an age which still inherits the assumption of Western superiority. Hence, Western thinkers are deemed to have universal relevance whereas all others are specific to their context. In examining the ideas of W.E.B Du Bois and Rabindranath Tagore together, I have assumed them both to be  thinkers who are important for humanity as a whole. I have emphasized their critical examination of modernity, and their hope in the coming together of Asia and Africa to set new standards for civilization.

The intellectual fashions in the Western world for quite a while have moved towards post-modernity. However, an inherent assumption in a lot of post-modern literature is that if the European elite failed to create human standards for our world, it means that humanity as a whole has failed. None of the foundational post-modern thinkers ever made a profound critique of white supremacy or colonialism. This has left a paucity of ideas in an age where war and poverty continue to ravage us and Western standards for civilization have miserably failed.

The challenges that we are faced today require an effort that must involve large sections of humanity. For both Du Bois and Tagore, it is the darker peoples who, given the opportunity, would produce the ideals that our age needs. A deep study of these two thinkers will reward us with a vision for our Afro-Asiatic future of democracy and peace; a tomorrow that they believed in.




Archishman Raju is a contributor and editor of this journal.