Aseem Shrivastava - Re-reading Tagore to Become Human
IN 1922, RABINDRANATH
TAGORE published one of his most important works, the play Mukta-Dhara.
The story, rich in symbolism, is a simple yet powerful one. A child of mysterious
birth is found abandoned by a mountain waterfall. He is adopted by the royal
family and raised as the crown-prince, Abhijit. As he turns into a young man,
Abhijit continues to feel close to the falls. He eventually learns that he is
not a prince by birth. He discovers a spiritual kinship with the falls. He goes
and sleeps below the waterfall at night. When asked by his father, King Ranjit,
why he does something so outlandish, he replies, “In the sound of this water, I
hear my mother’s voice.”
The king has other
designs on the mountain stream. He appoints an appropriately named figure,
Yantraraj Bibhuti, a famous, pompous engineer, to construct ‘a machine’ to
build a dam across it. Those building the dam sing an anthem to the machine,
chanting, ‘Namo yantra, namo yantra.’ When told about the damage
from the new dam to the fields of peasants in the valley below, Bibhuti boasts
that “the purpose of my dam was that human intelligence should win through to its
goal, though sand, stone and water all conspired to block its path. I had no
time to think of whether some farmer’s paltry crop of corn would die.” He lacks
the heart to consider the ‘collateral damage’ that the execution of his
technocratic ambition brings. He is captivated by the old dream of what digital
business commercials today call ‘building a smarter planet’.
All this upsets
Abhijit immensely and he joins the protesting villagers of Shivterai, the
valley of villages which is denied water after the dam comes up. The king is
also interested in getting the dam built since it would enable him to dominate
better the villagers in the Shivterai. He has his son arrested, but the
villagers set him free. The dam is completed. However, one night Abhijit breaks
open the dam at a weak spot. The released torrent of water carries him away. In
the cause of defending the waterfall and the people, he willingly sacrifices
his life. In the end, he is united with the waters that bore him and even the
king is forced to acknowledge regretfully that “in her freedom
he has found his own!” Humanity and nature are united at last. In
Abhijit’s visarjan (sacrifice through immersion and drowning)
is also his mukti (freedom).
Among the many
questions that Rabindranath prompts the reader to ask through such a vivid
story, perhaps the most important, and readily forgotten one relates to the
matter of human freedom and the intimately related spiritual and ecological
conditions under which it truly obtains... read
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