At a literary meet in January 2019, two biographers of Mahatma Gandhi while discussing the relationship between Gandhi and Bengal made two very interesting, discerning and provocative comments. Historian Ramchandra Guha launched a conversation with the Mahatma’s grandson, former Governor and writer Gopal Krishna Gandhi with the words, ‘Gandhi gave Bengal sleepless nights and Bengal gave Gandhi sleepless nights’. To this Gandhi replied, ‘I think it is very good that they were together awake to fight the British and take the country forward into freedom’.1 It is this positive ‘wakefulness’ that is the basis of my chapter rather than the ‘who kept whom sleepless’ which has been the general underlying raison d’etre of any discussion on Gandhi and Bengali intellectuals. This atmosphere of discomfort and distrust in discussing Gandhi’s relationship with Bengalis has arisen out of a belief that there existed during the lifetime of the Mahatma an antagonism between two widely respected stalwarts of Bengal, namely, Rabindranath Tagore and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. It is believed in the case of Tagore that there were irreconcilable differences of philosophy between the forward-looking poet who believed in the importance of western sciences and did not like Gandhi’s boycott of schools as part of non-cooperation and the project of spinning for self-reliance, though the poet himself upheld scheme for rural welfare along with universal education at Santiniketan-Sriniketan. In the case of Subhas Chandra Bose, Gandhi was believed to have been less than fair in his lack of support for Bose’s re-election as Congress President in Tripuri (1939) followed by the latter’s complete ostracism in Indian politics till Bose finally proceeded with his alternative plan for India’s freedom. Notwithstanding these irrefutable facts all biographers of these men acknowledge their signal contribution to the growth of Indian nationalism and the great camaraderie, friendship and respect that they shared. After all the two beloved titles that Indians associate with Gandhi may be owed to these two so-called dissident admirers. It was Tagore who popularized the title of Mahatma for Gandhi who reciprocated by hailing the poet as Gurudev and it was Bose who referred to Gandhi as the Father of the Nation.
My research on contemporary writing in vernacular literary journals reveals a multi-linear approach to the Bengal-Mahatma relationship. There is appreciation of both the charisma of Gandhi and serious discussion of his socio-economic ideas. There is agreement with his ideas on non-violence, fight against untouchability or his commitment to include the masses in politics. It is only in the case of the khadi movement and the popularizing of spinning that we find vigorous debates emerging. This voluminous source has previously been ignored in most discussions of Gandhi in Bengal. Yet, the Bengali political/literary press which emerged from the early nineteenth century had by the second decade of the twentieth century become a formidable and critical opponent of colonial rule. Bengali literary journals were more analytical than the daily newspapers and help provide a more contemporary perspective than memoirs, autobiographies and biographies. In these journals, discussion of Gandhi’s personality, ideas and activities, whether in the form of essays or poems, were more responsive to immediate events or trends in ideas and less prone to retrospective revisionism. Much of the subsequent literature tends to be one-sided, either unqualified panegyrics or bitterly critical towards Gandhi.
There is another aspect of this vernacular periodical literature which I consider important. They stand out not only because they seem to have eluded the gaze of most scholars on Gandhi, but also because their anonymity and plurality of views provide a mosaic of thoughts both complimentary and critical of unarguably the most important man of the Indian independence struggle. In this chapter, I have used essays and poems published between 1922 and 1939 in the Bangabani , Bharati , Bharatvarsha, Bichitra , Narayan and Prabashi , as well as the newspaper Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) in tracing the Tagore-Gandhi relationship between 1922 and 1932.
In recent times some historians have revisited Gandhi-Bengal connection, particularly covering the pre-Partition days when Gandhi had long stays in this part of the country. Tapan Raychaudhuri in 1999 had been one of the first historians to analyse ‘where the twain met’ and what the areas of agreement between the two were in their attempt ‘to work out world -views and agenda in the context of their colonial experience’.2 Sugata Bose recently delivered two lectures in Kolkata and at Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat, where he spoke about Gandhi’s abiding relationship with Bengal during these years.3 Also in his definitive biography of Subhas Chandra Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, Bose examined the contentious relationship between Netaji and Gandhi and argued that despite ‘differences in perspective … commonalities in the anti-imperialist effort, and a sense of mutual respect and affection’, enabled them to work in accord for some time and later respect each other’s differences and express ‘genuine admiration’ for their respective commitment to divergent causes.4 Gopal Krishna Gandhi’s book, A Frank Friendship: Gandhi and Bengal, is a valuable source in this connection.5 Ramachandra Guha’s chapter on ‘Travelling with Tagore’ in his book Democrats and Dissenters is not only a brilliant study of Tagore’s inherent universalism, portrayed through his writings during his travels, but also contains a valuable discussion of the amity and discord between the poet and the Mahatma.6 No discussion on Rabindranath Tagore on any aspect is quite complete without the detailed sources provided by Prashanta Kumar Pal in his systematic and detailed biographical study of Tagore in 12 volumes where again the relationship between Gandhi and Tagore receives due attention.7
A complete history of the vernacular literary press in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal is difficult to find and though Brojendranath Banerjee, in his 1935 book Bengali Periodicals (in Bengali), provides lists of newspapers and literary periodicals (SamayikPatra/patrika) as well as their authorship, management and readership details, his study is only valid for a few decades (1818–1868).8 P.N. Bose and H.W.B. Moreno’s A Hundred years of the Bengali Press is an interesting read because of the anecdotes surrounding the publication of the Bengali periodicals but which ends in 1920 when my study begins.9 Margarita Barns’ The Indian Press: A History of the Growth of Public Opinion in India, written in 1940, deals mainly with the role of Indian newspapers in forming a public opinion against colonial rule10 and, like Banerjee, she stresses the importance of the different Press Acts in moulding the growth of the media in India. An extensive study of the history of the pan-India press from its inception to the 1950s has been made by Natarajan where the major vernacular newspapers in the Gandhian era do feature but not the literary monthly periodicals that I am discussing.11 A more helpful discussion on literary journals is to be found scattered in memoirs and autobiographies but for obvious reasons tracing them is a herculean task.
The literary journals that I have used for this chapter were household names and played an important role in moulding public opinion as evident from written testimonies of many leading personalities of the day. Rabindranath Tagore, in his memoirs Jibonsmriti, paid tribute to an earlier generation of periodicals like Bibidhartha Sangraha and Bangadarshan,12 while Haraprasad Sastri, the Sanskrit scholar and essayist, admired the success of Bangadarshan’s motto of ‘knowledge filtered down’.13Narayan , edited by Chittaranjan Das was, according to Sastri, popular even among those sections of Bengalis ‘who did not read Bengali, like barristers and the England returned, for its deep subject-matter expressed in simple language and because it broke through the barriers of conventions of literary style’.14 Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, linguist and educationist, recalled the debt that all students during his youth owed to the literary periodicals when he writes about Prabashi : ‘at the beginning of each month we would rush to the Calcutta University Institute library for the latest edition of the periodical Prabashi of Ramananda Chatterjee, which had become a national institution for expression of political, literary and cultural history in Bengali’15 just as Chatterjee’s The Modern Review was for the readers in English.16
The Impact of the Mahatma
Gandhi’s relationship with Bengal began much before he became the Mahatma, when ‘Indian Colonisation in South Africa’ appeared in Bharati in 1902.17 This was probably during his first visit to Santiniketan (Abode of Peace), and henceforth Gandhi was a frequent visitor during Tagore’s lifetime, and after his death helped to keep Visva-Bharati afloat. Bharati had been, under the able guidance of its Tagore family editors Dwijendranath, Swarnakumari Debi, Rabindranath and Sarala Debi, one of the most influential literary journals of Bengal from the 1870s, and Gandhi would have wanted to reach out to the educated Bengali bhadralok through it. It was in Bharati that writings on Gandhi first began appearing from 1922.
Poetry was an important means by which Gandhi’s image was built up in the Bengali psyche and not simply his ideas, the reasons for his appeal are also discussed in these panegyric-style poems referred often to as bandana. Satyendranath Dutta, a famous Bengali poet, nicknamed ChhanderJadukar, or Wizard of Rhymes, wrote a poem titled ‘Gandhiji’ in Bharati in 1921 where he calls upon the people of Bengal to stop their mundane tasks at home and join the crowds who have responded to Gandhi’s call of satyagraha. Besides his gift of Satyagraha to Indians, the poet points out that the ‘star’ Gandhi’s ‘greatest endeavour is ahimsa in this violence filled world and whose place is in the lap of the Buddha and beside Tolstoy … finding him in their midst the Hindus and Muslims forsake their kazia, perform self control and swaraj and preach universal love in the world’.18 Hemendralal Roy’s poem with the same name ‘Gandhiji’ came out in Bharatvarsha in 1925, a journal started in 1913, as competitor to the Tagore family-run Bharati . It had been inspired by Dwijendralal Roy a nationalist poet and dramatist, contemporary to Tagore but who died in 1913, before Gandhi arrived back to India. Over the years it was developed under Jaladhar Sen as a forum for experimental writing in literature and containing articles on politics, society and culture of India and the world. Hemendralal Roy, whose articles on different Asian countries in many journals make interesting reading, in the poem brings in the metaphor of the floods which bring suffering but also flush out the accumulated dirt of centuries. ‘Ignoring the loud noise of the violent warmongers, the mantra of the saint of ahimsa is crying out for people to follow a different path … his soft tones are audible above the loud cannons … this naked man from the east is here to flood your hearts with love’.19
These poems not only try to garner support for the leader in Bengal; there is an attempt to bring him in within the established pantheon of nationalist icons that had been established in Bengali literature from the Swadeshi period, so as to legitimize him in the eyes of the educated Bengalis who were in a dilemma following the critiquing of Gandhian ideas by their most loved living icon Rabindranath Tagore. In the wake of the Salt March to Dandi in 1930, Pyarimohan Sen Gupta, who was assistant editor of Prabashi and a lecturer in Bengali in Bangabasi College, writes a panegyric to the ‘saviour of Bharat’ in the periodical Bharatvarsha in 1931. Using familiar tropes of historical memory that created the nation in intellectual imagination, Sengupta brings forth names which through shared tradition create for the new leader an aura of nobility and background of established spiritual and physical sacrifice that are associated with these names in the minds of the people who are reading his poem. He asks, ‘Are you Pratap? Or King Puru? Are you Shivaji, the saviour of India? Are you the greatest warrior Krishna, the creator of the great Gita? Are you Buddha, Nanak or NemaiChaitanya? Or are you Mohammed of infinite valour? Are you Christ spreading powerful love in the world? You are the flowering of strength of Shivaji, carrier of the Buddha’s love, as you walk a slight figure, yet with proud assured steps vanquishing fear of death and followed by crores of men and women whose pain finds expression in your strong words and your dreams of independence’.20
What the poems were arguing on Gandhi’s behalf was put in prose by Ramananda Chatterjee in an editorial in Prabashi . Chatterjee had in two decades established himself as an influential editor addressing readers in both English (Modern Review) and Bengali (Prabashi , Pradip and Dasi). He started them while he was still residing at Allahabad and continued Prabashi after he moved to Calcutta in 1907 to circumvent the government restrictions imposed on publications during the Swadeshi movement against the British Act partitioning Bengal. Chattopadhyay’s biography by his daughter Shanta Nag claims that Modern Review and Prabashi contained more coverage of Gandhi’s activities, starting from four articles by K.M. Jhaveri on Gandhi in South Africa in 1909 to editorials by Chattopadhyay himself, than any other periodical in Bengal. In the 1920s Prabashi followed the Gandhian movements and Gandhi’s activities as well as offered analyses of the main principles that made Gandhi popular with the masses. Chatterjee in one of his editorials questions the allegations made in ‘some English owned, English language newspapers’ that Gandhi’s insistence on ‘non-violence in the Non Co-operation movement was a pose. But we have no doubt about his truthfulness or his simplicity. He desires Ahimsa from his heart’. He adds, ‘we tend to sit at home and blame either the government or Gandhi for all the ailments of the country … he writes, in Young India , that that cooperation will not win us Swaraj, so … through non-violent noncooperation we have to snatch Swaraj’.21 Chatterjee also argues that ‘it is undeniable that Gandhi only preaches what he practices himself and if following his ideals bring sorrow and distress, one can be sure that he himself will endure it first. That is his attraction and people realize that’, he says, in another editorial in 1922 titled ‘Reasons for Gandhi’s Impact’.22 It appears as if Chattopadhyay is garnering support for Gandhi in the face of criticism by his long-time associate and friend Tagore, whose changing opinions can be traced through the letters written by the poet to his friend C.F. Andrews.23 There is also evidence in these letters of Tagore’s disappointment at what he considered ‘betrayal’ by some of his close associates in Santiniketan, who had in expressing the ‘ugliest side of patriotism’ had dissociated themselves from the ‘higher ideal of humanity’. There is confirmation of this discord as well as misinterpretation of Gandhi’s ideology by many in another set of letters exchanged between Romain Rolland and Kalidas Nag, another close associate of Tagore.24 Similar essays analysing the reasons why Gandhian ideas were acceptable can also be seen in the novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s article in Narayan,25 edited by Chittaranjan Das, a devoted Gandhian during the Satyagraha and Non-cooperation movement but who moved away after Gandhi halted the movement abruptly due to the outbreak of violence in 1922.
Though there are some details of participants in the Non-cooperation movement in Bengal, there is hardly any in the journals. That is why Akshoy Kumar Roy’s article ‘Dandi’ is important and interesting. The writer, a school teacher in Bolpur, writes about following the footsteps of the ‘death-embracing soldier-volunteer’ (moronboronkarisvechhasainik). Overwhelmed at the opportunity to join the Mahatma on his Dandi March, Roy took leave from his school and left for Sabarmati from where he writes for the journal Bichitra , describing his stay at the volunteers’ camp, his meeting with people from various parts of the country and discussions on politics. Finally, he describes the large conference on the shore at Dandi where in his words ‘white lotuses bloomed on the beach with everyone wearing khaddar and dhoti, or saree and Gandhi caps’, he describes the boiling of salt, the food he ate, the different activities of the volunteers during the salt campaign, and ends with the powerful emotion that he felt on the beach on the last day when as he writes, ‘admiring the sunset I was overwhelmed at the presence of the Mahatma before me beckoning me to his prayer meeting’.26
Analysis of Enduring Values of Economic Reconstruction and Self-reliance
It is apparent from any preliminary analysis of the 30 odd articles that I have selected from these periodicals, that far more than direct praise for the Mahatma, it is his advocacy for eradicating economic problems of the poverty-stricken rural and urban poor that is appreciated. There is not the use of an overtly propagandist tone but an application of logic and economics is mixed with a nationalistic tone whereby an appeal is made to many of the educated and wealthy who have forgotten their past in their present ambition to ally with the alien rule for mere economic benefit. It is interesting that most Bengalis opened their minds to Gandhian ideas mainly in the non-cooperation era and its aftermath. Two main ideas that find resonance in these writings are Gandhian ideas of the value of the spinning wheel (charkha) symbolizing self-reliance but also its potential as the pivot of rural communities and the importance of khadi, or handloom cloth. It was also a favourite topic of debate because of the very fact that Rabindranath Tagore had set the ball rolling by critiquing the same. What is interesting is that most of the articles in the journals take a contrarian position to that of Tagore’s criticism and instead of directly arguing against the most famous Bengali by name they argue against the critique.
Writing for Bharatvarsha in 1921, poet, essayist and founder of two other Bengali periodicals Mahila and Dipali, Basanta Kumar Chattopadhyay writes in an essay titled ‘Charkha’ about the three main needs of a family—food, clothing and shelter—and points out that the evils of westernization have destroyed our traditional conceptions of farming and animal husbandry which would have solved the problems of food, clothing and shelter for majority of Indians. He reminds his readers that India is a hot country and wearing elaborate western-style clothing is not really suitable. Since the article is aimed at women readers he uses the example of a well-known social leader who had become an iconic figure of emancipation for Bengali ladies of the period, to make his point. ‘Look at Sarala Debi Chowdhurani, who despite coming from a well to do family and able to afford many fine garments, has turned to spinning the charka religiously every morning before she even drinks water. It is the command of Mahatma Gandhi that she follows … Before the British came to this country women in every home used to spin threads and in every courtyard there was a handloom which created cloth. Why can we not continue that?’27
The other important symbol of Gandhi’s economic constructive programme was the khadi or home-spun/home-woven cloth, which, unlike the spinning programme of charkha, was not merely a means of alleviation of rural poverty but could provide livelihood for farmers during the off-season as well as for the urban poor. Jogesh Chandra Roy in an essay ‘Charka and Khaddar’ in Prabashi , in 1922, as if in reply to an unspoken criticism, points out that not just spinning, if the farmer could cultivate the necessary raw cotton, it would supplement his household income. ‘The seeds will provide an opportunity for the oil-presser in the village and the women in the house could spin cotton threads even after their work in the fields and at home’.28 Roy accuses the Cottage Industry Association of Calcutta of gross negligence since it had ignored spinning as a profession. He says, ‘this industry is a necessary form of art by which every family in every village may be benefitted … spinning cotton will provide clothing at a much cheaper rate. And for the farmer who grows cotton, he will not even have to pay for his raw material’. Roy makes a final point that Gandhi’s intention of popularizing khadi was not simply economic but something more: ‘it was a patriotic duty, symbolizing improvement through self purification’.29 Hemendralal Roy in an article named the ‘Future of Charkha’, in Bharatvarsha, quoted Mahatma Gandhi as saying in a speech at Madras Corporation convention, that ‘if we are to remove the economic distress under which this land is labouring, we cannot do without the spinning wheel … I ask you to give it a place in your schools and your homes, no matter which community or political party you belong to’. Roy stresses that despite this appeal by the Mahatma, every Indian household still does not have a charkha. He points out that ‘to remove the economic distress even partially if not fully, then one has to use this inexpensive way (i.e. through the use of the spinning wheel) to become self sufficient in cloth manufacture’. Comparing import statistics in India and China given by western experts, Daniel Defoe and Dunston, Roy points out that ‘the huge drain of wealth that large imports of cloth entails for India leads to her impoverishment whereas China has been able to not only increase production but also ensure restrictions on foreign import of cloth.’30
A number of articles also appeared in the 1920s discussing the importance of institutionalising the process of khadi making and spinning as the only way to prevent its eclipse again. Sarala Debi Chowdhurani in 1926 pointed out that it was ‘admirable that here (in Bengal) Satish Chandra Dasgupta, a chemist and freedom fighter under the inspiration of his mentor scientist, educationist and philanthropist Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy, whose dedication to social service Gandhi admired very much, had developed an institution for propagation of khaddar’.31 ‘Kalashala’, established by Dasgupta, was inaugurated in 1927 by Mahatma Gandhi and Bharatvarsha treated its readers with a write-up by the editor Jaladhar Sen and many pictures of the different experiments including improvements of the spinning wheel, paper from bamboo pulp, oil pressing machine, twisted jute fibre and making palm jiggery.32
Poems and songs dedicated to Charkha and Khaddar also made an appearance. Basanta Kumar Chattopadhyay wrote the poems ‘CharkarGaan’ (Song of Charka), the rhythm reflecting the movement of the wheel in Prabashi (1921), and ‘Khaddar’ in Manashi O Marmabani in 1922. ‘Song of the Khaddar’ by Hemendra Kumar Roy complete with chorus and changing tune (surpherta) came out in Prabashi in 1922, and poet Sailendranath Roy’s poem which was a translation of 1806 Wordsworth poem, ‘Song of the Spinning Wheel’, was published in Prabashi in 1926. Singing these songs, specially Kazi Nazrul Islam’s ‘CharkharGaan’ (Song of the Spinning wheel), was routine in any nationalist public gathering. The vibrant and vociferous rebel poet of Bengal was an unlikely admirer of Gandhi, but in 1921, Nazrul roamed the streets of Comilla singing his PagolPothik (Mad Wayfarer) in his praise of Gandhi’s charisma and excitement at a united Non-cooperation movement throughout India. But disappointment at the sudden withdrawal of the movement by Gandhi in the wake of a sudden outbreak of violence in Chauri Chaura in 1922 left Islam and many Bengalis admirers disoriented and convinced that Tagore may have been right in his criticism of Gandhi’s movement where national self-discovery superseded universal brotherhood or that ‘political asceticism’ for students during non-cooperation would lead to ‘noneducation’.33
The Mahatma and Bengali Society
In recent discussion around gender issues, Gandhi has often been criticised as having allotted a limited role to women in his writing and speeches. It has also been argued that women crafted for themselves greater roles in the freedom movement at all levels than was envisaged by the leaders. Without getting into the polemics of these arguments, one can say that in Bengal at least from the Swadeshi/revolutionary movement period onwards, women’s participation in the national movement became acceptable and respectable and more so through the Gandhian movements. The most interesting woman in this context was Sarala Debi Chowdhurani, writer, editor, social worker and one of Bengal’s early feminists, who followed her own destiny by working away from home in a school in Mysore and then shifting base to Lahore when she married the freedom fighter Rambhuj Datta Chowdhury. She came close to Gandhi when he stayed in her home in Lahore after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and its aftermath. In 1924, Sarala Debi returned to Calcutta after her husband’s demise and resumed editorship of Bharati . But while one would expect vociferous support from Sarala for Gandhian ideas only one significant article emerges in 1924 in Bharati where she catches the bull by the horn so to speak: ‘I wear khadi and am an admirer of khaddar. I ask everyone to wear Khaddar because it is a symbol of India’s atma-shakti (self-reliance). The fire that is seething inside India will not be suppressed by any number of government laws and repression. It will not be cooled by any fine machine made cloth. It is only khaddar that will assuage the hunger for development, and soothe the wounded pride of the nation’.34 This and another article touching upon the Gandhi-Tagore controversy are the only two by the firebrand activist/editor. Sarala possibly wanted to retain the reputation of Bharati as a literary journal or she did not want to dilute her family loyalty since Rabindranath Tagore was quite open in his criticism of Gandhian ideas.
Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) highlighted the storm that broke out when Tagore received a gold medal from the hands of the Governor of Bengal on the very day Gandhi’s prison sentence was announced in 1922, followed by Tagore’s criticism of Gandhian ideals of Swaraj and khadi in 1923. ABP quoted Mohammadi, edited by Maulana Akram Khan that ‘it is tragic that the poet, who in Paris in 1920 had in an open letter criticised the British treatment of Indian soldiers and claimed never to have any “connection with this people altogether and do our duty to our country never asking for their aid”, was, on the very date that India’s JanaganamanaAdhinayak Gandhi was standing trial with only love for his countrymen in his heart, standing before Ronaldshay to receive an accolade which he had declared to be “haram”.35 It must, however, be pointed out in all fairness to Tagore, that the medal in question was given not by the British Governor but by the University of Calcutta during their Convocation. In June of the same year while travelling in the US, Tagore was asked to comment on a recent book of Gandhi’s speeches and essays, and Tagore was quoted by ABP saying that ‘The greatness of Mahatma’s character is undeniable. His life is the epitome of sacrifice’. When asked by the journalist why the poet who is world famous does not speak about the Mahatma to the world, the poet replied that the Mahatma’s greatness and superiority of soul did not need any endorsement by him: ‘a naturally great soul does not need to contrive greatness and the light of his greatness can never stay hidden’.36
Yet a year after this reverential tone of the poet, another controversy arose from a speech by Tagore against the just ended movement, in the Calcutta University Institute just days before the Mahatma’s arrival in Calcutta. Reporting on this Sri Krishnadas wrote that despite efforts of the common friend C.F. Andrews, the difference of opinion between the two could not be resolved at the meeting and this was reflected in a number of Bengali and English periodicals who gleefully stressed the ‘victory of the poet’.37 This conflict between the two greatest sons of India had been precipitated from 1920 when at a conference in Gujrat, Tagore had been slighted by some Congress workers and this incident was subsequently reported and discussed by both the aggrieved parties and their supporters in what was a veritable press war between Young India and Ananda Bazar Patrika . In 1926, Sarala Debi once again revisited the debate in an article called ‘The battle between the worker and the poet’ in Bharati in 1926, where she printed a translation of Gandhi’s rebuttal of allegations with regard to his discord with the bard in Young India . Thereafter in an analysis of Gandhi’s reply, Sarala concludes that both the protagonists blame their ‘friends’ for ‘overreacting’. Despite her deep respect for Gandhi, Sarala here lays the blame for the discord on Gandhi saying that it was his impetuous habit of allowing his judgement to be clouded by hearsay that was unbecoming of a national leader. She uses as illustration a recent lecture by Gandhi at Berhampore college where on the basis of an allegation of a ‘Hindu widow’ to save the daughters of Bengal from the ‘impure lust of college students’ he chastised the entire youth of Bengal. In the article Sarala claimed to have taken the Mahatma to task appealing in a letter that he refrain from making public statements based on unproven allegations.38
Yet Tagore and Gandhi tried time and again to work out their differences, setting aside public misgivings. A report in ABP in 1924 claimed that C.F. Andrews, who was in Poona to visit the Mahatma, had said that he had been sent there by the poet who had conveyed a message that ‘he (Rabindranath) was willing to serve in any way possible during the Mahatma’s illness’.39 In 1925, Mahatma was reported to have visited Bolpur and spent three hours with Rabindranath’s elder brother Dwijendranath as well as Rabindranath, ‘with whom the Mahatma claimed to have important matters to discuss’.40 The Mahatma also visited Sriniketan on this visit where he ‘expressed satisfaction’ with the work there.
While Mahatma remained determined to ‘understand’ Bengali sentiment, and he believed that the Bengali literature held a key to that, it was not reciprocated so simply by the educated bhadralok Bengalis but rather with individual subjectivity which meant that based on their following, Gandhi was alternatively adored or hated at every turn of event, which was faithfully reflected in the periodicals and newspapers. In a complete turnaround of the acrimony of the late 1920s, in 1931, ABP reported that Rabindranath Tagore joined other Bengali intellectuals like Bipin Chandra Pal and Subhas Chandra Bose in signing an appeal for celebration of Gandhi Jayanti in Calcutta and Santiniketan.41 Yet within eight years another controversy, this time with Subhas Bose within the Congress would surface to muddy the waters. The Bengali angst regarding Gandhi’s lack of support towards Bose at the Tripuri Congress (1939) was omnipresent in the Bengali psyche, but was not covered in these literary journals, even in the miscellany or political news columns, which was strange since the Tagore-Gandhi controversy was discussed.
The invisible yet durable bond of commitment to the nation, that Gandhi, Tagore and Subhas Chandra Bose shared, remained intact until their deaths. After Tagore’s death in 1941, the link that the Mahatma had maintained with the Tagore family and Santiniketan continued and in December 1945, the Mahatma addressed the students at Visva-Bharati saying that ‘Gurudev was like a great bird, wide and swift of wings, under which he gave protection to many … we all miss the warmth of his protecting wings … Santiniketan has been the abode of peace to me and since my family was given shelter on arrival from South Africa it is a pilgrimage to me and whenever I got the opportunity I came here to seek peace and tranquility’.42 His connect with Bengal, as Gandhi reputedly said, was unbreakable, not least because of his love for the Bengali language, which he practiced till the last day of his life, but because of the respect he had for the local culture. Unlike individual opinions expressed in biographies and memoirs, the writing in contemporary journals faithfully follows the undulating curve of affinities, as well as discord and disagreement over particular issues and ideas. Ultimately a consistent study of these diverse opinions and representations can help to fill in the various pieces that form the mosaic of history. Tagore’s respect for the man and his philosophy, despite all his disagreements, expressed in an address to a group of farmers of Sriniketan, and published in the periodical, remains as proof of this complicated relationship that Bengal had with the Mahatma. ‘The Mahatma is a great man, almost divine, a rare appearance in the world. I do not know if you have all met him … but everyone recognises him as a Mahatma … Let us embrace that great soul’.43