“One never has any inkling of when the time is ripe for colonial civilizations to answer for their transgressions. But can you not see that their political bags are bursting at the seams with lies and deceptions, treacheries and espionage, sacrificing truth and justice for the sake of maintaining their supremacy? This burden of their sins is not insignificant, debilitating as bloodsuckers these civilizations. Those who do not regard morality as more important than the country, they are, in my view, not truly concerned about their country.”
The relevance of Rabindranath Tagore’s words written decades ago, strikes as uncanny even today. Nobel laureate, novelist, academician, poet, painter and musician par excellence, Rabindranath Tagore has written a number of poems and novels. The above is from his Bengali novel ‘Ghare Bhaire’(1919) translated into the English novel ‘The Home and the World’ by his brother Surendranath Tagore,
Operating with multiplicity, ‘The Home and the World’ on the superficial level is the tale of Bimala, Nikhil and Sandip. Scratch the surface and you discover a searing treatise on the Swadeshi movement. Intervowen are varying ideologies of serving the motherland. Thrown in are dollops of women’s emancipation, and there exists a continuous commentary on life’s ideals.
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An Ideal Husband, A Nouveau Liberated Wife, A Charming Suitor
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Bimala has been brought up, drilled into her that she must serve her husband and knows nothing else besides it. However, her husband of nine years, Nikhil an affluent, educated zamindar thinks otherwise. He does not want her to be caught in household chores only, always catering to his wants and waiting on him like a hand maid. He wants her to see the real world outside the home and be her own person.
But what he hadn’t bargained for was that Bimala with her new found freedom would get swept away by the charms of Sandip, a charismatic revolutionary who enters for a temporary stay at Nikhil’s home. Even lesser had Nikhil thought that Bimala would be so influenced by Sandip’s glib tongue that she’d suddenly start finding faults in her husband’s looks and ideologies towards his home and his country.
Sandip, an opportunist, begins living off Nikhil’s resources, outrageously flirts with Bimala under the pretext of she being his muse, his inspiration for the Swadeshi movement, as the epitome of the erstwhile suffering now awakened Indian woman, a symbol of the country’s turmoil.
Relations between the couple are severely strained taking its toll on both with equal severity. Sandip instigates Bimala to commit treachery under the pretext of aiding the freedom movement, that is raging outside the home, in India the country.
Nikhil however awaits for time to tide by, remains non-confrontational, waiting for Bimala to see through Sandip’s viles and return to him in soul and spirit. And the story proceeds to its extremely appropriate climax.
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Rabindranath Tagore’s writings displays an extremely progressive outlook on the role of women in Indian society. His belief in their empowerment were clearly much ahead of his time. At the same time, he never misses an opportunity to scathingly attack feminine deceit cloaked under the veil of helplessness. This he blames on the centuries of repression they have faced.
The acid-tongued, yet lovable Bara Rani (Nikhil’s, widowed sister-in-law) is a character that signifies all that is undesirable in the mental make up of a woman. Bara Rani is a woman who as a result of living all her life in hide-bound, suffocating traditions has become wretchedly bitchy, taunting, and spiteful.
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Language is beautifully used in ‘The Home and the World’ leaving you wondering how it must have read in the original Bangla.
Rabindrath Tagore has a mocking, questioning, delightfully poetic style filled with never read before similes and sentence constructions.
The narrative is through the three main protagonists, through their eyes, their thoughts and feelings. The prose changes with mercurial fluidity as the narrative shifts between the three.
When it is Bimala’s narrative the prose meanders in confusion:
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“Nature has many anodynes in her pharmacy, which she secretly administers when vital relations are being insidiously severed, so that none may know of the operation, till at last one awakes to know what a great rent has been made. When the knife was busy with my life’s most intimate tie, my mind was so clouded with fumes of intoxicating gas that I was not in the least aware of what a cruel thing was happening.”
Sandip’s narrative makes it unbelievably pompous:
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“My theory of life makes me certain that the great is cruel. To be just is for ordinary men,- it is reserved for the great to be unjust. The surface of earth was even. The volcano butted it with its fiery horn and found its own eminence. Successful injustice and genuine cruelty have been the only forces by which individual or nation have become millionaire or monarch.”
and Nikhil’s turns it painstakingly righteous:
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“If my heart is breaking-let it break! That will not make the world bankrupt, - nor even me; for man is so much greater than the things he loses in life. The very ocean of tears has its other shore, else no one would have ever wept.”
Symbolism is aplenty in the novel. Bimala is like India, torn between two ideologies during its freedom movement. Sandip and Nikhil represent two radically different schools of thought to serve the motherland. And the turmoil within the walls of Nikhil’s home represents the tumultuous changes taking place in the country.
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While his most famous literary work is the collection of poetry, ‘Gitanjali’ he has also written novels like ‘Gora’ and ‘Chokher Bali’ besides this one. If you have the curiosity for Tagore’s prose ‘The Home and the World’ is a novel to begin with to pleasure your curiosity.
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