Table Of Content~
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RIGHTEOUS REpUBLIC
The Political Foundations
of Modern India
ANANYA VAJPEYI
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2012
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,..,
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For
ROOPA VAjPEYI
miitii gurutarii bhume~
"The mother is weightier than the earth"
and
KAILASH VAjPEYI
khiitpitoccatara~
"The father is taller than the sky"
Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vajpeyi, Ananya.
Righteous republic: the political foundations of modern India /
Ananya Vajpeyi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-04895-9 (alk. paper)
I. Political science-India-Philosophy-History.
2. India-Politics and government-Philosophy.
3. Self-determination, 'Jational-India.
4. Nationalism-India. 1. Title.
jA84.I4V23 2012
320.0954-dC23 2012005074
.....
.
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Contents
PREFACE: The Searchfor the SelfinModern India IX
INTRODUCTlON: Swaraj, the Selfs Sovereignty
1. MOHANDAS GANDHI: Ahimsa, the Self's Orientation 49
2. RABINDRANATH TAGORE: Viraha, the Self's Longing 88
3. ABANINDRANATH TAGORE: Samvega, the Self's Shock 127
4. jAWAHARLAL NEHRU: Dharma, the Selfs Aspiration,
and Artha, the Self's Purpose 168
5. BHIMRAO AMBEDKAR: Du~kha, the Self's Burden 208
CONCLUSION: The Sovereign Self, Its Sources and Shapes 243
ApPENDIXES
A: The Indexical Complexity ofTagore's Meghdut 253
B: Thirteenth Rock Edict of Asoka 255
C: The State Emblem ofIndia
(Prohibition ofImproper Use) Act, 2005 257
D: From Ambedkar's Published Introduction to
The Buddha and His Dhamma 258
E: From "Gospel of Equality: The Buddha and the
Future ofHis Religion," '950
260
NOTES 263
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
291
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
321
INDEX 327
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Preface
The Search for the Self in Modern India
Reflect on the crisis of the self as a crisis in the tradition which has formed the self.
Alasclair Maclntyre, The Tasks ofPhilosophy
From the last two decades ofthe nineteenth century until the middle ofthe
twentieth century, Indians saw themselves as engaged in a struggle for
swaraj. What is swara}? This word, understood widely across many modern
Indian languages, meant "political independence" (i.e., freedom from colo
nial rule, an end to the British Empire). The Sanskrit form whence swaraj is
derived has two elements: riijya, meaning "rule," "dominion," or "mastery,"
and swa, a reflexive partide meaning "of the self," "to do with the self," or
"having reference to the self." A common translation of swaraj in English,
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then, is "self-rule." The ambiguity in the exact nature of the ligature be
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I tween swa and raj. evident in the Sanskrit and preserved both in Indian lan
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guages and in English, results in two meanings: "rule by the self" and "rule
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over the self'-the "self" thus is either the subject of rule, or the object of
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I rule, or both the subject and the object at the same time. In the context of
India's anticolonial movements between 1885 and 1947, the word "swaraj"
thus signified India being able to recapture from the British the power to
rule over itself. It was to be a relationship ofthe selfwith the self-India was
to be the ruler; India was to be the ruled. In the simple story of Indian na
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III tionalism, after much effort and strife, this goal was achieved: on August 15.
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1947, British dominion over India ended; India became a free country. A
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historic transition was made, from British Raj that lasted from 1857 to 1947, of India. What was this India that possessed me and beckoned
to swaraj that began in 1947 and continues even today, to me continually, urging me to action so that we might realize
But who or what is the "self," the rule ofwhich was the prize that India's some vague but deeply felt desire ofour hearts? The initial urge
nationalists were after, for a good three or four generations? To say that the came to me, I suppose, through pride, both individual and na
"self" is "India" and "India" is the "self" is only to defer the question, for tional, and the desire, common to all men, to resist another's
next we would have to ask: What is India, the rule of which was the ulti domination and have freedom to live the life of our choice. It
mate goal ofIndian nationalism? Colonial India's political and cultural lead seemed monstrous to me that a great country like India, with a
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ers, who were in many cases also the principal intellectuals of their time, rich and immemorial past, should be bound hand and foot to a
grappled with this question in very serious ways, The history of India's de faraway island which imposed its will upon her. It was still more
colonization, so far, has focused for the most part on how the Indian nation monstrous that this forcible union had resulted in poverty and
alist elite understood raj, or political sovereignty, and how they came to degradation beyond measure. That was reason enough for me
wrest it back from their British rulers through both violent conflict and and others to act.
nonviolent resistance, spread out over about seven decades, culminating in But it was not enough to satisfy the questioning that arose
the foundation of the new nation-states of India and Pakistan. Many men within me. What is this India, apart from her physical and geo
and women were involved in this long struggle, which unfolded over large graphical aspects? What did she represent in the past; what gave
parts of South Asia, but it is unquestionable that a few names stand out strength to her then? How did she lose that old strength, and has
when we really want to identify those who led both the battle for sover she lost it completely? Does she represent anything vital now,
eignty and the search for the self. In this list, undoubtedly, among India's apart from being the home of a vast number of human beings?
founders we may count as first among equals Mohandas Karamchand Gan How does she fit in to the modern world?
dhi (1869-1948), Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), ]awaharlal Nehru (1889 This wider international aspect of the problem grew upon
1964), and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956). me as I realized ... how isolation was both undesirable and im
This book is about five men. Four ofthem fought to regain India's sover possible. The future that took shape in my mind was one ofinti
eignty, and the fifth, Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), a prominent artist mate co-operation ... between India and the other countries....
and close associate ofmany leading nationalists, posed a question neglected But before the future came, there was the present, and behind
by most historians: What constitutes India's "self"? What is the substance of the present lay the long and tangled past, out of which the pres
the "swa" in "swaraj"? When we say "India," what do we mean? In my view, ent had grown. So to the past I looked for understanding.]
these five founders expended an equal amount ofenergy thinking about self
and sovereignty, though it is only the latter quest that we hear about in most In these three short paragraphs, Nehru adumbrates every theme necessary
historical accounts, while the former has so far not been examined very much. to chart my main argument. The nationalist intellectual-here Nehru
A classic formulation of the problem can be found in ]awaharlal Nehru's himself-having had his early education and a variety of personal experi
celebrated book The Discovery ofIndia-part memoir, part history, and part ences (described in this instance in chapters 1 and 2 ofThe Discovery ofIndia),
political treatise-at the very beginning of the third chapter, tellingly titled comes into political maturity by becoming "engaged in activities which
"The Quest": promised to lead to India's freedom." The quest for India's freedom is the
firmament against which we can see the very horizon of the political. But
As I grew up and became engaged in activities which promised even as he is engaged in his political activities, the freedom fighter becomes
to lead to India's freedom, I became obsessed with the thought "obsessed with the thought of India." He struggles to define his telos, the
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object that urges him to action, that possesses him, that beckons to him the answer has to come from the past, then, suggests Nehru, before colonial
continually-"What was this India ... ?" he asks. He recognizes that ini ism, when India was a "great country," strong, free, and self-ruling. Maybe
tially his urge to seek India's freedom came from a common desire, shared India can only be defined with a reference to a time when it was still "vita!,"
by all human beings, regardless of India's particular circumstances, to be not half-dead from "poverty and degradation beyond measure," listlessly
our own masters and to bow to no one in living "the life ofour choice." Lib lying there "bound hand and foot" to another nation and its will to power.
erty, in Nehru's understanding, is a universal human aspiration. For what troubles Nehru is that he cannot see an evident relationship be
More specifically, he knows that he first felt prompted into political ac tween India and her own prior self, on the one hand-"that old strength,"
tion by the fact of British imperialism, by the shameful and intolerable cir now lost, perhaps completely-nor, on the other hand, can he see the relation
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cumstance of India being "bound hand and foot to a faraway island which ship between India and any other country in the world-"the wider interna
imposed its will upon her" and, moreover, by the "poverty and degradation" tional aspect ofthe problem:' as he calls it. At the present moment, the only
that this"forcible union" ofmaster and slave, colonizer and colonized, had thing he can discern about India is India's relationship with Britain, which is
produced in India, once a "great country ... with a rich and immemorial one of servitude and oppression; a relationship that denies India her right to
past." Nehru acts out of injured "pride, both individual and national"; he self-determination and robs Indians of their self-respect. For India not to be
becomes involved in nationalist politics because his own personal sense of isolated in the future, she has to have both a sense ofself-a self-image that is
self-respect, as an educated and cognizant Indian who belongs to the ruling clear and a self-knowledge that is confident-and the motivation for "inti
classes, is threatened, and because the dignity ofthe political community to mate cooperation" with other countries of the world. For the moment
which he belongs-that ofIndians as an incipient nation-has been violated "before the future came, there was the present"-Nehru faces a wall. He
through the wrongful imposition ofthe domineering will ofthe small, dis confronts what he encounters. He does not know the answer to the question
tant island of Britannia upon the entire subcontinent of India. In other that keeps on bothering him, that he has raised twice already without making
words, Nehru and others like him (whom he does not name) have plenty of any headway: "What is this India?" He has some inkling, though, that the
reason to engage in anticolonial activity. The chain of cause and effect is answer lies in history, in the earlier time when India still had her vitality and
straightforward-colonial rule prompts nationalist resistance that is both her greatness, her capacity for self-rule-"the long and tangled past, out of
universally human and specifically Indian, realized in the actions ofJawahar which the present had grown." The answer to Nehru's persistent question
lal Nehru the individual as well as of millions of other patriotic, freedom does not appear to be coming from the given reality, the colonial rule that
loving Indians who chafe against foreign domination. constitutes India's miserable present, nor from India's status in the modern
Nationalism, though perfectly justified, is, however, "not enough to sat world, which is currently nil. All signs seem to point in just one direction.
isfy the questioning that arose" within Nehru. He has found a rationale and Nehru makes a call: "So to the past I looked for understanding."
an explanation for the widespread politics of anticolonial resistance that is Nehru was not alone. All five of the founders discussed in my study
consuming him and all ofIndia, but still the question has not been answered: Gandhi, the Tagores, Nehru, and Ambedkar-Iooked to the past for under
"What is this India ... ?" Yes, India has a spatial definition: a finite area it cov standing. Understanding what? Understanding the self whose sovereignty
ers, specific features ofthat land, and fixed territorial boundaries, but surely they sought; understanding the India that was in their time ruled by the
"physical and geographical aspects" are inadequate as answers, as is the huge British but that once had been free in the past and once again would be free
population inhabiting this expanse, or the fact of India being "the home of a in the future. If the quest for swaraj were only the quest for raj, then it
vast number ofhuman beings." Although there is a sense in which they em wouldbehalfaquest. Ifthestoryofthequestforswaraj wereonlythestory
pirically exist and are verifiable, in truth neither cartographic territory nor ofthequestforraj, thenitwouldbeonlyhalfthe story. I tryto tellthe story
sheer population can, in and ofitself, be the "what" ofwhat India is. Perhaps ofthe search for the self in modern India, the swa in swaraj, seeking which
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the founders delved deep into the texts, monuments, traditions, and histo theorists ofhistory. An excellent example ofan extremely long-running and
ries ofIndia, "rich and immemorial" in Nehru's resonant words. They under fecund knowledge tradition in India, one ofthe greatest the world had ever
stood, each one in his own way and by his own unique formula comprised seen, going into an irreversible decline and coming to a more or less com
in equal parts of intellectual engagement and political judgment, that raj plete end by the middle of the nineteenth century, has been laid out at
would have to be found in the future, that swa would be discovered in the length by Sheldon Pollock and his colleagues. At first Pollock called it "The
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past, and that the effort made in the present was itselfthe necessary but for Death ofSanskrit," though the historical description has been slowly deep
ever ambiguous ligature between past and future, between swa and raj, be ening and growing to encompass the state ofSanskrit knowledge (as a total
tween self and sovereignty. "What is this India?" they all asked; or, put an ity) on the eve of colonialism, which showed remarkable elements offlash
other way, "What is Indian self-rule the rule 00" In other words, to come ing newness and flaring renewal as well, in an overall and inexorable trend
full circle, we are back to the question, but this time the complete and not toward extinction. Colonialism and its forms of knowledge were only
the partial question: What is swaraj? partially to blame for what happened to Sanskrit-Pollock's essay was never
The philosopher Alasdair Macintyre-whose work, particularly on the titled "The Rape ofSanskrit." At least some ofthe degeneration and exhaus
theory of "tradition," on the crises that traditions face, and on the processes tion of the tradition was the result ofits own peculiar historical trajectory,
by which traditions confront those crises, informs this study ofIndia's search its uniquely encumbered entrance into and swift, painful exit from what we
for the self-has written that "a crisis in the self is a crisis in the tradition may call, as a convenient shorthand form (and with a nod to the single most
which has formed the self." Treating this as an axiomatic statement (what in important text ofthe Sanskrit language, the Mahabharata), the dice game of
Sanskrit philosophical systems is called a sutra-vakya), let us look at the pre modernity.
dicament of Indian intellectuals, especially those who were also nationalist The atrophy of Sanskrit was but one symptom of the crisis. Indian sci
thinkers and political leaders, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen ence and mathematics, which had in two mi11ennia, the one preceding and
turies. They experienced a crisis in the self. The swa of swaraj was unclear; the one following Christ, given to the world many ofits fundamental start
the subject (rule by X) and object (rule over X) ofanticolonial politics, or the ing points for advanced theories across a wide array of diSciplines, also
"India" whose freedom was sought, remained undefined or underdeter ceased to be productive in the modern age, ceding the leadership role to
mined. This was true not just for the five figures I have chosen, but for the Europe, and thereby hastening the conquest ofAsia and Africa by the three
entire spectrum ofintellectuals during that period, running into hundreds if Cs-colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity. Indian political traditions,
not thousands ofmen and women who comprised the founding generations. broadly speaking ofa mixed Hindu and Islamic character, as theorized and
Nehru's first-person account was considered so truthful and so moving when practiced in the precolonial kingdoms ofthe Mughals, the Deccani Sultans,
it came out, on the cusp of Independence, precisely because it gave voice to the Nayakas, the Marathas, the Rajputs, and the Sikhs, among others, were
the unspoken sentiments ofliterally every major or minor, famous or unrec severely delegitimized and weakened, not to say destroyed, through the
ognized Indian nationalist who had struggled for swaraj any time in the gradual colonization of much of India by the East India Company between
preceding three-quarters of a century. The feeling that there was a crisis of 1757 and 1857, followed by the dramatic defeat ofthe Indian rebels by British
selfhood was ubiquitous. forces in the mutiny of 1857 and the decisive establishment of the Crown
This widespread crisis of the self, to follow Macintyre's lead, was the Raj from 1858 onward. By the time men like Gandhi came ofage, the rout of
result ofthe fact that the traditions that had formed the selfhood ofIndians Indian traditions ofeither thinking about the political or practicing politics
in the centuries leading up to colonial rule were themselves in a severe state was so complete that we find at one stage India's nationalist elite consisting
of crisis. Partly they had atrophied from internal decay or entropic logics of men (for it was almost entirely men, and practically no women, until
about which very little, still, is understood by historians of knowledge or much later) who were schooled purely in Western political thought. Except
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for the color of their skin, they could in no way be distinguished from the India to find himself, and to find India to come into himself: the two pro
liberals, conservatives, socialists, Marxists, and eventually Fascists and cesses were the same.
Communists ofEurope and Anglo-America. A good indication ofthe extent to which nationalist intellectuals became
Indian traditions of theorizing the self-a great deal ofSanskrit philoso unmoored from all established protocols for the authorization ofknowledge
phy could be described as having this function-and Indian traditions oftheo whether knowledge about the self, or knowledge about sovereignty, or in
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rizing sovereignty-Sanskritic, Islamic, or other-were therefore effectively deed knowledge about any other matter of let us say a moral or political
unavailable to India's nationalist intellectuals when they started to try and description-is, for example, the sudden proliferation ofmodern commentar
figure out the meaning ofswaraj, its subject, its object, and its purpose as the ies and critiques on a traditional text like the Bhagavad Gttii, by men like
marker of the principal political project of their age. Many of them were not Bankimchandra, Tilak, Aurobindo, and Gandhi himself, not to mention Vive
just formed, but also persuaded by the tenets ofliberal politics-they became kananda, Savarkar, and Ambedkar. One way to understand this remarkable
enthusiastic students and later passionate proponents of egalitarianism, de phenomenon is that their exposure to Western modernity gave to these men
mocracy, and liberty. They did not think to turn to Indian traditions, in what the requisite insouciant confidence to pick up and read an ancient and difficult
ever state of survival, flourishing or disrepair, as legitimate sources of au text according to their own lights. Another way to understand it is to see that
thority on almost any matter concerning modern life, whether that of the they had no choice but to take on a text like this on their own, barehanded, as
individual or ofthe community as a whole. ("Religion" and "custom" were it were, for there no longer existed the entire edifice of traditional learning
supposedly the last bastions of native identity and indigenous pride to hold with its scholastic, religious, and popular authority to provide any kind of
out against the West, but even these began to undergo, inevitably, some kind structured and systematic access to the recondite meaning ofthis text. There
of modernization or other through the mechanisms of "secularization" in was literally nowhere else to turn, except the book itself-sometimes medi
duced from the outside and internal reform driven by self-criticism.) ated, ironically (and if at all), by translations into English, such as Edwin Ar
Educated at Harrow and Eton, Oxford and Cambridge, London and Edin nold's Song Celestial-as European Indology stepped in to replace the fugitive
burgh, Indian youth from elite families were taught to think like Englishmen, Sanskrit traditions.
and indeed they did, creating a class that they would eventually come to dis Elsewhere Indian mutineers had already made the bitterly disappointing
parage, at moments of self-hatred, as "brown sahibs." They were estranged discovery that Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal, was emperor only ofthe
from Indian traditions by both force of habit and free choice; by the persis realm ofpoetry: he had neither the political vision nor the material resources
tent condescension of their white masters and by their own growing skepti ofhis fabulously wealthy ancestors, who had in the sixteenth century been
cism about the value ofwhatever was Indian; by the empirical vanishing of the richest and most powerful monarchs on the planet, to offer to those who
entire cultures of Indian knowledge and by their own migration, in spirit if looked to him to stand up to the coming colossus of the British Empire. A
not in body, to more "cosmopolitan" parts of the world. Some other history "faraway island," having swallowed India whole, became the whale inside
of Indian nationalism will one day look at the young Rabindranath's home which sat the entire leadership of the future nation-state, unable to recall,
schooling and abandoned English education; the young Aurobindo's return recapture, or reconstruct the vast ocean-the past "rich and immemorial"
to India to teach himself Sanskrit and Bengali, overwriting the Greek and that had once been India's reality-unable to swim out into the wide deep
Latin he had studied in England; the middle-aged Gandhi's complete change waters ofthe traditions that had once been their own. The crisis of the self,
of dress and personal appearance as he silently traveled the length and we noted, is a crisis in the tradition that has formed the self.
breadth ofIndia upon his return from South Africa; and countless other such The nationalist elite experienced the crisis in Indian traditions as a crisis
episodes ofa "turn" and a "return" that punctuated and in some cases punc for two reasons, the first being that many of these traditions had gone into
tured these lives. Each of these men and many others, too, had to come to decline and were in the process of lapsing into incoherence. The second
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reason for this profound sense ofcrisis was that Indian intellectuals at the end turned to Hindu (Vai~lJava) texts, say the RamayalJa, the Ramcaritmanas, the
ofthe nineteenth century had become in many ways insiders relative to West Bhagavad Gfta, or the devotional songs ofthe medieval bhakti poets ofnorth
ern political traditions, especially liberalism. The problem was a very difficult ern and western India, what he sought from them was a moral-possibly
one. They could not turn to Indian traditions in any simple sense, because even a didactic-vision that could help an individual to cultivate self-mastery
these had foundered. Nor could they turn away from Western traditions, be and acquire self-knowledge, and at the same time regulate the affective life of
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cause these had become familiar and acceptable, even desirable. And yet many communities. Ritualism, the rigidly hierarchical relations of caste society,
Indian thinkers could see that it would not be possible to continue in limbo for the authority of orthodox Brahmins, and dry scholasticism-the very as
very much longer. European ideas, while backed by the political power ofthe pects ofIndian religions that had come in for severe criticism from the mod
colonial state and reinforced by the globally dominant paradigm ofcapitalist ern West-were discarded by Gandhi as well, though he did cling stub
modernity, were not socially embedded in the Indian milieu. Gandhi recog bornly, for a variety of reasons, to social conservatism in some respects
nized this with the greatest clarity and was consequently able to introduce (including patriarchal caste strictures), much to the irritation ofhis critics.
into mass politics a number ofnew concepts and tactics that drew intelligently The Tagores looked to religion-mainly the religious traditions found
on extant and remembered Indian political cultures. in their native Bengal, such as Sakta cults, Gaudiya Vaisnavism, Sahajiya
On the other hand, Indian traditions, weakened though they were, were Buddhism, Sufi Islam, certain kinds oftantric and yogic beliefs shared across
still seen as the repositories of a number of political norms, moral values, low-caste Hindu and Muslim groups, tribal systems, and Christianity-to
and aesthetic resources that, with some effort at revitalization and recalibra construct what Rabindranath called "the religion of man": a synthesis of
tion, would make sense to, and work for, ordinary Indians because they be universalism, humanism, and nature worship from which all traces oforga
longed within India's precolonial history and emerged from it into the colo nized religion had been removed. Tagore's grandfather and father, close to
nial moment. All five of the founders were acutely aware of the limits of Ram Mohan Roy, had been the founders and proponents ofa new reformist
European liberalism in an Indian political context, as well as the residual Bengali sect called the Brahmo Samaj, loosely based on the tenets ofAdvaita
normative appeal of Indian traditions to the people of India. The five men Vedanta and Unitarianism. But Rabindranath Tagore never quite stayed
had different strengths-Gandhi focused on everyday lived experience and within this fold, being too inventive and too individualistic to be able to fit
techniques of self-discipline, the Tagores on poetry and the arts, Nehru on into a given system, even one that originated in his own family. By instinct
politics proper, and Ambedkar on legal and juridical scholarship. But each he was suspicious ofthe esoteric dimensions ofmost ofthe religions preva
one, I argue, entered into a prolonged engagement with Indian traditions in lent in Bengal and distanced himself especially from orgiastic practices in
search of sources of the self, a move without which none of them would volving animal sacrifice; the consumption of meat, alcohol, and hallucino
have been able to restore the delicate balance within swa and raj, the two gens; rituals that incorporated sexual activity; and other extreme forms of
terms that together (and inseparably) defined the project ofnationalism. either corporeal indulgence or self-mortification. Even his vaunted love for
All five of the founders under discussion here had to some degree at Baul poetry and music came after he had made a highly selective, sanitized,
tempted to plumb the depths ofIndia's past, but it is notable that they did not and stylized interpretation ofBaul praxis. Abanindranath Tagore was rela
go in any obvious or direct way to the religious traditions that were, accord tively more willing to explore the emotional states (bhava), imaginative play
ing to Orientalist wisdom, supposed to be India's mainstay, the heart ofwhat (lila), and aesthetic essences (rasa) associated with the characters, narratives,
India was about. In this sense the relationship of these five to tradition was and rituals ofdifferent religious traditions. Besides, he was interested in the
completely distinct from that of say, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Au history ofreligions in India because it provided him with a parallel history
robindo on the one hand; Bankim, Bhartendu, Tilak, and Savarkar on the , of Indian art and architecture over the COurse ofmore than two millennia.
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other hand; and Iqbal and Azad in yet another direction. When Gandhi Unlike his uncle, Abanindranath came from the Hindu rather than the
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