The 20th Century produced great thinkers in India who earned to foster not only independence and sovereignty over European rule and hegemony, but also a way of life mired in eastern thought and philosophy. Prominent among these were Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi.
Criticism of the West on the worship of Science and Materialism: A Historical perspective.
Born in 1861, in an influential Bengali family, Rabindranath Tagore was part of the Indian intelligencia exposed to Western thought and ideals. Over time, he became a strong critic of India’s Anglicisation which was most evident in the Bengal of the times. He held that the European model of ‘nationhood’ was not suited for Asia. In his speeches in the US in the 1920’s, he mentioned that the nation-state “is a machinery of commerce and politics that turns out neatly compressed bales of humanity.”He looked towards a futuristic India in which the ideals of humanity would surpass that of the nation-state.
Tagore’s travels in the Bengali countryside would heavily influence his worldview: of the moral superiority of the pre-industrial culture over the modern technological cum industrial world. After receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, Tagore became an international celebrity and a spokesman not only for India, but the entire East. He was received by President Herbert Hoover when he visited the US in 1930, and the New York Times extensively covered the poet including his interviews. He did not shy away from expressing his views to his Western hosts that their cult of money and power on which the pillars of modern western civilization were built was inherently destructive; that it should be tempered by spirituality much abundant in the Eastern way of life.
Over time, Tagore would temper his views. At a dinner party in New York attended by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau and Sinclair Lewis, he admitted that: “the age belongs to the West and humanity must be grateful to you for your science.” But he went on to add: “you have exploited those who are helpless and humiliated those who are unfortunate with this gift.”
While readily acknowledging the many benefits of Westernisation such as civil liberties, and the rule of law among others, Gandhi, like Tagore, claimed that the Industrial Revolution had made economic prosperity the central goal of state politics by turning human labour as the very source of capital, corporate profits, and ultimate power. This transformation crowned machine over man, and such ideals as ethics, conscience, and religion were relegated to afterthoughts. He saw nationalism radiating from the center replace one set of rulers with another set of rulers. Gandhi, like Tagore believed that India’s future lay in the villages, and both rejected violence and nationalism─the latter reflected in a bureaucratic, institutionalised militarised state.
What have we learned from these philosophical and political deliberations?
The ideas of Tagore and Gandhi ─ both of whom recoiled from seeing India as a ‘nation-state,’ i.e. a bureaucratic, institutionalised, militarised state ─ would not come to pass.
The last elections saw an overwhelming parliamentary victory for Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ushering in a sense of euphoria in the country. The great majority of the Indian electorate wholeheartedly embraced Modi’s Capitalistic Materialism. Undoubtedly, India badly needed a change in Governance, but the expectations of a radical change were perhaps too ambitious. Whether Modi’s economic policies of privatisation and capitalistic materialism will benefit the Indian masses was doubtful to begin with.
Recent policies and trends in India, have been far from reassuring. These include not necessarily in the order of importance: 1: The emergence of a militarized Hindu-India under Modi’s leadership that goes against the vision of the founding fathers of India. This has provoked violence against religious minorities. 2) The recent de-monetization policy mostly hurt the poor and middle classes and resulted in job losses. The Reserve Bank of India revealed that nearly all of the demonetized currency had returned to the system, thus defeating the objective of the policy. 3) India’s environment ministry under the Modi government called for a nationwide ban on the sale and purchase of cattle from animal markets for slaughter, which elicited fresh controversy around the “beef ban” in India. What is worrisome is the impact on the social and religious equilibrium of India’s diverse and complex society. Right-wing Hindu cow protection squads have beaten and killed cow traders and those suspected of eating beef. Fortunately, India’s Supreme Court suspended the ban, and the Modi government has decided to revisit the controversial restrictions now being seen as a major blow to dairy farming, leather production and beef export. 4) There has been a substantial increase in the military budget, and India now ranks among the top countries importing arms ahead of Saudi Arabia contrary to the ideals of Gandhi and Tagore. Whether these priorities will ultimately uplift India only time will tell.
(Anthony Gomes, MD, FACC, FAHA is a Professor of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York.)
