Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan 14

Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi

Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan

14

Just read what some one wrote, I know not who- Tagore is proud to have written the national anthems of two countries, India and Bangladesh, and to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. If anyone asks what could be wrong with the people of many states of India calling Tagore a national poet with so many qualifications, my answer is, ‘It is not a crime for them to call him that, it is a crime not to call Bhartiyar that way’.

That crime is not only the fault of the people of other states, we Tamils have a share in it. The fact that today’s Tamils are incapable of even realizing that crime is a felony in all crimes !.
During the time when Tagore was known as Kaviyarasar, Bharathi had the idea that ‘he deserves that title’. Bharathiyar, who made himself the poet of Tamil Nadu, will show this by saying what he did.

When the Nobel Prize was announced for Tagore, Bharathiar, who knew Tagore, said, “If Tagore and I convene a meeting at the Tamukkam ground in Madurai and talk, whoever gets the most applause will be awarded the Nobel Prize.” Behind this challenge, Bharti’s depression over Tagore getting something he did not deserve, deserves it. But it is doubtful whether Tagore, who lived in his contemporaries, would have known such a Bharatiyar!. Even today, in many parts of India, people do not know who Bhartiyar is. Let us first learn about Bhartiyar to tell others. Who is Bharati? Who is Tagore? Who among these is suitable for the title of National Poet?

Bharatiyar was born into an average Brahmin family in Ettayapuram. He lost his father at a young age and grew up in poverty. He spent his youth learning with a thirst for education. When education was at hand, he did not use his intellectual development to add wealth, but to social development and change. Through his writings, Bharathiar overcame the great stagnation that the Tamil language had seen in the previous 800 years (before Bharathi, Vallalar was the only person involved in such endeavors!). Bharatiyar lived on this soil for a very short time. During his lifetime, Bhartiyar did not receive even a share of the recognition he deserved.

Tagore’s life is fundamentally the opposite of Bharati in many respects. Born 21 years before Bhartiyar’s birth, Tagore is the owner of longevity and died 20 years after Bhartiyar’s death. He was born into a wealthy Bengali family that owned several villages. Tagore’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore, fought hand in hand with Rajaram Mohan Roy to legislate the ban on Sati. Tagore’s father Devendranath Tagore was self-taught. Called ‘Maharishi’ by the Bengalis. Tagore learned the Vedas and the Upanishads from his father. Tagore was reluctant to go to school and the teachers were brought to his house and taught him lessons.
Thus these two poets emerged from different slices of society. We need to evaluate them based not only on their efforts but also on their thoughts.

Bharathi wrote that his Bharat Mata was a ‘thirty crore being ‘. The population of India at that time was 30 crores. So he saw the faces of all the people as the face of the nation. Except wherever there is a need to say something about the nation,
‘Thirty crore mouths ring’
‘Thirty crore people association’
‘Thirty crores will live – in the fall

Bhartiyar expresses the sense of unity of India that 30 crore people must be seen and behave as one . This shows that he deserves to be called a national poet.

On the other hand, Rabindranath Tagore describes his independent mother as “having 10 crore hands”. If you look at the 10 crore hands, the total population of Bengal, which was divided into two by the British at that time, is 5 crore. So Tagore is referring to a united Bengal with 10 crore hands. This shows that he was not a ‘national poet’ , but a Bengali poet.

This write-up is found in the web portal of the Tamil news channel Puthiya Thalaimurai. It is tough to associate oneself with the feelings and sentiments expressed in if and it is not a serious ‘analysis’ and surely not scholarly anyway.It appears to be an emotional outpouring. Possibly echoing the feelings of several others too. But it is not reflective of overwhelming opinion on the ground. It would be risky to rely on such views to conclude our musing. It would be unfair and unjust to both the icons. Neither or both of them would have frowned on such a construct. They were of that genre.

We are Musing on Bharathi. Not engaged in any dissertation to pronounce. So, that too belongs. It makes ‘interesting’ reading. Did Bharathi utter what he is said to have said on Tagore’s Nobel? That write up is not an isolated one. If one surfs the World Wide Web, one reads/hears it repeated by many. Was it true? Was it not true? Or just an apocryphal tale to sizzle and entertain? But Bharathi being Bharathi, a proud son and gifted poet, always seeking Parasakthi’s benediction, was he beyond saying it? May be, may be not. Leave it to better souls as real historians and academicians to dig and deep dive than skim the surface as these Musings, to tell us the real.

Surely, that was no erudite response to a scholarly Ashokamitran. That came from this man. A R Venkatachalapathy ( ARV) is an Indian historian, author and translator who writes and publishes in Tamil and English. Currently he is a professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). He is noted for collecting and publishing the works of Tamil writer Pudumailothan. He is a scholar on all things Bharathi and wrote the popular work “Who Owns that Song? The Battle for Subramania Bharati’s Copyright”.

ARV responded with gusto to Ashokamitran- Asokamitran , in an otherwise unexceptionable article wrote that ‘There was a spell of artistic rivalry between Tagore and … Subramania Bharati’; he goes further and speculates on why this may have been so: ‘Bharati may have felt that circumstances conspired to restrict his luminosity to his own region.’ Ashokamitran is here repeating an old story; and like most old stories, this has little basis in fact. Smallness is not what one associates with Bharati. On the contrary, we can piece together a narrative that testifies to Bharati’s unqualified admiration for Tagore.
Bharati’s first reference to Tagore comes a few years after the latter was awarded the Nobel Prize. Writing to The Hindu (July 11, 1914), from his exile in Pondicherry, in response to F.T. Brooke’s criticism of nationalists accepting Annie Besant’s interventions in politics, Bharati wrote that this was fine so long as she did not expect to become a leader of Indians in anything. ‘Intellectually and morally we have men in our land and women, too, who cannot in the nature of things be dominated by her personality.’ And what was the evidence on which Bharati made this statement? ‘We produce men like Tagore and Bose nowadays.’

A correspondent of The Hindu who met Bharati in Pondicherry, two years later, ‘remember[ed] nothing out of all his tirade, except his classification of Tilak as the first Indian statesman of the ages, of Prof. J.C. Bose as the first scientist, and Rabindranath Tagore as the first Indian poet.’

Bharati’s first extended reference to Tagore comes in November 1915. Narrating the now-familiar tale of ancient glory and medieval decline, he observed, ‘We now see the signs of resurgence in everything. The Indian nation has been born anew. The whole world now acknowledges that Ravindranath is one of the mahakavis of our times.’ The global acknowledgement of Tagore is a recurrent theme of Bharati’s comments on Tagore.

In January 1917, Bharati translated extracts from Tagore’s The Crescent Moon — ‘The Beginning’ and ‘Playthings’ — and made references to ‘The Champak Flower’ and ‘Hero’. Bharati’s joy in translating The Crescent Moon is apparent. While these translations are in prose, a year later (April 1918), he translated in four stanzas, a Tagore poem on the glory of national education.

Further Bharati commented at length on Tagore’s talk at the Imperial University of Tokyo in June 1916 and quoted extensively from this. He saw Tagore’s message as the awakening of a sleeping Asia by Japan, and added: ‘Vivekananda only revealed the exercise of the spirit. Tagore has now been sent by Mother India to show to the world that worldly life, true poetry and spiritual knowledge are rooted in the same dharma.’ Assessing Tagore’s credentials for this task, Bharati continued: ‘Gitanjali and other books that he has translated and published in English are small. Not extended epics. Not big plays. He revealed only a few lyrics. But the world was amazed. Will not lakhs of rupees be collected if only a dozen are so brilliant diamonds are sold! If ten pages of divine poetry are shown will not the world’s poets be enthralled!’ In commenting on Tagore’s global reception Bharati always returned to the literary genius of Tagore.

Bharati expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Indian journals had covered Tagore’s Japanese visit. Writing in New India, he asked: ‘The Indian press does not appear to be doing full justice… to the activities of Tagore in Japan. Does it happen every day that an Indian goes to Japan and there receives the highest honour from all classes of people, from Prime Minister Okuma as well as from the simple monk of the Buddhist shrine?’

Bharati produced two books of Tagore translations. In August 1918 he published Pancha Vyasangal, a translation of five essays drawn from The Modern Review: ‘The Small and the Great’, ‘Thou Shalt Obey’, ‘The Nation’, ‘The Spirit of Japan’, and ‘The Medium of Education’. Shortly afterwards, Bharati’s translations of Tagore’s stories were published: ‘False Hope’, ‘The Lost Jewels’, ‘Giribala’, ‘In the Middle of the Night’, ‘The Editor’, ‘Subha’, ‘The Homecoming’, and ‘The Conclusion’.
Considering that Bharati rarely did translate any writer, the fact that he translated so much of Tagore in itself is a worthy tribute. There is little doubt that Bharati put heart and soul into this task. In many places Bharati glosses and adds substantive footnotes.

Sometime after April 1919, Bharati wrote a celebrated poem, ‘Bharata Mata Navaratna Mala’ — essentially a panegyric to Gandhi. Here he makes reference to ‘Hark unto Ravindranath, world-renowned composer of songs, the Kavindranath, who said, “The first among the men of this world, the embodiment of Dharma, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi”’. This is but a poetic translation of Tagore calling Gandhi ‘a great leader of men [who] have stood among us to proclaim your faith in the ideal which you know to be that of India.’
Bharati keenly followed both Tagore’s writings and activities. He commented on the staging of Tagore’s King of the Dark Chamber at Frankfurt in November 1920.

In a fitting poetic coincidence, Bharati’s last published piece was on Tagore’s European tour of 1921. Appropriately titled ‘Sri Ravindra Digvijayam’, this essay was written barely three weeks prior to his premature death in September 1921. The burden of the essay is how Tagore was received in Europe — in Germany, in Austria, and in France.
More fulsome and unconditional praise is yet to be heaped on one poet by another. For Bharati, Tagore’s greatest achievement was fame, especially a fame that redounded to a fallen nation. A fame that he never experienced in his own lifetime. A fame he would not know would be his posthumously.

ARV was not finished yet. He had more.

( Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)