Making and Remaking
of the ‘West’: A Post-colonial understanding of Tagore's Letters from a Sojourner in Europe
Travel has always been a pivotal part in Tagore's life and
in a way has shaped his approaches regarding literature and culture. As a youth
he visited England and came into the ‘Contact Zone’ of the ‘West’ as he
witnessed western cultures in relation to the culture of his own. Tagore's
‘Letters From A Sojourner In Europe’, in this regards documents the responses
of a thinking coloniser as someone who had a preconceived notion about ‘West’,
prior to the journey, his progression upon having a firsthand experience of the
Western world and how it forces him to ratify and remake the concept of the
‘West’ counter-culturally. By doing so, in the one hand he ridicules the blind
imitation of western customs and dogmas by his fellow Indians as he mockingly
discovers a hybrid called ‘Ingo-bongos’, but on the other, he praises the sense
of liberty among British men and women which he finds lacking in his native
milieu. The nuanced comparison between the class system, household and culture
of Britain and Bengal by the youth traveller in lieu of soulful travelogues,
resonates a deep Post-colonial yearning, which rejects the finality of the
Western narratives and takes a counter-narrative approach to describe the
‘West’ from his own unique positionality.
Keywords: contact zone of cultures;
ratification and remaking of the ‘west’; cultural hybrids ‘Ingo-bongos’;
post-colonial yearning; counter-narrative approaches
If we take a nuanced look at our history, we could realise
that from the time immemorial human beings have an infatuation for the unknown
or the lesser known spaces, cultures, people and their ways of life. Travel, in
this respect, becomes the only medium to quench that thirst. Whenever there's
any travel, there are abundance of stories regarding it, from the factual,
formal, journalistic to fictitious, propaganda, informal, parody and other
umpteen number of expressions surrounding it and their multitudes of
interpretations, make travel narratives a dynamic and ever-growing field of
study. A travelogue is never a naive story simply about foreign geographies,
rather it takes different forms of covert politics, representational agendas
and unique tropes under its ambit, as there's always someone reflecting his/her
own version of story through the depiction of exotic spaces that often end up
affecting the outlook of the readers, so much so that travelogues become a
place of experimentation, involving an endless process of shaping and reshaping
the narrative umpteen number of times.
In the heyday of European
Imperialism, it became a norm to reshape the foreign lands with western
yardsticks, involving gross stereotyping and generalisation. Edward Said in his
groundbreaking publication 'Orientalism', shows how this western narrative of
Orientalism “....failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see
it as human experience.” (Said 3) and in a way created a literary cul-de-sac,
where there was only one brand of representation, by west for the colonies. But
in the beginning of the 19th century something interesting started to take
place, what Michael H. Fisher recognises as ‘Counterflows of Colonialism’ in
his publication of the same name, where he shows “... during mid nineteenth
century, many envoys arrived woefully unprepared for what they would encounter
in Britain.” (Fisher 246) and what followed thereafter in forms of racial
prejudice of accepting, rejecting and counter-culturally modifying the
perception of the West by the travellers of the colonies. In this respect, we
come across the letters of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), born out of his
very first visit to England at the young age of seventeen in 1878 when he
accompanied his brother Satyendranath, whose wife Jnanadanandini had already
set up a home in Brighton, England. Tagore's stay in England was a little more
than a year, living in different locations and having different experiences
which in the form of letters, he wrote back home and which were published
serially in the Bengali periodical magazine named “Bharati”. These letters were
collected under the name of “Yurop Probasir Patra” and later translated as
“Letters From a Sojourner in Europe”. These letters are unique in their own
rights as here the author not only accepts the falsity of his preconceived
notions of the West, but moves a step further by attempting to undo the
mistakes by pointing out the thorny details of the West, from the Native
sensibilities from the author's distinct positionality.
These letters are marked by the
coming of age element as a youth of an imperial colony, having a high respect
and an elevated perception of the West, finds himself “deeply disappointed” as
the England of his dream doesn't exist anywhere but in his perception. In the
second letter Tagore says, “I had hoped to find here, perhaps, the voice of
Tennyson….I would be able to hear the speeches of Gladstone, Max Muller
expounding on the Vedas….. I had thought that no matter where I went, I would
find men, women and children engrossed in the joys of intellect.” which is
definitely a result of the one way flow of colonial representation of itself,
in unrealistically pompous terms which in the words of Edward W. Said, “The
result is usually to polarize ... the Oriental becomes more Oriental, the
Westerner more Western” (Said 1). But at the same time, in Tagore we find an
attempt to thwart the colonial influence as he seeks to remake England in his
own understanding, generated based on empirical data in front of him. The young
author by not succumbing to the hegemonic Colonial framework of his time,
Tagore's attempt finds a meaning in the lines of Post-colonialism, as he notes
down with deep caution and sympathy, “The working class of this country
do not seem to have any humanity left in them - they seem to be placed only
above animals. When I see their faces…... I shudder at the sight….” By showing
this masked unspoken of the coloniser, Tagore unveils the mask of rational,
liberal and the much appreciated “Human face Divine” that often colonists try
to show themselves with and the animal like existence of the working class in
the heart of the industrial city pushes forward the mission of decoloniality,
which is achieved by the author as he sends these letters to his homeland and
makes his learned populace aware of the realities that imperial forces whitewash
under their coats of enlightenment.
To have a critical understanding of
the Post-colonial undertones in Tagore's letters, one can cite Mary Louise
Pratt’s study, as published under the title 'Imperial Eyes : Travel Writing and
Transculturation', where she brings the process of 'Transculturation' and
'contact Zone' in her quest to define the subliminal space born out of the
interaction between a coloniser and a colonised. Pratt sees 'Contact Zone' as,
“...social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often
in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism,
slavery, or their aftermaths…” and therefore the process of Transculturation
becomes a way for the marginal groups to “... select and invent from materials
transmitted to them by a dominant metropolitan culture.” (Pratt). Tagore's
letters in this way paves a way for his own opinions, with the limited opinions
he had in his hand readily available by the imperial propaganda machinery, but
he transcends this when he finds England pretty much a mixed place as he
claims, “I have never seen anywhere such a constant struggle for livelihood as
in this country.” In one of Tagore letters we find an incident of a working
class boy ripping apart a horse's tongue solely for the amusement and the
traveller's criticism of “such beastiality” is in fact a covert criticism of
British Imperialism that has done the same thing all over the world that the
working class boy had done to that horse. Tagore's letters in this way debunk
the humane face of the ‘West’ and by doing this, he renounces and remakes an
alternative version of the 'West', upon coming into the 'Contact Zone' of their
cultures. Countering the colonial narrative for Tagore becomes a way to subvert
the hegemonic power structure and by breaking the cultural cul-de-sac he not
only remakes the West for his own self, but tries to bring out the
socio-cultural realities of the colonisers before the hundreds and thousands of
the readers of his letters, at his home turf.
Tagore's critique in these letters
are never one sided, as he never overcompensates in his quest to revise the
errors planted by Colonial narratives. Tagore at once criticizes English
societies for class system and superficialities but adjacent to his criticism,
we also find him praising the sense of liberty and wisdom among certain classes
of the English societies. But the letters are as much about the Western
citizens as they are about his fellow countrymen, who had boarded the ship with
the young traveller. He calls them ‘Ingo-bongos’, the people who are natively
Indian, but as they see English people and their Cultures before them, they
aggressively try to imitate that blindly, without understanding the drawbacks
in this cultural mimicry. In the ship, Tagore finds them cornered by their
preconceived fears, as they live in an existence that's quite similar to the
definition of 'Double-consciousness' developed by the famous American theorist
W.E.B Du Bois, where one looks ‘....at one’s self through the eyes of others,
of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt
and pity.” (The Soul of Black Folks). These senses are amplified with their
constant inner fears that, “What if we committed a blunder? What if we were
scolded by the gora captain and the gora sailor? After all, we were in their
protection -- that they had allowed us darkies to purchase tickets was kindness
enough on their part!” which satirically Tagore speaks for the breed of
'Ingo-bongos'. The critique here is of the submissive nature of his fellow
countrymen, who in order to be Englishmen, sacrifices their identity, integrity
and even the humanity of their own selves, so much so that now they're neither
Bengali, not English, but a pale shadow of both, which shows that what colonial
hegemonic structure could do, if one doesn't counter it. The lack of
individuality can be seen in Tagore's comparison, where he says, “....they
(Ingo-bongos) are just like children. When they see a book with its cover
decorated with illustrations in gold, they stare at it in a gaping awe.” This superficiality and hypocrisy among the
natives regarding their cultural standpoint are pivotal part of colonial
project of deculturation, which is here countered by Tagore through his
Transculturation, with which he divides Englishmen and women as per their
classes to prove that good and bad are scattered among all cultures. Therefore,
the narrative is essentially a Post-colonial one, which celebrates and
critiques certain aspects of both the West & the East, for different
reasons, without conforming to any distinct politics.
As these letters show us, Tagore,
from his youth was an adamant supporter of women liberty and education and
although much of his romantic idealism regarding England and English culture
fell flat in the hands of reality, a handful kept inspiring the author during
his stay. Some of these experiences he writes back home, which includes praises
for the cleanliness among British people, the 'Spirit of Socializing' and the
openness among the genders. Tagore sees, balls and parties playing a great role
regarding the dissemination of knowledge among upper and middle class women,
they read novels without feeling the need to have a dictionary at their side,
they meet with men without any inherent shyness, which Tagore finds lacking in
his own culture, where the house of a ‘nautch-girl’ is frowned upon by the
society and a sense of ‘Reticence’ is prevalent among the genders. The author,
citing English society as an example measures his own society, which proves the
reformist bend of mind of the young traveller, who doesn't only work towards
deconstructing any one milieu, but compares and contrasts both, to have a
deeper understanding of the two, in pretty much the way which can be interpreted
as Post-colonial due to its defiance against any singular narrative, propagated
by Colonial narratives and philosophy.
The dynamism is a very prevalent
aspect of Tagore's literary, critical and political oeuvre, where he has
changed his outlook regarding certain aspects throughout his life. His “Letters
From a Sojourner in Europe” bears a testimony of this phenomenon, which
consists of the gradual changes of the young traveller from the Indian colony
as his expectations fall from romantic admiration to bitter criticism, but
subsequently he transforms into rational criticism and further cultural
reshaping. The West therefore becomes closer to the reality in the hands of
Tagore than the Imperial propagandists, who neither mentioned the plight of the
working class or the superficialities of their own homeland. In one hand,
Tagore's narrative mirrors the good and bad aspects of the coloniser, but it
doesn't write off the necessity to rectify the hegemonic strains of Colonialism
and that's why he critiques the degenerated hybrid of Ingo-bongo, whom he sees
like a disease spreading over the English colonies. Among the circumstances as
these, Tagore sees an urgent need of not only to make the West of his own
concepts upon getting depressed at the prosaic realities of the England, but to
remake it as a counter to the very imperialistic agenda that has turned people
into cultural aliens like 'Ingo-bongos'. Therefore, the Post-colonial urge in
Tagore's letters not simply rises from the critique or praise of the West, but
it finds its origin from the wrong depiction of the East and the West by the
imperial forces, who have dictated the terms for a long time and why it's as a
practice is highly unsustainable. This gives rise to more enmity, falsehood and
cultural stereotyping as both the parties get an unrealistic understanding of
each other, without acknowledging the human responses of each other. The
letters of Tagore thrive on this opportunity to remake the West, as a form of
resistance against the public perception and between this cultural turmoil
around representational politics, one can find a deeper understanding of
“Letters From a Sojourner in Europe” in the lines of the recent postcolonial
studies, which opens this nineteenth century letter collection to a plethora of
interpretations.
Works Cited
Tagore, Rabindranath, Letters
from a Sojourner in Europe, Visva-Bharati, Kolkata, 2008.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Fisher, Michael H. Counterflows
to Colonialism: Indian Travellers and Settlers in Britain 1600-1857. New
Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial
Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge,
1992.
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1868-1963, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago, A. G.
McClurg, 1903.