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CHAPTER-IV

The Dialects of Self-exhibitionism and Self- Realization in Chaturanga

On action alone be thy interest,

Never on its fruits

Abiding in discipline perform actions,

Abandoning attachment

Being indifferent to success or failure.

BHAGAVAD GITA (1:25)

Diversity of class, race, and religion and religious orientation has been the
characteristic of Indian culture since ancient times. India may justifiably be termed as the
land of religions, giving birth to numerous religions and adopting, sheltering and
nurturing many more. Hinduism is one of India‘s major religions along with Buddhism,
Jainsim, Sikhism and others. All these religions emerged and flourished in India. Islam,
Christianity, Zoroastrian Parsi and Judaism are the other religions which entered the land
through missionaries. Etymologically, if the word religion is explained, it hails from the
Latin root religio meaning obscure. Many critics have given their understanding about
religion. Harper Douglas defines religion in an online etymology dictionary as ―respect
for what is sacred, reverence for the gods‖ and Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
defines religion as ―the belief in the existence of a god or gods, and the activities that are
connected with the worship of them‖ (1287). Peter Harrison in The Territories of Science
and Religion notifies that in the ancient and medieval world, the etymological Latin
root religio was understood as an individual virtue of worship, never as doctrine, practice,
or actual source of knowledge. ‗Religion‘ is a modern concept constructed during the 17th
century after the schism in Christendom when the Catholic church was divided into
others forms of Christianity i.e. Anglican, Presbyterian, etc. The word religion, as such, is
not referred in any of the sacred books on which all the religions are based though
Dharma in the Hindu texts and Din in the Islamic texts is often translated by the modern
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scholars as religion. The famous philologist Max Muller in Natural Religion avers that
the root of the English word "religion" - the Latin religio, was originally used to mean
only "reverence for God or the Gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety" (33). So,
religion can also be defined as a way of worshipping particular god by the people who
share same cultural beliefs inclusive of certain assigned behavioural practices, world
views, recognition of a text (religious), visit to selected places (pilgrimages) and ethics
which guarantee the connection of humanity to the supernatural or the transcendental
world. If one identifies the religions of the world, they may be divided into the following
classifications. Polytheism – it is the most ancient and encompasses popular Hinduism
and ancient Greek religions and the ones in which there are many gods. Dualism - it
includes Zoroastrianism and certain Gnostic sects. The dualist conceives all the binaries
as equally powerful. They do not exclude good or evil rather they conceive them as
equally powerful deities. Monotheism - Christianity, Judaism and Islam come under the
ambit of monotheism in which there is single god. Supratheism – it is the sect in which
the devotee participates in the religion through a mystical union with the supreme. The
Hindu Vedanta calls it ‗Brahman‘ and certain sects of Buddhism call it ‗Nirvana‘. The
last one is Pantheism which identifies with nature God.

The important thing which lies at the heart of every religion is its philosophy.
Every religion propagates its own philosophy and every person with some preconceived
prejudices comprehends the particular philosophy in his/her own way. This leads to an
individualistic interpretation of all the religious philosophies and results in the clash
between different religions. But, here, the significant point is that there is no problem in
any of the religions rather the problem or mal-intention is incubated inside the people
who pretend to monopolies understanding. If one revisits history, there are numerous
examples where humans have reflected their tendency of violence and intolerance. Anti-
Semitism during Nazi regime in Germany, the conflict between the Shaivaite and
Vashnivaite sect of Hinduism, the intolerance of Hindus towards Buddhists and the
inhumane practice of caste system are all the instances which shows the human‘s
limitation in the understanding of Supreme. The comprehending vision of humans
becomes narrow with the submission of their intellect towards the proclaimed tenets of a
particular religion, which is termed as the ‗institutional religion‘. Every human being
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desiring his/her recognition in the society needs to affiliate him/herself to some group or
institution and the natural and easy institution where they can affiliate themselves without
any effort is religion. Under normal circumstances the only criteria to be a part of it is to
take birth in a particular faith. For example, if a boy is born in a Hindu Brahmin family;
he is Brahmin and Hindu by virtue of his birth to the respective family. His deeds are not
counted for becoming a Brahmin boy. His accident of birth is enough for his recognition
as the Brahmin Hindu in the society.

Any religion when institutionalised becomes a sociological tool rather than a

spiritual one. A religion is institutionalized when the belief systems and rituals are
systematically arranged and formally established by the religious leaders on the
interpretation of certain religious text. For example, Christianity is institutionalised with
the help of Bible; Islam is institutionalised on the basis of Quran and all other major
religions of world are institutionalised through the canonized interpretation of their
respective doctrines prescribed in their holy literature. This institutionalisation of
religions is also the key factor in its sustenance and validity in today‘s world. The
exclusiveness and chauvinism makes every religion contemplate its superiority over all
other religions and this façade of its superiority attracts more followers in the society and
at the same time gives birth to hostilities.

India is branded for the sectarianism among its people. All the citizens of India
are the part of one or the other religion. The secular outlook of India permits every
religion to flourish without any restriction. Further, it was adopted to create peace and
harmony among the people of India with different faiths but the irony of the state is that
the opposite of it has happened. The history of India exemplifies that irrespective of
liberty to flourish peacefully, the religions in India further divided into sects. For
example, Islam has two sects Shia and Sunni; Hinduism has many sects like
Vaishnavites, Shiavites, Vedantist, and many others; Buddhism has Theravada,
Mahayana, Tantric and many other sects. Due to this sectarianism among the religions,
India has faced dark times of communal riots and religious persecution. Many reformers
came from time to time to preach non-sectarianism with reference to the sacred books.
One such reformer was Rabindranath Tagore who lived a life of non-sectarian and
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secular outlook. Once he was asked to give views on institutional religion to which he
replied in the form of an essay ―Institutional Religion.‖ He stated:

As an abstract idea I have nothing to say against it. It is like the caste
system, perfect when ideally represented. Men were to be classified
according to their inherent differences in temperament. If all the natural
Brahmins came together to carry on the work which was only for them to
perform, then through their mutual encouragement and co-operation, a
tremendous force could be generated for the good of the man.

But, directly a group is formed, its personality almost always gives

rise to an egotism which judges its own value by its external success and
physical duration. The sect struggles for bigness and for self-preservation
even at the cost of truth. The growth of consciousness of its own
distinction develops into a pride, which like the pride of wealth is a
temptation. (qtd. in Ghosh 293)

Tagore during his times knew that all the religions have been institutionalised to
breed hatred towards the other religions. Being the poet and philosopher of his own times
he observed everything around the world. He was aware of the fact that all the religious
communities are more often formed upon prescribed customs and preconceived notions
rather than truth and the real essence of religion has faded into the oblivion. Religion as
an institution has been politicised which brings together all the human beings who are
true to their common aspiration and their common aspiration is merely based upon the
uniformity of habits and the material things. Their congregation is not based on the
spiritual reasons to find the supreme truth and its political orientation makes it the place
for the breeding of untruths. Nowadays, religion as an institution has gained such
worldwide popularity and power that it leaves no space for the righteous; rather, the
religious hypocrisy finds a ready opportunity to create widespread mischief. For example,
the faith of Christians is based upon the pure relationship of love and truth with all the
humanity. Christ like all other spiritual personalities propagates the message of love
among the humankind but when the church becomes the authorised caretaker of
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Christianity, it sells off all its spiritual strength to the political power in order to earn the
luxury of execution of power. As Tagore himself declares:

… the church is often on the side of vested interest and established power
which have come into being for exploiting the weak. This is because the
church as an organization is a power which has its natural alliance with
other powers that are not only non-religious but very often irreligious; in
fact, it is even ready to make its bargain with the very powers that
crucified Christ. (qtd. in Ghosh 294)

Tagore also questioned those men who have taken the responsibility of the
propagation of religious message. All the religious gurus of every religion strive for
power. But the power they desire is from the external world, not from their inner self. All
the religions teach to propagate the message of love and compassion, and the religious
teachers are supposed to make it accessible to the masses. The religious hypocrisy has
seeped so deep down inside all those religious men that they are in a delusion that
whatever they are doing is best for the masses. Tagore was well aware of the fact that all
the religions are giving shelter to the Satans of the society and which is good if they
could change the devil but religion grants them shelter for the personal benefit. He adds:

I know that a community of God-seekers is a great shelter for man, but

directly it grows into an institution it is apt to give ready access to the
devil by its back door. All the same the fact cannot be ignored that religion
has ever sought its shelter in institutions; in fact, when the former is
independent of the latter; it is not recognised as a religion at all. (qtd. in
Ghosh 294)

Tagore was totally against this kind of religion. His notion of religion does not
conform to any institutionalised form of religion. His version of religion is of ‗personal
realisation‘. Tagore confessed about himself in his The Religion of Man:

I have already described how the nebulous idea of the divine essence
condensed in my consciousness into a human realisation. It is definite and
finite at the same time, the Eternal Person manifested in all persons. It
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may be one of the numerous manifestations of God, the one in which is

comprehended Man and his Universe. But we can never know or imagine
him as revealed in any other inconceivable universe so long as we remain
human beings. (148)

The greatest influence on Tagore‘s thought was of ancient Indian thought of the
Upanishads and the Vedanta and his father Maharishi Debendranath Tagore acquainted
him with the great Hindu philosophy of Upanishads and the Vedanta. His early education
and the ways of his upbringing inculcated in him the ancient Indian ideals. The Indian
Vedantic philosophy is not accepted by Tagore in a readymade abstract form. His poetic
mind tried to imagine and express the message of Upanishads and the Vedanta in the
poetic form which is manifested in his celebrated collection of poems Gitanjali. Along
with the influence of Upanishads and the Vedanta, he was impressed by Vaishnavism
and the teachers of Bhakti Marg. The lyrical productions of the saints like Ravidas, Guru
Nanak and Kabir modified the poetic elements of the philosopher. Eventually, the
Bhagvad Gita clears his confusion by showing him the way to reconcile the abstract and
impersonal nature of the Upanishadic Brahman with the personal God of the Bhakti
Marg. This enables the poet-philosopher to comprehend the mystery of the Hindu
religion where he conceives the vision of Brahman as God who is also an omnipresent
reality. Tagore in his essay ―Institutional Religion‖ says, ―The idea of Brahman when
judged from the view point of intellect is an abstraction, but is concretely real for those
who have the direct vision to see it‖ (qtd. in Ghosh 296).

God, according to him, is not found in any sect of Monism or theism. The Reality
is identified in impersonal reality with personal God. The Supreme Being is above any
sect or religion. He can be found in every form but at the same time He is formless. The
only way through which He can be achieved is the spiritual realisation. Basant Kumar Lal
aptly remarks in Contemporary Indian Philosophy ―Tagore can rightly be called ‗an
idealist‘ or ‗a spiritualist‘ he can again be described both as a ‗monist‘ and a ‗theist‘‖
(49). Applauding his unique understanding of God, Radhakrishnan in The Philosophy of
Rabindranath Tagore, avers, ―He [Tagore] gives us a human God, dismisses with
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contempt the concept of world-illusion, praises action overmuch and promises fullness of
life to the human soul‖ (4).

Tagore lived during those times when Bengal was going through a religious
transitional phase. The Hindu religion was in the hands of the higher Brahamnical classes
who were modifying and fabricating the understanding of Hindu religion according to
their own vested interests. The malpractices of Sati system, widow celibacy, child
marriage, and untouchability were rampant. To eradicate all these evils from the society,
the revival of Bengal was much needed and that led to the process of reformation in
Bengal and that was called as Bengal renaissance. A short tour of the Bengal history will
better contextualize the religious problem of Bengal. The pre-modern period from 1000
to 1800 was religious in character, written from the perspective of unflinching faith and
devotion in God, justifying the ways of God to men and stirring up persistent belief in the
supernatural. The revolutionary Bengal emerged due to renaissance in the modern period
i.e. after 1800 with the advent of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Previously, Bengali society was
under the cloak of ignorance, blind faith and superstition, and narrow regionalism. It was
during the modern times that religious, philosophical, educational, social, political, and
other movements were initiated by Bengali Bhadralok, representatives who created
modern Indian culture along with the intellectuals from other regions. Conversely,
English education proved to be an absolute boon to the people, liberating them from the
conventional restrictions and opening vistas of universal knowledge and ideas.

The prominent factors which lead to the inception of Bengal renaissance were -
the widespread appearance of periodicals and newspapers, the growing number of
associations and the rise of religious and social movements. The propounder of Bengal
renaissance discerned sources of this new learning from the west and not from the ancient
Indian literature. Aurobindo Poddar also remarks that the Bengal Renaissance was not
about rediscovering India‘s past but it was an awareness regarding social stagnation and
overcoming the conformist and conventional character of India. Raja Rammohan Roy,
the pioneer of renaissance in Bengal, propagated his profound social and religious ideas
to assist the growth of the society in a progressive direction. He confronted persistently
the social evil of intolerance and religious bigotry that perpetuated in the society. In his
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letter to James Silk-Buckingham, he claimed that the religion adhered to by the Hindus
did not promote the political interest because of:

The distinction of castes, introducing innumerable divisions and

subdivisions among them, has entirely deprived them of patriotic feeling
and the multitude of religious rites and ceremonies and the laws of
purification have totally disqualified them from undertaking any difficult
enterprises… It is, I think, necessary that some change should take place
in their religion, at least for the sake of their political advantage and social
comfort. (qtd. in Heimsath 11)

Embarking upon the spread of English education and western ideas, Roy‘s
preaching focused upon the noble ideals of universal brotherhood. He aimed at reforming
caste ridden, superstitious and backward Hindu society. He insistently talked about
securing human happiness ahead of religion and religious life. His real struggle began
after the religious clash between the orthodox Hindus and liberal Hindus. He raised his
voice against the cruel customs like casteism, the cult of ‗sati‘ and polygamy that
prevailed in the society.

Religion for him was the ideal moral behavior in the society. By establishing the
Brahmo Samaj, he aimed at eradicating the influence of orthodox Hinduism and age old
customs of Hinduism. Aurobindo Ghose aptly highlights:

Our Renascence was marked ... by a thawling of old moral customs. The
calm, docile, pious, dutiful Hindu ideal was pushed aside with impatient
energy, and the Bengali, released from the iron restraint which had line
like a frost on his warm blood and sensuous feeling, escaped joyously into
the open air of an almost Pagan freedom. (The Complete Works Vol.
XX95)

The objective of Brahmo Samaj was to oppose idol worship and abolish the
practice of priesthood and sacrifice and to spread the ideals of ―rationalism and
enlightenment‖ in modern India. Raja Ram Mohan Roy‘s legacy was further continued
by great social reformer, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar who according to Madhusudan
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Dutta, was, ―the genius and wisdom of an ancient sage, the energy of an Englishman and
the heart of a Bengali mother‖ (qtd. in Kunal Chakrabarti and Shubhra Chakrabarti 480).
He continued the reformation movement for securing women‘s rights and for providing
them platform equal to men. The political thinkers, philosophers and scientists of the
West greatly influenced the thoughts and ideas of the awakened Bengalis. Rousseau‘s
political theory of popular sovereignty, Voltaire‘s tirade against the Church and religion,
Comte‘s positivism, Darwin‘s theory of evolution, Spencer‘s agnosticism, Mill‘s
Subjugation of Women as a strong plea for women‘s emancipation- all contributed to the
revolutionary upsurge. Henry Lewis Vivian Derozio‘s fearlessness and devotion to truth
served as a route to the new world of thought. He and his followers from Hindu College
upheld the motto, ―He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool, and he who
does not is a slave‖ (qtd. in Mehrotra 44). His followers not only distorted the traditional
beliefs and customs of Hinduism but they also opposed the colonial practices. Further,
Maharshi Debendranath Tagore was amongst one of Roy‘s followers who illustrated the
traditional Indian spiritualism and made effort to provide a suitable direction to
Rammohan Roy‘s thoughts and actions.

Conversely, despite its revolutionary intellectualism in the advent, the movement

was a flaw. The Bengalis were apparently unified but at the core, there persisted a
bifurcation between liberalism and conservatism. Nirad C. Chaudhuri in The Intellectual
in India explores the consequences of the new thinking which led to these diverging
opinions in Bengal; ―The new thinking... soon showed the differences ... grouped
themselves into the great nineteenth century antithesis of Liberalism and Conservatism‖
(16–17). The liberalists focused upon synthesis of the universal ideals, of amalgamating
the western with Indian tradition. Contrary to them, the conservatives who created the
façade that their ideals are laid on Indian-Western synthesis, identified with the Hindu
tradition but lacked the spiritual and cultural renaissance. Revisiting the version of
‗dharma‘, conservatives tried to construct the image of Hinduism from a humanistic
perspective but ostensibly it failed to impact the obsessive Hindu tradition and rituals of
the toiling masses. Even caste distinction remained strong and hard to eradicate from
Indian consciousness. Overemphasis on religious and political aspects of culture not only
undermined the secular aspect of India, it also led to Hindus praising the Indian History
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and Muslims being confined to the medieval history. This constructed the concept of
demarcation, of separate individuality and of increased communal consciousness. The
clinging to traditional values is elaborated in the works of Bhudeb Mukhopaddhyay who
favored traditional Hindu values such as caste distinction, social differentiation,
following ‗dharma‘ and working in accordance with that; highlighting the fact that all
these contribute in progression of society and creating harmony. In the similar vein, B.
Mukhopaddhyay asserts in ―The Beginning of Indian Sociology‖:

... indigenous values and institutions were not only good for traditional
India, but also for India of his time. He would therefore ask for their
revival rather than welcome changes in them. The Hindus were now in a
miserable condition. … But their society would survive all the same only
if they remained true to their dharma. (99)

So, the Indian Bengali society was divided into number of factions – the Hindu
revivalist, the Brahmoist, the new educated rational class and the Muslims. Along with
the national movement, the intolerance between these sects arose. The Hindu revivalist
wanted to find God but within his tradition of Idol worship. On the other hand, the
Brahmo Samaj founded churches on the tradition of Christians and they were against Idol
worship. Most of the rational class was atheist and they were more interested in serving
humanity rather than God. The Muslims were kept on the periphery by the Hindus and
the Hindus led congress party.

During Tagore‘s time, the conflict between the Brahmos and the Orthodox Hindus
was frequent. Tagore hailed from the Brahmo background and he was highly influenced
by the thoughts of Raja Rammohan Roy. By virtue of his affiliation to Brahmo Samaj he
should have been a committed Brahmo. But Tagore, a poet-philosopher, was not blind to
the religious hypocrisy on the part of Brahmo Samaj. During his times, being a Brahmo
Samaji meant becoming the modern educated man, irrespective of the one‘s
understanding of the basic tenets propounded by Raja Rammohan Roy for being a
Brahmo Samaji. The only thing which Brahmos were doing was that they were
developing contempt and intolerance towards the orthodox Hindus. According to them,
they had having a better understanding of religion since they belonged to the legacy
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which eradicated the social follies created by the Hindu tradition. Tagore was against
such kind of religious understanding of Brahmos. He even spoke of it in an open message
‗Brahmo Samaj Centenary‘ and tried to give message to all the Brahmo Samajis:

Sectarianism is materialistic. It ever tries to build its tower of triumph with

its numerical strength, temporal power and external observances. It breeds
in the minds of its members a jealous sense of separateness that give rise
to conflicts more deadly than conflicts of worldly interests. It is a worse
enemy of the truth of religion than atheism … there are those who have
imperialistic tendency of mind which leads them to believe that their own
religion has the sole right to bring the whole human world under its
undisputed dominance … Religion is the expression of human aspiration
seeking the fundamental unity of truth in the divine person of God.
Whereas sectarianism uses religion itself to create disunion among men,
sharpening its sword for the killing of brothers as a part of the ritual of the
Father‘s worship. (qtd. in Ghosh 747-748)

The hypocrisy on behalf of Brahmos is also echoed in his novel Gora where
Tagore portrays both kinds of characters – Brodasundari and Haran babu. Brodasundari
represents the hypocrite part of Brahmo Samaj, who possesses both power and say in the
Brahmo Samaj but is oblivious to its essence whereas the character of Poreshbabu is one
of the enlightened Brahmo who knows every facet of life and has never forced any of his
family members to walk the path of Brahmo system. He allows everyone in his family to
choose their own path. When his daughter Lalita wants to marry Binoy, he does not show
any kind of resistance; rather, he asks Lalita to take her own decision.

On the contrary, Tagore was also not satisfied with the Hindu revivalist, who
rather than understanding the real essence and message of Hindu philosophy started to
follow the Brahaminical constructed tradition and show resistance towards all the hostile
factions. For example, orthodox Hindu started to follow the prescribed austerity, rituals
and the sacrifices to show that they belong to a rich tradition. The orthodoxy retaliation
also did some social persecution which made several Bengali young men leave their
ancestral village and home as they embraced the new faith. These kinds of characters are
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found in his novel Gora where Sucharita‘s aunty Harimohini and Gora‘s father
Krishandyal represent the conservative Hindus who do not compromise with their Hindu
rituals. Likewise, the character Anandmoyi, the mother Gora, represents the liberal facet
of Hinduism. Anandmoyi is shown as the character that understands the message of
Hindu philosophy which is to love unconditionally. This can be noticed in her love
towards Gora. Knowing the fact that he is not Brahmin by birth, her love towards Gora is
like the love of a mother for her son.

While writing Gora, Tagore‘s religious thoughts were transitioning towards

maturity. He still looked at the world through the dichotomy of black and white at that
time - some good Brahmos and Hindus and some bad Brahmos and Hindus. In the similar
vein, the article ―Rabindranath Tagore and Renaissance in Bengal‖ published in a book
Bengal Renaissance and Other Essays by Susobhan Sarkar, states, ―the inner conflict
within Bengal‘s awakening reveals two main trends, both of which naturally found an
echo in Rabindranath Tagore‘s contemporary mind… the two currents of thought as
Westernism or liberalism, and Orientalism or traditionalism‖ (152). His understanding of
God and religion matured after consistent practice, and will to understand the Supreme
reality. Tagore understood that religion is not something which a man can understand
after joining the religious congregations. Religion is a consistent effort of man to realize
and attain the Supreme Being. Tagore in his The Religion of Man claims:

…religion which is solely related to man, helping him to train his attitude
and behaviour towards the infinite in its human aspect. At the same time it
should be understood that the tendency of the Indian mind has ever been
towards that transcendentalism which does not hold religion to be ultimate
but rather to be a means to further end. This end consists in the perfect
liberation of the individual in the universal spirit across the furthest limits
of humanity itself. (173)

Further, he views that true religion has a definite constructive purpose in one‘s
life. According to Tagore, Religion helps man to understand the deep nature of the
binaries. A true religious person knows that both the binaries are necessary for the overall
development and balance of nature. It reconciles the contradiction by subordinating the
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brute nature of man which he considers the truth of man. Religion blesses the man with a
sense of duty towards humanity, which enlightens his reason, inspires his wisdom and
prompts the love in him.

Tagore‘s religious odyssey finds its mature expression in his novel Chaturanga,
which is also known as Quartet in its English translation. The present chapter will
analyse the novel Chaturanga by Tagore‘s ideas about religion and will focus upon his
religious journey from Gora to Chaturanga. The novel‘s English translation by Kaiser
Haq is opted for the chapter. The novel was serialized in Sabuj Patra from December
1914 to February-March 1915. In 1916, the novel was published in the form of book. The
English translation of the novel was published in 1925 in the volume The Broken Ties
and Other Stories. Many critics see it more as a novella than a novel, since its size, if
compared with his novel Gora is comparatively short. Chaturanga comprises of four
major characters and is divided into four sections named after each character – Uncle
(Jagmohan), Sachish, Damini and Siriblash respectively.

The whole story is narrated by Siriblash, friend of the protagonist Sachish.

Sachish is an idealistic young man who is in search of his spiritual fulfillment. He is the
son of an orthodox father Harimohan whose narrow orthodoxy is rejected by him from
the very beginning. He is highly influenced by his uncle Jagmohan, who is an atheist and
a rational humanist. The character of Jagmohan is created as the foster father of Sachish.
His ideas of rational humanism are embraced by Sachish and he develops the worldview
which his uncle wanted him to espouse. The first section is named after Jagmohan in
which Tagore introduces the minor characters along with Sachish. In the first section, the
subplot of Jagmohan and Nonibala is delineated. Jagmohan is sued in the court by his
brother Harimohan for being an atheist, as the only income of Jagmohan and Harimohan
is through the trusteeship of ancestral property which is endowed as a religious trust.
Jagmohan willingly does not show any kind of resistance in the court and thus loses the
case. After losing the case, Jagmohan has no money as well as no direct control over
Sachish. Afterwards, the character of Nonibala is introduced who is a young orphaned
girl and has been seduced and cast out by Sachish‘s elder brother Purandar. The pregnant
Nonibala is provided shelter at Jagmohan‘s house, who treats her like his own daughter.
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To save Nonibala from the societal jibes, Sachish decides to marry Nonibala but she
commits suicide leaving a note where she declares that she cannot marry Sachish because
she is still in love with the man who seduced her. After this incident, Calcutta is caught
by an epidemic and the humanist Jagmohan turns his house into a hospital for the poor
Muslims and tanners. Eventually, he is also caught by the dreaded disease and dies. The
deaths of Nonibala and Jagmohan gives rude shock to Sachish and his faith on
rationalism shatters.

Sachish now wanders in the forests in search of true faith and in the second
section of the novel, named after Sachish; he is seen as a disciple of a Vaishanava guru
Swami Lilanand. He starts wandering with the swami to the different villages of Bengal
and submits himself totally to the service of Swami Lilanand. Sachish, after getting
disillusioned with rationalism, goes into an escapist form of emotional devotion to God
until he encounters Damini, a young, rebellious widow who is also a part of the Swami‘s
circle because of her dead husband. Damini is skeptical about the Swami‘s religious
practices. As the story develops, Damini feels attracted to Sachish, but Sachish after his
experience with Nonibala spurns human love as a trap, although he is well aware of
Damini‘s desire. In the nocturnal cave episode, Damini approaches Sachish but he kicks
her, mistaking her to be a beast who is about to attack him. Damini along with Siriblash
teases Sachish to make him realise his longing for her. Eventually, Sachish admits
Damini‘s control over him and requests her to renounce the desire for him as he cannot
achieve the Supreme truth while getting distracted by a woman‘s love. The act of
renunciation by Sachish is much adored by Damini and she starts to venerate him.
Damini requests Sachish to make her his disciple and to leave the Swami Lilanand‘s
congregation. Sachish gives consent to the request of Damini and he along with Siriblash
and Damini leave Swami Lilanand and his religious cult.

In the last section which is named after Siriblash, Damini realizes that it is useless
to pursue Sachish as he is already walking the path of spiritual quest and does not want to
stop without fulfilling it and also he misconstrues Damini‘s love as the bestial lust.
Damini then decides not to pursue Sachish or become an obstruction in his spiritual
quest, she marries Siriblash. Siriblash, unhesitatingly, accepts Damini‘s proposal and he
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marries her unconditionally. After a short blissful married life, Damini dies of an injury
which was given by Sachish in the cave when he kicked her. The story ends with the
Damini‘s wish to go back to the seashore where she got that injury. She takes her last
breath there, concluding the narrative.

Chaturanga was published along with The Home and The World. The latter novel
earned criticism from all over the world, both positive and negative since it dealt with the
national movement of Bengal but the former novel was of a different kind so it earned a
different kind of review from the contemporary literary world. Many critics viewed
Chaturanga as a short story like Dr. S.C. Sengupta in The Great Sentinel doubts whether
―Broken Ties (Charuranga) is a novel at all for it had not that completeness, the gradual
building of plot on character we expect from a novel‖ (212). According to Humayun
Kabir in The Bengali Novel it is ―a long story rather than a novel‖ (46). However, Ashok
Mitra, the English translator of Chaturanga called it a ‗novella‘ in the translator‘s note of
his translation.

When the section called ‗Siriblash‘ was published in 1915, Radha Chakravarty in
Novelist Tagore: Gender and Modernity highlighted, ―a reviewer in the Journal Manasi
commented that this work heralds a new kind of writing, a series of interlinked stories
that make sense only when read in relation to each other. He also lauds Tagore‘s skill in
representing the complex psychology of his protagonists within the brief span of the short
story‖ (78). The modern reader does not take it as an interlinked story rather they
recognise the radical form of Chaturanga as a new kind of novel in the Bengali literary
circle. Internationally, the novel in English translation necessitated a rethinking of
traditional Western critical vocabulary. An American reviewer in The New York Times
which is referred to by Sujit Mukherjee in Passage to America: The Reception of
Rabindranath Tagore in the United States, 1912-1941 complained that it was ―very
difficult for the Occidental mind to divest itself of Occidental prejudices and
presuppositions that what is Oriental may be seen in its true light‖ but he also added that
these stories should not be ―discussed in terms of occidental criticism‖ (57).

In order to anticipate the time period of the novel‘s story it can be assumed that it
is a story set around late nineteenth century when Kolkata was hit by a plague as the
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novel also talks about it in the first section. As Radha Chakravarty also claims that the
first outbreak of plague in Kolkata broke out in March 1899 (79). Ashok Mitra, one of the
recognised translators of the novel also opines that irrespective of the intensely personal
world represented in the novel, the text also spans about half-a-century of life and
thought in Bengal. In his translator‘s note, he maintains:

Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, the original to my mind of the uncle, and his

campaigns, the Guru and the cross currents of the personal religious
movements at the turn of the century, the long struggle for the recognition
of a widow‘s right to remarry and order her own destiny, the stormy figure
of Vivekananda who lighted up the Indian sky and disturbed complacency,
Nivedita and her account of the cave, Damini, unique to Bengal and
nowhere else, and Siriblash who learnt to rid himself of self-pity: they
certainly represent Bengal of the first half of Tagore‘s life. (7-8)

The first section of the novel is named after Jagmohan (Uncle) and in this section
the character of Sachish is viewed through Siriblash‘s lens. In the very beginning,
Sachish is shown as a mature boy who has precocious wisdom. This section of the novel
mainly stresses on the virtue of rationality which is unknowingly given by Britishers to
the Bengali people through English education. Sachish, who is an atheist under the
influence of his uncle Jagmohan never worries about the slandering by his classmates,
rather he shows better understanding of life. This can be witnessed through his cordial
relations with Professor Wilkins who has a soft spot for him. Professor Wilkins teaches
literature in the college but he is not happy with his job. According to him, teaching
literature to Bengali boys is equivalent to a menial job. His only place of peace in the
classroom is with countenance of Sachish. Sachish‘s aura was no less than that of one of
the enlightened figure. As Siriblash affirms, ―As soon as I saw him I decided he was a
Brahman‘s son. After all, his face was like a god‘s image carved out of marble‖ (616).

The character of Jagmohan is constructed by Tagore as a true prototype of inbuilt

rationality with the tendency to serve humanity. His rational outlook was not idealistic
rather it seems that it was influenced by European positivism (positivism is a system of
philosophy based on things that can be seen or proved, rather than on ideas). As Stuart
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Hall in Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies says, ―the philosophies of

European Enlightenment emphasized a secular, anti-clerical approach based on
rationalism, empiricism and humanitarianism‖ (43).Jagmohan in the novel does not obey
the clerical orthodoxical Hinduism as this is clearly visible in relation to his younger
brother Harimohan, who is an orthodox Hindu. He is more rational and humanitarian. All
these qualities are very well manifested when he displays his atheism in front of
everyone. It would be an understatement to say he didn‘t believe in God; he believes in
‗no-God‘. He always remains ready for rational argument to show that there is no God as
he expresses:

If God exists, then my intelligence is his creation. My intelligence says

there is no God. Therefore God says there is no God. Yet you contradict
Him to His face and say that God exists! Thirty-three billion godlings will
twist your ears to make you atone for this blasphemy. (617)

Service to humanity is an important aspect of Jagmohan‘s atheistic creed. He feels

delightful when after serving the people he gets nothing except some loss of his money.
His altruist nature motivates him to keep on serving. If someone asks him what is he
getting from it, he clearly replies that the best part of it is that he is not getting anything
materially. He frequently teaches Sachish that ―Remember, my boy, our pride in being
atheists requires us to be morally impeccable. Because we don‘t obey anything we ought
to have greater strength to be true to ourselves‖ (619).

His secularism is also very well manifested when he calls his Muslim neighbors
to his household to offer food. When Harimohan and his son come to know about
Jagmohan‘s invitation to all the Muslims and tanners, he gets furious. When Harimohan
exhibits his resentment to Jagmohan, he replies to Harimohan, ―I don‘t say anything
about your daily food offerings to your gods. So why do you object to my making an
offering to my gods?‖ Irritated Harimohan asks about his conversion to Brahmo and
Jagmohan replies, ―Brahmo accepts formless deity who is invisible to the eye. You
accept idols who cannot be heard. We accept the living who can be seen and heard – it‘s
impossible not to believe in them‖ (620). So, Jagmohan‘s rationalism and way of living
life is deliberately created by Tagore to show one section of the Bengali society – who is
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educated, humanistic, secular, rational and irreligious. Tagore presents Jagmohan as an

atheist who can be compared with the legendary figure of young Henry Vivian Derozia.
Derozio also encouraged his students to debate freely and question authority like
Jagmohan does with Sachish. In an article ―Derozio and Young Bengal‖ published in
Bengal Renaissance and Other Essays by Susobhan Sarkar, the author informs about
Derozio and his circle, ―Derozio and his pupils started in 1828 the Academic Association,
our first debating club, which discussed topics like free-will and fate, virtue and vice,
patriotism, arguments for or against the existence of god, the shames of idolatry and
priestcraft‖ (111). Tagore somewhat admired this sect of Bengal because of its
humanitarian outlook but Gurudev also understood that the lack of faith cannot achieve
the Supreme Being. So is the case with Jagmohan as well as Derozio. Bimbehari
Majumdar in Heroines of Tagore: A Study in the Transformation of Indian Society 1875-
1941 compares Jagmohan with Sister Nivedita. He claims, ―[t]he prototype of Jagmohan
must have been sister Nivedita, who Dr. R.G. Kar found nursing a plague-stricken child
all through the day and night, in a damp and weather-beaten hut‖ (237-238). When
Jagmohan takes the full responsibility of Nonibala and aids most of the poor Muslims and
tanners, Tagore presents him like a father figure which complements the figure of Sister
Nivedita.

There is one more lens through which one can fathom the character of Jagmohan
vis-à-vis Tagore‘s religious ideology. For one thing, Tagore and Jagmohan seem similar.
Tagore was not a committed atheist but his ideology in one way or the other
complements that of Jagmohan‘s. Tagore opposed ritualism, orthodoxy and idolatry as
Jagmohan did. Tagore believed in the philosophy of unity of mankind. Tagore had no
respect for the people who subscribed to fanaticism. The book Homage from Visva
Bharati cites Tagore‘s view, ―orthodoxy is not necessarily narrow-mindedness. What
matters seriously is whether these orthodox people are fanatics or not. Fanaticism is
definitely anti-religious, and when Rabindranath condemns unintelligible rituals and
dogmas, this is only because the line between fanaticism and orthodoxy is very thin‖ (qtd.
in Gupta and Sen 33). And same assertion is applied to Jagmohan; Jagmohan also loathes
his fanatic brother Harimohan and his nephew Purandar. Tagore talked about the religion
of spiritual realisation to serve the humankind. As R. N. Sharma in Contemporary Indian
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Philosophy opines, ―The main end of religion for Rabindranath was the unity of
mankind‖ (248). In the novel, Jagmohan from the very beginning is keen to serve the
humankind. His helping nature towards the downtrodden and the ostracized people, his
disinterestedness towards the material things of the earth as he lost all the ancestral
property in the court without any resistance against his brother, his virtual adoption of
Sachish and Nonibala, his act of converting his house into a hospital during the
apocalyptic plague time for the downtrodden – all these acts contribute to show him as a
man who selflessly worked for the unity of humankind. On his death bed, Jagmohan says
to Sachish, ―The creed I have lived by all my life has given me its parting gift, I have no
regrets‖ (628). The parting words of Jagmohan and his lifestyle confirms Tagore‘s way of
seeing life.

Sachish is the main character of the novel through which Tagore presents the two
contemporary religious sects. Jagmohan represents the rational and liberal (not Brahmos)
sect and the other sect that Tagore takes on is that of orthodoxy. Sachish is badly affected
by the void left by his uncle‘s death. The death of his uncle could not be fathomed by
Sachish‘s rationally trained mind. He finds it difficult to accustom himself in the world
without his uncle who was his father, friend and sometimes his son. As Siriblash informs
in the novel, ―for he [Jagmohan] was so absent minded about himself and so ignorant of
worldly affairs, that one of Sachish‘s prime responsibilities was to keep him out of
trouble‖ (629). His struggle to understand his life leads him to find himself in a hopeless
position. Siriblash expresses the condition of Sachish after his uncle‘s death in the novel:

Sachish struggled in intolerable anguish to establish that the void could

never in fact be so empty, that no emptiness was so absolute that it left no
room for truth. For if it wasn‘t the case that what was ‗No‘ in one sense
was also ‗Yes‘ in another, then through the tiny hole of that ‗No‘ the entire
universe would vanish into nothingness. (629)

To fill the void in his life, Sachish becomes recluse and wanders in the
countryside for two years. Nobody knew the whereabouts of Sachish. One day Siriblash
comes to know that Sachish has joined a Vaishnava group led by Swami Lilanand. The
Character of Swami Lilanand is totally opposite to the character of Jagmohan. Swami
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Lilanand lives an ascetic life with his followers which Jagmohan hated most. Siriblash
retrospect Jagmohan‘s word:

Just as a moneychanger rings a coin to test if it is counterfeit, the world

tests the quality of man by making him experience loss, bereavement and
the lure of salvation. Coins that ring false are discarded as counterfeit;
these sannyasis are like those fake coins, useless in life‘s transactions. Yet
they go around saying that they have renounced the world. If one is of any
use there‘s no way one can slip out of the world of samsara. Dry leaves
fall from the boughs because the tree shakes them off – they are trash after
all. (629)

Jagmohan never wants any of his group members to follow any of the sannyasis
but after watching Sachish dancing ecstatically, singing Kirtan and playing cymbals
Siriblash becomes dumbfounded. Siriblash left no stone unturned to talk to Sachish about
his recent transition. For that he even temporarily joins the group but eventually falls into
the snare of Lilanand and became one of the followers of the Swami.

The influence of Buddhism is also well reflected in the character Sachish of the
novel. Tagore sub-consciously creates a character which resembles the venerable figure
of Gautam Buddha. Sachish‘s quest for his spiritual fulfillment after the death of his
uncle could be read in relation to Siddhartha‘s life. Siddhartha also wandered with ascetic
group to find nirvana, but like Sachish, he also got disillusioned with the blind devotion
of ascetics like Lilanand and finds it in humanity instead.

The character of Swami Lilanand is created as one of the Vaishanava gurus.

Tagore himself was very fond of Vaishnavism as he himself confesses in many of his
writings that he was highly influenced by the Vaishanava poets since his family once
patronized some Vaishnavites also. But the character of Swami is not drawn on a brighter
side of Vaishnavism and it shows the ambivalence of Tagore towards Vaishnavism.
Bimbehari Majumdar in Heroines of Tagore: A Study in the Transformation of Indian
Society 1875-1941 refers to a story Boshtomi which is written at the same time as that of
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Chaturanga i.e. 1914-1915. With reference to the short story and the novel, Bimbehari
express Tagore‘s divided feelings about Vaishnavism:

The female protagonist of Boshtomi represents an idealized version of

Vaishnavism, renouncing love and family ties for the pursuit of higher
truth. In contrast, Lilanand Swami, the ascetic in Chaturanga, is an
emblem of ‗counterfeit Vaishnavism‘ for he is ‗more fond of celebrity and
ostentation than of God and devotional practices‘. (62)

Swami Lilanand is the one who never compromises with his food and hookah. He
is the one who wants a comfortable life as his followers including Sachish and later
Siriblash also massage his feet. He is also a guru who inherits his followers‘ property like
in case of Damini‘s husband Shibtosh who leaves all his property for Swami‘s religious
congregational uses. He is the one who envies and wants his followers to increase with
time.

Through Swami Lilanand one understands more clearly what Tagore is saying
about the mindless devotionalism that he represents. For Sachish (and even for Siriblash
for a while), the Swami is a lure from which he has to disentangle himself. But in the
novel, it does not seem that Tagore has a special place for figure like Lilanand in his ideal
world. Tagore does not subscribe to even an iota of Lilanand‘s ideology as he implicitly
endorses Jagmohan‘s way of living life. Tagore‘s own conception of religion, his own
search for wisdom, has no place for the people like Lilanand.

The character of Lilanand is one of a hypocrite Vaishanava but Tagore marks it as

an integral stage in Sachish‘s religious journey towards his realization of the highest
truth. As it is witnessed through Siriblash‘s transition from logic to faith, he asks Sachish
about his physical service to swami ―…the person who stretches out his legs towards you
like that is surely…‖ (631). The answer to this question by Sachish intoxicates Siriblash
also. Sachish replies, ‗he can do that because he doesn‘t really need anyone‘s service. If
he did he would feel embarrassed; the need is mine alone.‘ Siriblash fathoms that this is
something which he has not tasted in his life and Sachish is experiencing the trance of
that nectar, ―I realized that Sachish was in a realm I had never entered. The ‗me‘ whom
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Sachish had embraced when we met wasn‘t ‗me, Siriblash‘, it was the Universal Soul that
inheres in all beings, it was an idea‖ (631).

This phase of Sachish is explained as a poetic phase which according to Tagore is

necessary for the realization of truth. In this stage, the self of a man is negated by him and
the selfless being fountains from inside, the reason and calculations of life left behind in
the longing for Supreme Reality of Man. Tagore in The Religion of Man highlights:

Our union with this spirit is not to be attained through the mind. For our
mind belongs to the department of economy in the human organism. It
carefully husbands our consciousness for its own range of reason, within
which to permit our relationship with phenomenal world … Once man
had his vision of the infinite in the Universal Light, and he offered his
worship to the sun. He also offered his service to the fire with oblations.
Then he felt the infinite in life, which is time in its creative aspects, and he
said, Yat kincha yadidam sarvam prana ejati nishritam, ‗all that there is
comes out of life and vibrates in it‘. (53-54)

When Siriblash along with Sachish joins Lilanand‘s religious ascetic group, they
meet with the fourth main character of novel Damini. Tagore has also named a chapter
after Damini. Damini is the wife of Shibtosh, who died leaving her a widow and a
dependent on Swami Lilanand. When Siriblash and Sachish encountered Damini their
fervour of Lilanand gets mellowed. Damini is the only member of Lilanand‘s crew who
occasionally agrees with Swami. She is created as a revolutionary figure in the novel,
who is not willing to renounce anything irrespective of her circumstances of being an
integral member of a renunciating organization and at the same time of being a widow.
Tagore has created two women characters in the novel one Nonibala and the other
Damini. Through both these characters Tagore draws attention to different forms of
womanhood during that time. As Sachish notes in his diary:

In Nonibala I saw one form of the Universal Feminine – the woman who
takes upon herself the stigma of sin, who sacrifices her life for a sinner‘s
sake… In Damini the Universal Feminine assumes another form. She has
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no truck with death, she is a celebrant of the vital force… She doesn‘t
want to renounce anything in life; she is unwilling to play host to the
sannyasis; she has sworn not to pay a paisa in homage to the cold north
wind. (633)

Through Damini, Tagore proposes another way of living life: the ‗Griyasth‘
(married) life. Damini, through a widow held the belief that she can love anyone and can
get married. Remarriage of a widow was very remotely known to the Bengali people
during the nineteenth and early twentieth century but Tagore deliberately created the
character of Damini in the novel to suggest reform in the conditions of widows. Damini
starts to like Sachish and wants to marry him, but Sachish‘s quest for the spiritual
awakening ignored Damini‘s craving for him. Siriblash describes her as, ―Damini didn‘t
dress like a widow; then, she would pointedly ignore the guru‘s instructions; and finally
she showed no hint of the radiance of ascetic purity that lights up body and soul through
being close to such a great man‖ (634). But when she starts to like Sachish, her
thunderous and lightning personality mellows down. Everything begins to change around
Lilanand‘s crew. The rebellious Damini now begins to respect the religious codes.
Sachish began to notice Damini‘s loveliness but according to Siriblash, ―Sachish saw
only Damini‘s beauty, he didn‘t see Damini herself‖ (635).

Damini‘s transgressiveness can be well defined in the cave episode of the novel
where Damini tries to approach Sachish in the dark cave where a man cannot see even his
hands. But this episode is more significant from Sachish‘s point of view. Sachish‘s
introspections which are filtered by the narrator (Siriblash) in the novel express his
psychological aspect. Tagore was not a professional psychoanalyst but his drafting of
Sachish‘s psychological fear in the cave expresses his understanding of the human fears
also. Tagore had a long meeting with Kalidas Nag [an Indian historian, author and
parliamentarian]. Nag asked Gurudev about the novel Chaturanga on which he
responded with profundity. Tagore first explained the major characters, and then said:

To the authors of yesteryears life meant desire and frustration, union and
separation, birth and death, and certain other similarly imprecise events.
Therefore, the play called life had to end either in a cherished and revered
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union, or with a scene devoted to death‘s vast graveyard. Since a few days
now, our impression of our life has been changing—it seems we were so
long loitering about the entrance—after a long time we seem to have
discovered the way to the inner chambers for the first time. We are awake
at the outer side of our consciousness—there we are consciously fighting
battles, striking others and are being struck by others. But within these
strikes and counter strikes, these ups and downs, something is being
created in our ignorance of it. The arena for that gigantic game of creation
is our submerged consciousness [magnachaitanyalok]. It is a new world,
as if gradually coming into existence before us. (qtd. in Biswas 718)

Same is noted in the character of Sachish who is also fighting from his inside. He,
in the longing of his fulfillment, is impotent to comprehend the life. With his uncle, he
thought the life is simple and can be handled through logic and rationalism but after
Jagmohan‘s death the void created in him is only gets superficially covered in the garb of
ascetism, it does not heal Sachish. His internal fear is well manifested in the cave episode
where the darkness of the cave is conceived by him as a black beast. He expresses his
fear in the novel,

The beast was all dark hunger, it would lick at me slowly and consume
me. Its saliva was acidic, it would corrode me./ If only I could sleep; my
wakeful mind couldn‘t beat the close embrace of such colossal, destructive
darkness; that was possible for death alone. .. a thin sheet of numbness
spread over my consciousness. At some point in that semi-conscious state
I felt the touch of a deep breath close to my feet. The primordial beast.
(637)

He mistakes Damini for a primordial beast and kicks her in the cave out of fear.

The fear of Sachish in the cave is sub-consciously manifested: his fear of falling
in love with Damini, fear of breaking of the vow that he has taken of being ascetic to find
the highest truth. He denies Damini‘s love out of fear not out of understanding.
Somewhere inside of him he has this feeling of guilt. All his religious confusion of
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attaining the highest truth without the understanding of the life is drafted by Tagore in the
cave episode.

Sachish tries to clear his confusion about life by arguing with Siriblash when he
proposes to Siriblash that they cannot keep Damini among them anymore. He views
Damini as a hurdle in their spiritual fulfillment. Siriblash could not take this and he
retorted to Sachish that if Damini is a hurdle then there is a grave flaw in their spiritual
endeavour. He explains to Sachish:

What you call nature is a reality. You may shun it, but you can‘t leave it
out of the human world. If you practice your austerities pretending it isn‘t
there you will only delude yourself; and when the deceit is exposed there
will be no escape route… (643)

Without comprehending Siriblash‘s understanding of life, Sachish expresses his

flawed argument which also exposes the loophole in the ascetic way of living life. He
says:

I am not interested in logical quibbles. I am being practical. Clearly

women are agents of Nature, whose dictates they carry out by adopting
varied disguises to beguile the mind, they cannot fulfill their mistress‘s
command till they have completely enslaved the consciousness. So to keep
the consciousness clear we have to keep clears of these bawds of Nature.
(643)

Sachish tries to convince Siriblash as his elder brother that he (Siriblash) has
already submitted himself into the spell of Damini and he should not get entangled in it.
Sachish feels it is his duty to secure him from all these kinds of distractions so that
Siriblash also returns to the right path. But Siriblash again gives Sachish an insightful
reply at which Sachish hopelessly turns away. He says:

I accept all your saying but I‘d like to point out that I didn‘t myself lay this
worldwide trap of nature, and I know no way of evading it. Since we can‘t
deny it, true devotion in my view ought to allow us to accept it and yet
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enable us to transcend it. Whatever you say, dear Sachish, we are not
doing that, and so we are desperately trying to amputate one half of the
truth…. We must row the boat of life in nature‘s current. Our problem
should not be to stop the current; our problem is to keep the boat from
sinking and in motion. (643)

These words of Siriblash are ascribed to him by Tagore and they are meant to be
narrated by him to Sachish because it is Sachish who is fighting for his spiritual
fulfillment. He denies life to achieve the truth but the poet-seer himself never subscribes
to this way of achieving the highest truth. Mulkh Raj Anand in ― Tagore‘s Religion of
Man‖ declares, ―it is quite clear that he saw the vast infinitude of the Universe through its
concrete manifestations in space and time, thus integrating awareness with knowledge
and experience. If Sri Aurobindo wanted cosmic consciousness through Yoga, Tagore
wanted it in everyday life through poetry. He believed ‗in the personal awareness of the
depth of his experience of nature and almost intuitive alliance with life‘‖ (88-89).

The discussion between Sachish and Siriblash sow the seed of doubt in Sachish‘s
mind about their spiritual endeavour. Irrespective of that, Sachish half-heartedly
approaches Damini to inform her about her not staying with them in the Ashram. On this
Damini breaks into tears and expresses her agony of being objectified by the patriarchy.
The sobbing of Damini constantly vibrates in Sachish‘s mind. He cannot understand the
mystery of spirituality and Damini. Out of his confusion, Sachish takes permission from
Lilanand to go to sea-side all alone to clear his head. In the novel, his return is shown as
the one who has realised that Nature has the important role in the spiritual fulfillment of
man. He says, ―Damini it was wrong of me to ask you to leave. Please forgive me… I‘ll
never again entertain for a moment the utterly unjust thought that to preserve our
spirituality we can decide to keep you or abandon you, as the whim takes us‖ (647).
During his visit to sea-shore, Sachish introspects with reference to his discussion with
Siriblash and he comes to conclusion that he was wrong.

When Sachish and Damini unite under the ambit of Lilanand‘s faith, Siriblash
feels neglected. Damini also starts serving Lilanand as Sachish was serving. A sweet aura
pervades her prayers and acts of kindness. She never misses the session of kirtans and
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religious discussions. Everything is acceptable to her but the greatest trial in this phase of
her life lays in her behavior with Lilanand. She does not respect him from her heart but is
obliged towards him because of Sachish. When Sachish extends his service to Lilanand
that sight is not acceptable to Damini and she frequently mumbles to herself, ―I won‘t
break the rules, I won‘t break the rules…‖ (648). But the rebel in Damini cannot stay
confined longer in her. An incident is Lilanand‘s circle shakes her. Nabin – one of
Lilanand‘s followers gets involved into an affair with his wife‘s sister. When Nabin‘s
wife comes to know about her husband and sister‘s attraction, she commits suicide. This
infuriates Damini and she blurts out the double standards of asceticism:

Please explain, what use to the world are the things that engross you so
day in and day out? Who have you succeeded in saving? … Day and night
you go on about ecstasy, you talk of nothing else. Today you have seen
what ecstasy is, haven‘t you? It has no regards for morals or a code of
conduct, for brother or wife or family pride. It has no shame, no sense of
propriety. What have you devised to save man from the hell of this cruel,
shameless, fatal ecstasy? (649)

This incident shakes Sachish too and his already shattered faith in Lilanand finds
its way out. On the request of Damini, he along with Siriblash and Damini leaves
Lilanand‘s circle.

The last section is named after Siriblash who concludes the novel in his own
voice. After they leave Lilanand they find it very difficult to settle down. The asceticism
of Lilanand had provided them with food and shelter but now they realized that
spirituality cannot be attained without the basic needs of life. Siriblash proposes to
Sachish that they should go to Uncle‘s (Jagmohan) house in Kolkata but Sachish refuses
because he knows that he cannot go back to his uncle‘s house in this condition where he
is dealing with the existential crises. He says to Siriblash:

Once I tried to base my life on intelligence and found that it couldn‘t take
life‘s full weight. Then I tried to build my life on ecstatic devotion and
found it bottomless. Intelligence is an aspect of myself, and so is
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mysticism. It is not possible to balance oneself on oneself. Unless I find

some support I can‘t return to the city. (653)

With these words of Sachish, Tagore draws his idea of religion. According to him,
the blind following of any of the creeds is the submission of one‘s intellect to some
particular ideology. Sachish after disillusionment with atheism and theism leaves his own
self to discover the Ultimate truth. The only thing which is left in Sachish is his
enthusiasm for the spiritual awakening. Siriblash after looking at Sachish‘s condition
proposes to him to find a Guru for his spiritual awakening. On this Sachish replied, ―My
dear fellow, this isn‘t the truth of a geographical description. The God within me will
tread my road and none other; the guru‘s road only leads to his own courtyard‖ (654).
Now Sachish after much brainstorming realizes, ―Today I have clearly grasped the
significance of the saying, ‗Better die for one‘s own faith than do such a terrible thing as
accept another‘s‘‖ (654). Everything else can be taken from others, but if one‘s faith isn‘t
ones‘ own, it brings damnation instead of salvation. ―My god can‘t be doled out to me by
someone; if I find him, well and good, otherwise it‘s better to die‖ (654). Tagore in his
The Religion of Man also expresses the same:

All the higher religions of India speak of the training for Mukti, the
liberation of the soul. In this self of ours we are conscious of
individuality… In our soul we are conscious of the transcendental truth in
us, the Universal, the Supreme Man; and this soul, the spiritual self, has its
enjoyment in the renunciation of the individual self for the sake of
supreme soul. This renunciation is not the negation of self, but in the
dedication of it … This purpose is in the realisation of its unity with some
objective ideal of perfections, some harmony of relationship between the
individual and the infinite man. It is of this harmony, and not of a barren
isolation that the Upanishad speaks, when it says that truth no longer
remains hidden in him who finds himself in the All. (164)

Sachish‘s craving for spiritual awakening is so impassioned that he starts

forgetting his meals and this sight hurts Damini. On complaining, Siriblash pacifies
Damini that ―when the mind runs hard into something the body‘s need automatically
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diminish. That‘s why in a state of great joy or intense grief one feels no hunger or thirst.
Sachish‘s state of mind is such that his body won‘t suffer…‖ (655). But in the last section
of the novel, Tagore makes Sachish realize the Ultimate truth. In the dialogues of
Sachish, Tagore expresses his own understanding of religion and god. At midnight,
Sachish shouts for Damini and Siriblash; on hearing the loud voice of Sachish both of
them come to him. Sachish then enlightens them with his recent discovery, ―If I move in
the same direction in which He is approaching me I‘ll only move away from Him, but if I
move in the opposite direction we shall meet‖ (656). A glimpse of similarity between the
character of Sachish and the real figure of Buddha is apparent in the last section as well
where after leaving the ascetic group, Buddha also wandered to discover God which he
eventually discovered with the attainment of nirvana and Sachish also discovered the real
truth which he narrates to Siriblash and Damini in the novel. The only difference is that
Buddha wandered alone and Sachish wandered with his two friends. Tagore in the voice
of Sachish tries to express that God reigns everywhere and in everything – form or
formless. It is the job of Man to find Him. Sachish expresses:

He loves form, so He is continuously revealing Himself through form. We

can‘t survive with form alone, so we must pursue formless. He is free, so
he delights in bondage; we are fettered, so our joy is in liberty. Our misery
arises because we don‘t realise this truth. (657)

Tagore‘s poetic sensibility finds enunciation in the words of Sachish when in a

state of trance he narrates everything to Damini and Siriblash:

All this while, I‘ve been sitting in a dark corner, listening in silence to the
divine maestro‘s song. As I went on listening I suddenly understood
everything. I couldn‘t contain myself, so I woke you up. All these days
I‘ve only fooled myself in trying to make Him in my own image. O my
apocalypse, let me forever crush myself against you! I can‘t cling to any
bondage because bondage isn‘t mine, and because bondage is yours you
can never escape the fetters of creation. While you concern yourself with
my form I plunge into your formlessness. (657)
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After this, an incident happened between Sachish and Damini in a rainy-windy

night where Sachish asks Damini to abandon him because he is desperately seeking for
the Supreme Being and Damini is obstructing his path. Damini leaves for Kolkata with
Siriblash who proposes her for marriage. Damini accepts the proposal and they get
married in the presence of Sachish. Sachish feels happy and relieved when Damini and
Siriblash decide to marry. The conjugal life of Damini-Siriblash is presented by Tagore
as the blissful phase in their life. As Siriblash notes down in the last section of novel,
which is named after him:

The two of us set up house unaided, but our hardship was our delight. I
bore the badge of Premchand-Raychand scholar, so it was easy to land a
lectureship. In addition I put out patent medicines to help students pass
examinations: voluminous notes on the text books. I needn‘t have gone to
such lengths, because our needs were few… On top of my responsibilities
I took up the sub-editorship of an English newspaper. Without telling
Damini I engaged the services of a servant-boy, a bearer and an indulgent
Brahmin cook. The next day she dismissed them all without telling me.
When I objected she said, ‗You are always indulging me for the wrong
reasons. How on earth can I do nothing while you are working yourself to
the bone?‘/ My work outside and Damini‘s work inside the home – the
two mingled like the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna. Besides,
Damini began giving sewing lessons to the Muslim girls of the
neighbourhood. She seemed to have vowed not to be outdone by me.
Calcutta became Vrindaban and our daily struggle became the nimble
Krishna‘s flute. (662-663)

It seems in the novel; Tagore favours balanced conjugal life of Siriblash and
Damini than blind faith or faithless life of Sachish. In his one of the lectures and
addresses ―The Indian Ideal of Marriage‖ Tagore expresses his view of marriage and how
a peaceful marriage helps man to attain the spiritual unity. He writes:

Wherever many men have congregated, not for the purpose of attacking
others, but for mutual benefit, there is evolved a mentality which
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eventually transcends all considerations of expediency and envisages

Supreme Good as an absolute fulfillment. And so, in our country, there
was a day when the household was glorified, not as a comfortable home,
not as an enjoyment of proprietary right, but as the means of living the
fullest communal life, and through it attaining supreme liberation at the
end. (qtd. in Sisir Das 525)

Tagore presents Siriblash as the one who has attained liberation after a blissful
conjugal life with Damini. After the short period of their marriage, Damini reveals to
Siriblash about her sickness caused by the injury she got when kicked by Sachish in the
cave. Damini does not survive long and dies with the parting word to Siriblash, ―My
longings are still with me. I go with the prayer that I may find you again in my next life‖
(663). When Siriblash cremates Damini‘s remains and is mourning her death, Tagore
inquires philosophically through him the real essence of life and death vis-à-vis holy
union of marriage. Siriblash while mourning refers to Shankaracharya‘s quote: ―This
world is illusion‖ (651) and muses to understand the real essence of marriage and being
Sannyasis. He states in a monologue:

Shankaracharya was sannyasis. He had said such things as, ‗Of what avail
are wife and child?‘ but without grasping their significance. I am no
sannyasis, so I know in my bones that Damini is not a dewdrop on a lotus
leaf. But I am told even some householders speak in the same world-
denying terms. That may be. They are only householders; they may lose
their housewives. Their houses are maya, illusion; and so are their
housewives. Both are man-made things, and vanish at the touch of the
broom. (652)

Tagore through the words of Siriblash explains the real essence of marriage:

I haven‘t had time to be a householder, and – thank heaven – it‘s not in my

temperament to be a sannyasis. That‘s the woman I found as companion
didn‘t become a housewife; she couldn‘t be dismissed as maya; she was
real. Till the end she remained true to her name, Damini lightening. Who
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would dare call her shadow? ... I have known her in a nobler, truer
relationship that I can tell everything frankly, whatever others may say.
(652)

Tagore never subscribed to Shanakracharya‘s view of life as illusion. For him

everything is real in the world and the highest truth can be attained through the
understanding of all the entities, relations and the ideals existing on the earth. To reject
anything by calling it maya for Tagore is escapism from the world. The novel starts with
the rationalism, entangles in the blind devotion, and concludes with the discovery of the
real truth by Sachish. The whole storyline depicts Tagore‘s own religious ideas but the
holistic understanding of humanity makes Tagore realize that the life lies not in extremes
but in the moderates. Sachish‘s crisis from both the faiths (atheism and theism) very well
elaborates Tagore‘s idea of attaining Supreme Being. For human, to discover God is to
discover himself. This is what he hinges upon in his The Religion of Man:

… the positive aspect of the infinite is the advaitam, in an absolute unity,

in which comprehension of the multitude is not as in an outer receptacle
but as in an inner perfection that permeates and exceeds its contents ,… It
is not the magnitude of extension but an intense quality of harmony which
evokes in us the positive sense of infinite in our joy, in our love. For
advaitam is anandam; the infinite One is infinite love. For those among
whom the spiritual sense is dull, the desire for realisation is reduced to
physical possession, an actual grasping in space. This longing for
magnitude becomes not an aspiration towards the great, but a mania for
the big. But true spiritual realisation is not through augmentation of
possession in dimension or number. The truth that is infinite dwells in the
ideal of unity which we find in the deeper relatedness. This truth of
realisation is not in space, it can be only realised in one‘s own inner spirit.
(52-53)

Chaturanga was published during the Great War (1914-1918) period. Being the
humanist of his times, Tagore was badly inflicted with the news of the Great War which
claimed thousands of lives in the West. In order to restore his harmonious mind, Tagore
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travelled and stayed at Allahabad and Bodh Gaya to meditate. His literary productions of
that period are dark and foreboding, both in its form and content. While drifting in quest
of peace and understanding of life he started crafting, with well pointed arguments and
poetical expressions, a cycle of four stories of philosophical nature, exploring the inner
world of man striving to realize Truth as it actually is. The cycle of four stories turned
into Chaturanga.

Tagore although is not consciously influenced by Buddhism in his portrayal of

Sachish but it is apparent that his visit to Bodh Gaya has in some way or the other
architectured the character of Sachish. He was also highly influenced by the Buddhist
teachings. Buddhism describes the purpose of humanity- to serve humanity; Tagore in his
The Religion of Man describes the same with reference to the teachings of Buddha:

Our union with a Being whose activity is worldwide and who dwells in the
heart of humanity cannot be a passive one. In order to be united with Him
we have to divest our work of selfishness and become visvakarma, ‗the
world-worker‘, we must work for all. When I use the words ‗for all‘, I do
not mean for a countless number of individuals. All work that is good,
however small in extent, is universal in character. Such work makes for a
realisation of visvakarma, ‗the world-worker‘ who works for all. In order
to be one with this Mahtama, ‗the Great Soul‘, one must cultivate the
greatness of soul which identifies itself with the soul of all peoples all not
merely with that of one‘s own. This helps us to understand what Buddha
has described as Brahmavihara, ‗living in the infinite‘. He says:

‗Do not‘ deceive each other, do not despise anybody anywhere,

never in anger wish anyone to suffer through your body, words of
thoughts…

‗Above thee, below thee, on all sides of thee, keep on all the world
thy sympathy and immeasurable loving thought which is without
obstruction, without any wish to injure, without enmity.
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‗To be dwelling in such contemplation while standing, walking,

sitting or laying down, until sleep overcomes thee, is called living in
Brahma. (55-56)

In the novel, Tagore concludes the religious quest of Sachish where he returns
back to serve humanity and ready to become visvakarma ‗the world-worker‘. In the
postscript of the novel, Siriblash notes that after his marriage with Damini, Sachish
returned to serve humanity. He says that:

…papers reported in abusive terms that Sachish‘s opinion had been

revised yet again. He had once loudly denied religion and caste; then one
day he had just as loudly proclaimed faith in gods and goddesses, yoga
and asceticism, purificatory rituals and ancestor worship and taboos – the
whole lot. And yet another day he threw overboard the whole freight of
beliefs and subsided into peaceful silence – what he believed and what he
denied became impossible to determine. One thing was apparent; he had
taken up the welfare work he had done once in the past, but the caustic
combativeness was no longer in him‖. (650)

Tagore‘s understanding of religion is simple and it does not carry any extremist
ideology of any institutionalized religion. His message of religion, influenced by
Upanishadic ideals and Buddhist teachings, is simple wherein he says that Man occupies
the central position in the universe. God, for which he is looking outside of himself
resides inside him. The only way to attain that Supreme faculty inside man is to first find
humility and love inside himself for the humankind. Man has to realize that the whole
universe resides in his thinking: man within bounds and man the boundless, man the
finite and man the infinite. It is his will to find the universe outside of him or to realize
the universe inside of him. Every man possesses a surplus man in him, the only thing he
needs to do is to go through certain stages to attain it. S. P. Banerjee in ―Rabindranath‘s
Concept of Personality and the Surplus in Man‖ avers, ―Rabindranath‘s concept of man,
of human personality finding its fruition in creativity through the surplus in man, passed
through certain stages of conceptual and experiential development‖ (28). After the
realization of the Supreme Being, Tagore says that it becomes prime responsibility of the
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man to turn to religion named humanity. His religion should be humanity and his
religious rituals should be of visvakarma ‗the world-worker‘.