Tagore’s 1900 New Year Poem Resonates in 2024

As the new year 2024 dawns and there are celebrations in several quarters, Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, “The sunset of the century”, composed on 31st December 1899, the last day of the nineteenth century, when the twentieth century was being welcomed, assumes critical significance in 2024. 

Standing Fearlessly before the Proud and Powerful

The last few years of the 21st century, specifically after 2014, are sadly marked by the domination of a personality cult, carefully scripted around one individual exercising power and authority. This massive concentration of power, exercised by demolishing key institutions of governance and the naked display of authority, has shaken the nation beyond measure. Those speaking truth to power face harsh punitive measures, which is reducing India to an electoral autocracy. In this new year in the Naya Bharat conjured up by the powers that be, that poetic composition of Tagore resonates intensely. 

"The crimson glow of light on the horizon,” Tagore wrote with anguish, “is not the light of thy dawn of peace, my Motherland.” He went on to add, “It is the glimmer of the funeral pyre burning to ashes the vast flesh, the self-love of the Nation, dead under its own excess.” 

“Thy morning,” he added, “waits behind the patient dark of the East, Meek and silent.” Tagore urged people to summon courage to face the mighty and powerful. “Be not ashamed, my brothers,” he wrote, “to stand before the proud and the powerful/ With your white robe of simpleness.” 

He then with poetic excellence urged: “Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul.” In these trying times these words of Tagore uttered in his poem on 31st December 1899 assume far more significance for the new year dawning on 1st January 2024.  

Huge is Devoid of Greatness  

Tagore reminded in the same poem to “build God’s throne daily upon the ample bareness of…poverty”. He stated, “And know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.” There is now a projection in India that what is huge is great by use of massive media blitzkrieg. Pride associated with ‘hugeness’ is sought to be inculcated as something that would last forever. 

Keep Watch India

The poetic composition of Tagore summons readers to take courage: “Keep watch, India. Bring your offerings of worship for that sacred sunrise. Let the first hymn of its welcome sound in your voice and sing, ‘Come, Peace, thou daughter of God’s own great suffering/ Come with thy treasure of contentment/ The sword of fortitude/ And meekness crowning thy forehead.” Those words Tagore uttered echo aloud in 21st-century India.

The year 2024 is bound to confront the apprehensions Tagore expressed some 125 years back. Today, the giant-sized photographs of a leader with a mandate to exercise control over the State apparatus are ubiquitous. The unmistakable impression generated in the minds of the citizenry is that the incessant projection and peddling of something big is truly valuable. 

The false consciousness associated with such projections was unravelled by Tagore’s aforementioned words, “… what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.”

Sectarian Ambition for Power  

In his speech, “Robbery of Soil”, delivered in 1922 at Calcutta University, Tagore apprehended the insatiable ambition for power of those wedded to sectarianism. He said presciently: “Whenever some sectarian ambition for power establishes a dominating position in life’s republic, the sense of unity, which can only be generated and maintained by a perfect rhythm of reciprocity between the parts is bound to be disturbed.”

More than a century later, Tagore’s sense of foreboding has come true. The disunity and imbalance attributable to the dominance of the “sectarian ambition for power” are emerging as a dangerous by-product of the aggressive pursuit of a process of polarisation in our republic. 

Institutions of governance have lost their independence and this alarming phenomenon is being accompanied by a fear psychosis generated on account of the muzzling dissenting views with draconian laws. Yet again, we can turn to Tagore’s prophetic words in the same speech: “In a society where the greed of an individual or of a group is allowed to grow uncontrolled, and is encouraged or even applauded by the populace, democracy, as it is termed in the West, cannot be truly realised.”

“In such an atmosphere,” he stated, “…a constant struggle goes on among individuals to capture public organisations for the satisfaction of their own personal ambition.”

As we celebrate the new year—the arrival of 2024—those words resonate. In Naya Bharat’s selfie points established across railway stations and elsewhere are promoting a personality cult. It is quite striking that Tagore likened democracy in such a situation to an elephant used by the clever and the rich, in his words, “…for the joyride of the rich.”

Manipulation of Outlets of Information

Tagore made a sharply critical remark that “the organs of information and expression, through which opinions are manufactured, and the machinery of administration, are openly or secretly manipulated by the prosperous few...” His words, “Be on watch, India” and asking people “to stand before the proud and the powerful/ With your white robe of simpleness”, are of greater relevance today, when the arrival of 2024 is being celebrated, than when he composed those words to mark the advent of the year 1900. 

The author served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India KR Narayanan. The views are personal.