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"Many Paths": Reading Rabindranath Tagore’s The
Waterfall (Muktadhara)
Widely recognized as Tagore’s finest dramatic work, The
Waterfall (Muktadhara, 1922) has been interpreted as a symbolic play
that indicates Tagore’s admiration for Gandhi and his rejection of the machine
in favour of the spirit of life. The character of Dhananjoy Bairagi has been
seen as a representation of the non-violent spirit of Gandhi and the play has
been read as Tagore’s nationalist critique of colonial exploitation.1
This paper seeks to interrogate these readings to suggest that the play is a far
more complex work that has several rough edges which display Tagore’s
problematic interactions with science, the concept of nation and the emergence
of his cosmopolitan outlook.
Together with The Red Oleanders, The Waterfall
has been seen as part of the third phase of Tagore’s dramatic career where he
predominantly relied on the symbolic mode.2 The
Waterfall (Muktadhara) is place in an imaginary location Chitrakoot,
ruled by the dictatorial King Ranajit. Chitrakoot is dependent for its financial
might on Shiv-tarai and consequently Ranajit attempts to control it by denying
its people water by building a dam across the waterfall Muktadhara. The play
charts the hostilities between the citizens of the two areas and the non-violent
resistance to Ranajit by the enigmatic singer and sanyasi, Dhananjoy
Bairagi. Lurking in the background is the gigantic machine built by the royal
engineer Bibhuti that towers above the temple of Bhairava. The heir to the
throne Abhijit, a foundling adopted by the king, learns that he was discovered
by the side of the waterfall and nurtures a deep association with the free
flowing Muktadhara. His love for the freedom of the waterfall and his refusal to
allow the King to exploit the people of Shiv-tarai, prompts him in the climax of
the play, to demolish the machine and let loose the force of the waterfall; in
the process he too is swept away.
The context of the composition of the play is to be noted.
Tagore wrote it in 1922, immediately after his return from America where he had
severely criticized the idea of the nation and the spirit of nationalism. He
viewed nationalism as a diabolical force, or "the one goblin-dread with which
the whole world has been trembling"3 and considered it to be a highly
intoxicating and addictive sentiment that breeds radicalism and passionate
excitement in people. Comparing nationalist zeal and religious fanaticism, in
that they both mutilate the sense and sensibility of the individual and nations,
in a letter from New York, dated 20 December 1920, he wrote: "Formalism in
religion is like nationalism in politics: it breeds sectarian arrogance, mutual
misunderstanding and a spirit of persecution".4 In a letter from
Stockholm, dated 27 May 1921, he explains:
The nations love their own countries; and that national love has only given rise to hatred and suspicion of one another …. When we hear Vande Mataram from the housetops, we shout to our neighbors: "You are not our brothers" …. Whatever may be its use for the present, it is like the house being set on fire simply for roasting the pig! Love of self, whether national or individual, can have no other destination except suicide.5
In a letter from Paris, dated 18 September 1920, he wrote in a
solicitous tone, referring to Gandhi: "I shall be willing to sit at his feet and
do his bidding if he commands me to cooperate with my countrymen in service and
love. I refuse to waste my manhood in lighting fires of anger and spreading it
from house to house".6 He subsequently added: "I love India, but my
India is an idea and not a geographical expression. Therefore, I am not a
patriot – I shall ever seek my compatriots all over the world".7
Indeed, Tagore’s opposition to Gandhiji’s non-cooperation
movement has been widely recognized and the disagreement would sharpen in their
debate on the Charkha.8 Unlike Gandhiji, Tagore was far more
receptive to the West and he held up Rammohun as an ideal of the pioneer in
accepting the positive values that the West had to offer.9 The noted
biographer of Tagore, Prasanta Chandra Pal suggests that when Tagore was writing
Muktadhara, he was trying to get over his disappointment with the fact
that his own ashramites were deeply fascinated with Gandhiji’s movement. Tagore
had steadfastly refused to allow Santiniketan to be embroiled in the political
struggle in India. Tagore was also deeply suspicious of the political mass
movements and felt that they did not have any lasting impact of social change.
In a letter to Rolland in May 1922 Tagore had already written:
What hurts me deeply is that nationalism has roused the minds of the people but has led it through a narrower channel, and by incessantly harping upon wrongs done to us and belittling cultures foreign to India has allowed their aim to get mixed up with passions that are evil. What hurts me deeply is the fact that this movement fails to draw its inspiration from a larger vision off humanity but on the contrary deliberately obscures it in the minds of its followers in order to intensify to a glowing red heat the consciousness of national individuality. I felt the utter loneliness of my position when I came back to India, longed for co-operation from men like yourself with whom I feel my kinship.10
Thus, Tagore’s Dhananjoy not only refuses to allow his
resistance to be engulfed by violence, he scrupulously attempts to remove the
antagonism between the residents of Shiv-tarai and
Dhananjoy: In order to avoid being hurt, you either hurt others, or else run away. Both are the same. Both are for brute beasts … That’s why your eyes are still red with passion and your voice lacks music.11
Tagore’s deep uneasiness at the way in which people were
blindly creating a frenzy of nationalism, without understanding the moral
significance of Gandhi’s teachings, can be located in Dhananjoy’s admonitions to
the villagers:
Dhananjoy: The more you try to cling to me while trying to swim, the more you forget your lessons in swimming, and also keep dragging me down. I must take my leave of you and go where nobody follows me … You rejoice to think, that you gain me and take no heed that you lose yourself! I cannot make good that loss! You put me to shame! … it’s better to love you and keep you free, than to love you and smother you by my love. (185)
In 1925, Tagore once again wrote to Rolland:
I wish it were possible for me to join hands with the Mahatma and thus at once and surrender myself to the current of popular approbation. But I can no longer hide it from myself that we are radically different in our apprehension and pursuit of truth.12
One should also note the fact that Tagore himself wrote about
borrowing the character of Dhananjoy Bairagi from an earlier play
Prayaschitto or The Atonement (1909) where he had already used
many of the songs. At that point of time, Gandhiji has just started his movement
in Africa and was largely unknown as a figure in India. Clearly, the influence
of Gandhiji on this play has been largely overstated; indeed, if he is present
in this play, there is an ironic undercurrent to this presence.
Tagore started writing this play in 1922 and on 6th
January, 1922 he wrote to Ranu Adhikary, "I have started writing a new play. I
want to perform it in Santiniketan."13 A month later he wrote to Ranu
again, "I have finished the play in a week … I have called this play, ‘Path’.
This play has an earlier character of mine, Dhanajoy Bairagi from my earlier
play The Atonement (Prayaschitto)".14 Tagore explained
his alternative title to Prasanta Chandra Mahalanabis later in a letter on 24
February, 1922:
I have revised the play a bit … The entire play is about the path … it is about the openings and closures of paths … in between the travel and the conversation, the message of time arrives intermittently. The entire play talks about the lure of the path and the events and the pain located beyond it. Those who have not understood this have tried to locate within this play the presence of Mahatma Gandhi and the strings of the charkha.15
Clearly Tagore was rejecting the interpretation of the play as
a comment on Mahatma Gandhi. Tagore reiterated this idea in a reading of the
play at the Rammohun Library in Kolkata to mark the founding of the
Visva-Bharati Sammilani (Visva-Bharati Society). This society was established to
disseminate the ideals of Visva-Bharati to a wider community of students; the
fact that Tagore chose to read it at this particular occasion reveals the
affinities between the play and the ideas of Visva-Bharati. Speaking before the
play, Tagore once again suggested, "This play is not an allegory for the
nationalist movement that is sweeping the country. The play is rather about
opening up paths for the broader convergence of all human
civilization".16 Taken in the context of Tagore’s disagreements with
Gandhi and his writings on Nationalism, these comments clearly indicate that
this play in general and Dhananjoy in particular was not based on Gandhi.
Two other factors need to be taken into consideration here. In
terms of the plot, Dhananjoy actually has little influence in the particular
destruction of the machine. It is Abhijit who finds the weakness in the machine
and destroys it at the cost of his own life. What Dhananjoy rather attempts is
to sensitize the people to the act of forbearance and renunciation through which
a broader understanding of the self can be had. He is also critical of the
boundaries between the residents of Chitrakoot and Shiv-tarai and seeks to unite
them. The ideal of bringing them together under the broader ideal of humanism
clearly replicates the ideal of Visva-Bharati and global co-operation that
Rabindranath had fervently pleaded for in his trip to America and Japan.
Dhananjoy is thus a mouthpiece of Tagore rather than Gandhi.
This is substantiated by the fact that Tagore uses the motif of
folk (Baul) music in Dhananjoy. Marjorie Sykes in her translation of
Muktadhara notices the numerous songs that seem to interrupt the play and
decides to omit them to tighten its structure:
It contains numerous mystical songs … some have been omitted
altogether as defying all ingenuity, and others reproduced only in part. Some
are included though the translation is imperfect, because they are dramatically
necessary.17
Sekhar Samddar notes that the use of music was a conscious
dramaturgical strategy that Tagore evolved to provide his plays with a salient
characteristic in opposition to the realist five-act structure of Western
drama.18 The presence of the songs ally Dhananjoy with Tagore in
their conviction that music, especially folk music could be used to gain
proximity to a broader section of the population and that this music could
create bonding among estranged communities. The poet- sanyasi Dhananjoy
thus echoes the poet-dramatist Tagore.
The other broad binary that has been read into the play is
between the forces of nature and the forces of the machine. This is largely
established in the stage directions of the exposition where the gigantic figure
of the machine seems to tower over the temple of Bhairav. The initial responses
to the machine talk about the ugliness of the edifice and there are strong
suggestions that human sacrifice has to be undertaken to bring the machine to
perfection. The figure of the desolate mother Amba and her search for her son
Suman develops the tone of pathos that highlights the monstrous aspect of the
machine. Even the King is uneasy at its size:
Ranajit: Don’t you see how the sun from behind it looks red with anger, and the machine appears like the menacing fist of a giant. It has not been at all proper to raise it so high. (176)
Yet the binaries are not so clearly identified. There are
sections where the engineer Bibhuti who has constructed this machine is given
the status of the creator and the hymn to the machine is sung out in direct
imitation to the song of Bhairav. There is an acknowledgement of the power of
the machine as an agent of transformation in these lines:
We salute the machine, the machine,
Loud with its rumbling of wheels,
Quick with its thunder flame,
Hurling against obstruction
Its fiery defiance
That melts iron, crushes rocks,
And drives the inert from its rest.
We salute the Machine, the Machine. (169)
The choice of Bhairav as the presiding deity in the play is
interesting. Bhairav represents within his body the eternal peace of Shiva, his
spirit of renunciation and simultaneously reminds us of the destructive powers.
The song of the machine reminds us that it has similar powers of destruction
akin to Shiva. However, the tale of exploitation that it generates is in direct
opposition to divinity.
The play seems fascinated with the immense power and potential
of the machine. The fact that the king decides to use the machine to deny the
people of Shiv-tarai and starve them into submission does not take away from the
fact that the power of the machine may be used for beneficial purposes. This
leads us to Tagore’s rather problematic interaction with modern science. Of all
the modern thinkers it was Tagore who realized the potential of technology to
ease the problems of the broader world population and he advocated its use:
If the cultivation of science by Europe has any moral significance, it is in the rescue of man from the outrage by Nature, not in its use of man as a machine but in its use of the machine to harness the forces of Nature in man’s service.19
Tagore’s syncretic and international mind also revolted against
India insulating itself from the progression of modern science: "No longer will
it be possible to hide ourselves away from commerce with the outside world.
Moreover such isolation itself would be the greatest of deprivations for
us."20 At Sriniketan, for example, Tagore decided to import machines
to facilitate agriculture. However, Tagore was also quick to realize the human
greed and exploitation that machines generated and linked it to the spirit of
nationalism and imperialism. The First World War fresh in memory, many of
Tagore’s texts reveal his profound dilemma about the use of science and
technology. The Waterfall is a dramatic enactment of this dilemma. It was
later in essays like Crisis in Civilization that we recognise
Rabindranath’s disillusionment with modern science as inevitably leading to
exploitation, human greed and avarice. In The Waterfall there is still a
substantial admiration for the machine. Time and again Tagore reminds that it is
human pride and the misuse that leads to the sufferings caused to man.
Tagore’s engagement with the machine and the practices it
generated was deep and philosophical. This can be observed in a letter to
Kalidas Nag that outlined the play’s treatment of this issue. Tagore wrote:
The machine is an important part of the play. This machine has injured the spirit of life and it is with this spirit that Abhijit has destroyed the machine, not with another machine. Those who exploit with the help of the machine make a drastic mistake – they kill the very humanity that is within them also – their own machine destroys their inner human self. Abhijit represents these men, the afflicted among the powerful, who destroy the machine to free themselves from the machine with which they destroy. Dhananjoy, on the other hand, represents the humanity which is being oppressed by the machine and his message clearly is that, "I will triumph because I will not allow the machine and its injuries to overcome my inner spirit". The tragedy is really of the man who uses the machine to injure: it is he who has to look for freedom from his own machine and destroy it if necessary.21
Clearly Tagore’s understanding of the tragedy of the man and
the machine was part of a broader understanding of Modern Europe struggling to
negotiate with the spirit of destruction that it had unleashed. In a brief essay
written in 1932, titled "Can Science be Humanized", Tagore expanded on this
idea. He begins by arguing that, "There is no meaning is such words as
spiritualizing the machine; we can spiritualise our own being which makes use of
the machine, just as there is nothing good or bad about our bodily organs, but
the moral qualities that are in our mind".22 He warned that the
forces of science had to be understood in all its complexity:
It is some great ideal which creates great societies of man; it is some blind passion which breaks them to pieces. They thrive so long as they produce food for life; they perish when they burn up life in insatiate self-gratification. We have been taught by our sages that it is truth and not things which saves man from annihilation.23
Tagore’s antidote was the creation of Visva-Bharati where he
imagined a space of plurality and tolerance, a space of shared knowledge, on a
plane of equality free from the dialectics of power.
The fact that Abhijit is revealed to be a foundling is
significant. As a foundling, his identity is not constrained either as a crown
prince of Chitrakoot or as a resident of Shiv-tarai. He can thus freely interact
with the two and seek the broader moral and material welfare of the two.
Tagore’s own idea of Visva-Bharati was to free itself from aligning with any
national culture. He thus called it Yatra Visvam Bhavatyeka Needam:
"where the world makes its home in a single nest". It was here that the power of
the European machine could meet the spirituality and the aim of renunciation and
service for a broader social and moral upliftment. It is to be noted that Tagore
did not merely create the binaries of a scientific Europe and a spiritual Asia.
He rather reminded Europe of its Christian heritage, witnessing within it the
highest possibility of renunciation and service. The east could merely remind
Europe and help it to rediscover and reunite this self. The Waterfall
thus emerges as one of Tagore’s most philosophical analysis of the interaction
between the man and the machine. Marjorie Sykes thus concludes:
His deep distrust of all government by machinery and of all prostitution of science to serve violence and oppression, his hatred of all politics which seek to make one tribe depedent on another instead of risking the gift of the fullest freedom … all these are so prominent that each may with justice be claimed as the play’s message.24
That his play had been taken largely as an allegory must have
disturbed Tagore. Muktadhara was never performed at Santiniketan and
later performers have noted the difficulty in organizing a rendering of the
play. Tagore sought to distance himself from the merely allegorical and symbolic
reading of the play in his brief note to the translation published in The
Modern Review in May 1922, explaining that Abhijit was the representation of
a concrete psychology:
While acknowledging that there is no great harm in holding the view that this play has some symbolical element in its construction, I must ask my readers to treat it as a representation of a concrete psychology. The crown prince Abhijit who is one of the principal characters in this drama suddenly comes to learn that he is a foundling picked up near the source of the Muktadhara. This unexpected revelation profoundly affects his mind, making him believe that he has a spiritual relationship with this waterfall; that its voice was the first voice which greeted him with a message when he came to the world. From that moment the fulfillment of that message becomes the sole aim of his life; which is to open out paths for the adventurous spirit of man … he comes out of the object of emancipating the prisoned water and his life at the same time. He achieves this with a supreme act of renunciation.25
One realizes now why Tagore renamed this play. The original
title ‘Path’ would have rendered this plays wholly allegorical, reducing it to a
mere message of uniting humanity and exploring the diversity of life. The title
Mukatadhara or The Waterfall alerts us to the deeper affinities
between character and setting, releasing an additional dramatic logic for the
action of the play. The symbolic and the dramatic closely interact to complement
each other. The characters of Amba, the various citizens, Biswajit and others
also add to this sense of the dramatic interplay of personalities around the
waterfall.
Referring to Krishna Kripalani’s comment that, "the
socio-political motif of the play, such there is, seems to dissolve at the end
in an undefined sense of mystic exaltation"26, Barnik Roy criticizes
The Waterfall to be structural failure because it neither draws out the
nationalist content nor the exploitative nature of modern
technology.27 This is explained by the fact that Tagore never
intended the play to be a Gandhian play of nationalist protest, nor was he
intent on merely dismissing the machine as evil in itself. The play traces the
tragedy of Abhijit and through it the determination of Tagore to follow the path
that leads beyond boundaries. Tagore was conscious of his alienation from the
broader nationalist movement; his determination to create Visva-Bharati as a
plural global space never wavered. In April 1922, just before The
Waterfall had been published, Tagore wrote a small poem for The Modern
Review:
Let the grey dust of the road be your nurse
May she take you up in her arms,
Lead you away from the clasp of clinging reluctance. 28
The Waterfall (Muktadhara) is a play that straddles
the spaces between any simplistic creation of binaries and allegories. It is
definitely not a play meant as a tribute to Gandhi. It rather articulates many
of Tagore’s ideas against the spirit of nationalism and highlights the ideals of
Visva-Bharati as a space of freedom and convergence. It is neither a simplistic
rejection of machine for a broader spiritual outlook; it emerges as one of the
most profound analysis of the tragedies and contradiction of the mechanical man.
It is also a tale of the formation of the self and the ways in which human
affinities are shaped by nature. The Waterfall (Muktadhara) was a
pivotal play in Tagore’s dramatic career combining dramaturgy, philosophy and
symbolism
