Excerpted from: A Tagore Reader, edited by Amiya Chakravarty.
Tagore and H.G. Wells met in Geneva in early June, 1930. Their conversation is reported here.
TAGORE: The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform. Calcutta, Bombay,
Hong Kong, and other cities are more or less alike, wearing big masks which represent no
country in particular.
WELLS: Yet don't you think that this very fact is an indication that we are reaching out for a new
world-wide human order which refuses to be localized?
TAGORE: Our individual physiognomy need not be the same. Let the mind be universal. The
individual should not be sacrificed.
WELLS: We are gradually thinking now of one human civilization on the foundation of which
individualities will have great chance of fulfillment. The individual, as we take him, has suffered
from the fact that civilization has been split up into separate units, instead of being merged into a
universal whole, which seems to be the natural destiny of mankind.
TAGORE: I believe the unity of human civilization can be better maintained by linking up in
fellowship and cooperation of the different civilizations of the world. Do you think there is a
tendency to have one common language for humanity?
WELLS: One common language will probably be forced upon mankind whether we like it or not.
Previously, a community of fine minds created a new dialect. Now it is necessity that will compel
us to adopt a universal language.
TAGORE: I quite agree. The time for five-mile dialects is fast vanishing. Rapid communication
makes for a common language. Yet, this common language would probably not exclude national
languages. There is again the curious fact that just now, along with the growing unities of the
human mind, the development of national self-consciousness is leading to the formation or rather
the revival of national languages everywhere. Don't you think that in America, in spite of
constant touch between America and England, the English language is tending toward a definite
modification and change?
WELLS: I wonder if that is the case now. Forty or fifty years ago this would have been the case,
but now in literature and in common speech it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish
between English and American. There seems to be much more repercussion in the other
direction. Today we are elaborating and perfecting physical methods of transmitting words.
Translation is a bother. Take your poems - do they not lose much by that process? If you had a
method of making them intelligible to all people at the same time, it would be really wonderful.
TAGORE: Music of different nations has a common psychological foundation, and yet that does
not mean that national music should not exist. The same thing is, in my opinion, probably true for
literature.
WELLS: Modern music is going from one country to another without loss - from Purcell to
Bach, then Brahms, then Russian music, then oriental. Music is of all things in the world most
international.
TAGORE: May I add something? I have composed more than three hundred pieces of music.
They are all sealed from the West because they cannot properly be given to you in your own
notation. Perhaps they would not be intelligible to your people even if I could get them written
down in European notation.
WELLS: The West may get used to your music.
TAGORE: Certain forms of tunes and melodies which move us profoundly seem to baffle
Western listeners; yet, as you say, perhaps closer acquaintance with them may gradually lead to
their appreciation in the West.
WELLS: Artistic expression in the future will probably be quite different from what it is today;
the medium will be the same and comprehensible to all. Take radio, which links together the
world. And we cannot prevent further invention. Perhaps in the future, when the present clamor
for national languages and dialects in broadcasting subsides, and new discoveries in science are
made, we shall be conversing with one another through a common medium of speech yet
undreamed of.
TAGORE: We have to create the new psychology needed for this age. We have to adjust
ourselves to the new necessities and conditions of civilization.
WELLS: Adjustments, terrible adjustments!
TAGORE: Do you think there are any fundamental racial difficulties?
WELLS: No. New races are appearing and reappearing, perpetual fluctuations. There have been
race mixtures from the earliest times; India is the supreme example of this. In Bengal, for
instance, there has been an amazing mixture of races in spite of caste and other barriers.
TAGORE: Then there is the question of racial pride. Can the West fully acknowledge the East?
If mutual acceptance is not possible, then I shall be very sorry for that country which rejects
another's culture. Study can bring no harm, though men like Dr. Haas and Henri Matisse seem to
think that the eastern mind should not go outside eastern countries, and then everything will be
all right.
WELLS: I hope you disagree. So do I!
TAGORE: It is regrettable that any race or nation should claim divine favoritism and assume
inherent superiority to all others in the scheme of creation.
WELLS: The supremacy of the West is only a question of probably the past hundred years.
Before the battle of Lepanto the Turks were dominating the West; the voyage of Columbus was
undertaken to avoid the Turks. Elizabethan writers and even their successors were struck by the
wealth and the high material standards of the East. The history of western ascendancy is very
brief indeed.
TAGORE: Physical science of the nineteenth century probably has created this spirit of race
superiority in the West. When the East assimilates this physical science, the tide may turn and
take a normal course.
WELLS: Modern science is not exactly European. A series of accidents and peculiar circumstances prevented some of the eastern countries from applying the discoveries made by humanists in other parts of the world. They themselves had once originated and developed a great many of the sciences that were later taken up by the West and given greater perfection. Today,
Japanese, Chinese and Indian names in the world of science are gaining due recognition.
TAGORE: India has been in a bad situation.
WELLS: When Macaulay imposed a third-rate literature and a poor system of education on India,
Indians naturally resented it. No human being can live on Scott's poetry. I believe that things are
now changing. But, remain assured, we English were not better off. We were no less badly
educated than the average Indian, probably even worse.
TAGORE: Our difficulty is that our contact with the great civilizations of the West has not been
a natural one. Japan has absorbed more of the western culture because she has been free to accept
or reject according to her needs.
WELLS: It is a very bad story indeed, because there have been such great opportunities for
knowing each other.
TAGORE: And then, the channels of education have become dry river beds, the current of our
resources having been systematically been diverted along other directions.
WELLS: I am also a member of a subject race. I am taxed enormously. I have to send my check -
so much for military aviation, so much for the diplomatic machinery of the government! You see,
we suffer from the same evils. In India, the tradition of officialdom is, of course, more unnatural
and has been going on for a long time. The Moguls, before the English came, seem to have been
as indiscriminate as our own people.
TAGORE: And yet, there is a difference! The Mogul government was not scientifically efficient and mechanical to a degree. The Moguls wanted money, and so long as they could live in luxury they did not wish to interfere with the progressive village communities in India. The Muslim emperors did not dictate terms and force the hands of Indian educators and villagers. Now, for
instance, the ancient educational systems of India are completely disorganized, and all indigenous
educational effort has to depend on official recognition.
WELLS: "Recognition" by the state, and good-bye to education!
TAGORE: I have often been asked what my plans are. My reply is that I have no scheme. My
country, like every other, will evolve its own constitution; it will pass through its experimental
phase and settle down into something quite different from what you or I expect.
Go to Selected Poems from Tagore's Gitanjali
Go to Tagore Einstein Conversation page
