Letters from Russia and India Now Palash Biswas

Letters from Russia and India Now
Palash Biswas

Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com

 Monday, September 24, 2007 12:42 AM

"If our political progress was to be real, the underdogs of our society must be helped to become men" (Rabindranath Tagore, Letters from Russia)

" Throughout the ages, civilized communities have contained groups of nameless people. They toil most, yet theirs is the largest measure of indignity. They are deprived of everything that makes life worth living. I had often thought about them, but came to the conclusion that there was no help for them. …..In Russia at last. Whichever way I look I am filled with wonder. From top to bottom they are rousing everyone up without distinction" (in Letter from Russia).

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.

No sprituality, the experience of Peace which is not a productible commodity and shapes in hearts full of Love, its elementary humanity comes through more clearly than any complex and intense spirituality in these lines of Rabindra Nath Tagore despite the archaic language of the original translation of Gitanjali.

Marxist Minister and Dalit Poet Anil Sarkar is influenced by the Subaltern commentry in Rabindra Literature, specially in Chandalika, Rather Rashi and Rashiar chithi.Long before Maybati took over the reins in Uttar Pradesh and specialised in social eingineering, long before the in North India the social leaders Brahmins and kshatrias surrendered to Mayabati`s Casteology to have a share in Power, Tagore fortold in his Rather Rashi that only dalits could lead the polity. And only the Ratha may go ahead when the reins are in the hands of untouchables. In Rashiar Chithi, Tagore expressed his appreciation on the social change generated by revolution and improved conditions of Workers in a communist society. then he wrote on the plights of Indian Untouchables who work most, eat least, wear least and stand as light houses of the Human civilisations., who bears all the heat and dust of the production system. but you may not get much deatails unless you read the bengali original. These tagore works do break the Brahminical Hegemony. thus, Anil sarkar is quite right on emphasising on the relvance of rabindra in National Dalit Movement as per as Karl Marx and baba saheb Ambedkar.The debate on affirmative action in India is long and not always geared to the desired aim: creation of equality of opportunity. Just like Indian secularism, reservation system in India has always a different political aim to make the system more unequal than what it is. Indian secularism, rather than making the state independent of religion, is intended to provide special privileges to certain religious groups. Similarly Indian affirmative system is politically designed to provide restricted rights not equal rights to some chosen people.

Develop, Displace, Forget The Poor

WALTER FERNANDES

Illustration: Naorem Ahish

"What else did you expect me to do?" was her reply when I asked her why she had pulled her son out of school to turn him into a child labourer. She is one of four lakh parents to have done so in Assam alone, all of them displaced in the name of national development and left to fend for themselves. Assam claims to have displaced 4,51,252 people from 3,91,773 acres between 1947 and 2000. The real figures stand at 19,09,368 people from 14,01,186 acres. West Bengal has done the same to 7 million people from 4.7 million acres in the same period. Similar numbers are found in other states .

Leave alone rehabilitation, most of them are not even seen as displaced. Assam has rehabilitated those displaced by just about 10 projects out of 3,000 and West Bengal has partially resettled around 10 percent of them. Fifty-six percent of the displaced in Assam and 49 percent in Bengal have turned their children into child labourers. When that is not possible, women sell their bodies to keep the hearth fires burning. Crime is another option.

Studies indicate that India has deprived some 60 million people of their livelihood in the name of national development. Fewer than 20 percent have been rehabilitated. Since colonial land laws continue and recognise only individual ownership, Assam has not counted the 1 million acres of common land from which it displaced 14.5 lakh tribals, Dalits and others. It has been their sustenance for centuries but the colonial laws declare it State property. The official claim that compensation is rehabilitation is untenable. But the ruling class does not have to worry about them because they are powerless. Tribals are more than 20 million of these 60 million, Dalits are 12 millions and other rural poor are some 10 million. They can be displaced and forgotten.

That is the future trend too. Nandigram and Singur hog headlines but not Navi Mumbai, other SEZs and the 2.26 lakh acres that West Bengal has committed to industries with private profit as the only criterion. One hundred and sixty eight massive dams are being planned in the Northeast. Former PM Vajpayee declared in May 2002 the dams will turn the Northeast into the powerhouse of India. Many more lakhs of people who will be impoverished by them were ignored.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=cr290907DoBigha.asp

GOVERNMENT’S "FOLLOW UP ACTION" ON SACHAR COMMITTEE

Where Is The Political Will?

Brinda Karat

THE UPA government’s minority affairs minister A R Antulay placed a report on "Follow-up action on the recommendations of the Sachar committee" before both houses of parliament in the last week of August. The report is like a pendulum that swings between tokenism and deception. It will be recalled that previous Congress-led governments had ignored the recommendations of successive reports on the conditions of minorities whether it was the Gopal Singh Committee report in 1983, the National Commission of Minorities report in 1995 or the Planning Commission’s sub-group report of 1996. Going by the follow-up report, it is clear that without a strong public campaign the Sachar Committee recommendations will meet the same fate.

In May 2007 another important report from the Ranganathan Mishra Committee was given to the government. That report which dealt with reservations for dalits in the Muslim and Christian communities was not been placed in parliament at all. It has reportedly recommended just as the Sachar report did that the Constitution should be amended to include dalit Muslims and Christians in the Scheduled Castes list. The government did not accept the demand of the CPI(M) MPs to table the report and accept the recommendations for reservations for dalit Muslims and Christians. This approach exposes the deficit of political will in the government to take concrete action on the recommendations of the Sachar and Mishra Committees to address the discrimination faced by Muslims in different spheres.
http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0923/09232007_brinda.htm

NEPAL: DALITS, JANAJATIS AND MUSLIMS-THE MOST NEGLECTED
TGW
"The Dalits, Muslims and the Janajatis were more affected by rampant poverty in the country", a three-year interim plan approach paper prepared by the Nepal’s National Planning Commission has freshly revealed.
"46 per cent of dalits, 44 per cent of Magar, Rai, Gurung, Tamang and Limbu in the Pahadi-Janajati category and 41 per cent of Muslims living in the country have been found living below the poverty line", says the NPC report further.
"These groups have negligible share in the State apparatus, overall resources and the production as well", says the report.

Poverty in the country is widespread and is showing an upward trend as compared to the average 31 per cent in the recent past, the report adds.

Similarly, the paper also declares that the participation of Dalits, Janajatis and Madhesis are negligible in the Government bureaucracy.

The major objective of the interim plan is to scrutinize earlier plans and to develop strategies to rectify past errors by increasing participation of the marginalized groups in the county, the report concludes.

See nepal and see india! What is the difference you see!

Dr.Dipak Basu writes:
`Immediately after the revolution, Lenin proclaimed the affirmative action known as korenizatsiia to provide affirmative preferences for non-Russians backward ethnic groups and poorer Russians. To gain the support of the non-Russian, who were mainly illiterate except in Georgia and Armenia, for the new state, a Sovietization in three phases was developed. First the ‘blooming’ (rastsvet) of the different peoples through a determined promotion of their respective culture, their national conscience, and the creation of national elites which eventually would lead to the second phase which was ‘rapprochement’ (sblizhenie) and finally to the third phase of ‘merging’ (sliianie).n the sphere of social engineering the Soviet system had imposed the rule that sons and daughters of the educated professional people cannot go to the higher education directly, they need to work as ordinary workers in factories or farms for a few years first. The idea was to diminish the class-consciousness. East Germany even had prohibited the admission of the children of the educated professional class in the universities; they had to be workers for one generation and their children in turn would get priority in admission to the universities. However, admission to the elite universities and institutes were still based on merit, there was no compromise in that sphere.
Due to this social engineering, within two decades the Soviet Union had eradicated illiteracy and had the best educated population among all nations of the world. In 1917 Azerbaijan had a predominately Muslim population that was 98-percent illiterate. Its people suffered great poverty and hunger. Little developed industry existed outside the capital city of Baku. As a result of this deliberate affirmative action programs, in 1939, 97 percent of the population became literate. Women had been accorded full legal and civil rights. Literacy Rate in 1926 in Ukraine was 41.3, and in Russia 45.0, Kazakhs 7.1, and Kalmyks 10.9. Within a few years, by 1940, they were all educated.’

Tagore’s "Letters from Russia" generated considerable awareness and critical understanding within the Indian intelligentsia about the Soviet system. After a visit to Russia, wherein Tagore was greatly impressed by all he saw, Tagore had also written extensively on his visit in Visva-Bharati in 1930. This was later published as Letters from Russia.Tagore's aristocratic upbringing and his creed of individual freedom and choice notwithstanding, he was greatly struck by the Russian Revolution: "If I had not come to Russia, life's pilgrimage would have remained incomplete. Before judging the good and the bad of their activities here, the first thing that strikes me is: What incredible courage!" Having been a victim of tradition whose "innumerable doors are guarded by sentries whose number is legion", Tagore is awed by the Russians having "torn it up by its roots: there is no fear, no hesitation in their minds... " It would seem that the debate within the Communist party (CPI) on the issue of withdrawing support to the government over the nuclear issue is continuing, and is not a done deal. Initially, there were just plain suspicions that there would be tension between the West Bengal unit of the CPI and the central Politburo; there were unnamed sources in the West Bengal unit who claimed that the attitude of the central leadership was not comfortable to the West Bengal unit. They are in a state which needs to develop rapidly, it's people are looking for development and they have already faced a mini-revolt over the issue of earlier land acquisition for development, with Mamta Banerjee leading the protest.As the tension between the Left and the Congress escalated, and the Congress got support from its other allies, there must have been a lot of thinking going on in the West Bengal leadership about what this means for the state. For many of their measures, such as rural electrification, industrialization and SEZ's, they need to have a friendly Central Government. In a small indicator of what a uncooperative center can mean, the West Bengal Government faced problems regarding getting funds for rural electrification. Of course, a Congress aligning with Mamta Banerjee is the worst nightmare for the Left (and by Left, I primarily mean the CPI(M), since the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc don't seem to care all too much).

MYSORE: Eleven Dalits were injured when a mob of over 150 people from "upper caste" attacked a Dalit colony of Chikka Ankanahalli in Srirangapatna taluk of Mandya district on Friday night.

Three injured Dalits have been admitted to K.R. Hospital, Mysore. On learning about the incident, the police rushed to the village and resorted to lathicharge to control the situation.

When this did not have any effect, they lobbed teargas shells to quell the mob. The situation is now under control and adequate police force has been deployed in the village, according to Superintendent of Police Seemanth Kumar Singh.

Mr. Singh, who is camping in the village, told The Hindu that nine persons had been arrested in this connection and a search was on to arrest others involved in the attack.

In 1916, Tagore undertook a voyage through China and Japan to Amrica and suffered humiliation from the Japanese for his trenchant criticism of nationalistic chauvinism which was the cause of the first world war. He repeated the same warning to Japan through his letters to the Poet Noguchi (1938).

Kalidas Nag writes(Discovery of Asia, Calcutta : The Institute of Asian African Relations, 1957, pp. 9-13.):

In 1920, I had the privilege of travelling with him through France and other European countries. I saw how in his sixtieth year, Tagore plunged with the enthusiasm of a youth, into the planning of an Asian Research Institute at Santiniketan. He had already inspired Pandit Vidhusekhar Sastri to learn Tibetan with a view to restoring some of the forgotten Indian texts, luckily preserved in Tibetan translations. While in Paris, he came to learn from my venerable professor Sylvain Levi that a large number of valuable Indian scholars could be induced to learn Chinese. And although the financial resources of the Santiniketan School were very low in 1921, Rabindranath at once decided to invive Professor Sylvain Levi to inaugurate the department of the Sino-Indian studies at the cost of over ten thousand rupees. Thus Professor Levi spent some of the happiest months of his life in Santiniketan and the Visva-Bharati was founded in December, 1921, as the first institute of Asian Culture, developing under the joint collaboration of the scholars from the East and the West...

On my way back from China and Japan, I visited in 1924 our ancient culture colonies of Champa (Viet Nam) and Cambodia in Indo-China, as well as the islands of Java and Bali. In 1927 Tagore sailed for Indonesia leaders of Java and Bali; on his return journey he spent some time in Siam, Malaya and Burma as well. Some of the significant poems that he wrote in this period should now be translated from original Bengali into different Asian languages. The entire East Asia with its rich legacies of Sino-Japanese art (mainly inspired by Indian Buddhism), the art and culture of Indonesia, Siam, Burma, in fact, of the whole of South-East Asia, was made for the first time real to our consciousness by the exploratory zeal and the creative genius of Rabindranath.

In 1930-31 I had again the privilege of travelling with the Poet through Europe and America. We watched how the venerable Poet, almost in his seventieth year, was still dreaming of exploring fresh fields of cultural collaboration. Visiting Soviet Russia in 1930, Tagore was deeply moved to find how eager were the rural folks of Russia, specially of Soviet Asia, to come to the aid of our unfortunate exploited rural population. Tagore’s Letters from Russia written in Bengali (but not then permitted to be published in English), should now be published by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, pioneer of inter-Asian Relations, for the benefit of all those who cannot read them in the original, and specially for the numerous nations of Soviet Asia who sent such a large and brilliant delegation to the Asian Conference. When in 1931-32. I had the privilege of assembling and publishing The Golden Book of Tagore, messages flocked in from his admirers of Europe and America as well as from Soviet Russia, China, Japan, Indonesia, the Middle East and the Far East.

Dr Amartya sen writes:
Tagore would also oppose the cultural nationalism that has recently been gaining some ground in India, along with an exaggerated fear of the influence of the West. He was uncompromising in his belief that human beings could absorb quite different cultures in constructive ways:

Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin. I am proud of my humanity when I can acknowledge the poets and artists of other countries as my own. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine. Therefore it hurts me deeply when the cry of rejection rings loud against the West in my country with the clamour that Western education can only injure us.
In this context, it is important to emphasize that Rabindranath was not short of pride in India's own heritage, and often spoke about it. He lectured at Oxford, with evident satisfaction, on the importance of India's religious ideas—quoting both from ancient texts and from popular poetry (such as the verses of the sixteenth-century Muslim poet Kabir). In 1940, when he was given an honorary doctorate by Oxford University, in a ceremony arranged at his own educational establishment in Santiniketan ("In Gangem Defluit Isis," Oxford helpfully explained), to the predictable "volley of Latin" Tagore responded "by a volley of Sanskrit," as Marjorie Sykes, a Quaker friend of Rabindranath, reports. Her cheerful summary of the match, "India held its own," was not out of line with Tagore's pride in Indian culture. His welcoming attitude to Western civilization was reinforced by this confidence: he did not see India's culture as fragile and in need of "protection" from Western influence.

In India, he wrote, "circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world." There seems to me much force in Rabindranath's argument for clearly distinguishing between the injustice of a serious asymmetry of power (colonialism being a prime example of this) and the importance nevertheless of appraising Western culture in an open-minded way, in colonial and postcolonial territories, in order to see what uses could be made of it.

Rabindranath insisted on open debate on every issue, and distrusted conclusions based on a mechanical formula, no matter how attractive that formula might seem in isolation (such as "This was forced on us by our colonial masters - we must reject it," "This is our tradition—we must follow it," "We have promised to do this—we must fulfill that promise," and so on). The question he persistently asks is whether we have reason enough to want what is being proposed, taking everything into account. Important as history is, reasoning has to go beyond the past. It is in the sovereignty of reasoning—fearless reasoning in freedom—that we can find Rabindranath Tagore's lasting voice.

Sreeparna Chakrabarty in New Delhi reports for rediff.com:
Casting doubt over the guilt of 10 people lynched in Bihar for stealing, the National Commission for Denotified and Nomadic Tribes said the mob, which killed them, was not even aware of the theft.After an inquiry into the sequence of events leading up to the beating to death of the alleged thieves in Vaishali district, the commission, in a letter to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, said: 'They were not caught red-handed, in fact the scene of theft was nearly five kilometres away from the scene of mob violence.'

When the commission visited the house where the theft had allegedly taken place, the residents said that Rs 16,000 in cash, ornaments and clothes were stolen from there.

'But none of these were found on the youths beaten to death by the mob,' Chairperson Balkrishna Sidram Renke told PTI.

'Apart from this, the time difference between the theft and the violence shows that the mob indulging in the violence was not even aware of the theft,' Renke said.

In a savage retribution for frequent thefts in Dhelpurwa village, hundreds of people took the law into their own hands and mercilessly beat up 11 suspected thieves with sticks and iron rods, killing 10 of them on September 13. The critically injured person, Ranjit Kureri, is being treated at a hospital in New Delhi.

The alleged thieves belonged to the extremely backward nomadic tribe of Kureris, who are traditionally involved in bird catching and honey gathering.

Govt gives go ahead to first ever caste-based survey

Sumit Pande / CNN-IBN

New Delhi: After seeking permission from the Union Government, for the first time in 75 years, Commission for Economically Backward Classes has started conducting a caste survey.

"Centre has done nothing for the people of the upper caste especially those belonging to the economically backward classes," says Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati.

Taking a cue from the UP Chief Minister, the Congress at the Centre has woken up to stem another breach in its votebank.

So, a nearly defunct Commission for Economically Backward Classes under the Social Justice Ministry has initiated a flurry of activities in the last one month.

The Commission set up to suggest affirmative action for the castes not covered by the reservation policy has sent a questionnaire to all the states seeking caste-based data, information on social and economic conditions of the upper castes, including the landholdings.

Yes we have sought this data from the state and want them to furnish this by the end of this month," says Member Secretary of NCEBC, Mahendra Singh.

The last time such caste-based information was collected was in the 1931 census.

In independent India, successive government's have so far refrained from conducting such an exercise. So, the Commission did seek permission from the Union Government before proceeding on this caste data collection exercise.

This data may prove to be politically sensitive in the future and with the reservation debate on, politicians and bureaucrats will definitely fall back on it for policy-making.

Dr Amartya Sen writes:
An ambiguity about religious experience is central to many of Tagore's devotional poems, and makes them appeal to readers irrespective of their beliefs; but excessively detailed interpretation can ruinously strip away that ambiguity.10 This applies particularly to his many poems which combine images of human love and those of pious devotion. Tagore writes:

I have no sleep to-night. Ever and again I open my door and look out on the darkness, my friend!
I can see nothing before me. I wonder where lies thy path!
By what dim shore of the ink-black river, by what far edge of the frowning forest, through what mazy depth of gloom, art thou threading thy course to come to see me, my friend?
Sen writes:
Some of the ideas he tried to present were directly political, and they figure rather prominently in his letters and lectures. He had practical, plainly expressed views about nationalism, war and peace, cross-cultural education, freedom of the mind, the importance of rational criticism, the need for openness, and so on. His admirers in the West, however, were tuned to the more otherworldly themes which had been emphasized by his first Western patrons. People came to his public lectures in Europe and America, expecting ruminations on grand, transcendental themes; when they heard instead his views on the way public leaders should behave, there was some resentment, particularly (as E.P. Thompson reports) when he delivered political criticism "at $700 a scold."
Reasoning in Freedom
For Tagore it was of the highest importance that people be able to live, and reason, in freedom. His attitudes toward politics and culture, nationalism and internationalism, tradition and modernity, can all be seen in the light of this belief.11 Nothing, perhaps, expresses his values as clearly as a poem in Gitanjali:

Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls; ...
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit; ...
Into that heaven of freedom,
my Father, let my country awake.

Tribal students face discrimination in schools: NCERT

New Delhi: Often used as "servants" by their own teachers and criticised for the clothes they wear and the dialect they speak, the tribal students are a discriminated lot in schools, affecting their education, according to a report by the NCERT.

"Discrimination is a major root cause for social exclusion of SC/ST students. Tribal children are used as servants by high caste teachers," the report on 'Empowerment and Upliftment of ST girls through Action Research' said.

There is "institutionalised discrimination" against these children which alienates them from school and results in high level of child labour, the report prepared by NCERT's department of Women's Studies said.

Discrimination on the basis of caste, class, tribe and gender characterises social relations between school personnel, teachers and high caste children on one hand and SC/ST children on the other in schools and classrooms, it said.

The report gives examples of how the tribal students face discrimination in schools.

Teachers in Madhya Pradesh feel that teaching "Korku" children is equivalent of "teaching cows". Similarly in Bihar, teachers' belief about "Mushar" children is that they are not just interested in education and that they do not have any tension in life.

Such presumptions set effective limits in the teaching efforts of teachers, it said.

"Levels of prejudice, hostility and indifference to Dalit and tribal cultural traits and value system are high. Studies have shown that teachers perceive Dalit and Adivasi children in a negative light, seeing them as unclean, dishonest, lazy, ill-mannered etc," it said.

Amartya sen writes:

Nationalism and Colonialism
Tagore was predictably hostile to communal sectarianism (such as a Hindu orthodoxy that was antagonistic to Islamic, Christian, or Sikh perspectives). But even nationalism seemed to him to be suspect. Isaiah Berlin summarizes well Tagore's complex position on Indian nationalism:

Tagore stood fast on the narrow causeway, and did not betray his vision of the difficult truth. He condemned romantic overattachment to the past, what he called the tying of India to the past "like a sacrificial goat tethered to a post," and he accused men who displayed it - they seemed to him reactionary - of not knowing what true political freedom was, pointing out that it is from English thinkers and English books that the very notion of political liberty was derived. But against cosmopolitanism he maintained that the English stood on their own feet, and so must Indians. In 1917 he once more denounced the danger of ‘leaving everything to the unalterable will of the Master,' be he brahmin or Englishman.21
The duality Berlin points to is well reflected also in Tagore's attitude toward cultural diversity. He wanted Indians to learn what is going on elsewhere, how others lived, what they valued, and so on, while remaining interested and involved in their own culture and heritage. Indeed, in his educational writings the need for synthesis is strongly stressed. It can also be found in his advice to Indian students abroad. In 1907 he wrote to his son-in-law Nagendranath Gangulee, who had gone to America to study agriculture:

To get on familiar terms with the local people is a part of your education. To know only agriculture is not enough; you must know America too. Of course if, in the process of knowing America, one begins to lose one's identity and falls into the trap of becoming an Americanised person contemptuous of everything Indian, it is preferable to stay in a locked room.
Tagore was strongly involved in protest against the Raj on a number of occasions, most notably in the movement to resist the 1905 British proposal to split in two the province of Bengal, a plan that was eventually withdrawn following popular resistance. He was forthright in denouncing the brutality of British rule in India, never more so than after the Amritsar massacre of April 13, 1919, when 379 unarmed people at a peaceful meeting were gunned down by the army, and two thousand more were wounded. Between April 23 and 26, Rabindranath wrote five agitated letters to C.F. Andrews, who himself was extremely disturbed, especially after he was told by a British civil servant in India that thanks to this show of strength, the "moral prestige" of the Raj had "never been higher."

A month after the massacre, Tagore wrote to the Viceroy of India, asking to be relieved of the knighthood he had accepted four years earlier:

The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilized governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote. Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organisation for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification.... The universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers - possibly congratulating themselves for imparting what they imagine as salutary lessons…. I for my part want to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who for their so-called insignificance are liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings.
Both Gandhi and Nehru expressed their appreciation of the important part Tagore took in the national struggle. It is fitting that after independence, India chose a song of Tagore ("Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka," which can be roughly translated as "the leader of people's minds") as its national anthem. Since Bangladesh would later choose another song of Tagore ("Amar Sonar Bangla") as its national anthem, he may be the only one ever to have authored the national anthems of two different countries.

Tagore's criticism of the British administration of India was consistently strong and grew more intense over the years. This point is often missed, since he made a special effort to dissociate his criticism of the Raj from any denigration of British—or Western—people and culture. Mahatma Gandhi's well-known quip in reply to a question, asked in England, on what he thought of Western civilization ("It would be a good idea") could not have come from Tagore's lips. He would understand the provocations to which Gandhi was responding - involving cultural conceit as well as imperial tyranny. D.H. Lawrence supplied a fine example of the former: "I become more and more surprised to see how far higher, in reality, our European civilization stands than the East, Indian and Persian, ever dreamed of…. This fraud of looking up to them—this wretched worship-of-Tagore attitude is disgusting." But, unlike Gandhi, Tagore could not, even in jest, be dismissive of Western civilization.