To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging of the Semitic races (Jews)…. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here … a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.
— MS Golwalkar, RSS Supremo from 1940 to 1973, ‘We or Our Nationhood Defined,’ 1939
No, I am not a Hindu…. Please give me the mantra of that God who is the God of Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Brahmo… who is the God of Bharat, and not only of the Hindu.
— Gora’s last declaration in Rabindranath’s epic bearing the same title, 1909
JOSEPH Goebbels, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler did not utter the name of Goethe even once. Their omniscient Fuehrer Adolf Hitler also observed a total silence. They could not eulogise because Goethe even in his youth had traversed beyond the limited terrain of German culture and penetrated deep into the European creativity of other languages, both classical and contemporary — Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian and English. Thereafter, he concentrated on Chinese literature, which was followed by his fascination for our classics like Shakuntala, Gita Govinda and Meghduta. Finally, the most consummate creative genius of the occident found his blessed refuge in the sublime poet of the orient, Hafiz, whom he regarded as his guru. Those millions stained by Islamophobia in the west and the north, now, should read his epic west-easterly Divan inspired by Hafiz to realise the Himalayan folly of their intense animosity.
How could, possibly, Goebbels idolise Goethe who debunked in every breath the national-racist doctrine of the Aryan fascists? He was a universal humanist par excellence. Nor could they denigrate or demolish him because he remained a towering Olympian like Dante, Shakespeare and Tolstoy far above their poisonous touch. They even had to gulp his ominous prophecy, so unerring. Perceiving the nascent rise of Prussian nationalism during the Napoleonic war, Goethe warned, ‘I have nothing to do with this upsurge. In the coming years this could turn into something awful and terrible’ (Conversation with John Peter Eckermann).
Goebbels and his henchmen did burn with impunity the unforgettable dramas of Gottfried Lessing, whose supreme tolerance reached the very apex in his play Nathan the Wise; they burnt the lyrics of the most eloquent European Romantic poet Heinrich Heine. Goebbels even toyed with the criminal desire to change the father of Jessica. How could this immaculate maiden be the daughter of that perfidious Jew, Shylock, he wondered? Hitler was incensed with Goethe’s invaluable comrade, Friedrich Schiller, who had the temerity to write the magisterial play Wilhelm Tell which celebrated the revolt of the persecuted serfs against their Swiss feudal despot. But all of them fell silent, strategic in nature, if not reverential, when they approached Goethe.
But the Sanghis in India have not learnt from their distant Aryan cousins. Unlike the Nazis who exulted in burning books, they are desperate to appropriate and disfigure everyone and everything — Varahamihir and Aryabhatta, Kalidas and Sudraka, Rabindranath and Nazrul. Particularly Rabindranath because, after all, he is the gurudev who was the first Asian poet to win the Nobel prize. And that is why, when Narendra Modi stressed that the ‘soul of Vande Mataram’ was severed by erasing its stanzas, he deliberately forgot to mention that the surgical operation was carried out to honour the advice of none else but Rabindranath who had explained to Nehru and Netaji that parts of this hymn could injure the faith and feeling of those who would not bow to Mother Goddess because they had rejected idolatry. In his letter written to Buddhadev Bose in 1937, he emphasised this aspect without ambiguity, ‘India’s national song should be such that it could be sung not by Hindus only but by Muslims, Christians and even Brahmos.’ Burying Rabindranath’s logic and contribution conveniently and singling out his bête noire Nehru as the villain of the piece, the prime minister claimed that this severance [‘sowed the seeds for the division of the country, which was ultimately split into two in 1947.’
No statement could be more ahistorical and unhistorical in the same breath. The first seeds, indeed, had been sowed by the crafty British historian James Mill in 1817, who in his The History of British India insisted that the history of the country was the history of two nations in constant conflict, Hindu and Muslim. Loyalist Veer Savarkar confirmed this thesis in 1922 in his explosive monograph Hindutva, who is Hindu by claiming that only Hindus, that is, neither Muslims nor Christians, belonged to the Punyabhumi (holy land) or Pitribhumi (fatherland), which is Bharat. Others, like Muslims and Christians, were plain aliens, they constituted another separate block. Savarkar’s confirmation was given a vengeful, vicious twist by the RSS supremo Guru Golwalkar, who in his blistering We or Our Nationhood Defined (1939) proclaimed that the Other, or primarily the Muslim, had to accept a servile existence without any right and privilege if he at all wanted to languish in Hindustan. He would survive only ‘at the mercy’ of the Hindus, he prescribed.
At this specific point, Golwalkar, hailed as the very fountain of wisdom by the Saffronites, proposed that the Hindus should learn from the Germans how they should deal with their minority, how to resolve for once and for all the racial curse. No, neither Jinnah in 1940 at the Lahore conference, nor the Congress that supposedly suppressed the stanzas of Vande Mataram in 1937 had sowed the seeds for the division of India. It was done much before and later turned sacrosanct by the prime minister’s own demigods. He was simply off the mark in the wildest manner. Indeed, two years before the Lahore conference, Savarkar had declared in his presidential address to the Hindu Mahasabha Conference held in Nagpur, ‘Yes, we Hindus are a nation by ourselves… we Hindus will be a nation and, therefore, we are a nation.’ Hence, the chronology of vivisection is as clear as the noonday sun.
Golwalkar recommended the prescription of imitating the Nazis but left Rabindranath untouched. His followers, however, persisted with their untutored messing. For example, pointed enquires were made by no less a person than LK Advani who tried to find out if the national anthem Jana Gana Mana was written by Rabindranath in 1911 to honour George V, who was presumably hailed as Bharat Bhagyavidhata, when he had visited India in that year. The design behind was crisp and clear. Sangh Parivar was looking for a flagrant excuse to discard Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem and situate Vande Mataram in its place, whose author Bankimchandra they found much more congenial in ideological terms.
Suspicious Advani was, however, blissfully ignorant of Rabindranath’s letter which he had written to Pulinbehari Sen in the very same year, where he had underlined in a highly aggrieved tone, ‘I hailed the victory of that Charioteer of the Indian people who through ages has led and guided us. This glorious Charioteer has nothing to do with any Royal Highness. How could one think that I would stoop so low.’
Sadhvi Ritambhara, the firebrand ‘Durga’ of the Parivar, was not as discreet as Advani. Obviously, she had nothing to do even remotely with Rabindranath, and after the demolition of Babri Majid she disseminated a sacrilegious cassette where she lambasted Jana Gana Mana. She labelled as ‘gaddars/traitors’ those who had selected this song as the national anthem. According to her vitriolic opinion, this song was selected to appease Muslims and please pseudo-secularists. And, why was Bankimchandra’s ‘Vande Mataram’ rejected as the national anthem? Precisely because Nehru and his ilk wanted to eliminate the element of Hindutva expressed in this song. A vituperation of this kind prompts one to seek refuge in TS Eliot’s famous admonition, ‘After such knowledge, what forgiveness?’ (Gerontion)
Angels fear to tread where… the Sangh, however, the Sadhvi notwithstanding, has continued to eulogise Rabindranath by addressing him gurudev. I shall not request them to read his Sesh Lekha, his play Bisarjan and his scintillating sociopolitical text Kalantar. These, perhaps, lie beyond the realm of their deformed epistemic worldview. I will merely request them to read the last three pages of that monumental epic Gora which runs to more than 400 pages. Bishnu Dey, one of our most illustrious poets, lauded it as the most glorious novel in the Bangla literature. Just read what he wrote in the salvationary conclusion and then follow Goebbels, who did not pronounce ‘Goethe,’ by not uttering the word gurudev yet again.
The impervious chief minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has already shown the way, partially though, by damning one of his resplendent songs (Amar Sonar Bangla). The residual can be done by recalling his resolution quoted in the epigraph to this text.
Let him rest in peace, like Goethe whose Faust he cherished reading in the German original though he found the diction a trifle difficult at times. The chasm, in fact, is far too wide, yawning and unbridgeable between Golwalkar and gurudev, no matter how many million times the Hindutvavadis call him gurudev.
Subhoranjan Dasgupta, based in Kolkata, is a former professor of human sciences. He has written several books in English and Bangla. The first English appreciation of Akhtaruzzaman Elias titled Elegy and Dream was written by him and published by University Press Limited, Dhaka, 2018.
