The Home and the World, Rabindranath Tagore [robert munsch read aloud txt] 📗

themselves who can

accept such offerings?

After his wife's illness and funeral, Panchu, who had been

tottering on the brink of starvation, went altogether beyond his

depth. In a desperate attempt to gain consolation of some sort

he took to sitting at the feet of a wandering ascetic, and

succeeded in acquiring philosophy enough to forget that his

children went hungry. He kept himself steeped for a time in the

idea that the world is vanity, and if of pleasure it has none,

pain also is a delusion. Then, at last, one night he left his

little ones in their tumble-down hovel, and started off wandering

on his own account.

I knew nothing of this at the time, for just then a veritable

ocean-churning by gods and demons was going on in my mind. Nor

did my master tell me that he had taken Panchu's deserted

children under his own roof and was caring for them, though alone

in the house, with his school to attend to the whole day.

After a month Panchu came back, his ascetic fervour considerably

worn off. His eldest boy and girl nestled up to him, crying:

"Where have you been all this time, father?" His youngest boy

filled his lap; his second girl leant over his back with her arms

around his neck; and they all wept together. "O sir!" sobbed

Panchu, at length, to my master. "I have not the power to give

these little ones enough to eat--I am not free to run away from

them. What has been my sin that I should be scourged so, bound

hand and foot?"

In the meantime the thread of Panchu's little trade connections

had snapped and he found he could not resume them. He clung on

to the shelter of my master's roof, which had first received him

on his return, and said not a word of going back home. "Look

here, Panchu," my master was at last driven to say. "If you

don't take care of your cottage, it will tumble down altogether.

I will lend you some money with which you can do a bit of

peddling and return it me little by little."

Panchu was not excessively pleased--was there then no such thing

as charity on earth? And when my master asked him to write out a

receipt for the money, he felt that this favour, demanding a

return, was hardly worth having. My master, however, did not

care to make an outward gift which would leave an inward

obligation. To destroy self-respect is to destroy caste, was his

idea.

After signing the note, Panchu's obeisance to my master fell off

considerably in its reverence--the dust-taking was left out. It

made my master smile; he asked nothing better than that courtesy

should stoop less low. "Respect given and taken truly balances

the account between man and man," was the way he put it, "but

veneration is overpayment."

Panchu began to buy cloth at the market and peddle it about the

village. He did not get much of cash payment, it is true, but

what he could realize in kind, in the way of rice, jute, and

other field produce, went towards settlement of his account. In

two month's time he was able to pay back an instalment of my

master's debt, and with it there was a corresponding reduction in

the depth of his bow. He must have begun to feel that he had

been revering as a saint a mere man, who had not even risen

superior to the lure of lucre.

While Panchu was thus engaged, the full shock of the

Swadeshi flood fell on him.

VII

It was vacation time, and many youths of our village and its

neighbourhood had come home from their schools and colleges.

They attached themselves to Sandip's leadership with enthusiasm,

and some, in their excess of zeal, gave up their studies

altogether. Many of the boys had been free pupils of my school

here, and some held college scholarships from me in Calcutta.

They came up in a body, and demanded that I should banish foreign

goods from my Suksar market.

I told them I could not do it.

They were sarcastic: "Why, Maharaja, will the loss be too much

for you?"

I took no notice of the insult in their tone, and was about to

reply that the loss would fall on the poor traders and their

customers, not on me, when my master, who was present,

interposed.

"Yes, the loss will be his--not yours, that is clear enough," he

said.

"But for one's country . ."

"The country does not mean the soil, but the men on it,"

interrupted my master again. "Have you yet wasted so much as a

glance on what was happening to them? But now you would dictate

what salt they shall eat, what clothes they shall wear. Why

should they put up with such tyranny, and why should we let

them?"

"But we have taken to Indian salt and sugar and cloth ourselves."

"You may do as you please to work off your irritation, to keep up

your fanaticism. You are well off, you need not mind the cost.

The poor do not want to stand in your way, but you insist on

their submitting to your compulsion. As it is, every moment of

theirs is a life-and-death struggle for a bare living; you cannot

even imagine the difference a few pice means to them--so little

have you in common. You have spent your whole past in a superior

compartment, and now you come down to use them as tools for the

wreaking of your wrath. I call it cowardly."

They were all old pupils of my master, so they did not venture to

be disrespectful, though they were quivering with indignation.

They turned to me. "Will you then be the only one, Maharaja, to

put obstacles in the way of what the country would achieve?"

"Who am I, that I should dare do such a thing? Would I not

rather lay down my life to help it?"

The M.A. student smiled a crooked smile, as he asked: "May we

enquire what you are actually doing to help?"

"I have imported Indian mill-made yarn and kept it for sale in my

Suksar market, and also sent bales of it to markets belonging to

neighbouring zamindars."

"But we have been to your market, Maharaja," the same student

exclaimed, "and found nobody buying this yarn."

"That is neither my fault nor the fault of my market. It only

shows the whole country has not taken your vow."

"That is not all," my master went on. "It shows that what you

have pledged yourselves to do is only to pester others. You want

dealers, who have not taken your vow, to buy that yarn; weavers,

who have not taken your vow, to make it up; then their wares

eventually to be foisted on to consumers who, also, have not

taken your vow. The method? Your clamour, and the

zamindars' oppression. The result: all righteousness

yours, all privations theirs!"

"And may we venture to ask, further, what your share of the

privation has been?" pursued a science student.

"You want to know, do you?" replied my master. "It is Nikhil

himself who has to buy up that Indian mill yarn; he has had to

start a weaving school to get it woven; and to judge by his past

brilliant business exploits, by the time his cotton fabrics leave

the loom their cost will be that of cloth-of-gold; so they will

only find a use, perhaps, as curtains for his drawing-room, even

though their flimsiness may fail to screen him. When you get

tired of your vow, you will laugh the loudest at their artistic

effect. And if their workmanship is ever truly appreciated at

all, it will be by foreigners."

I have known my master all my life, but have never seen him so

agitated. I could see that the pain had been silently

accumulating in his heart for some time, because of his

surpassing love for me, and that his habitual self-possession had

become secretly undermined to the breaking point.

"You are our elders," said the medical student. "It is unseemly

that we should bandy words with you. But tell us, pray, finally,

are you determined not to oust foreign articles from your

market?"

"I will not," I said, "because they are not mine."

"Because that will cause you a loss!" smiled the M.A. student.

"Because he, whose is the loss, is the best judge," retorted my

master.

With a shout of Bande Mataram they left us.

Chapter Six

Nikhil's Story

VIII

A FEW days later, my master brought Panchu round to me. His

zamindar, it appeared, had fined him a hundred rupees, and

was threatening him with ejectment.

"For what fault?" I enquired.

"Because," I was told, "he has been found selling foreign cloths.

He begged and prayed Harish Kundu, his zamindar, to let

him sell off his stock, bought with borrowed money, promising

faithfully never to do it again; but the zamindar would

not hear of it, and insisted on his burning the foreign stuff

there and then, if he wanted to be let off. Panchu in his

desperation blurted out defiantly: "I can't afford it! You are

rich; why not buy it up and burn it?" This only made Harish

Kundu red in the face as he shouted: "The scoundrel must be

taught manners, give him a shoe-beating!" So poor Panchu got

insulted as well as fined.

"What happened to the cloth?"

"The whole bale was burnt."

"Who else was there?"

"Any number of people, who all kept shouting _Bande

Mataram_. Sandip was also there. He took up some of the

ashes, crying: 'Brothers! This is the first funeral pyre lighted

by your village in celebration of the last rites of foreign

commerce. These are sacred ashes. Smear yourselves with them in

token of your Swadeshi vow.'"

"Panchu," said I, turning to him, "you must lodge a complaint."

"No one will bear me witness," he replied.

"None bear witness?--Sandip! Sandip!"

Sandip came out of his room at my call. "What is the matter?"

he asked.

"Won't you bear witness to the burning of this man's cloth?"

Sandip smiled. "Of course I shall be a witness in the case," he

said. "But I shall be on the opposite side."

"What do you mean," I exclaimed, "by being a witness on this or

that side? Will you not bear witness to the truth?"

"Is the thing which happens the only truth?"

"What other truths can there be?"

"The things that ought to happen! The truth we must build up

will require a great deal of untruth in the process. Those who

have made their way in the world have created truth, not blindly

followed it."

"And so--"

"And so I will bear what you people are pleased to call false

witness, as they have done who have created empires, built up

social systems, founded religious organizations. Those who would

rule do not dread untruths; the shackles of truth are reserved

for those who will fall under their sway. Have you not read

history? Do you not know that in the immense cauldrons, where

vast political developments are simmering, untruths are the main

ingredients?"

"Political cookery on a large scale is doubtless going on, but--"

"Oh, I know! You, of course, will never do any of the cooking.

You prefer to be one of those down whose throats the hotchpotch