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The clash of Titans: Tagore v Gandhi

posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 08:19 PM

Author: Sanjay Kumar, Brighton

Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of the modern Indian republic, wrote in his prison journal on the death of Tagore in 1941: ‘It is not so much because of any single virtue but because of the tout ensemble that I felt that, among the world’s great men today, Gandhi and Tagore were supreme as human beings’. Beautiful flowering words from one of India’s most handsome exponent of the English language. The reality was that conflict between Tagore and Gandhi, two of the great titans of modern India, was inevitable. There was respect, even love, perhaps – but little understanding.

Tagore versus Gandhi was the cherisher of beauty versus the ascetic; the artist versus the utilitarian; the thinker versus the man of action; the individualist versus the politician; the elitist versus the populist; the widely read versus the narrowly read; the modernist versus the reactionary; the believer in science versus the anti-scientist; the synthesiser of the East and the West versus the Indian chauvinist; the internationalist versus the nationalist; the traveller versus the home boy; the Indian Bengali versus the Gujarati; the scholarly Brahmin versus the merchant Vaishya; and most importantly, the fine flowing robes of white and prophetic beard versus the coarse loincloth and bald head.

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