Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan 15

Musings on the Life & Times of Chinnaswamy Subramania Bharathi
Narasimhan Vijayaraghavan
15

Let me refrain from imposing my absent scholarship, merely because it happens to be my musings. It makes robust common sense and a strategic move to yield to the better informed and qualified. What ‘they’ muse is appropriated as mine. How better can it get? All it requires is acknowledgment or attribution. So simple. Then the absent scholarship in these musings, is borrowed from where it is . In line with inevitable and humble acceptance of lack of scholarship, these musings continue with A R Venkatachalapathy’s on the Tagore-Bharathi poetic vision.

At this time, Bharati wrote an innovative column called ‘Tharasu’ (The Balance) in Swadesamitran, the leading Tamil nationalist daily. The column is structured as a conversation between various visitors who congregate regularly and talk of contemporary issues with the balance holding centrestage. One day a local poet arrives and declares that he has made a prose translation of a poem from Gitanjali. No marks for guessing: the chosen poem is of course ‘Where the head is held high…’ On hearing the translation, which is reproduced in full in his column, Tharasu comments: ‘There’s no flaw in the translation. But it could have been in a simpler style.’Following this, a few months later, Bharati himself translated extracts from The Crescent Moon – ‘The Beginning’ and ‘Playthings’ – and made references to ‘The Champak Flower’ and ‘Hero’. Bharati’s joy in translating from The Crescent Moon is apparent.While these translations are in prose, a year later, he translated a Tagore poem on the glory of national education in four stanzas.It is clear, despite whatever smattering of Bengali he may have possessed, that Bharati’s translations were from English.
Bharati commented at length on Tagore’s talk at the Imperial University of Tokyo in June 1916 and provided in translation extensive passages from this.He saw Tagore’s message as the awakening of a sleeping Asia by Japan. He also saw Tagore as continuing Vivekananda’s task. ‘Vivekananda only revealed the exercise of the spirit. Tagore has now been sent by Mother India to show to the world that worldly life, true poetry and spiritual knowledge are rooted in the same dharma.’ Assessing Tagore’s credentials for this task, Bharati continued: ‘Gitanjali and other books that he has translated and published in English are small. Not extended epics. Not big plays. He revealed only a few lyrics. But the world was amazed. Will not lakhs of rupees be collected if only a dozen or so brilliant diamonds are sold! If ten pages of divine poetry are shown will not the world’s poets be enthralled!’ In commenting on Tagore’s global reception and his message Bharati always returned to the literary genius of Tagore.

In thus writing extensively on Tagore, Bharati also expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Indian journals had covered his Japanese visit. Writing in Annie Besant’s New India, he asked: ‘The Indian press does not appear to be doing full justice to the activities of Rabindranath Tagore in Japan. Does it happen every day that an Indian goes to Japan and there receives the highest honour from all classes of people, from Prime Minister Okuma as well as from the simple monk of the Buddhist shrine?’

In 1918 Bharati was rather active in relation to translating Tagore. Apart from the poem referred to earlier, he published two books of Tagore translations. In August 1918, he published, through the book publishing division of Swadesamitran, a translation of five essays, all from The Modern Review (MR). Titled Pancha Vyasangal (Five Essays), the book included ‘The Small and the Great’ (MR, December 1917), ‘Thou Shalt Obey’ (MR, September 1917), ‘The Nation’ (n.d.,13 from Creative Unity), ‘The Spirit of Japan’ (MR, June 1917), and ‘The Medium of Education’ (MR, October 1917). Of these, the translation of ‘The Nation’ had been first published in the Swadesamitran daily on 1 February 1918. Probably the other essays too had been published in the daily before being put together as a book.

Shortly afterwards, again in 1918, Bharati’s translations of eight stories from Tagore were published in a two volume edition by Swadesamitran: ‘False Hope’, ‘The Lost Jewels’, ‘Giribala’, ‘In the Middle of the Night’, ‘The Editor’, ‘Subha’, ‘The Homecoming’, and ‘The Conclusion’.

Considering that Bharati did not often translate any writer, the fact that he translated so much from Tagore in itself can be seen as a worthy tribute paid by him to Tagore. While it is possible that the initiative to publish Tagore’s stories and essays in Tamil could well have come from Swadesamitran, there is little doubt Bharati put his heart and soul into this task. Though normally faithful in retaining the titles of the stories, he took some liberties in two cases, translating ‘Giribala’ as ‘Maanabangam’ (‘humiliation’) and ‘Homecoming’ as ‘Rajaakaalam’ (‘holidays’). In the narrative, Bharati glosses and adds substantive footnotes in many places.
The first kind of embellishments Bharati adds in his translations is parenthetical glosses. In the first line of ‘False Hope’ he parenthetically describes Darjeeling as being located in the Himalayas; ‘Company Bahadur’ is clarified as being ‘the East India Company’. As the name of the character Subhashini (‘Subha’) has a bearing on the story, he glosses it (‘the one who utters sweets words) on first occurrence.

Occasionally Bharati uses substantive footnotes to clarify cultural matters. In the translation of ‘Homecoming’, there is a reference to the Puja holidays. Bharati clarifies as follows: ‘In Bengal Devi puja is observed from the beginning of Navaratri to the amavasya after Deepavali. This is a long period of holidays for them. The Tamil month of aippasi is analogous to the Bengali karthigai. Hence, in this story, the various festivals that occur in the Tamil country in the aippasi month are said to occur in karthigai.’
Similarly, at the end of ‘Giribala’ when ‘after the wedding ceremony she came out dressed in her red bridal robe and took her veil off’, Bharati explained the veil in a footnote: ‘In North India, more especially in Bengal, most women of the upper castes observe gosha like our Mohammedan ladies. Even at the wedding, rituals are conducted while the bride is in gosha. Only after the wedding ceremony is over does even the groom get to see his bride. This is called darshana.’

While, in translating Tagore’s stories, Bharati remained content with explaining cultural nuances and specifics, in translating the essays he occasionally took issue with Tagore.
In ‘Thou Shalt Obey’ Tagore makes references to the Brahmin oppression of Shudras:
I know that we are open to the rude retort that British principles do not take into account the likes of us. Just as the Brahmin of old had decreed in his day that the highest knowledge and the larger life were not for the Sudra.* But the Brahmin had taken the precaution to consolidate his position. Of those whom he sought to cripple externally he also cripples the mind.* The roots of knowledge having been cut off from the Sudra all chance of his blossoming out into independent action withered away.*

To the translation of this passage Bharati appended three footnotes, for the lines marked with an asterisk, under the rubric ‘mozhipeyarthavarudaiya aakshepam’ (‘the translator’s objection’) – surely an extraordinary intervention in the general climate of the day. ‘Brahmins did not impose such an injunction. It appears that Rabindranath has repeated, in the flow of his thought, the words of the unlettered who know not Satyakama’s story from the Upanishads, Dharmavyata’s story from the puranas, and the fact that though many of the Nayanmars and Alwars are shudras, Brahmins worship them in temples as liberated souls.’ And again ‘There is no historical evidence for these words.’ And finally, ‘This is only a fable.’

Similarly, when translating ‘The Nation’, Bharati translates ‘people’ as ‘janam’, and ‘nations’ as ‘jati’, and glosses in a long footnote: ‘In this essay, the author classifies human society into “janam” and “jati”. The natural category that emerges from land and language he calls “janam”. Examples: the Aryans; the Negroes. The category that emerges from political differences he designates as “jati”. Examples: the Russian nation; the German nation; the Japanese nation. Readers should keep this specific definition in mind when reading this essay.’
Overall, however, Bharati’s characteristic fluid style is not seen in his translations of Tagore. An attempt to be faithful to the structure of the original English from which he translates is quite apparent.

Some time after April 1919, Bharati wrote a celebrated poem, ‘Bharata Mata Navaratna Mala’, which is essentially a panegyric to Gandhi. Here he makes reference to ‘Hark unto Ravindranath, world-renowned composer of songs, the Kavindranath, who said, “The first among the men of this world, the embodiment of Dharma, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi”.’ This is but a poetic translation of Tagore calling Gandhi ‘a great leader of men [who] have stood among us to proclaim your faith in the ideal which you know to be that of India.’

It is evident that Bharati keenly followed both Tagore’s writings and activities. He commented on the staging of Tagore’s King of the Dark Chamber at Frankfurt in November 1920.16 He invoked Tagore’s name whenever he discussed the rise of the East, the resurgence of India, and national education. And he always referred to him respectfully as ‘Ravindrar’.

It is therefore a fitting poetic coincidence that Bharati’s last published piece was on Tagore’s successful European tour of 1921, and appropriately titled ‘Sri Ravindra Digvijayam’.This essay, written barely three weeks prior to his premature death in September 1921, opens with a quote from an old Tamil poem about how kings are feted only in their realm while the learned are celebrated wherever they venture. Even though Bharati makes reference to the need for the confluence between East and West and the mutual lessons to be learnt, the burden of the essay is how Tagore was received in Europe – in Germany, in Austria, and in France.
If one attains fame it should be like that of Mahaan Ravindrar. Is it only in Bengal? It is just in India? Is it in Asia alone? His fame has spread across this earth from Germany, to Austria, to France. This despite the fact that his songs are available only in Bengali. What the world has seen are only translations. And yet this fame!

However, in Bharati’s view, the praise heaped on Tagore did not belong to him alone. It went to the lotus feet of Mother India. ‘Can the fame that is accumulated for one’s own sake be called fame? Fame is that which comes from gathering glory for an entire nation. Ravindrar has established to the world that India is the loka guru. May the flowers at his feet be praised!’

More fulsome and unconditional praise is yet to be heaped on one poet by another. Thus, for Bharati, Tagore’s greatest achievement was fame, especially a fame that redounded to a fallen nation. A fame that he never experienced in his own lifetime. And would not know that he would gain posthumously.
Ironically, on his 1919 visit when Bharati narrowly missed meeting him, Tagore, replying to a civic address given to him in Madurai, had said that ‘to honour a poet was a waste of time and energy, and good material for poetry best thrived under silent neglect. …poets should be left alone to do their own work in their seclusion and obscurity which were the best places for them. Poets should not be spoiled with too much adulation…’!

One more allusion to Bharathi-Tagore connect or absence of it, before we get back to the eternally patient and ever waiting Chellammal, Bharathi’s wife, typical of the wives of that age.

(Author is practising advocate in the Madras High Court)