THE MODERN REVIEW
No. 4
No. 172
OUR SWADESHI SAMAJ
By Rabindranath Tagore
(Specially translated for the Modern Review)
[This paper was read by the author some 16 years ago on the occasion of a Government resolution bearing on Water Scarcity in Bengal. It is extraordinary how closely it touches the present feeling in the Country—Ed., The Modern Review]
In our country the king has made wars, defended his territory and administered his laws, but the social organisation has attended to everything else, from the supply of water to the supply of knowledge, so simply and naturally that the repeated floods of new sovereignty, which swept over the land with the advent of each new era, did not reduce us to brutes by destroying our dharma, nor scatter us into vagabondage by breaking up our social structure. The kings incessantly battled against one another, but in our murmuring bamboo groves, amidst the shade of our mango orchards, temples were being raised, rest-houses for wayfarers established, and water-reservoirs excavated, the village schoolmaster taught his simple lore, higher philosophy was not lacking in the tols, and the village meeting-places were resonant with the chanting of the Ramayana and the singing of Kirtans. The social life did not depend upon outside aid, nor did outside aggression perceptibly mar its serene beauty.
It is a trivial matter that we should be deploring the scarcity of water to-day. The root of it is the thing, above all things, which should cause us the deepest misgiving,—the fact that our mind is no longer in our own social system, that our whole attention is directed outwards. If a river, which has always flowed by the side of some village, deserts it and betakes its current elsewhere, then the village loses its water, its fruits, its health and its commerce. Its gardens become wildernesses, and the tangled growths which lodge in the cracks of its decayed prosperity become the haunt of bat and owl.
The current of man’s mind is of no less importance than a river. This current of old had kept pure and joyful the cloistered shade of Bengal’s villages,— but now the mind of Bengal has been distracted and turned away from its village homesteads. That is why its temples are in ruins, for there are none to repair them, its pools are insanitary, for there are none to clear out the slime, the dwellings of its wealthy ones are deserted and no joyful festivity resounds therein. So now it is the government which must give us water, government which must give us health, and for our very education we must cringe at the door of government. The tree which used to bear its own blossoms now stretches its withered branches upwards, petitioning for a rain of flowers from on high. What if its prayer be granted,—of what avail to it would be such make-believe bloom?
The state is the sovereign power in England. The old time Raj-shakti in our country was different. In England the state is mainly responsible for the well-being of the people, but in India this was so only to a limited extent. Not that the king had not to maintain and reward the sages who gave free education to the people in religion and science,—but that was only in part. The real responsibility lay on the householder. If the king stopped his
