Tagore Path to civilizational dialogue

by Manoranjan Mohanty.

This is the text of a speech given at an event to commemorate the centenary of Tagore's trip to China on the 23rd of September at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, Delhi.

This is a very special occasion, I am very fortunate to be present. First of all, I would like to tell you about my relationship to Chameli Tan Ramachandran’s family. I remember it was August of 1965, I saw a signboard with an arrow, on Mall Road near Delhi University on which was written Centre for Chinese Studies. Nobody seemed to know about this center. In my hostel, Jubilee Hall, there was a Lecturer in Sanskrit teaching in Deshbandhu College. I was teaching Political Science in Zakir Hussain College at the time. On a quick enquiry I ascertained that he was already in the course. I told him I wanted to learn Chinese. I had not gotten an opportunity till then. I had actually joined Russian one month back, but I did not know that Chinese Language Course had started. He said he had two Chinese teachers, Tan Chung and his wife Huang Ishu. He said they were so good human beings that we could right away go to their house and find out. At 9 PM at night we reached their house. First, Ishu gave us some sweets and after a short conversation Tan Chung said I could join his class the next morning. This is how I started my Chinese language. Having made up my mind to study some non-western region of the world after my MA, I had already started doing research on Chinese Foreign Policy.


That was the beginning of my association with the Tan family that has lasted till today. After my Ph D in the US I came back and became Tan Chung’s colleague in Delhi University. Then I moved to the Political Science Department in 1980. In 1978, Tan Chung moved to JNU but Ishu continued at DU. We have remained lifelong friends. Tan Chung is not only my teacher but also my mentor. As I was Chameli Ramachandran earlier I last met Tan Chung in 2019 in Changsha, Hunan when we attended the centenary celebration of Tan Yunshan, Tan Chung’s father, at Changling, the Tan family’s native place- in which County, incidentally, Mao Zedong was born.
Tan Chung is now 96, but still agile and full of ideas. I can go on telling about him. I had met Tan Yun Shan in 1980 in Santiniketan and we had a wonderful conversation there.


Now I will come to what I want to talk about in this momentous celebration of the centenary of Tagore’s visit to China and the perspective on India-China civilizational understanding that the Tan family has carried forward. I must emphasize that Tan Chung greatly shaped my thought process on this subject. I have an article called Alternate Historiography: Tan Chung’s Geo-civilizational Perspective. He mentored us to believe that state is a relatively new formation in history. India and China became republics in 1950 and 1949 but these are great civilizations with thousands of years’ history. That is a major element in the discourse in our intellectual journey associated with the Institute of Chinese Studies which we had started as a seminar group over fifty years ago, Tan Chung, me and a few other colleagues started meeting as the Wednesday China Seminar in 1969 August.


Coming back to our topic of civilizational understanding. When Archishman Raju writes to me some one year back saying that they have something called the Intercivilizational Project and they want to hold a series of celebrations. I was very excited. Then I discovered Nandita. This couple, scientists in Bangalore, thought of this celebration even before professional China scholars like us had thought about it. We hadn’t planned it yet, we knew we would do something. Santiniketan had already started the planning. What attracted us all to this initiative was our common commitment to the civilizational perspective. Tan Chung had gone deep into the multiple dimensions of that perspective and carried forward Tan Yunshan’s efforts to crystalliza the Tagore vision on seeing the world as a civilizational universe. That presents before us what can be called the Tagore path to global civilizational dialogue.


The Tagore path has three characteristics. When we talk about civilizational east, we imply that West is not just a geographical region but a civilizational space, West and East constitute the globe. In other words, firstly, all parts of the globe have history, culture and civilization. That is why Tagore thoughtfully named his educational initiative as Visva Bharati. What he meant by Bharati was learning and Vishva Bharati was envisioned as a centre of civilisational heritage of the entire world, the language, literature and culture and knowledge systems of the whole world . His concept of mahamanav ( human with the highest qualities ) vishwamanav ( human belonging to the whole planet or embodying the cumulative heritage of the whole world) . You have to see in this perspective the unity of the whole world consisting of multiple civilizations.


Let us recall the controversy about Tagore’s visit to China in 1924. The radical intellectuals in China opposed his visit and argued that his ideas were not appropriate for China’s needs at the time. However, in my opinion, the great Indologist Professor Ji Xianlin, who later wrote about it, puts it very well: Tagore was anti-imperialist but he was also a mystic. So many in China did not like his mysticism. But we note that later Tagore become very popular- having become the most published foreign author after William Shakespeare. In 2013-2014 in China and in India we together organized innumerable functions, more than 20 of them to celebrate the centenary of Tagore’s Nobel prize of 1913. That year we all recognised the extent of popularity of Tagore in China. Civilizational perspective leads us to see interconnections among peoples, their histories and cultures and the deeper levels of reality in society and life. To promote such an understanding at the global level Tagore wanted Visva Bharati to hace centres of leaning such a Cheena Bhavan, and many other Bhavans to study Japanese, Persian and many Indian language centers. In other words, study of world civilizations was his mission.


Second, Tagore made it very clear that Western Civilization was more about materialism while Eastern Civilization was more about spiritualism. That was the usual way most thinkers in India and Europe had characterized Eastern and Western civilisations. There are two ways to read Tagore. Many emphasize the mystical and spiritual in his writings. But if you read the entirety of Tagore’s writings and put them together with the works he undertook then it would be clear that he was not just about spiritualism. Sisir Kumar Das has put it very well, Tagore wanted a syncretic understanding of spiritual and material together and he wanted to convey the message that all civilizations have both spiritual and material traditions. Santiniketan the arena of knowledge cultivation and Sriniketan the arena of production and creation of artifacts together represented the totality of the Tagore cosmology. He showed in practice that, in India too we had both a material tradition along with a spiritual tradition. Similarly, in the West, there is the Socratic, Platonic and Augustine tradition up until Hegel which continued till today along with the evolution of science and industry which demonstrated the materialist tradition. J. P. S. Oberoi in his work, “The Other mind of Europe” has pointed out the non-rational and idealist, the non-materialist mind of Europe. Tagore looked at traditional culture in all its dimensions, material and spiritual together.


Third aspect of the Tagore Path to civilizational dialogue is to realize the intimate bond between humans and nature. This was the theme that attracted many people all over the world to Tagore’s poetry. It was this that was celebrated in the first translations by Chen Duxiu the founder of the Chinese Communist Party in the second issue of Xin Qingnian ( The New Youth ) Magazine, the magazine which catalyzed the Chinese cultural stream and literature and inspired the May 4th Movement of 1919. Tagore captured it very well, humans and nature were in unity, and mutual dependence. This should not be called mystic. To understand the beauty and the mysteries of nature and try to explore them. That mysticism I believe as a Marxist, dialectical materialist, I believe that mysticism is a very important part of one’s total understanding of phenomenon recognizing the realm of unknown or yet to be articulated.


Thus, every culture, every civilization had all three dimensions: they are all inter-related, each had both material and spiritual elements of tradition and and each was based on integral relationship of humans and nature. Recognizing the variety and beauty in society, in humanity, recognizing the plurality in each tradition each one deserving equal attention and each deserving equal respect. That is the Tagore path.


I will conclude by making two suggestions to ourselves, all of us, those who are workers for peace and friendship between all civilizations particularly of Asia, particularly of India and China. Those of us, our distinguished speaker today, Syeda Hamid and I for example, are active in Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy and we are located in the Tagore path. I must tell you, I was active with Pandit Sunderlal and B. P. Mandal in the very tense days of India-China relations during the 1960s in the India China Friendship Association. Then after I returned from the U.S, from 1971 onwards I was very active till it became very easy and normal and a lot of people joined India China friendship association. Indian Government and Indian Business took many initiatives to promote exchanges. We then focused more on research and academic collaboration. But friendship association activities that excessively depend upon governments experience ups and downs reflecting the course of the relations between the countries. Therefore, this civilizational initiative has to be a people’s initiative. No matter what policies the embassy has, the government has, people must have their own channels of interaction.


Number two, I think we have to be objective and independent in our approach in carrying out our dialogues. We don’t have to support Prime Minister Modi’s policies here and President Xi Jinping’s policies there at this moment. We should be prepared to face consequences of taking independent stand on issues and policies as scholars or peace activists. Speak truth to history and power and history and people in future will judge. And that is Tagore’s message. He had a big debate with Gandhi, but he also gave the term Mahatma to Gandhi. People to people relations, and scholars can start that, we should start with all channels and society must pressure the government to create that understanding and remain independent of governments and their policies. Only then can we carry forward the Bandung perspective of decolonization and oppose hegemony and superpower politics and create that equitable, just world that is the future world envisioned by Tagore and Tan Yun Shan.