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Rabindranath was an exceptionally well travelled man for his time, even by European or American standards. Along with that, he carried an unquenchable thirst to learn about the nature, flora, fauna and the fabric of humanity wherever he went. Having an analytical mind and being acutely conscious of the plight of the impoverished masses in India, he could not help but wonder what were good about the lands he visited, that could be either emulated, or modified, to suit the needs of India.
Rabindranath had written that, early in his life, (1) when living in a houseboat tied to the banks of the Padma river in today’s Bangladesh, he had thought that his life’s pursuit was going to be primarily writing poems and songs and a lifelong engagement with literary creation. Nothing else.
But then, he could not but notice the plight of the poor peasants, many of them subjects of his own family estate. He could not help analyze the issue and come to the conclusion, rightly, that true progress for nation cannot come without starting at the root, which means, uplifting the masses from their sorry state. Rabindranath did mention that observation to a noted national Politician of the time in Pabna Conference. However, the politician disregarded that observation as he did not think much about the poor masses. Rabindranath concluded that, the politician possibly imported the notion of “nationhood” from foreign sources, and did not harbor any fellow feeling with the rural populace, restricting his world to the tiny slice of middle class city dwellers.
Anyhow, Rabindranath reminisces that while he did not consider himself qualified for any work other than literary, he changed his mind. When he could not convince anybody else at the time, that real work for independence starts with turning the villages of India into self sustainable healthy units, he decided to tuck his pen behind his ear, and engage himself to the task of toiling with the cultivators, the artisans and the stone cutters of the land, in an effort to find a path towards progress for the masses.
It came to him that the real ownership of and relationship with, agricultural land belonged to the poor cultivators, and not the land lord. He also wondered how samabaya samiti (collective cooperatives) could pool in resources in the villages and joining hands in cultivating larger plots of land collectively, rather than the small plots where each persons does what he can on his own slice. To this end, he found the experiments ongoing in Russia of great interest (1).
Rabindranath write that, in those days of early effort in his Zamindari estates in todays Bangladesh, his only real companion in this work was a teenage Kalimohan Ghosh. Feeble and sickly, Kalimohan often succumbed to fever twice a day. On top of that, his name was in the Police diaries, likely to be arrested some day for sedition, since he was involved with the Swadeshi, or freedom movement as a young boy (1).
Kalimohan genuinely believed in Rabindranath’s analysis of India’s weakness, where the social foundation was weak and rotting. Any work towards regeneration must first start with rebuilding a robust foundation, over which future generations can built monuments and building blocks for the nation.
Kalimohan was undernourished and overworked in hot and humid conditions day and night in the Muslim villages in and around the Tagore estates, often going without proper meal or sleep, and spending nights in sheds without proper beds, or protection from mosquito and bugs. He developed various skin, stomach and lung ailments along with malaria, and eventually a form of tuberculoses. That was when Tagore got worried that he the young dedicated social worker might not survive.
The fact that Rabindranath mentioned this repeatedly in his writings, remembering how lonely he was those days in his efforts to do something for the downtrodden villagers, where Kalimohan was the only true believer he had, goes to show the depth of Rabindranath’s feelings, not just for Kalimohan, but his convictions that any work towards progress for his moribund nation needed to include first and foremost improving the lot of its village dwellers and stopping them from exploitation.
Tagore’s serious effort to save him was the reason Kalimohan lived on for decades and had a children including my mother, and indeed, the reason I myself am here, writing this blog.
But rechecking Tagore’s own writings on it, and connecting it with what my grandmother used to say, how Kalimohan was enfeebled in his work in the villages of the Tagore estate and his passionate involvement with Rabindranath’s ideas of rural reconstruction work, and how, desperate to save his life, Tagore eventually had to call an English doctor - an unheard of thing for rural folks those days, and had to send him off to a dry land to recuperate, I gradually came to the conclusion that this was a rather close call for a young Kalimohan Ghosh. He almost died at the wheel. In a strange way, I felt I owed my very existence to Rabindranath’s serious effort to save Kalimohan. Rabindranath, himself only in his thirties at the time, who thought he wanted to do nothing more than write poems and songs, but ended up, lonely and misunderstood by his peers, trying his best with the limited resources at his disposal to search for and experiment with means to firm up and rebuild the rickety and crumbling social foundation of the nation of India.
And I, sitting in relative comfort in Canada, literally owned my life to him.
I think, if I had said this to my mother, Sujata Mitra, perhaps the biggest fan of Kalimohan among his children, she would have been pleased.
I hope you are listening from up there, ma.
Tonu
1: Russiar Chithi (Letters from Russia) #4
Rabindranath had written that, early in his life, (1) when living in a houseboat tied to the banks of the Padma river in today’s Bangladesh, he had thought that his life’s pursuit was going to be primarily writing poems and songs and a lifelong engagement with literary creation. Nothing else.
But then, he could not but notice the plight of the poor peasants, many of them subjects of his own family estate. He could not help analyze the issue and come to the conclusion, rightly, that true progress for nation cannot come without starting at the root, which means, uplifting the masses from their sorry state. Rabindranath did mention that observation to a noted national Politician of the time in Pabna Conference. However, the politician disregarded that observation as he did not think much about the poor masses. Rabindranath concluded that, the politician possibly imported the notion of “nationhood” from foreign sources, and did not harbor any fellow feeling with the rural populace, restricting his world to the tiny slice of middle class city dwellers.
Anyhow, Rabindranath reminisces that while he did not consider himself qualified for any work other than literary, he changed his mind. When he could not convince anybody else at the time, that real work for independence starts with turning the villages of India into self sustainable healthy units, he decided to tuck his pen behind his ear, and engage himself to the task of toiling with the cultivators, the artisans and the stone cutters of the land, in an effort to find a path towards progress for the masses.
It came to him that the real ownership of and relationship with, agricultural land belonged to the poor cultivators, and not the land lord. He also wondered how samabaya samiti (collective cooperatives) could pool in resources in the villages and joining hands in cultivating larger plots of land collectively, rather than the small plots where each persons does what he can on his own slice. To this end, he found the experiments ongoing in Russia of great interest (1).
Rabindranath write that, in those days of early effort in his Zamindari estates in todays Bangladesh, his only real companion in this work was a teenage Kalimohan Ghosh. Feeble and sickly, Kalimohan often succumbed to fever twice a day. On top of that, his name was in the Police diaries, likely to be arrested some day for sedition, since he was involved with the Swadeshi, or freedom movement as a young boy (1).
Kalimohan genuinely believed in Rabindranath’s analysis of India’s weakness, where the social foundation was weak and rotting. Any work towards regeneration must first start with rebuilding a robust foundation, over which future generations can built monuments and building blocks for the nation.
Kalimohan was undernourished and overworked in hot and humid conditions day and night in the Muslim villages in and around the Tagore estates, often going without proper meal or sleep, and spending nights in sheds without proper beds, or protection from mosquito and bugs. He developed various skin, stomach and lung ailments along with malaria, and eventually a form of tuberculoses. That was when Tagore got worried that he the young dedicated social worker might not survive.
The fact that Rabindranath mentioned this repeatedly in his writings, remembering how lonely he was those days in his efforts to do something for the downtrodden villagers, where Kalimohan was the only true believer he had, goes to show the depth of Rabindranath’s feelings, not just for Kalimohan, but his convictions that any work towards progress for his moribund nation needed to include first and foremost improving the lot of its village dwellers and stopping them from exploitation.
Tagore’s serious effort to save him was the reason Kalimohan lived on for decades and had a children including my mother, and indeed, the reason I myself am here, writing this blog.
But rechecking Tagore’s own writings on it, and connecting it with what my grandmother used to say, how Kalimohan was enfeebled in his work in the villages of the Tagore estate and his passionate involvement with Rabindranath’s ideas of rural reconstruction work, and how, desperate to save his life, Tagore eventually had to call an English doctor - an unheard of thing for rural folks those days, and had to send him off to a dry land to recuperate, I gradually came to the conclusion that this was a rather close call for a young Kalimohan Ghosh. He almost died at the wheel. In a strange way, I felt I owed my very existence to Rabindranath’s serious effort to save Kalimohan. Rabindranath, himself only in his thirties at the time, who thought he wanted to do nothing more than write poems and songs, but ended up, lonely and misunderstood by his peers, trying his best with the limited resources at his disposal to search for and experiment with means to firm up and rebuild the rickety and crumbling social foundation of the nation of India.
And I, sitting in relative comfort in Canada, literally owned my life to him.
I think, if I had said this to my mother, Sujata Mitra, perhaps the biggest fan of Kalimohan among his children, she would have been pleased.
I hope you are listening from up there, ma.
Tonu
1: Russiar Chithi (Letters from Russia) #4
