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CHAPTER - I

INTRODUCTION

Literature is a process of transmitting knowledge and also entertains people through

all means. They play a wide range of roles socially, psychologically, spiritually and also

politically. It is considered as any collection of work that is written, especially as an art form

in prose fiction, poetry and drama. Literature represents the culture, tradition and language of

the people.

It is a term used to describe the written or sometimes spoken material. Literature is a

method of recording and preserving information. Literature can also include works in various

non-fiction genres such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters and the essay. Within its broad

definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other printed information on a

particular subject.

Etymologically, the term is derived from Latin literatura/litteratura “learning, a

writing, grammar,” originally “writing formed with letters,” from litera/littera “letter”. Inspite

of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. “Literature: writings having

excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest”.

“The body of written works produced in a particular language, country or age”.

Definitions of literature have varied over time. In western Europe, prior to the 18 th

century, literature denoted all books and writing literature can be seen as returning to older,

more inclusive notions, so that cultural studies for instance; include, in addition to canonical

works, popular and minority genres. A value judgement definition of literature considers it as

consisting solely of high-quality writing that forms part of the belles, letters tradition.
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The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and

prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence

of their execution. Literature maybe classified according to a variety of systems, including

language national origin, historical period, genre and subject matters. Definitions of the word

literature tend to be circular.

The 19th century critic, Walter Pater referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic

literature” as a “transcript”, not of more fact, but of fact infinitely varied forms”. But such

definitions assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed, its central

meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera, “a letter of the alphabet”,

literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it is the body of

writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing. The

art of literature is solely because of the craft of writing.

As an art, literature elevates and transforms experience beyond “more” pleasure.

Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of both criticizing and affirming

cultural values. It is a form of human expression. These writings are primarily informative –

technical, scholarly and journalistic. Certain forms of writing, however are universally

regarded as belonging to literature as an art.

In this way, literature is more than just a historical or cultural artifact; it can serve as

an introduction to a new world of experience. The readers may interpret and debate the

author’s message by examining the words he or she chooses in a given novel or work or

observing which character or voice serves as the connection to the reader. Literary fiction

involves getting into the minds of the characters and experiencing their relationships with

others. The protagonist typically comes to a realization or changes in some way during the

course of a literary novel. As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being
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composed within and sustained by an oral tradition; hence it constitutes the earliest example

of literature.

Indian Writing in English consists of the works written by the writers in India who

writes in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the

numerous languages of India. This kind of Indian literature initiated with the works of Henry

Louis Vivian Derozio and Michael Madhusudhan Dutt followed by Rabindranath Tagore and

Sri Aurobindo. There were many Indian writers who contributed to the growth and fame of

Indian English fiction such as R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao. Indian English

Literature surrounds a variety of themes and ideologies, from the late eighteenth century to

the present day.

The first book written by an Indian in English was “The Travels of Dean Mahomet”, a

travel narrative by ‘Sake Dean Mahomed’, which was published in England in 1794. Bankim

Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote “Rajmohan’s Wife” and published it in 1864 which is the first

Indian novel written in English. The non-fictional body of prose-works, consists of letter,

diaries, political manifesto, articles, speeches, philosophical works, etc...

Rabindranath Tagore who worked as a writer, poet, playwright, composer, painter,

philosopher and social reformer wrote in Bengali language and also in English language. He

was responsible for all the translations of his own work into English. He was the first non-

European to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. “His sobriquets: Gurudev, Kobiguru,

Biswakobi”

Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World), Gitanjali (Song Offerings), and Gora (Fair-

Faced) are known as his best works. Children, housing colonies, underground stations derive

their names from either his person or his works, as told by P.K. Datta. Tagore had stunning
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range of personalities combined in himself like being a landlord, pedagogue, statesperson,

lover and rural activist.

He had become an icon in his lifetime, especially after the award of the Nobel Prize in

1913. “Einstein called him a ‘seer’, and Gandhi, ‘The Great Sentinel’. He was also one of the

famous idols in Europe. His most controversial moment perhaps was his questioning of the

swadeshi movement, which was the first popular anti-colonial movement in India that took

place in Bengal, from 1905 to 1908.

Rabindranath Tagore began as a Hindu nationalist. It was with his mindset that he

threw himself unreservedly into the swadeshi movement that sought to abrogate the partition

of Bengal by Lord Curzon’s administration in 1905. “Rabindranath Tagore said in a famous

declaration, ‘cannot enter till he finds a flaw’”. The World War led Rabindranath Tagore to a

more passionate analysis. In lectures given in Japan and America in 1916, Rabindranath

Tagore argued that war and nationalism were twins. He suggested that nationalism sprang

from the greed and competition that defined the industrial culture of the West.

Rabindranath’s opposition to war and nationalism made him unpopular globally. In

Japan the response to his lectures was lukewarm; in Seattle he had to cut short his trip in 1916

after the American press launched a great attack on his lectures. In Bengal he was criticised

by Chittaranjan Das and Bepin Chandra Pal. However, much to the surprise of many of his

critics who had tried to dismiss the power of his arguments by accusing him of collaboration,

Rabindranath soon returned to a sustained criticism of British authority from 1917.

He made his trips to his estates in Selaidaha and Patisar in East Bengal when he was

writing Ghare Baire. These trips brought back to him the dire condition of the peasantry, the

reality of poverty and the need for intervention, concerns which he had first developed when

he had begun visiting his estates in the nineteenth century.

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He wrote to C.F. Andrews that, “It was a great event of my life when I first dwelt among my

own people here, for thus I came into contact with reality of life”.

There are clear traces of the nineteenth century in Tagore’s “The Home and the

World”, translated work of “Ghare-Baire”. Its multi-confessional form which seems to be its

most obvious novelty – is borrowed from Bankim Chandra’s “Ranjani”, published in 1878.

The concerns with domesticity and gender relations are key preoccupations in the nineteenth-

century novel. Rabindranath had used chalitbhasha earlier, but interestingly, he had

employed it in only personalised forms such as diaries and letters.

In Ghare Baire, which is written in the diary form, chalitbhasha carries a more

ambitious significance. Most of the stories that Rabindranath Tagore wrote for journal dealt

with women as individual subjects engaged in negotiating with problematic relationships in

their marriages and with their husband’s households, but also women who created alternate

lives, some of which involved being single. Rabindranath’s novels have the quality of

intense, looming depth that are a feature of his paintings especially his portraits, even as they

detail nuances of feeling and feature intellectual deliberations. At the same time, the novels

lack the resonances of his poetry which evoke a multiplicity of genres. The love plots were

integrated with incessant debate over public political and social issues between the

protagonists. This form is represented by Gora and Ghare Baire.

“The Home and the World” was published in 1919, year after the World War. It had

been serialised in The Modern Review from December 1918 as At Home and Outside. The

translation has often been criticised for its overblown style and its excisions. Recent research

shows that Rabindranath had done a large part of the translation himself. While this

knowledge does not remove the problems of overrhetoricised language, seen in the light of

this discovery it indicates less a problem of distortion than of finding the correct register. The
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excisions are sometimes more difficult to understand. Some may have to do with dropping

localised references in order to cater to a more general readership, although this meant

dropping certain resonant details. Some excisions may have to do with simplification.

A more problematic subtraction is the elaboration of Chandranath Babu, which takes

off from the end of part four of the fifth chapter entitled ‘Nikhilesh’s Story’ and carries on for

nearly two more pages in Ghare Baire. Whatever the motivation may have been for editing

Chandranath Babu's presence, a consequence is to reduce the force of ideal types in The

Home and the World. Tapobrata Ghosh, in his article in this volume, shows how the English

translation tries to make the novel more plot oriented.

Despite these differences however, there is no doubt that The Home and the World is

a very intelligent transposition that captures most of the nuances of the original novel. The

proximity of the two novels is shown in the way most contributors to this volume have used

Ghare Baire as a background resource to the study of The Home and the World, sometimes

using them interchangeably, and in some cases, actually employing Ghare Baire itself as the

basic text. The history of colonial India is not merely the story of how colonialism exercised

power. It is equally the history of attempts by the colonised to require power. There were

many kinds of avenues and projects by which they could combat the sense of powerlessness

under colonialism.

The Home and the World critically elaborates one such avenue, specifically that of

gaining control over self and nation by changing one’s attitudes, convictions, habits,

relationships, in short, one’s subjectivity. This idea was crucial to Hindu nationalism which

was based on the belief that if Hindu could be persuaded to look upon the nation as an object

of religious devotion, then it would inspire them to change their collective subjectivity,

empower themselves and thereby recover the power and glory believed to be an intrinsic part
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of Hindu culture and history. The Home and the World’s exploration of the implications of

Hindu nationalism was set within a narrative of the nation that departs from comparable

stories which visualise national identity as fixed and existing from time immemorial. Instead,

it shows different conceptions of the nation battling each other to produce its shape.

The Home and the World represents the nation as an entity that is created rather than

inherited. Further, the different ideas of nationalism are tied in The Home and the World to

contrasting conceptions of the ideal national subject and its social relationships. The Home

and the World is self-reflexively concerned about the crises that afflict the creation of new

national subjectivities and in subjectivities, and this is what makes it a story about modernity.

The Home and the World possesses a double movement. At its primary level it

involves a debate between intensely ideational protagonists about the individual, society and

nation. The characters venture into a new world and their only maps are ideas about what

they desire their selves and world to become. The other movement in the novel is generated

by the plot. Interestingly, the elaboration of ideas is concentrated in the first part of the novel.

The plot is extremely rudimentary, basically introducing Sandip to the ‘home’. But in time

the plot takes the story outside the boundaries of the bhadralok home and makes it collide

with the social worlds of the poor and marginal. This point of collision is a turning point in

the novel. The bhadralok world’s encounter with Panchu and Mirjan changes the course of

the swadeshi movement and destroys the uneasy equilibrium in the relationships between

lover, wife and husband leading to the apo calyptic conclusion.

Above all, the events unfold the implications and test the worth of the ideas that are so

incessantly debated in the novel. Producing an opposition between imagination and reality

and then privileging one over the other is a process that is a crucial strand of the Anglo-

American novel and its critical understanding.

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In The Home and the World, however, different conceptions or imaginaries of the

nation are shown to mould life equally. But they mould it differently. The differences are

crucial, for they relate to questions of identity, relationship and the possibilities of human

survival itself.

Although The Home and the World’s structure and narrative strategy tends to

marginalise Sandip, his character is central to The Home and the World’s critique of the

Hindu nationalist subject. Together with Bimala, Sandip represents a new personality type of

this period. They live a life that they feel is simultaneously a divine drama. The Home and the

World mounts a sustained critique of this notion through Sandip’s dilemmas and its

resolutions. Sandip enacts recurrent crises. On the other hand, his devotional nationalism is

clearly grounded in the politics of desire. He believes his divine power comes from the force

of his desire expressed in his mantra, “I want, I want, I want” (HATW, Pg.51).

And yet the very idea of religions nationalism is based on a sense of insufficiency and

limitation. The fact that Sandip believes that nationalism cannot do without the crutch of

religion, that it needs the support of an image which will embody the nation and inspire

people through its presence, indicates that he does not believe that the nation can, by itself,

provide a sufficient source of inspiration and energy. Indeed, the assumption of a lack is not

only something that characterises his understanding of nationalism in general, but also

corresponds to a sense of insufficiency about his own self and its desires. This is evident in

his relationship with Bimala. If Sandip has to believe in his powers of divine inspiration, he

has to prove it to himself by wielding a ‘masterful passion’ over women.

In his scheme of values, Sandip gives supreme importance to women for they give

‘birth to reality’; in other words, they produce the very grounds of reality. For Sandip, the

erotic is a way of mastering women and through them, life. Indeed, the erotic is seen as the
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test of reality. Sandip deftly puts a book on sex next to Bimala’s seat, and when Nikhilesh

enters, Sandip engages him in a discussion, arguing that sex is the measure of reality. Fore

Sandip sexuality is ‘real’ not because it represents the ‘hard facts’ of life alone. The erotic is

also a test of his powers of desire. By attracting women, Sandip proves to himself that as a

man he possesses the force and intensity of desire with which he can master reality and make

the nation.

The Home and the World reveals that the politics of desire is brittle and violent

because it cannot come to terms with its feelings of lack and limitation. Typically, Sandip

confronts his sense of insufficiency by two kinds of evasion – either through abjectness or by

violence. According to the original Ghare Baire, Sandip has many lovers but it is only Bimala

who inspires him and confirms him in his belief that he is extraordinary. This is because

Bimala’s nationalist enthusiasm affirms to him that the nation desires him, he who is the

master of all desires. Since Bimala’s nationalistic adoration of him is simultaneously erotic,

she confirms for him his possession of the power of manliness which he believes to be

fundamentally important for nationalism.

Bimala’s devotion gives to him a sense of self-completion because it merges the

erotic with the nationalist. But ironically, this also means that his sense of self-completion is

completely dependent on her. Not surprisingly, his desire for Bimala becomes a craving,

expressed in analogies of intoxication. He had to constantly seek her out, stalk her, worship

her into coming back to him and reaffirm his belief in his newly forged identity. But Sandip’s

sense of his own vulnerability is also dangerously violent. Being conscious of his

susceptibilities does not make him more self-aware. It merely leads him to insist on his

desired identity.
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In The Home and the World, the Hindu nationalist subject produces two

complementary forms of authoritarian relationships, of servility and violence, in order to

overcome an inseparable condition in which its belief that it possesses the divine power of

desire keeps crumbling against its sense of deficiency. The brittle underside of Sandip’s self-

assurance collides against the world of Panchu and Mirjan and is provoked into a crisis. The

two of them challenge the self-absorptive nature of Sandip’s nationalism by raising the

problems of those who do not belong to the middle class. They articulate the problems of

livelihood and social difference.

By implication, Panchu and Mirjan underline something that is overlooked because it

is taken for granted; Sandip and the student activists are free to create imaginaries of

nationalist, self-empowerment because they do not have to work. Sandip lives on Nikhilesh’s

patronage and the students are holidaying. He converts Bimala from a private object of nation

worship to a mass devotional image. The people, he assumes, will join him in the belief that

the sheer force of the desire of ‘I want’ will be able to inspire them to complete the divine

project of making the nation.

The burden of the plot set into motion by Panchu and Mirjan is of course to show how

Sandip’s social fantasy disintegrates. The unity of the transcendental and the everyday begins

to look like a contradiction. At the personal level his need to acquire money in order to

pursue a stick-and-carrot policy with the petty traders and peasants leads him to get Bimala to

steal money from her sister-in-law, and in so doing, he unwittingly serves her from his

influence completely. At the public level it produces riots that rip apart the idea of the unitary

nation which Sandip worships.

But Sandip does not give up and in contrast to Nikhilesh, Sandip’s failure begins

another phase of his political career. He then travels with his message and a portable image of
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the national goddess. By completing the process of turning Bimala into an image, Sandip

achieves a higher level of divine self-sufficiency. He realises for himself an ambition he had

outlined as: “Ignorant men worship gods. I, Sandip, shall create them” (HATW, Pg.155). His

new goddess will be free of Bimala’s human unpredictability and will be solely within his

powers of control.

But this achievement too remains precarious. The image cannot be detached from

memory; the fact that it is moulded in Bimala’s image is a trope for the stubbornness with

which the history of loss, violence and division will remain embedded in devotional

nationalism. Sandip’s nationalist subjectivity can never free itself from the aborias that dot

his trail and by the same token, cannot remove the stain of violence that is the last guarantee

of his nationalism. While Sandip becomes socially conservative because of the logic of his

ideas, Bimala begins as a ‘modern conservative’ who desires the improbable fantasy of

making her deeply cherished traditional values a vehicle of her modern desires.

Bimala’s character is founded on the possibility that the capacity for choice in women

may not necessarily lead to a radical critique of traditional social beliefs. Bimala may idealise

domesticity but she is not domesticated. She looks up to her mother for embodying the ideal

of wifely devotion, of pativrata, but at the same time makes it clear that she wants to be a

larger-than-life version of her. Inspired by her reading of romances, Bimala visualises a

public role for her domestic virtues.

She wished to be a model of domestic devotion in contrast to more ordinary women

who would hope to follow one. In other words, Bimala converts devotionalism from an act of

self-negation to one of self-assertion for it allows her the possibility of becoming a

conservative icon. Interestingly, she evaluates her mother’s devotion not for its actual
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presence in the latter’s affection, but as a series of visible rituals which she finds is ‘beauty

itself’.

Bimala’s preoccupation with public images makes her reprocess the belief in devotion

as an aesthetic spectacle. Sandip’s devotional nationalism delivers her from a dilemma.

Bimala was already a nationalist but had difficulties in articulating for it conflicted with

Nikhilesh’s plan to serve the poor of the country. Serving the poor would compromise

Bimala’s life’s desire to be a model and inspire people from the distance that the andarmahal

provided her. Sandip’s nationalism allows her to become a nationalist icon through the

traditional role of an andarmahal lady. Sandip offers her a dynamic social form to realise her

childhood fantasies without the burden of relating to social inferiors.

Thus, a different analysis and approach has been undertaken in the present study.

Finally for the scrupulous scholarship and the careful documentation The MLA Handbook,

eighth edition is referred to.

This study aims to bring out the portrayal of revolutionary patriot of Nikhil and

Sandip. In this novel, The Home and the World, it is achieved through the characters, their

dialogues, surroundings which shows the political happenings and justifies this work. It will

be seen in the upcoming chapters.

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CHAPTER - II

A PORTRAYAL OF REVOLUTIONARY PATRIOT

Rabindranath Tagore’s major novel was “The Home and the World”, in which each of

the three major characters reveals his or her own thoughts in a diary. The novel is set in early

20th century India. The story line coincides with the National Independence

Movement taking place in the country at the time, which was sparked by the Indian National

Congress. There were various national and regional campaigns with both militant and non-

violent ideas which all had the common goal of ending British colonial rule.

Militant nationalism had a strong showing in the early part of the 20th century,

especially during the World War I period. Some examples of this movement are the Indo-

German Pact and the Ghadar Conspiracy, both of which failed. Particularly important to the

novel is an understanding of the Swadeshi movement as a part of the Indian Nationalist

Movement. The Swadeshi movement started in response to the 1905 Partition of

Bengal by Viceroy Lord Curzon, which temporarily separated Hindus and Muslims into

different geographical areas.

The Swadeshi movement was a successful resistance policy against British

colonisation. Indian citizens were encouraged to boycott British goods to foster Indian

identity and independence. This movement was important in fostering "the new spirit in

India," and separating India from Britain, which was largely thought to be responsible for the

subsequent widespread poverty.

The setting is the political excitement in the stormy years of the first decade of the

century when Tagore himself had been drawn into its vortex for a time. This novel is his

answer to the critics who had accused him of desertion. The answer went home, for the novel

only provoked worse abuse. The portrayal of the revolutionary patriot who has no scruples to
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deceive his friend and seduce his trustful wife was so vividly drawn that the author was

accused of being immortal and unpatriotic. For three years after its publication the critics

continued to tear the novel to pieces- a tribute to its impact on their minds.

The atmosphere of the novel is tense, reflecting the tensions of the period it depicts. It

was a stormy period of the national upsurge, of an upheaval of violent passions long

submerged of a clash of ideals and interests. The sombre narrative scintillates with brilliant

sparks of thought as the flints of opposing arguments strike against each other. It is a clash all

along, of the old with the new, of real politik with idealism, of the means with the end, of

love claimed as of right and love given of free will, of home-bred virtue with the wild wind

from the outside. “Although a poet’s manifesto, the novel is equally a testament of Gandhi’s

philosophy of non-violence, of love and truth, of his insistent warning that evil means must

vitiate the end, however nobly conceived” (“Tagore- A Life” by Krisha Kripalani, Pg.148).

The plot, like all Tagore’s plots, is very simple – the usual, age-old angle, two men

and a woman. Nikhil, the titled nobleman, owning vast estates in the country, is an unusual

representative of his class, almost too good to be true, although Tolstoy had already made the

type familiar, both in his life, and in his novels, and Tagore himself had tried to live up to it

when he was managing his family estates. Nevertheless, the character, as it emerges in the

novel, is more shadowy than real.

His friend and protégé, Sandip the patriotic firebrand, splendid wind-bag and

shameless seducer, on the other hand, is far more real and convincing, except that he speaks a

language which only a Tagore could put in his mouth. Bimala is Nikhil’s wife, an ordinary,

domesticated type who becomes extraordinary when her passion and her vanity are aroused a

real and convincing character. She comes under the spell of Sandip’s fiery eloquence; the

admiration soon warms into attraction under the hot breath of Sandip’s sensual vitality:
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So long I had been like a small river at the border of a village. But the tide

came up from the sea, and my breast heaved; my banks gave way and the great

drum-beats of the sea waves echoed in my mad current. I could not understand

the meaning of that sound in my blood. (HATW, Pg.54)

Nikhil knows what is going on between his wife and his friend and could easily put a

stop to it, but he values love only when given out of free will and in open competition with

the outside world and not as an obligation or under duress.

Tagore himself was tossing between his love of his home and the lure of the world.

Having experienced the stimulus of a triumphant sojourn abroad, the comparatively

monotonous and dull routine of life at home seemed insipid and enervating. Tagore was an

enthusiastic advocate of the swadeshi movement. But as the movement spread, Tagore began

to get disillusioned with it. The novel, The Home and the World emerged from Tagore’s

experiences during the swadeshi years. Written and published in 1915-16, the novel remains

as a cautionary tale about the dangers of nationalism.

The story revolves around Bimala who is caught between her love for her husband

Nikhilesh and infuriation for his best friend Sandip. Set against the turbulence created by

Lord Curzon’s divisive policy and the swadeshi movement, Bimala’s personal dilemma is

inextricable from the choice that she has to make between opposed political and ideological

impulses.

With the rise of political consciousness in India, political ideas were put forth in the

novels. So far, these were termed as social or historical novels. Indulekha, a significant

Malayalam novel by Chandu Menon, is a typical example in this regard. Menon concluded

his novel with a chapter containing conversation on the political situation of India after the

first session of the Indian National Congress. In the preface to the novel, Chandu Menon
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admitted that inclusion of the last chapter was redundant but unavoidable. It happened so

because of the political consciousness that was gradually gaining ground in public mind.

Since the birth of Indian novel in the second half of the nineteenth century, national

consciousness was reflected in the novels. Three distinctive ways of depicting national heroes

or fleeting national awareness are discernible in the nineteenth century novels namely,

historical novels, depicting national heroes, semi-historical novels depicting socio-political

upheaval and satirical novels giving humorous portraits of pseudo-patriots.

Rajsingha by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay exemplifies the first category. More

examples of the type are Harinarayan Apte’s Marathi novel Rupe Nagarci Rajkanya and

Ushakal, Chandi Charan Sen’s Jhansir Rani, Rajanikanta Bardoloi’s Assamese novel

Manomati etc. As regards semi-historical novels depicting political upheaval in regional

setting, there is a host of examples such as Anand Math by Bankim Chandra, Padum Kuani

by Lakshminath Bezbarua, or V. Pattawardhan’s Hambir Rao ani putlibai (Marathi) etc. In

the third category, we find a few satirical novels such as Model Bhagini by Jogendranath

Basu or Khudiram by Indranath Banerjee and so on.

The Home and the World is a major political novel of considerable importance.

Sandip is the activist hero of this novel. Sandip is unable to restrain his lust for money and

woman. Of course, he is gifted with flamboyance and casts a magic spell on his audience and

thus wins the heart of Bimala, the heroine Nikhilesh, the husband of Bimala, accepts the

challenge hurled upon him by his dear friend Sandip, and readily agrees to give Bimala the

freedom to develop in her own way. Sandip wanted her to rebel against not only the foreign

rule but also the domestic bond. Bimala stands confused between the two friends and for a

time she seems to be on the verge of an emotional surrender to Sandip. Eventually, however,

she gets disillusioned with Sandip. Her sense of value prevails and self-realization breaks the
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magic spell that Sandip cast over her. When Bimala returns to her patient and waiting

husband, the spell has been over. Sandip stands exposed. He is no more a Swadeshi hero, but

merely a villain with all his unbridled hedonistic activities, under the garb of patriotic

postures.

Tagore himself tried to offer an answer to these questions in a subtle manner. Tagore

did not apply in The Home and the World the methods of creating a role model as available in

Indian historical novels of the nineteenth century. Sandip is blinded by the selfish hedonistic

impulse. He is a deeply political man, an organizer and activist, who is quite involved in

contemporary politics. Hence, the novel is very much related to the political atmosphere that

prevailed in the country during the first decade of the twentieth century.

Irving Howe, defines a political novel as: “A work of fiction ‘in which political ideas

play a dominant role or in which political milieu is the dominant setting. A political novel

treats some political events of significance in a politically based situation”.

Naturally, this novel’s genre includes political thoughts, confrontations and problems.

In fact, materials here are political, situations have a political background, characters, even if

imaginary, have political conceptions and ideologies. Of course, it should be admitted here

that Tagore’s The Home and the World satisfies all the above-mentioned requirements as

discussed by Irving Howe and hence its claims to be a political novel seems to be just and

relevant. The background of Tagore’s novel is based on the wide canvas of the national

uprising of 1905, particularly in Bengal. The partition of Bengal by British rulers in 1905 and

its consequent repercussions – the Swadeshi movement and boycott of foreign goods, the

indiscriminate burning of foreign goods and clothes, anarchical agitations, political plunders

and secret murders- are all included in its purview.

Even the oppression of the British rulers and the fanatical activities of the extremists

find a brilliant representation in Tagore’s fiction. It is really to be admitted that the political
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flame of 1905 steers the story of The Home and the World. The story starts with the quiet,

happy conjugality of Nikhil and Bimala. Their home was all peaceful, amorous and

congenial. All that Nikhil desired was to bring his wife out of the narrow home to the wide

world in order to know her more fully.

However, it was Sandip’s arrival, his intoxicant political views and his personal

enchantment that stirred Bimala’s serene centre- her home – and brought her out of to the

whirlwind of politics in the wide world outside. She was fascinated by Sandip’s stirring

speeches and Swadeshi slogans and also by his romantic adoration of her as Mother India.

Again, Sandip was crafty enough to bring a stir among the young generation of Nikhil’s area.

In other words, Sandip and his associates lit up the political fire with noble intention but

unfortunately the fire spread in a destructive manner. Truly, there is nothing to question the

Swadeshi background of Tagore’s novel. Yet questions may be raised about the actual

political scenario of The Home and the World.

The politics of Swadeshi is deeply rooted in the centre of the work and spreads its

boughs and twigs all over the story. Still the movement is not dominant in its real flame and

fervour. Except Sandip’s catchy, agitative speeches and the reckless burning of foreign

clothes at his incitement, The Home and the World presents no scene worth mentioning of the

Swadeshi movement. The history of political unrest and the desperate conflict between the

English rulers and the poor rulers of India is absent in Tagore’s artistic canvas. Nothing of the

country- wide revolt by the young patriots, the fearless acts of terrorism and the glorious self-

sacrifice by many dedicated souls has got a space in the novel.

Therefore, judged from this very angle, it remains impossible to group The Home and

the World together with the classic political novels like War and Peace, A Tale of Two Cities

and The Mother. Again, on the basis of the stark contrast between Nikhil and Sandip

Tagore’s The Home and the World has suffered much criticism from the contemporary
 19

Swadeshi leaders. Contextually Bipin Pal commented, “Rabindranath had not understood the

essence of Swadeshi itself.”

However, a reasonable analysis of the novel establishes a different truth. It is then we

confront the fact that, the author is not speaking against Swadeshi. Rather he is speaking for

those poor natives who suffered the extreme as a result of the propagation of the movement

which dealt with the destruction of their livelihood. The question is not then, how far Nikhil

and Sandip are real historical personages. What is important here is that Tagore by the means

of his novel originally intended to show the negative aspect of the movement, which had been

given birth by sincere patriotic thoughts.

The novel therefore remains as it does a specimen of Tagore’s remarkable

understanding of the fragility of the destructive temperament, during the Swadeshi era.

Herein Nikhil’s comment seems to be the most relevant since he in the course of the novel

acts as Tagore’s spokesman- “You should not waste even the tenth part of your energy in the

destructive excitement.”

The novel has a certain allegorical quality in that Nikhil and Sandip seem to represent

two opposing visions for the nation; with Bimala, torn between the two, not knowing for sure

what should be her guiding principle - signifying Bengal tottering between the two

possibilities. Nikhil’s vision is one of enlightened humanitarian and global perspective, based

on a true equality and harmony of individuals and nations.

On the other hand, Sandip’s parochial and belligerent nationalism, which cultivates an

intense sense of patriotism in individuals, threatens to replace their moral sensibility with

national bigotry and blind fanaticism. Seen from this perspective, Nikhil’s death at the end of

the novel, just when Bimala is turning the corner and returning to her senses after a prolonged

infatuation with Sandip and his views, also signals Tagore’s pessimism about the future of

Bengal. In the absence of truly benevolent leaders like Nikhil, she would be mutilated,
 20

divided in two (currently Bangladesh and West Bengal), with millions of her children playing

with their lives to meet the apocalyptic wishes of self-seeking, immoral, power-hungry

politicians, determined to carve out her body on religious communal lines.

Nikhil loves his country as much as, if not more than, Sandip, but he will not allow

his love for the country to overtake his conscience. Sandip, on the other hand, believes that

‘country’s needs must be made into a god’, and one ought to set ‘aside conscience [by]

putting the country in its place’. This reckless deification of the nation and his belief that any

action, no matter how heinous or unscrupulous, is justifiable if undertaken for the nation’s

sake eventually turns him into a frightful terrorist and appalling criminal. He does not mind

using intrigue or violence to accomplish his mission, even if it means harm to his own

followers.

As long as the mission is accomplished, the end justifies his means. He adroitly

persuades Bimala to give all her jewellery to him to finance the movement, and steal money

from the family safe. He also uses Amulya, an impassioned but idealistic youth (emblematic

of the many adolescents who were influenced by the movement), exploitatively. When

Mirjan, a Muslim boatman, refuses to stop carrying foreign goods, as it will take away his

livelihood, Sandip arranges to sink his boat in midstream.

Rabindranath Tagore, a worshipper of universal humanism, depicts two different

streams of Nationalism in his novel The Home and the World. The first stream may be termed

as Moderation that articulates essentially pure patriotism without showing the aggressiveness

of the Extremism, which is the other stream. Both these streams surely are built on the basis

of ideals and the followers are motivated according to their beliefs. In this novel Nikhil is a

personification of moderate politics whereas Sandip represents the aggressive nationalism

throughout the novel.

 21

The relationship between Sandip and Nikhil, despite being good friends, is one of

extreme duality. Although they are the male protagonists, the essentials of their character are

blatantly contrasting from one another. On one end, Sandip is a strong and aggressive

character who is very much a militant nationalist in his approach. Being an openly vocal

character, Sandip does not hesitate to declare that "My country … becomes mine on the day

when I am able to win it by force."

On the other end, Nikhil is the passive and mature thinker who is strongly against

violence and extreme nationalism. Being a strong believer in rational thought and action,

Nikhil believes that, “I am willing to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right

which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon

it” (HATW, Pg.26).

Bimala's husband, Nikhil, is wise and enlightened. He holds no personal agenda of

manipulation and is rather honourable in trying to get Bimala to take stock of the world and

her place in it. He understands Sandip fairly well, recognizing that he might be duplicitous in

his alleged love of the nationalist movement and that the charismatic leader might have an

ulterior motive at play. Yet, Nikhil maintains his dignity with considerable poise and does

not allow his own personal feelings to interfere with the nobility and sense of grace he strives

to embody.

This is seen in the critical point in the novel when he seeks to defend the honour of

women who are being targeted by looters. It comes as no benefit to himself to pursue this, but

Nikhil recognizes something larger at play and follows it to a sad end. Whereas Nikhil

embodies something larger than himself, Sandip operates on his own motives by cloaking

them in the Swadeshi movement. Tagore depicts Sandip as charismatic and very charming.

A leader in the resistance movement, Sandip understands human motivation very well. He
 22

understands how to convince people of what he wants them do for him, as Sandip is very

much driven by his own personal agenda. He is able to convince and charm Bimala through

this talent. It is here in which Sandip is markedly different from Nikhil, who is reflective in

how he lives in the world. Nikhil sacrifices for his ideals and suffers because of it.

Tagore’s development of the character of Sandip is one in which one sees the

calculating self- interest masked in the facade of nationalism and public interest. When he

escapes, Tagore makes it clear that he is doing so for his own self- interest and no other

reason. On the other hand, Nikhil sacrifices himself for people he does not know. This

demonstrates how a universal understanding of what it means to love and care for others in a

sense that is not contingent is more difficult, but more rewarding from a moral and ethical

point of view. Here, Tagore makes it clear that universality, and understanding the

implications of it, is far more beneficial than a position of temporality and contingency.

The author's sympathy lies obviously on the side of Nikhil that resembles Tagore

himself to a great extent, if not altogether. The author viewed human relationships from the

perspective of the everlasting values of love, trust and hope; not in terms of dominance,

violence and hatred. Tagore's affection for Nikhil demonstrates this; as well as his own sense

of loyalty and preference. Nikhilesh represents the pure passion for constructive work

in swadeshi (nationalism), and Sandip its greed and destructive energy. Nikhilesh worships

nothing but truth which is greater than the country, and which is alone all temporary crazes;

for Sandip the success of the moment, no matter by whatever means it is the only thing that

matters. For Nikhilesh, the Ideal is the principal ingredient in real; for Sandip the Ideal is

tolerable only when it is a means to the attainment of the Real.

Bimala, the central character of the novel, who has been given a large number of

autobiographical narratives than the other two principal characters, is torn between these two
 23

contending forces which exercise a powerful fascination over her mind. Nikhilesh’s passion

for absolute truth reminds us of the sages of ancient India, and the dominating force in

Sandip’s character is greed which is the lane of modern western nationalism. The novel has

been regarded as an allegory, Bimala, standing for modern India, Nikhilesh for ancient India

and Sandip for modern Europe.

However, many would feel that the real meaning and interest of the novel lies in its

moving portrayal of man -women relationship, in the psychological conflict, in the personal

drama of husband and wife knowing each other both at home and in the world. The swadeshi

agitation is a necessary political backdrop only became it is through this upheaval that an

Indian wife can suddenly tear the moorings of a sheltered domestic life and float adrift in the

high seas of a countryside agitation. The novel is full of political discussions and they are

important only, so far as they help to reveal the working in the minds of Sandip, Nikhilesh

and Bimala.

A mighty political agitation that sweeps over the country and breaks the barriers of

age, gives the Indian wife an opportunity to come out of her secluded existence. Not only

does Bimala leave the introverted; but her mind and sight, her hopes and desires become red

with the passion of the new ages. And it is at this time she meets Sandip, a fiery nationalist,

who thinks and feels differently from her husband. Sandip is frankly champion of greed and

of the Nietzschean will to power. Bimala is fascinated by Sandip’s impetuous vitality beside

which her husband’s lour for truth, eternal and absolute, seems to be very thin. Bimala’s

burning devotion to her country is mined up with her attraction for the country’s hero Sandip,

who flatters her as the incarnation of Sakti, the goddess from whom the son of Bengal will

derive inspiration and energy.

 24

Bimala does not share, Nikhilesh’s ideas, and therefore, although she notices that

Sandip’s eloquence grows when he catches sight of her, she lets Sandip worm his way in to

her heart. Even when she finds herself on the high tide to excitement, she argues with her

husband in support of Sandip’s doctrines. Although Bimala and Sandip are drawn towards

each other by what seems to beam insuperable attraction, the adulterous impulse is soon

checked, Bimala discovers that behind the sparkle of Sandip’s brilliance there is in him the

slime of weakness, meanness and cowardice and she recoils in disgust. In accordance to this

idea, the next chapter records Bimala’s choices and decisions and also about her involvement

in politics which acts as an adding point to prove the study as a political novel.
 25

CHAPTER - III

BIMALA’S POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

The novel talks about the struggle of Bimala in choosing between her ‘home’ behind

the purdah, the outside ‘world’ that her husband Nikhil has introduced her to. Bimala is torn

between being a faithful wife of Nikhil who is her ‘home’, and Sandip her attraction and

newly found love representing the outside ‘world’. At some deeper level into the novel,

however, the title symbolizes the two ideologies Bimala must choose between – Nikhil’s

pragmatism that represents the ‘world’. It is due to Nikhil’s exertion that Bimala crosses the

threshold of her secluded, sheltered ‘zenana’ existence behind the purdah and enters the

outside world. Ironically, this crossing of the threshold coincides Sandip’s entrance into their

lives; proving as Nikhil observed, ‘if you will not go to the world, the world will come to

you’. It was at the sight of Sandip that Bimala, drawn to his nationalistic fervour, makes the

choice between staying inside her ‘home’ and meeting him in the outside ‘world’, and

chooses the latter.

Smitten by Sandip's fiery speeches and his vision of her as the ‘Queen Bee’ as

contrasted with her own husband Nikhil's ostensibly indifferent attitude towards the freedom

struggle, Bimala finds herself increasingly attracted to Sandip. Nikhil is the man of her home;

Sandip represents to her the outside world, not only because he is her link to the nation, her

source of information to all that is happening outside her home in the country, but also

because he is an outsider who embodies all the vitality and passion that she supposes the

outside world to contain but that has been absent from her own domestic life. She

emotionally trips, vacillates between Sandip and her husband, and decides to take side with

Sandip until she returns home bruised and humiliated but with a more mature understanding

of both Nikhil, her Home, and Sandip, the World.

 26

Through the love-triangle, Tagore explores the war between idealism and pragmatism

inside Bimala’s mind and extends its sphere of influence to encompass the issues dividing

India during those times of strife and struggle through the depiction of the revolution and the

Swadeshi movement. Nikhil, who was keen on social reform but repulsed by nationalism,

gradually loses the esteem of his spirited wife, Bimala, because of his failure to be

enthusiastic about anti-British agitations, which she sees as a lack of patriotic commitment.

However, despite seeing clearly that she is unimpressed by his worldview, he refuses to

compromise his principles and persists in his quiet belief in humanism over nationalism. This

measured stance of her husband towards politics fails to win Bimala’s approval.

Unconvinced by this non-flamboyant, practical approach towards freedom and

fascinated by the illusive utopia presented to her by Sandip, Bimala is torn between the two

extremes. Her choice stands between the inclusive humanism practiced in her Home and the

militant nationalism followed by the World. She wavers towards the latter, taken in by the

goddess image Sandip created of her and the power he seems to impart in her every time he

speaks. But in the end, when Sandip is exposed, her dreams are shattered and reality strikes

and she comes back to her husband “hesitatingly, barefoot, with a white shawl over her

head”, back to the ‘home’ she has abandoned and neglected.

It is well known that Tagore, after a brief dip into the Swadeshi movement, became

disillusioned with nationalism and condemned it on the grounds that ardent nationalism, in

the process of uniting all Hindus, would end up alienating other religions and nationalities

and promoting hatred and exclusivity that would break the country apart and destroy people’s

humanism. In that context, the title of the novel can be interpreted as an appeal to strive

towards global unity and shun the politics of nationalism. There are several plot points in the

novel – such as the harassment of Miss Gilby, and the alienation and consequent uprising of
 27

the Muslim traders - that can be considered evidence of this. Thus, through Nikhil, who was

Tagore’s spokesperson and his counterpart in many ways, Tagore tried to explain his dream

of his ‘home’ coexisting in harmony and mutual friendship with the ‘world’.

Bimala’s desire grounds it in a vulnerability that is deeper than Sandip’s. Her

ambition to inspire the nation without transgressing the boundaries of her home means that

she has to make Sandip into a relay of her nationalist inspiration: it can only be through him

that she can ‘inspire’ the movement. Sandip’s synedochal status makes Bimala dependent on

him for her allegorical life as wife and nationalist icon. And this dependence is greater than

Sandip’s since, unlike him, she cannot recuperate her losses in the world of mass political

action. It is this unequal relationship of interdependence that dramatizes her disability as a

woman when she is made to steal from her household. As a member of the upper class, she is

simply its object of mobilisation, in precise terms, an instrument for empowering its male

leadership.

The Home and the World devises an intriguing conclusion for Bimala. She becomes a

person traversed by different possibilities, none of which are free from vulnerabilities. At the

most obvious level her story is one of a ‘return’ to Nikhilesh as she falls at his feet. This is

actually not quite a ‘return’ to the earlier times for she now falls at his feet without the desire

for acquiring a public reputation.

Her remarks on womanhood reveal a new acceptance of the limited sphere of activity

and self-expression for womanhood: if they keep to their ‘banks’ they give nourishment; if

they want more ‘then we destroy with all that we are’. The after-effects of the theft raise the

possibility of a relationship of solidarity with sister-in-law who experiences womanhood as

an experience of deprivation and who steps in to shield her. And there is Amulya, with whom
 28

she forms a relationship of guarding care – and through whom she intervenes in the practical

workings of the swadeshi movement one single time, creating a rift in its leadership.

The precariousness of domestic self-fulfilment is, of course, underlined by

Nikhilesh’s uncertain fate in the end. The vulnerabilities of the other possibilities are equally

clear. Amulya dies while Bimala’s sister-in-law holds her responsible for destroying the only

relationship of affection in her life. The only other thing the text lets us know is that Bimala

is the sole person to write in the present; it is as if only she, unable to come to terms with her

present post-swadeshi life, were condemned to replaying the memory of that tragic,

exhilarating and fractured time.

Bimala’s undecided state within the world of her domesticity may have been one of

the outcomes of Rabindranath’s mounting critique of conjugality and the household. The

paradox of a woman who chooses domesticity to express herself in public may have,

therefore, created an impasse in Rabindranath between the importance of female self-

expression and choice on the one hand and the scepticism about domesticity on the other

hand. But Bimala’s predicament is created not just by the general opposition between

domesticity and the importance of public self-articulation, but in specific terms, by her

attempts to resolve this split through devotional nationalism.

Like Sandip’s, Nikhilesh’s nationalism is also based on an imaginary which fails; in

Ghare Baire it is even reported that to the peasants. Nikhilesh became an object of ridicule.

And significantly, both men visualise the romantic participation of woman, Bimala, as a

crucial element of nationalism. However, while the structure of their nationalist imaginaries

is similar, the difference in content is more decisive and leads to a transformation of this

framework in Nikhilesh. If the nation for Sandip is just a bounded territory that he can fill up

with the largeness of his desires, Nikhilesh’s imaginary of the nation is based on the everyday
 29

nature of its people and their interrelationships. Correspondingly, while Sandip seeks to

transport Bimala with him into a transcendental condition that makes questions of choice and

equality irrelevant, for Nikhilesh these preoccupations are crucial to his relationship with her.

The story revolves around Bimala who is caught between her love for her husband

Nikhilesh and infatuation for his best friend Sandip. Set against the turbulence created by

Lord Curzon’s divisive policy and the swadeshi movement, Bimala’s personal dilemma is

inextricable from the choice that she has to make between opposed political and ideological

impulses. Nikhilesh’s wife Bimala is a woman with an independent mind. Lavished by her

husband’s affections, she is all set to become a ‘memsahib’ under the tutelage of her English

instructor Miss Gilby. Her independence in her marital home stands in contrast to the life of

Bouthan, Nikhilesh’s widowed sister-in-law.

Deeply influenced by Western education, Nikhilesh wants his wife Bimala to defy

convention and step out of the inner quarters of the home into the world outside. Behind this

egalitarian impulse lies Nikhilesh’s desire that his wife should love him not out of

compulsion but out of choice after having experienced the world around her. ‘If she is “his”

in the “home”, he wants her to be “his” in the “world” too after she has experienced it. To

this end, he introduces her to his best friend Sandip, a popular swadeshi leader. As Bimala

and Sandip become lovers both The Home and the World are thrown into crisis. Finally, all

three characters are complicit in the catadysmic consequences that overtake Sukhsayor.

Anticipating Sandip’s arrival in Sukhsayor, Nikhilesh describes him to Bimala as both

an important swadeshi leader and someone who has a ‘way with women’. Till Bimala meets

Sandip for the first time, she has nothing but reservations about him. ‘I have no desire to meet

a man’, she says, ‘who through a hundred wiles, exploits you for money’. Nikhilesh

condescendingly insists that it would be ‘instructive’ for Bimala to meet him, as Sandip is his
 30

complete opposite. To this, Bimala resorts, “Who told you that I want someone who is your

exact opposite?” Bimala first sets eyes on Sandip when he arrives to address a meeting in the

quadrangle of Nikhilesh’s house. Amidst chants of ‘Bande Mataram’ Sandip arrives sitting

on the shoulders of his saffron-clad disciples.

In his eloquent and passionate speech, he condemns Curzon’s policy of ‘divide and

rule’ and pleads for the boycott of imported goods. Bimala becomes preoccupied and also

thoughtful about swadeshi politics. The saffron-coloured clothes of the activists and the

centrality of ‘Bande Mataram’ as their rallying cry points to the Hinduisation of swadeshi

politics and foreshadows its disastrous consequences. That Muslims are – understandably –

unmoved by the slogan is revealed in a later sequence when Sandip addresses traders in the

Sukhsayor marketplace.

Tragically, Bimala misreads these signs of future catastrophe that attracted to the

saffron-coloured boys shouting slogans of ‘Bande Mataram’ and to Sandip’s powerful

rhetoric. The strength of the scene lies in the ability to straddle the ambivalence of

desirability and discomfort that provides enough evidence to point to the reasons for Bimala’s

attraction towards Sandip’s personality and politics.

When Sandip meets Bimala for the first time in the parlour, he reacts by gaping at her

ludicrously. He makes no attempt to hide his instant fascination for her. Throughout the scene

he makes sexual advances through political pleas. Sandip’s attraction towards Bimala is an

ambivalent blend of the political and the erotic. He tells Bimala that the thought of winning

her support excites him because they have never had a woman on their side. Sandip spares no

effort at winning her to his side. He concludes his efforts with a stirring patriotic song. To

Sandip’s delight, Bimala is mesmerised by his performance.

 31

Nikhilesh, who has also enjoyed the ‘admirable song’, is quick to point out that his

appreciation of the song has nothing to do with his views on swadeshi politics. It introduces

an intertextual reference about Tagore’s own experience with swadeshi politics. Tagore had

written this immensely popular song (‘Are you so strong as to break the bonds of destiny?’)

when he was a swadeshi enthusiast in the early days of the movement. The new swadeshi

enthusiast, Bimala is enthralled by the song. But like Tagore, Bimala’s enthusiasm too will be

short-lived and will eventually suffer disillusion.

Throughout the scene, the interaction between Nikhilesh, Bimala and Sandip is

marked by constant slips between personal and political choices. It highlights the

inconsistencies of the Hindu middle-class approach to swadeshi politics.

The personal and political are again inextricable. At the end of the meeting, Sandip

leaves Bimala more than just a swadeshi pamphlet. She notices that his lit but unsmoked

cigarette continues to turn to ash in the ashtray. Sandeep has already begun to do her bidding.

At their second meeting, that is, their first meeting alone, erotic tension becomes integral to

political articulations. Bimala arrives in the parlour after Sandip sends for her the next day

with a note that reads: ‘I hope the rule was not broken for a day’. While waiting for her, he

discovers her hairclip on the sofa. Studying it carefully he puts it away in his pocket. When

she enters the room and is about to sit on a sofa in front of him, he insists that she sit right

next to him. He tells her that he has changed his travel plans and is now planning to work

from Sukhsayor.

As Sandip leans over and brings his face closer to hers, a confessional moment is

anticipated. But instead of making a personal disclosure, he requests a political favour. He

asks her to try and persuade Nikhilesh to impose swadeshi in Sukhsayor. At the end of the

conversation, just as she is about to leave the room, he calls her back. He holds up the
 32

hairclip. As she reaches out for it, he puts it back in his pocket with the comment that this is

one foreign object that he would like to process.

The two subsequent scenes between Bimala and Nikhilesh build simultaneously on

erotic and political tension. While Nikhilesh has dinner, Bimala informs him of Sandip’s

decision to stay back in Sukhsayor and carry out his campaign. Nikhilesh argues that he has

no moral right to impose swadeshi in the market in his zamindari as the market belonged not

to him but those who traded for a living there.

Bimala wonders whether it is possible to practise swadeshi without hurting the

interests of the poor. Had that been possible, Nikhilesh tells her, then he would have joined

the swadeshi activists. Despite his attempts to remain non-judgemental, he snidely asks

whether the two of them were going to hold daily meetings, since they had ‘teamed up in

right earnest to work for the country’. An angry Bimala tells him that he had no business to

first drag her out of seclusion and then make nasty insinuations. His attempt to retract does

not convince Bimala. It is evident that none of the three protagonists believes that Sandip’s

work in Sukhsayor is only political in nature.

In a letter to an English friend in 1921, Tagore wrote, “… the anarchy of emptiness

never tempts me, even when it is resorted to as a temporary measure. I am frightened at an

abstraction, which is ready to ignore living reality”. Nikhilesh seems to imagine that Bimala’s

agency must stem from his initiatives. Therefore, he is taken aback to learn that Bimala has

read all about swadeshi in the newspapers.

Unlike Sandip who asks her what she thinks about swadeshi, Nikhilesh asks her what

she knows about swadeshi. Sandip treats her not just as an ally but an inspiration. Coming to

terms with this, Nikhilesh confesses in the novel that in trying to find the truth of Bimala’s
 33

personality he had forgotten he would have to renounce all claims based on conventional

morality. Despite, his best intention Nikhilesh is not able to treat his wife as an equal.

Tagore’s Bimala is sympathetic to the swadeshi movement even before Sandip enters

her life. When Miss Gilby is attacked by swadeshi activists Bimala does not share her

husband’s distress. When Nikhilesh turns Noren, the boy who attacked Miss Gilby, out of

house, Bimala writes:

There was not a single soul, that day, who could forgive my husband for that

act, - not even I… I had often become anxious at my husband’s doings, but

had never before been ashamed; yet now I had to blush for him… I could not

but look upon it as a sign of cowardice in my husband. (HATW, Pg.24,25)

Bimala’s swadeshi politics is neither like Sandip’s nor oppositional like Nikhilesh’s.

It is evident that Tagore respects Amulya because his commitment to politics transcends

personal gains. Amulya has no self-interest, nor does his conscience ever abandon him.

Moreover, he has power and insight to challenge opportunism and populism. When Sandip

plots to coerce the traders into boycotting foreign goods, Amulya advocates picketing rather

than force. Unlike Sandip, Amulya is not ready to flee the moment communal riots break out

in Sukhsayor. He makes amends for Sandip’s exploitation of Bimala returning to her both her

money and her jewels.

Through Bimala’s turbulent rites of passage between The Home and the World, it is

Amulya who becomes her ally. Amulya dies at the end of the novel. Having refused to flee

with Sandip he stays back to face the consequences of his actions. Like Amulya, Bimala too

believes in the politics of persuasion and not of coercion. Somewhat natively she asks

Nikhilesh whether it is possible to practise swadeshi without hurting the poor. Bimala
 34

genuinely believes this to be Sandip’s politics till she learns better at the end of the novel. He

is careful not to reveal his strategies to her even though he is open about them with Nikhilesh.

Sandip knows too well that, unlike her husband, Bimala would not hesitate to act on her

displeasure. Bimala’s sexual involvement with Sandip, along with the financial and moral

support that she provides him makes her an accomplice in Sukhsayor’s devastation.

Her political complicity is integrally bound to her sexual involvement with him.

Bimala’s and Sandip’s third meeting follow his failure to convince the traders of Sukhsayor

to adopt swadeshi. Later, traders are attacked; their goods forcibly confiscated and set on fire.

Sandip conspires with the manager of Nikhilesh’s estate so that the traders’ boats are sunk

before the goods can even reach the market. Unlike Sandip who seems riddled with doubts,

Bimala is confident and self-possessed. There is a reversal of roles in the meeting. It is

Bimala who is now active and performative while Sandip sits captivated and transfixed.

Bimala will eventually discover that the ‘world’ that Sandip presents her is delusional.

It is not a window through which she can see the ‘world’ for herself. For the first time,

Bimala openly states her opposition to her husband’s politics and urges Sandip to continue

with his campaign in Sukhsayor. It is evident that she mistakenly attributes her husband’s

political stance to his ‘placid’ temperament. Bimala seems to attribute Nikhilesh’s ‘placidity’

to a lack of male aggression. Conversely, she mistakes Sandip’s aggressive posturing with

virile political commitment. The emotional tenor shifts when Sandip refuses to disclose his

new political strategies since persuasion has failed in Sukhsayor.

Bimala feels insulted by Sandip’s inability to confide in her. In rage and humiliation,

she attempts to leave the room. Sandip rushes to block her path and clasps her hands in his

hands. During this moment of high passion, Bimala and Sandip exchange promises: she to
 35

see him that evening and at least once every day and he to take money from her when the

need arises.

During their next meeting Bimala’s involvement with Sandip and his politics becomes

complete and consequently irreversible. While Bimala, Nikhilesh and Amulya evolve with

the unfolding events, their self-representation in relation to others or themselves is never in

conflict. Sandip stands out by contrast. Impelled and driven by a schizophrenic impulse, he

allows different people and spaces to glimpse only fragments of his personality. In the

confessional space of the inner quarters Sandip sheds his disguises. To Bimala he confirms

the truth about his ruthless politics and to Nikhilesh he admits his sexual transgression.

Bimala’s love for Sandip is inextricable from her investment in swadeshi politics.

Similarly, Nikhilesh’s sense of loss is both personal and political. However, his sense of

moral outrage emerges, not from the fact of Bimala and Sandip’s relationship but from the

unethical political choices that they make.

 36

CHAPTER - IV

CONCLUSION

The Home and the World is a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, set against the political

and logistical nightmares of India’s 20th century caste system. Although the story focuses

on the dynamic of a marriage—which shifts when a shadowy outsider enters the lives of the

couple—much of the novel reads like a philosophical treatise. There are shifting viewpoints

between the characters Bimala, Nikhil, and Sandip, and much of the book comprises their

internal and external dialogues as they consider serious issues such as tradition, the roles of

men and women in Indian culture, the nature of political change, the occasional need for

violence in political activism, and other rhetorical exercises such as the weighing of the

public good.

As the novel begins, Bimala is happy with her life. She has married a good, kind

man who is educated and generous. She is content to worship him and accept his support in

all things. What she does not feel, however, is excitement. When the political firebrand

Sandip begins making speeches in their village, she is infatuated by his words, but also

stirred by some of his political ideas. She thinks of him constantly. Sandip, who is only

interested in pursuing his own desires and climbing the social strata, does nothing to

discourage her interest in him.

Her husband, Nikhil, sees what is happening, but is unwilling to intervene. Nikhil

believes that, if one is committed to living morally and thoughtfully, one can accept

whatever arises. He is sad that he feels like a burden to Bimala, but is determined to let her

make her own choices.

Bimala’s choices lead her to steal from Nikhil to raise money for Sandip’s cause,

money that he keeps for himself. Overcome with shame at how she has allowed a man who
 37

now disgusts her to cause such havoc in her life, Bimala must try to save her marriage,

support her country, and recommit herself to living by her conscience, not her passions. As

village unrest turns to outbursts of violence, the characters are all changed by the decisions

they must make.

Published in 1916, The Home and the World is a critically celebrated work with

themes that its author knows intimately. The novel is a striking example of the power of art

(and artifice) to edify—or destroy—causes, relationships, and possibly an entire country.

There are three distinctive views upon nationalism presented in this novel through the

key characters, Nikhil, Bimala and Sandip. Nikhil represents the moderate view on

nationalism. He represents the ideology of Rabindranath Tagore. He carries the most

perception of the nation in Tagore’s point of view. On the other hand, Sandip represents the

extreme nationalist view. Between these two distinctive views, Bimala represents the

dilemmatic view on Nationalism. Tagore also depicts India in the form of a woman, Bimala.

Bimala is portrayed as the physiological and psychological resemblance of the nation. This

novel signifies those ideological conflicts could happen everywhere, even in the inside of a

house.

In The Home and the World, the caste structure underlies all of the conflicts as the

novel focuses on the question of what is good for a country. The answer appears simple: the

good of its citizens. But when a country’s citizens do not share equality, those without

wealth and power have no say in defining what is good or bad. They must accept the

decisions of the ruling castes.

Nikhil truly wants what is good for the country. He is the one who refuses to be

pressured into a premature embrace of Swadeshi, knowing that it is unrealistic and would

do more economic harm than good. He is unwilling to take a symbolic stand for the

temporary appearance of change. Sandip, on the other hand, preaches fiery patriotism
 38

without believing much of what he says. His concern is not for the good of the country, but

in using rhetoric as a means to enrich himself and raise his position. Ultimately, in The

Home and the World, the pursuit of what is good for the country leads to the acts of

violence that conclude the novel.

The Home and the World tells us not only of the personal struggles of the three main

characters, but also little details of the family structure and what traditional Indian households

were like. At the opening of the novel, Bimala is a traditional, obedient house wife who is

faithful to her husband, even forcing herself to be respectful towards her nagging sister-in-

law. "I would cautiously and silently get up and take the dust of my husband's feet without

waking him, how at such moments I could feel the vermilion mark upon my forehead shining

out like the morning star" (HATW, Pg.11).

However, as she falls "in love" with Sandip, she slowly weans herself from her

traditional housewife role. She becomes more daring, more confidently brushing off her

sister-in-law's criticisms, crossing outside the women's quarter of the house, and easily

conversing with a man, Sandip, who is not her husband. Through her change from the good

house wife to an independent, she becomes modern woman.

Nikhil is seen and described as an educated and gentle man. He is from Kulin

aristocratic family of landlords, and his family prides themselves in beautiful women.

However, Nikhil is different in that he married not only a poor woman, but also one who has

black complexion. He is also unpopular in the town because he has not joined them stating, "I

am not running amuck crying Bande Mataram” (HATW, Pg.44).

In light of this, the police also suspect him of harbouring some "hidden protest." In

reality, Nikhil considers himself to be more aware of his country's role in a broader sense,

and refuses to take part in Swadeshi. Bimala is described as not very pretty and from a much

humbler background than Nikhil. She loves her husband dearly, and enjoys being completely
 39

devoted to him. At the beginning of the novel, she seems to be confined to the traditional

female role, and has no thoughts of entering the real world, even with persuasion from her

husband. Her feelings make a rapid change with the occurrence of the Swadeshi movement,

due to Sandip's radical influence.

Her knowledge of so-called modernity is the homemade product. She loses her voice

and presence as a passive, obsessed entity:

I felt that my resplendent womanhood made me indeed a goddess. Why should

not its glory flash from my forehead with visual brilliance? Why does not my

voice find a word, some audible cry, which would be like a sacred spell to my

country for its fire initiation? (HATW, Pg.87)

It seems that the more Bimala talks, the more invisible she becomes, as she just

mimics vocabularies and thoughts of others. Figuratively, such a state shows that the body

and mentality of Indian women are occupied by the nationalist rhetoric of modernity and

tradition at once; they talk and think in terms and points of nationalisms and not as beings

with individual authority and agency. Mimicking vocabularies and thoughts of others, Bimala

suggests that she acts like the passive receiver of the nationalist projects and naively accepts

the separate order of the World, on the one hand, and the Home, on the other, as the distinct

truth.

Sandip is the third major character in the novel, completing the love triangle. He is a

guest in the home of Nikhil and Bimala and his revolutionary ideas and speeches have a

significant impact on Bimala. He is very vocal in his anti-imperialistic views and is a skilled

orator. Sandip represents characteristics that are directly opposite to those Nikhil possesses,

thus drawing Bimala to Sandip. Bimala gets caught up in the ideas that Sandip presents as

well as the man himself. Her seemingly increasing patriotism causes her to spend more and

more time with Sandip, thereby solidifying the love triangle conflict.
 40

Bimala considers Amulya to be her adoptive son, whom she met from the Swadeshi

Movement. When first they meet, Bimala asks him to acquire money for their cause. He lists

schemes and plans, to which Bimala replies "you must not be childish" (HATW, Pg.173).

After pondering their situation, Amulya resolves to murder the cashier for the money.

Tagore uses him to symbolise the raw emotion and passion, yet lack of sympathy for others

often encompassed by group or riot mentality. Amulya struggles, as any youth, between

completing the goals of the movement and developing strong relationships on an individual

level, such as with Bimala; this is made extremely difficult by Sandip's powerful influence.

Nikhil and Sandip have extremely different views for the growth of the nation. Nikhil

demonstrates these beliefs in marrying Bimala, a woman considered "unattractive" as a result

of her dark skin color. In the novel, Nikhil talks about disliking an intensely patriotic nation,

"Use force? But for what? Can force prevail against Truth?" (HATW, Pg.48).

On the other hand, Sandip has contrasting views for the growth of the nation believing

in power and force, "My country does not become mine simply because it is the country of

my birth. It becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force" (HATW, Pg.48).

The contradicting views of Nikhil and Sandip set up the story and construct a

dilemma for Bimala. Unfortunately for Nikhil, he has already tried to show Bimala the

outside world, and stir some sort of emotion within her since the beginning of the novel, and

failed. Sandip possesses great oratory skill that wins Bimala over simply because of his

passion and ferocity, something that her husband may lack.

The tragic inconclusiveness’ of the two young men’s ideas of nation and womanhood

is foreground-ed to show how their visions are inscribed within two kinds of masculinities as

well as different conceptions of freedom. Education and social class contribute their part

towards the contradictions of modernity that both men grapple with, and the consensus that
 41

binds both within a common culture needs also to be appreciated in order to delve into their

differences.

Just as the background of a painting is as important a part of the picture as the

characters in the foreground, the novels that deal with the marginal and outcaste characters

such as Panchu and Mirjan add an invaluable element to our understanding of the novel.

Sumanta Banerjee feels, “Hovering behind the scenes of the emotional and political tensions

within the Nikhilesh-Bimala-Sandip triangle is the Bengal peasantry”.

To show how Rabindranath arrived at his novelistic depictions, he brings to our

attention Rabindranath’s own role as a zamindar and his own relationship with the poor and

the dispossessed on his estates. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s essay, “Understanding Panchu”, is

in fact one of the outstanding contributions to this volume for the insight it gives us into the

politics propagated by the Namasudras and the Rajbansis in east and north Bengal in this

period. Airbrushed out of history text books, the aspirations of a whole swathe of the

population (whose sole representative in the novel is Panchu) is shown to have ignited a

resistance to mainstream politics that becomes more significant in this light.

The Muslims and the Dalit groups both supported the partition of Bengal because they

saw in it an opportunity to improve their condition; going against the grain of the emotive

nationalism of swadeshi was not a choice but an inevitable precondition of advancement for

these groups. Indicative of “a cata-strophic lacuna in the process of imagining our nation”,

the failure to integrate Dalits and Muslims into the dominant nationalist agenda spelt doom

then, and continues to do so today.

Guided by history, this is a volume, then, that treats the social, the political, and the

historical contexts of Rabindranath’s novel as all-important, treating these issues with the

attention they no doubt deserve. In their under-standing of Ghare Baire, these essayists are
 42

guided altogether by history, but in doing so, they would do well to remember Rabindranath’s

own injunction in Sahitye.

I n t he case o f The Home and t he World , T agore’s staunch views on

Nat ionalism act as the ult imate referent for the Swadeshi movement. Tagore

believed that the boycott of cheap British goods in favour of expensive Indian goods was

harming the interests of the poor. The ones who suffered the most were Muslim peasants and

traders at the hands of wealthy Hindu landowners and politicians. However, what Tagore

seems to have disregarded in the narrative were the patriotic feelings nourished by many

Indians who joined the lines of the Swadeshi in order to resist the colonial power.

These elements have to do with the way in which Nationalism is understood in the

West and the way they have affected the India devoid of all politics, the India of no nations,

whose one ambition has been to know this world as of soul. Nikhil and Sandip understand the

concept of patriotism that should lead to an independent Bengal from different and excluding

perspectives. As in the case of Swadeshi, however, Tagore, once again, seems to retreat into a

more conservative position, and Bimala is chastised for her choices and decisions.

Though the novella is organized in chapters, each chapter is organized in stories

through which each one of the characters dramatize their views on the conflict and, indirectly,

Tagore depicts his own inner struggle with the Indian crisis. In this way, the element of

orality akin to pre-colonial Indian literature pervades the narrative, lending to it a distinct

Indian cadence. This stylistic device is highly functional in the sense that Tagore seems to

adopt a multi-layered perspective to recreate Bengali society at a moment of crisis and

transition, when the different views and attitudes on the boycott of foreign goods were tearing

the community apart. Nevertheless, the radicalization of the two male characters, Nikhil and

Sandip, the first representing good and the second representing evil, seems to cancel their

desire of equanimity in the narrative.

 43

This novel reveals several aspects of the conflict of ideologies including the conflict

of gender and nationalism. This novel represents Tagore’s perspective in seeing the effect of

swadeshi to India. Furthermore, we can conclude that this novel reveals the political

happenings and ideological conflicts which are taking place in the society as the result of

modernization and British colonization. This revelation can be seen in the way Tagore

contrasts the views of western ideology and eastern ideology through the characters Nikhil,

Sandip and Bimala. Hence, the novel is very much related to the political atmosphere that

prevailed in the country during the first decade of the twentieth century. Ultimately, in The

Home and the World, the pursuit of what is good for the country leads to the acts of

violence that conclude the novel.

 44

WORKS CITED

PRIMARY SOURCE:

Tagore, Rabindranath. The Home and the World. Wisdom Tree, New Delhi, 2016.

SECONDARY SOURCES:

Anil, Purnima and Sandhya Saxena and Jaba Kusum Singh. Political Novel – The Beaten

Track and the Path Ahead. Aadi Publications, New Delhi, 2012, p.50.

Datta, P.K., editor. Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World – A critical

companion. Permanent Black, India, 2002, pp.1-106.

Dua, Shyam, editor. The Luminous Life of Rabindranath Tagore. Tiny Dot Publications,

New Delhi, 2006, pp.1-5.

Ghose, Sisirkumar. Rabindranath Tagore. Sahitya Akademi, India, 1986, p.75.

Kripalani, Krisha. Tagore – A Life. National Book Trust, India, 1986, pp.135-157.

Long, William J. English Literature – Its History and its Significance for the life of the

English Speaking World. AITBS Publishers, India, 2015, p.72.

Ray, Mohit K. The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Atlantic Publishers and

Distributors, New Delhi, 2007, pp.45-47

 45

Sali, Sudhakar T, Dr. Indian Writing in English. Chandralok Prakashan, Kanpur, 2013,

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