Abstract
At a time when the relations between India and China are full of tensions and disputes, Tagore and China speaks of the ancient ties between the two countries and resonates with sentiments of Hindi-Chini bhai bhai. Rabindranath Tagore had immense love and admiration for China. He not only admired Chinese culture and civilization but also had deep sympathy for the people of China. He wrote an essay in Bengali, Chine Maraner Bybasay, as early as 1881, attacking the opium trade which had been forced on China. In 1938, he wrote to his Japanese friend, Yone Noguchi, the poet, that he was moved by ‘sorrow and shame’, and that he suffered intensely ‘because the reports of Chinese suffering batter against my heart’, p. 5. Tagore was the first thinker of modern India to be invited by the Chinese intelligentsia. He went to China in 1924 and was most enthusiastic in promoting friendship and understanding between the two countries. Professor Amartya Sen in his Introduction raises some doubts about the success of this trip. He says that the visit generated considerable disapproval and reproach, one result of which was that Tagore’s lectures in China were never published in Chinese. This, says Professor Sen, was probably because of the timing of the visit. After the brutality and destruction during the First World War, Rabindranath was critical of Western civilization and felt that Eastern thought had something to offer to the West. On the other hand, after the May 4th Movement in 1919, China was looking forward to the future and Tagore was perceived by young radicals as a traditionalist glorifying the past. In India, however, Tagore was not seen as a traditionalist and his ideas on science and modernization were contrasted with those of Gandhi. Tagore continued to admire China despite this problematic visit.
The contributors to this volume, who write of the China visit, differ from Professor Sen and describe it as a great success. Professor Wei Liming, Head of the Department of Afro Asian Languages of Peking University, gives an overview of the 1924 visit and discusses its significance in great detail. He contends that Tagore’s visit ‘was a great event in the annals of modern Chinese culture and those of Sino-Indian relations. It made a big impact on cultural development, especially on the new literature’, p. 14. Amitabha Bhattacharya’s essay ‘In Search of a Forgotten Dialogue: Chinese and India Artists since 1924’ emphasizes the significance of the ‘grand visit’ that led to contact between artists of the two countries.
Visvabharati University and the Cheena Bhavan that Tagore established there played a pioneering role in developing Chinese studies in India. Uma Das Gupta gives a scholarly account of the birth and growth of Cheena Bhavan from 1921 to 1937, which began with Tan Yun-Shan’s arrival in Shantiniketan in 1928 and the inauguration of Cheena Bhavan in 1934. In his impassioned Inaugural Address, the Poet said how it would reopen the channels of communication between two ancient civilizations which had been blocked. He spoke of ‘the beautiful spirit of the Chinese culture that has made the people love material things without the strain of greed…They have instinctively grasped the secret of the rhythm of things…This is a great gift, for God alone knows this secret’, p. 62. Swapan Mazumdar gives a comprehensive survey of Tagore’s thought on China. One gets the impression that Gurudev, like Nehru, had a somewhat romantic notion of Sino-Indian ties and of an Asian civilization ‘which had the strength of truth that sustained it through antiquity and lent it its eternity’. Mazumdar argues that the criticism of Tagore during his China visit came from the ‘West-enamoured younger generation of China led by Communists’ p. 81—a view not shared by Professor Sen.
Part IV of the book deals with Tagore and two of his Chinese friends. Professor Tan Chung writes of ‘Rubidadda and Susima’ (Xu Zhima), Tagore’s host, guide and interpreter during his 1924 visit to China. There was, he says a telepathy between the two. Relations between Tagore and Xu Zhima were not of a long duration but were deeply intellectual, spiritual and emotional in nature. Tan Chung also deals with the opposition to Tagore’s visit and sees it as one between ‘Leftists and Eastern Culturalists’, between traditionalists and modernizers, but says that the opposition should not be exaggerated. Little academic attention, according to him, has been paid to Tagore’s China visit which was one of the ‘most important, most splendid, most fruitful and most powerful events in his life’. The visit, ‘the greatest event in the annals of Sino-Indian intercourse’ has been given insufficient recognition among Chinese and Indian intellectuals p. 192.
Huay I-Shu‘s article is on the friendship between Tagore and Tan Yun Shan which he describes as a ‘golden bridge between China and India’ p. 139. Tan Yun Shan came to India in 1928, though he had met Tagore a year earlier in Singapore. He started Cheena Bhavan in Santiniketan, fell deeply in love with India and was devoted to Rabindranath. He saw Buddhism as the primary link between India and China and his life was a fusion of India and China.
The next two essays are on Tagore, China and Asia. Amiya Dev writes of Tagore’s meeting with Tenshin Okakura of the Japan Art Institute who believed in Asian unity. After Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905, Tagore wrote a Japanese style poem that said that if India had given Japan dhyana, she might now learn karma from her. Tan Chung writes of Tagore’s ‘magical power’ which lay in his notion of the ‘universal human spirit’ and how he demolished national boundaries. Tagore felt that both the Indian and Chinese civilizations reflected a ‘universal human spirit’. He wanted Indians, Chinese and Japanese not to look always to the West but to delve into Eastern wisdom. He felt strongly about Asia, Asian unity, Asian values and had an empathy for the East.
The section on Tagore and Chinese Literature has an essay on Bing Xin, a Chinese poet who greatly admired Tagore. Tan Chung believes that Tagore fell in love with classical Chinese poetry and though he could not read it in the original, he read English translations. He sees the influence of poetry of the Tang and Song dynasties on Tagore’s poems. Amiya Dev disputes this and argues that familiarity does not prove influence. He holds that while Tagore appreciated Chinese poetry, he was not influenced by it.
This volume based on a seminar organized by Peking University to celebrate 150 years of the Poet’s birth, reveals Tagore’s deep love and attraction for China, its culture and civilization and the interest and respect that Chinese academics and scholars still have in Tagore. According to Professor Tan Chung, Tagore never thought of any national boundaries between India and China. How one wishes this was true today!