10 1 1 1011 4435

The Journal of Hindu Studies 2011;4:176–204 doi:10.
1093/jhs/hir023
Advance Access Publication 9 July 2011
‘Natural Supernaturalism?’1 The Tagore–Gandhi

Debate on the Bihar Earthquake
Makarand R. Paranjape*
Jawaharlal Nehru University
Downloaded from http://jhs.oxfordjournals.org/ at Pennsylvania State University on September 17, 2016

*Corresponding author: makarand@mail.jnu.ac.in
Abstract: This article is a study of the confrontation between Rabindranath

Tagore (1861–1941) and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) on the
Bihar earthquake of January 1934. Gandhi who was then campaigning
against untouchability in South India called the earthquake ‘a divine chas-
tisement for the great sin we have committed and are still committing
against those whom we describe as untouchables . . . ’. Reading this state-
ment in the press, Tagore wrote to Gandhi pointedly disagreeing with him: ‘I
am compelled to utter a truism in asserting that physical catastrophes have
their inevitable and exclusive origin in certain combinations of physical
facts’. This article examines the differences in their position over this
topic and discusses the implications of their contrasting stands on it. In
addition, I also look at Gandhi’s other statements on the earthquake as I do
at Tagore’s exchanges with Einstein on the relationship between the obser-
ver and the phenomenal world. Perhaps no other disagreement between
Gandhi and Tagore better illustrates the differences in their attitudes to
life, their notions of what constitutes the relationship between physical
phenomena and the realm of human morals, or between nature and God,
within a broadly Hindu framework of understanding. But departing from the
conventional view that Tagore’s position is rational–scientific–modern, while
Gandhi’s is religious–superstitious–traditional, I argue that the contestations
are not as much between rationality and faith, science and superstition, or
modernity and tradition as between two kinds of rationality, two ideas of
science, and two approaches to modernity. I try to show how both Tagore’s
and Gandhi’s positions are intellectually more complex, nuanced, and com-
pelling than might appear at first. Ultimately, both Gandhi and Tagore
contributed, even with their contrasting perspectives, to the richness that
made up Indian modernity, with its unique attempts to integrate rationality
with a spiritual view of the world.
ß The Author 2011. Oxford University Press and The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com
Makarand R. Paranjape 177
The event
On 15 January 1934 at about 2:13 p.m. a massive earthquake shook Bihar, a popu-
lous state in North India. The affected zone extended from Purnea in the East to
Champaran in the West, a belt of more than 300 km, and from Kathmandu in Nepal
to the North of Bihar to Munger in the South, an area stretching over 100 kilo-
metres.2 There was extensive damage to life and property, with several thousand
lives lost. The officers of the Geological Survey of India who reported on the quake
estimated that 10,000 people had been killed, but other estimates put the toll

closer to 30,000.3 Occurring fifteen years before independence, when the struggle
against British colonialism in India was at its height, the quake became a focal
point of a fascinating debate between two of India’s greatest men, Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). In a
way, this debate shows us not only two contrasting ways of being Hindu in
recent times, but also goes to the very heart of how Indian modernity was fash-
ioned during the turbulent years of the freedom movement.
This article is a study of that debate. It examines not just the exchange that took
place between Gandhi and Tagore on this topic, but also the implications of their
contrasting stands on it. Perhaps no other disagreement between them better
illustrates the differences in their belief systems, attitudes to life, and more spe-
cifically, their notions of what constitutes the relationship between natural phe-
nomena and the realm of human morals within a broad Hindu framework of
understanding. Though almost every commentator on the Gandhi–Tagore relation-
ship mentions this issue, this is the first detailed study of this debate. In the four
months from 18 January 1934 to 19 May 1934 covered in volume 63 of his Collected
Works (Gandhi 1999), Gandhi refers to the earthquake nearly eighty times.4 It is
necessary to examine both the context of Gandhi’s views on the earthquake and
their evolution to understand not only what he meant, but also the real implica-
tions of his confrontation with Tagore. This article departs from the conventional
view that Tagore’s position is rational–scientific–modern, while Gandhi’s is reli-
gious–superstitious–traditional.5 I argue that the contestations are not as much
between rationality and faith, science and superstition, or modernity and tradition
as between two kinds of rationality, two ideas of science, and two approaches to
modernity. I try to show how both Tagore’s and Gandhi’s positions are intellec-
tually more complex, nuanced, and challenging than might appear at first.
The question of the Bihar earthquake is, of course, embedded in the larger
discourse on the relationship between them. In the considerable secondary litera-
ture on this subject, some commentators emphasise that differences were funda-
mental, while others are of the view that they were not as radical as to be
incommensurable. As an example of the former position, we might cite David
Kopf (1989, p. 63) who asserts that ‘It was Gandhi’s total commitment to the
Hindu past at the cost of rejecting all that was Western or modern which
alienated Tagore’. Kopf is echoing a position enunciated in his analysis of the
178 The Tagore–Gandhi Debate on the Bihar Earthquake
‘Tagore–Gandhi Controversy’ by Sibnarayan Ray, follower of the radical humanist,

M. N. Roy, in Gandhi, India and the World (1970). In contrast, Tapan Raychaudhuri, in
a chapter entitled ‘Tagore and Gandhi: Where the Twain Met’, points out that
‘genuine differences in opinion and world-view have deflected attention from
the vast areas of agreement between the two’ (p. 141). In fact, he attributes an
over-emphasising of differences to the fact that many scholars see Tagore primar-
ily as a poet–mystic and are unfamiliar with the vast body of his writings,
which are in Bengali, on political, socio-economic, and civilisational issues (ibid).

Having examined both the differences and the commonalities, he concludes,
‘Gandhi and Tagore are remarkably similar in many ways’ (Raychaudhuri 1999,
p. 142). In 1977, noted historian Sabysachi Bhattacharya compiled many of these
exchanges in The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and
Tagore, 1915–1941. The book was published by the National Book Trust of India, a
Government-funded publishing house, reflecting the ‘national’ importance of
these debates.
By critically examining one specific aspect of their complex relationship,
namely, their perspectives on the Bihar earthquake of January1934, I seek to
make a fresh intervention in this debate. To me, their divergent views on the
earthquake hold the key to an understanding of how their mentalities differed in a
profound sense. Perhaps even more than the non-cooperation movement or the
issue of the charkha (the spinning wheel), it is this topic that brings out their
differences in sharper relief. That is why I attempt a close reading of the brief
but concentrated exchange that took place over this event.6 It must be pointed
out, however, that their debate must not be construed as a science–spirituality
contest; after all neither Gandhi nor Tagore was a scientist. Nor need it be seen as a
discussion between two philosophers. Yet, both were not just thoughtful and
thinking individuals, but had a highly developed ability to articulate their pos-
itions on a variety of matters and to sustain such positions with an impressive
arsenal of arguments. Ultimately, both Gandhi and Tagore contributed, even with
their contrasting perspectives, to the richness that made up Indian modernity,
with its unique attempts to integrate rationality with a spiritual view of the world.
The Gandhi–Tagore debate highlights some of the grave challenges and hazards
that such a project faced.
The debate
On 24 January 1934, nine days after the earthquake, at a public meeting in
Tirunelveli (then Tinnevelly) to an audience of about 20,000, Gandhi said:
We who have faith in God must cherish the belief that behind even this indes-
cribable calamity there is a divine purpose that works for the good of humanity.
You may call me superstitious if you like; but a man like me cannot but believe
that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins. (Gandhi
1999, volume 63, p. 38).
The speech was reported in major English-language national newspapers: The

Hindu on 24 January 1934 and The Hindustan Times on 25 January 1934.
Gandhi had already been collecting money for the welfare of untouchables (or
Harijans as he named them) during this tour of the South; now he widened his
appeal on behalf of the quake victims. But he is not content with collecting money

alone. After asking for generous contributions from his listeners, he returns almost
compulsively to his earlier point, trying to posit a connection between the ‘Act of
God’ and the man-made ‘calamity’ of untouchability:
For me there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the untouch-
ability campaign. The Bihar calamity is a sudden and accidental reminder of
what we are and what God is; but untouchability is a calamity handed down to us
from century to century. It is a curse brought upon ourselves by our own neglect
of a portion of Hindu humanity. Whilst this calamity in Bihar damages the body,
the calamity brought about by untouchability corrodes the very soul. Therefore,
let this Bihar calamity be a reminder to us that, whilst we have still a few more
breaths left, we should purify ourselves of the taint of untouchability and
approach our Maker with clean hearts. (Gandhi 1999, volume 63, pp. 39–40).
What is noteworthy is that in this second part of the speech, there is no clear
causal relationship between the earthquake and untouchability; they are merely
regarded as two great catastrophes. In so far as the latter is of our own fashioning,
we ought to bear responsibility for it—this is Gandhi’s contention. The speech was
published in full in the 2 February issue of Harijan, a newspaper that Gandhi
himself edited. The following day, 25 January 1934, speaking at Tuticorin,
Gandhi repeated, ‘I want you to be “superstitious” enough with me to believe
that the earthquake is a divine chastisement for the great sin we have committed
and are still committing against those whom we describe as untouchables . . . .’
(Gandhi 1999, volume 63, p. 40).
It was this statement that Rabindranath Tagore cited in his reaction. Within a
couple of days of having read it, he wrote to Gandhi, pointedly disagreeing with
him. In his letter dated 28 January 1934, he asked Gandhi if he (Gandhi) had indeed
spoken as follows: ‘I want you to be superstitious enough to believe with me that
the earthquake is a divine chastisement for the great sin we have committed
against those whom we describe as harijans’7 (Bhattacharya 1977, p. 156). Tagore
offered his rejoinder to such a position but also wished to check with Gandhi if he
was reported accurately by the press: ‘I would,’ he clarified, ‘be the last person
to criticize you on unreal acts’. Gandhi, on receiving Tagore’s missive, wrote to
him on 2 February 1934 enclosing his own response to Tagore and offering to
publish both Tagore’s statement and his rejoinder either at ‘your end or mine,
as you desire’ (ibid). Interestingly however, just a few days after this exchange,
Tagore issued a statement on 6 February 1934 defending Gandhi against the ‘slan-
derous campaign that is being carried out against him [Gandhi]’ (ibid, p. 157). He
ended by offering Gandhi a ‘hearty welcome’ to Bengal, where Gandhi did not go
until much later. Thus, though Tagore criticised Gandhi for his views on the Bihar
earthquake, he nevertheless took a public stance against the vilification of the
latter on this account.
Gandhi, as promised, published Tagore’s statement in the 16 February 1934 issue

of Harijan. Tagore, in a concise and rich exposition, argues that physical and moral
causes are unrelated. He is even more concerned that Gandhi’s statements may
encourage irrationality and superstition:
It is all the more unfortunate, because this kind of unscientific view is readily
accepted by large sections of our countrymen. I keenly feel the inequity of it,
when I am compelled to utter a truism in asserting that physical catastrophes
have their inevitable and exclusive origin in certain combinations of physical
facts. Unless we believe in the inexorableness of the universal law in the work-
ing of which God himself never interferes, we find it impossible to justify his
ways on occasions like the one which has sorely stricken us in an overwhelming
manner and scale. (Bhattacharya 1977, pp. 158–9).
It is noteworthy that Tagore not only calls Gandhi’s position ‘unscientific’, but
also considers the separation between the physical and the metaphysical a
‘truism’.8
In support of his argument, Tagore proceeds to say that throughout human
history, there have been terrible injustices and traumas, which went unpunished.
Furthermore, he adds that natural laws like the law of gravitation seem to be
neutral to both the good and the wicked, and that the accumulated evil that we
have done can never undermine the foundations of civilisations. Tagore thinks it is
particularly unfortunate of Gandhi to make this kind of statement, which is better
suited to his opponents, the traditionalists, who would consider the earthquake to
be divine retribution for the violation of caste rules. He feels deeply concerned
that Gandhi who enjoys the love and devotion of his countrymen and women
should speak on behalf of unreason which ‘is a fundamental source of all the
blind powers that drive us against freedom and self respect’ (Bhattacharya 1977,
pp. 158–9).
Gandhi’s rejoinder was also published in Harijan on 16 February 1934. He starts
by acknowledging that Gurudev ‘had a perfect right to utter his protests when I
was in error’, that his ‘profound regard’ would incline him to pay more heed to
Tagore than ‘any other critic’ (Bhattacharya 1977, p. 159). But in spite of his having
read Tagore’s statement ‘three times’, Gandhi asserts that he ‘adheres’ to his views
of linking the earthquake to the ‘sin’ of untouchability. Gandhi then articulates his
fundamental difference with Tagore on the nature and relation between physical
and moral phenomena: ‘I have long believed that physical phenomena produce
results both physical and spiritual. The converse I hold to be equally true’ (ibid).
How does Gandhi justify what might seem a patently ‘unscientific’ position?
Gandhi does not offer an ‘irrational’ recourse to faith and belief to justify his
position. Instead he says: ‘We do not know all the laws of God, nor their working.
Knowledge of the tallest scientist or the greatest spiritualist is like a particle of
dust’ (Bhattacharya 1977, pp. 159–60). Gandhi questions the infallibility of present
scientific and spiritual knowledge suggesting that it may not be the last word or

the final explanation for catastrophes such as the earthquake. Indeed, when he
first describes the Bihar earthquake as a divine chastisement, he invites his audi-
ence to join him in what he self-consciously calls his ‘superstition’. In other words,
Gandhi is fully aware that his position, to say the least, is unconventional, a
complete departure from the prevalent scientific view, but he seems to suggest
that superstitious though his position may seem to be, it serves a higher moral
cause which he does not wish to forgo. He adds that he sincerely and instinctively
felt the connection. Not to admit his feelings publicly, would be ‘untruthful and
cowardly’ if he withheld these views ‘for fear of ridicule’ (ibid). What is notable
is that Gandhi’s ‘superstition’ is totally at odds with, indeed, is a reversal of the
traditional ‘superstition’ that caste hierarchies, including untouchability, are a
part of the natural scheme and any violation of them would result in the wrath
of the Gods evidenced in calamities and disasters such as the earthquake.
Agreeing with Gurudev, Gandhi acknowledges: ‘I believe in the inexorableness of
the universal law, in the working of which God himself never interferes’ (ibid), but
Gandhi differs from Tagore in making the profound assertion that God and his law
are not separate: ‘He and his law are one. The Law is God . . . . for God is the Law’
(ibid, p. 160). If God and his law are one, then there is no question of God being
separate from the universe of physical phenomena. Gandhi deftly turns a
non-interfering Newtonian watchmaker–God into an almost brooding Calvinistic
spirit who informs and rules ‘the tiniest detail’ of our lives: ‘I believe literally that
not a leaf moves, but by his will. Every breath I take depends upon his sufferance’
(ibid, p. 160). Gandhi’s refusal to accept a disjunction between the physical and the
metaphysical, the natural and the supernatural, the phenomenal and the nou-
menal, the human and the divine, marks him to be a rare exponent of a holistic
and integrated universe in our modern times. Gandhi reasserts a homology or
correspondence between the human microcosm and the divine macrocosm,
which characterises many mystical positions, and he refuses to divorce physical
phenomena from human morals.
Gandhi next admits that he cannot prove that the Bihar earthquake is linked to
untouchability: ‘even as I cannot help believing in God though I am unable to
prove His existence to the sceptics, in like manner, I cannot prove the connection
of the sin of untouchability with the Bihar visitation even though the connection is
instinctively felt by me’ (ibid). Hence, Gandhi suggests to Tagore that neither of
them can prove the existence of God, but both of them share such a belief.
Therefore, not everything that we believe is provable or needs to be based on

standards of proof. In effect, Gandhi proposes nothing less than an alternate epis-
temology for things that we do not fully comprehend such as the moral laws of the
universe. Indeed. Gandhi has already said that we do not fully understand all
physical laws. He admits to his ‘utter ignorance of the workings of the laws of
nature’ (ibid). Yet because he has ‘instinctively felt that the earthquake was a
visitation for the sin of untouchability’, Gandhi takes courage and is bold
enough to proclaim his feelings to his countrymen. He implies that what one

instinctively feels deeply and sincerely, even if it cannot be proven scientifically,
is worthy of belief and public avowal.
Contemporary reactions
After this preliminary exposition and before a more detailed analysis of the pos-
itions of both Gandhi and Tagore, it might be worthwhile to review how this
debate has come to be interpreted by leading contemporary intellectuals from
India. This will not only show the continuing importance of the issue, but indicate
how it has larger implications for a construction of a modern Indian identity. It is
almost as if thinking Indians have to make a fundamental choice on whether to
line up behind Gandhi or Tagore. In a recent interview at the University of British
Columbia to mark the 150th anniversary of Tagore’s birthday, noted Indian his-
torian and Harvard University professor, Sugata Bose, came out clearly on the side
of Tagore, without mincing any words:
Tagore was right, Gandhi was wrong . . . . This, in fact, I think is a solid example
of Tagore on balance being on the side of science and modernity and reason
while Gandhi could in fact take a very anti-modern stance and could fall back
on what Tagore would have described as ‘unreason.’ (Asia–Pacific Memo on 19
April 2011) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼dxf6OWR_8IA).
I shall try to show later why I consider Gandhi’s stand neither unreasonable
(though it might arguably be considered non-modern), nor even ‘unscientific’.
Bose, I think, fails to give the Gandhian position its due because he neither bothers
to contextualise it properly, nor take into account all of Gandhi’s own justifications
or explanations. Adopting a purely reductive approach, he dismisses Gandhi’s
stance by branding it ‘unscientific’ or ‘anti-modern,’ as if these terms in their
own right are not just self-evident but beyond interrogation. Many Indians who
have similarly bought into the modern project completely would sympathise
with Bose, rejecting Gandhi’s obscurantism and welcoming Tagore’s liberal
rationalism.
Another notable comment on this debate is to be found in Nobel Laureate
Amartya Sen’s Foreword to the Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore
(1997) edited by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson. Sen sets up the issue as
follows:
An occasion on which Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore rather se-

verely clashed with each other . . . involved their totally different attitudes to
science . . . . [Tagore] hated the implicit epistemology of seeing earthquakes as
an ethical phenomenon. (Dutta and Robinson 1997, p. xxii).

Yet, instead of a thorough analysis of the debate and the implications of both sides,
he somewhat skirts the issue by remarking:
While Tagore was totally opposed not only to ignoring modern science in trying
to understand physical phenomena, and particularly critical of giving ethical
failures a role in explaining natural catastrophes, his views on epistemology
were interestingly heterodox. (Ibid, p. xxiii).
Without fully explaining what the sources of Tagore’s epistemology were, Sen calls
it an ‘interpersonal epistemology’. This is an intriguing term, beyond its explana-
tory power; it signals Tagore’s differences with scientific epistemology which I
shall discuss later. Suffice it to say that the metaphysics behind Tagore’s ‘inter-
personal epistemology’ is certain at odds with the established methodology of
modern science where, except at the quantum level, subject–object dualism is
preserved. Sen, thus, himself admits that Tagore’s epistemological views, too,
were ‘heterodox’. Gandhi’s certainly were. So, as we will see, we have two kinds
of heterodoxies in debate, not a clear case of science on one side and some sort of
alternate epistemology on the other, as Sen believes.
So egregious is this perception that Gandhi’s position was ‘unscientific’ that his
biographers do not escape it either. In a recently translated four volume edition of
Narayan Desai’s My Life is My Message, Desai actually says that Gandhi made a
mistake in linking the earthquake to the sin of untouchability:
Poet Rabindranath quickly and justly pointed out the error of Gandhiji in
attributing agency to human failing for cosmic events. If Gandhiji could argue
that it was the sin of untouchability that brought about the calamity, the
Sanatanis by the same logic could claim that the earthquake was nature’s ret-
ribution for the sin of opening the temples to untouchables. . . . Gandhiji’s state-
ment was likely to misguide and perplex people. Human beings who have been
shown to be insignificant before nature ought to refrain from linking sin and
merit of human social artefacts [sic] with the laws of nature (Desai 2009, p. 205).
Desai, before coming to such a conclusion quotes from Gandhi’s speech of

27 March 1934 at Chapra, Bihar (Gandhi 1999, volume 63, pp. 318–19), where
Gandhi, according to Desai, ‘indirectly admitted to his error’ (Desai 2009, p. 204).
On the contrary, far from admitting to his error, Gandhi actually goes on to
develop the reasons behind his statement, standing by it rather than recanting it.
He not only anticipated Desai’s argument about the opposite use of such a method,
but has already pointed out how such a logic could not be used to justify a social
ill but only to engender repentance and soul searching (Gandhi 1999, this volume
63, p. 164). Gandhi, in fact, has also tried to warn against the indiscriminate use of
his method:
This is not to say that we can with certainty attribute a particular calamity to a

particular human action. . . . All that I mean to say is that every visitation of
Nature does and should mean to us Nature’s call to introspection, repentance,
and self-purification. . . . I would even go so far as to say that even the recent
earthquake would not be too great a price to pay, if it enabled India to cast out
the canker of untouchability. (Gandhi 1999, volume 63, pp. 318–19).
Clearly, there is no retraction, nor a fundamental change in Gandhi’s outlook,

neither after Tagore’s strictures nor after two months of reflection over his initial
statement. It is puzzling why Desai persists in misrepresenting Gandhi, nor why
his translator, Tridib Suhud, himself a noted Gandhian scholar, neglects to point
this out. Apparently, Gandhi’s position is problematic even to officially recognised
Gandhians.
The only contemporary historian who seems to give some credit to Gandhi’s
views is Vinay Lal. In a trenchant article ‘The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate’
published in Economic and Political Weekly on 4 October 2008, Lal observes:
However indefensible appear to be Gandhi’s pronouncements on the

Bihar earthquake, any criticism which posits a stark opposition of faith and
reason, superstition and science, seems hardly any more satisfactory.
(Lal 2008, p. 58).
Instead, Lal suggests that ‘Indian social theory had never offered any account
of collective responsibility. Gandhi’s reading of the Bihar earthquake can be
seen as an unprecedented effort in that direction’ (ibid). In an interview with
Gary Stern, professor and philosopher of Hinduism, Arvind Sharma, also offers
a Karmic justification for Gandhi’s view (Stern 2007, pp. 166–7). Sharma actu-
ally hazards that ‘Most Hindus . . . would probably side with Gandhi and assign
some degree of moral blame for catastrophes . . . ’ (ibid, p. 166). Lal and Sharma
offer a helpful counter-perspective to what appears to be the established opinion
on this subject.
Gandhi’s reasons
In this section, I devote closer attention to Gandhi’s actual statements leading up
to his exchange with Tagore. I would like to examine how his views were formed,
how they acquired a certain resilience, and how he, ultimately, stuck to them. Far
from being off the cuff or arbitrary, they were formed through considerable intro-
spection and interaction with his audiences. It is necessary to quote from them at
some length because the views were not static, but kept developing in new dir-
ections without changing in their basic position. Raising money both for his work
against untouchability and for earthquake relief, Gandhi becomes a one-man army
fighting both a social curse and the cause of rehabilitation in the aftermath of a
great natural calamity. At least in his own mind, Gandhi sees an intrinsic connec-

tion between the two, even if he does not expect his listeners to follow him. What
he does expect is that his moral exhortations will persuade them to accept their
share of responsibility for both untouchability and the earthquake, prompting
them to expiate for both by donating generously. Quite characteristically and
scrupulously, though, Gandhi keeps the two donation drives and their accounts
separate, refusing to use the money collected for Harijan welfare towards earth-
quake relief. It must also be admitted that after being criticised by Tagore, Gandhi
less frequently vocalises his belief that the earthquake is a punishment for the sin
of untouchability, although his campaign against the latter is undiminished in
fervour or consistency.
When the earthquake struck, Gandhi was at the other end of India, in the deep
South, on a hectic tour, whose main thrust was the removal of untouchability.
On 15 January 1934 he was in Calicut; it was his day of silence.9 His earliest ref-
erence to the earthquake came six days later in a letter to Rukminidevi Bazaj on
21 January 1934, asking her if she felt the tremors in Benares where she lived
(Gandhi 1999, volume 63, p. 23). The very next day, writing from Kanyakumari, the
Southernmost tip of peninsular India, he informs his close associate Vallabhbhai
Patel:
It seems the Bihar earthquake has completely destroyed Motihari. Rajendra

babu10 seems to have plunged into relief work as soon as he was released.
There was a heart-rending wire from him. I have sent him a wire of sympathy.
Satisbabu11 has rushed to Bihar. He informs me that 15,000 people have been
hurt. Many people were killed, but their number is not known. A large number
of even big houses have been rendered uninhabitable. (ibid, p. 29).
It is therefore clear that Gandhi did not suddenly or arbitrarily link the earthquake
to untouchability, but that the association formed gradually in his mind and
became firmer, not weaker, with time.
It was on 24 January 1934 that Gandhi first linked the earthquake and untouch-
ability, as already indicated, in his Tirunelveli speech. Immediately after making
the link, Gandhi says, ‘Even to avowed scoffers it must be clear that nothing but
divine will can explain such a calamity. It is my unmistakable belief that not a
blade of grass moves but by the divine will’ (ibid, p. 38). Gandhi is already offering
a clue to his mentality; ‘God’ as he terms the supreme force governing the
universe, is sovereign and all-pervasive, therefore everything that happens is ne-

cessarily a part of this grand scheme. ‘God’ here refers also to the ‘whys’ and
‘wherefores’ of our world, the ultimate explanation for what is difficult to under-
stand. In the Tuticorin address on the following day, he adds, ‘This divine calamity
has suddenly reminded us that all humanity is one’ (ibid, p. 40). The earthquake is
a ‘leveller’, showing how human distinctions such as caste are not recognised by
nature. In the competing rhetoric over this issue, we cannot help noticing how
the earthquake literally flattens the man-made distinctions between people, some-

thing Gandhi seizes on to suggest how even God or nature is against
untouchability.
In the same speech, he drives home the moral of the disaster: ‘Let us derive the
lesson from this calamity that this earthly existence is no more permanent than
that of the moths we see every night dancing round lights for a few minutes and
then being destroyed’ (ibid). Human life is fickle, transient, and impermanent. If
so, the question immediately arises, how should we live? Gandhi responds by
asserting, ‘Therefore, whilst we have yet breathing time, let us get rid of the
distinctions of high and low, purify our hearts, and be ready to face our Maker
when an earthquake or some natural calamity or death in the ordinary course
overtakes us’ (ibid). Gandhi stresses that the distinctions of ‘high and low’ must be
ended, that we should live such that we can, through the purification of our
hearts, be ready to face our ‘maker’ any time. The fickleness of life, the need
for self-purification, and the readiness to account for one’s deeds in the here-
after—all these indicate a broadly religious attitude, rather than a ‘modern’, con-
ventionally scientific approach.
The next day, 25 January 1934, speaking at Rajapalyam in Tamil Nadu, and
collecting money for Harijan welfare and the earthquake, Gandhi dwells again
on the link between untouchability and the calamity. Saying that nearly 20,000
people have perished in the disaster, he exhorts his audience to join him in
inquiring into the causes of the earthquake: ‘Now why should this calamity
come upon us? I request you to think with me’ (ibid, pp. 42–3). Then he actually
tries to suggest an ‘answer’ in a series of questions: ‘Is this great calamity a pun-
ishment for our sin? What is the great sin we are committing and have committed?
Why should we not take this as a warning to us? (ibid, p. 43). Gandhi’s inquiry
proceeds in a series of interrogative sentences, questioning, rather than asserting
that an important lesson can indeed be drawn from the natural calamity. What
this lesson can be, at least to Gandhi, is obvious: ‘The wrong we have done is
staring us in the face. We believe, in the name of religion, that thousands of our
own countrymen are born ‘untouchables’. Is it right? It is an insolence that we
must get rid of, at all costs’ (ibid). The earthquake is a mere pretext; the lesson to
be learnt from it is far more important.
A valuable insight into Gandhi’s mind is offered by the letter of condolence that
he wrote on 26 January 1934 to Laxmi Narayan Agarwal, one of the victims of the
earthquake, who had lost all the members of his family. Agarwal was the Secretary
of the All-Indian Spinners Association. His house in the Muzaffarpur district of
Bihar had collapsed, killing all its inmates.
Rajendrababu has given me news of your having lost all your nearest and
dearest. How can I console you? Where thousands are dead, consolation can

hardly mean anything. This is a moment when we must tell ourselves that
everyone is a relative. Then no one will feel bereaved. If we can cultivate
this attitude of mind, death itself is abolished. For that which lives cannot
die. Birth and death are an illusion. Know this to be the truth and, overcoming
grief, stick to your duty. (ibid, p. 43).
Gandhi takes a metaphysical position that would ‘abolish’ death because that
which lives ‘cannot die’; if birth and death are both illusions, why grieve, he
implies. This is, indeed, what Krishna says to Arjuna in the second chapter of
the Bhagawad Gita, when the latter does not wish to fight the Mahabharata war.
Gandhi, too, harps on doing one’s duty regardless of the circumstances. Yet, from
another standpoint, Gandhi’s condolence seems utterly to lack human pity or
sympathy; most people having suffered such bereavement would seek comfort
or solace, not the ‘abolishing’ of death and the injunction to do one’s duty. Lest
we come to the conclusion that Gandhi was heartless, we find him, that very day,
reminding the merchants of Madurai, whom he addressed as ‘brother banias’,12
that while they sat comfortably in their homes or might go to the cinema that
evening, there were thousands shivering in the bitter cold in Bihar, homeless,
hungry, and miserable. Should not they, the prosperous merchants of Madurai,
do something from their wretched brethren in another part of the country?
Carrying on, Gandhi offers an elaborate justification for his stance:
I know that you are all believers in God. Our forefathers have taught us to think
that whenever a calamity descends upon a people, that calamity comes because
of our personal sins. You know that when the rains do not come in time
we perform sacrifices and ask gods to send us rains and forgive us our sins
owing to which rains are detained. And it is not only here—I have seen it
in England and South Africa. When there is a visitation of locusts or the
rivers are in flood, they appoint days of humiliation and days of fasting and
pray to God to remove the calamity from their midst. And then I want you to
believe with me that for this absolutely unthinkable affliction in Bihar your sins
and my sins are responsible. And then when I ask myself what can be that
atrocious sin that we must have committed to deserve such a calamity
which staggers us and which today probably has staggered the whole
world,—within living memory there is no record of an earthquake of this mag-

nitude in India— I tell you the conviction is growing on me that this affliction
has come to us because of this atrocious sin of untouchability. (ibid, p. 45).
Gandhi derives his position in the following steps: (i) belief in God and his sover-
eignty; (ii) the traditional, even universal, practice of inquiry, self-purification, and
repentance following a natural calamity; (iii) inquiring what sin might have occa-
sioned such a great calamity; and (iv) surmising that the only sin grievous enough

was the practice of untouchability.
But Gandhi, does not stop there. He anticipates other possible refutations of his
argument:
I beseech you not to laugh within yourself and think I want to appeal to your
instinct of superstition. I don’t. I am not given to making any appeal to the
superstitious fears of people. I may be called superstitious, but I cannot help
telling you what I feel deep down in me. I do not propose to take up your time
and my time by elaborating this. You are free to believe it or to reject it. (ibid).
Gandhi, therefore, clearly rejects appeals to superstition and disassociates himself

from them. He also offers his audience the freedom to agree or disagree with him.
What is even more curious, he refuses to elaborate his stance, saying he does not
want to waste the time of his listeners. In other words, Gandhi is not interested in
working out his position in a series of logical steps—indeed, such a procedure does
not interest him. Instead, he wishes to use the earthquake to make a moral appeal,
inviting his audience to join him in using the occasion for penitence, prayer,
purification, and ultimately restitution. Stressing that there is no sanction or jus-
tification for untouchability in the scriptures, Gandhi continues: ‘You will think
with me that it is a diabolical sin to think of any human being as an untouchable. It
is man’s insolence that tells him that he is higher than any other. I tell you, the
more I think of it the more I feel that there cannot be a greater sin than for a man
to consider that he is higher than any single being’ (ibid). The connection between
the natural disaster and untouchability is thus a moral exhortation more than an
irrational superstition or an example of unreason.
Addressing a public meeting in Madurai later that evening, Gandhi continued:
I have not hesitated to say that most probably the calamity which has come to
India through the earth-quake in Bihar is a fit punishment awarded to us by
God for this great sin of untouchability. But whether it is so or not, it is
necessary that you should go to the alleviation of the sufferings of the
people of Bihar. (ibid, p. 48).
It is thus clear that Gandhi’s view is neither a doctrine nor a dogma, but an
invitation. His listeners are left free to agree or disagree with him; but regardless
of their views, they are expected to do something for the cause of the earthquake
victims. Then Gandhi says:
I might say that when we have visitations of this character they have not only
a physical reason, but they carry with them also spiritual consequences;
and if it is a superstition, it is a superstition which I share in common
with practically all mankind. You may, if you like, reject this belief of mine.
(Ibid, pp. 48–9).

Whether or not his audience agreed with him on the link between the
earthquake and untouchability, Gandhi reiterates that untouchability is
certainly both irrational and immoral and therefore can have no possible
justification.
At Karaikudi on 27 January 1934, the day after his many meetings and speeches
at Madurai, Gandhi continues his introspection on the earthquake:
I would like you tomorrow to enter into the sanctuary of your hearts and
examine the causes of this calamity. Geologists and such other scientists will
undoubtedly give us physical and material causes of such calamities. But the
belief has been entertained all the world over by religiously minded people,
especially by the Hindus, that there are spiritual causes for such visitations.
I entertain the honest and deep conviction that such visitations are due
to the great sin that we have committed towards humanity and to God.
(Ibid, p. 48).
Clearly, Gandhi does not rule out material causes but holds that they do not
explain entirely an occurrence such as an earthquake. Again, he says that the
manmade harm caused by untouchability is worse than the devastation of the
earthquake.
Given that most of his life was lived on the public stage, it was obvious
that Gandhi’s remarks would invite a lot of attention. His newspaper also served
as a forum for such public debates. The 2 February 1934 issue of Harijan carries
some telegrams that Gandhi received on the Bihar earthquake. This is the same
issue which also carried his Tirunelveli address in full, but what makes Gandhi’s
article ‘Bihar and Untouchability’ special is that Gandhi is not concerned with
reconstruction and rehabilitation, not just with the disaster. He is concerned
that the inequities prior to the ‘levelling’ will be reproduced after the
reconstruction:
the organizers would have resolutely to set their faces against reproducing evil
customs and habits. They may not encourage untouchability or caste divisions
unperceivably based on untouchability. Nature has been impartial in her de-
struction. Shall we retain our partiality—caste against caste, Hindu, Muslim,
Christian, Parsi, Jew, against one another—in reconstruction, or shall we learn
from her the lesson that there is no such thing as untouchability as we practise
it today? (Ibid, p. 82).
Having warned against the reinstation of untouchability after the reconstruction,

Gandhi returns to the causal link between the earthquake and the sin of
untouchability:
I share the belief with the whole world—civilized and uncivilized—that calami-

ties such as the Bihar one come to mankind as chastisement for their sins.
When that conviction comes from the heart, people pray, repent and purify
themselves. I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine
chastisement. (Ibid).
Does the ‘whole world’ indeed believe that natural calamities are a punishment
for our sins? According to Stern, even if they do not, they used to; in
the Abrahamic traditions, God was thought to deliver punishment or warn
humankind through natural disasters: ‘This view became less universal after the
Enlightenment, but it is still widely shared among followers of many religions
around the world’ (Stern 2007, p. 2). Perhaps many people no longer believe
thus not, but Gandhi nevertheless asserts that they do, placing most of humanity
on the side of religious faith rather than reason or science. He refuses to attribute
such beliefs only to the ‘uncivilized’ but wishes to make common cause with all
those who wish to ‘pray, repent and purify themselves’.
Not stopping there, Gandhi refuses to address philosophical ‘posers’ such as
‘‘why punishment for an age-old sin’ or ‘why punishment to Bihar and not to
the South’ or ‘why an earthquake and not some other form of punishment’’ (ibid).
He answers, ‘I am not God. Therefore I have but a limited knowledge of His pur-
pose’ (ibid). But, then, almost disregarding such a conversation-stopping assertion,
he reiterates the principles behind his conclusion that calamities are not arbitrary
but that ‘They obey fixed laws as surely as the planets move in obedience to laws
governing their movement. Only we do not know the laws governing these
events and, therefore, call them calamities or disturbances’ (ibid). Gandhi, in
other words, hints that there are ethical dimensions to natural phenomena
which have not been adequately researched. We simply do not know enough
and therefore need to do some ‘guess work’: ‘But guessing has its definite place
in man’s life. It is an ennobling thing for me to guess that the Bihar disturbance is
due to the sin of untouchability. It makes me humble, it spurs me to greater effort
towards its removal, it encourages me to purify myself, it brings me nearer to my
Maker’ (ibid, pp. 82–3). Gandhi, hence, distinguishes between an ethical and
value-neutral guess, considering the former more valid than the latter. He pro-
ceeds to admit that his guess may be wrong, but that does not deter him. He also
offers a method of distinguishing a superstition from his kind of guesswork: the

difference is purification; where there is no purification, such guesswork may be
regarded as mere superstition. Finally, he is not for enforcing a unilinear causality;
he invites readers to introspect on other possible sins that can be linked to the
earthquake:
That my guess may be wrong does not affect the results named by me. For what
is guess to the critic or the sceptic is a living belief with me, and I base my

future actions on that belief. Such guesses become superstitions when they lead
to no purification and may even lead to feuds. But such misuse of divine events
cannot deter men of faith from interpreting them as a call to them for repent-
ance for their sins. I do not interpret this chastisement as an exclusive pun-
ishment for the sin of untouchability. It is open to others to read in it divine
wrath against many other sins. (Ibid, p. 83).
He concludes by saying, ‘Let anti-untouchability reformers regard the earthquake

as a Nemesis for the sin of untouchability. They cannot go wrong, if they have the
faith that I have. They will help Bihar more and not less for that faith. And they
will try to create an atmosphere against reproduction of untouchability in any
scheme of reconstruction’ (ibid). In other words, his interpretation must be seen in
its context and not generalised into some sort of formula to interpret natural
disasters in general. Moreover, his remarks are directed at anti-untouchability
campaigners more than at the general public.
It is after this that Gandhi’s response to Tagore’s letter was published in the 16
February 1934 issue of Harijan under the title ‘Superstition vs. Faith’ (Gandhi 1999,
this volume 63, pp. 164–6). I have already discussed this response in the earlier
section, but to summarise, he makes the following points: (i) Despite their dis-
agreement, he holds Tagore in the highest esteem; difference of opinion has no
bearing on their mutual affection; (ii) When he had first linked the earthquake to
the sin of untouchability in Tirunelveli, he had done so with great deliberation and
he adhered to his view; (iii) Physical phenomena produce both physical and spir-
itual results and vice versa; (iv) Compared to the infinitude of God, the present
knowledge of either scientist or spiritualist was limited; (v) ‘God’ is not merely a
personal being, but infinitely greater; his sovereignty is compete, going down to
the smallest detail in individual lives; (vi) Just as he cannot ‘prove’ the existence of
God, he cannot prove that the earthquake is linked to untouchability, but he feels
it ‘instinctively’; (vii) Even if this belief of Gandhi’s is wrong, it has the value of
spurring him to repentance and purification; (viii) There is an indissoluble union
between matter and spirit; man’s actions can affect natural phenomena; and (ix)
such a faith would be a ‘degrading superstition’ only if he used it to castigate his
opponents, whereas his was only a call for self-purification and rectification.
Gandhi continued to tour the South for another fortnight, visiting several cities
and towns in Karnataka and Hyderabad. He reached Patna, the capital of Bihar, on
2 March 1934. While he continued to refer to both the earthquake and to untouch-
ability, collecting money for both causes, he refrained from linking them in the
manner he had done so often in the past. Had Tagore’s criticism of his position
muted his moralising? Not entirely for in his speech at Chhapra, Bihar, on
27 March 1934, he reiterates the earlier note: ‘If only we had enough humility,
we would have no hesitation in accepting the recent earthquake as a just

retribution for our sins’ (ibid, p. 318). However, Gandhi adds immediately that
‘This is not to say that we can with certainty attribute a particular calamity to a
particular human action’ (ibid). He adds ‘I would go so far as to say that even the
recent earthquake would not be too great a price to pay, if it enabled India to cast
out the canker of untouchability’ (ibid). The speech appeared in the 4 April issue of
Harijan.
On 16 April 1934, Gandhi responds to a ‘science student’ who objects to his
linking the earthquake to the sin of untouchability. He repeats his previous argu-
ments including our not knowing all the laws of nature, the oneness and collective
responsibility of all life, the intrinsic connection between moral and physical acts,
the widespread belief in such a connection, and, finally, his lack of interest in
questions such as why only Bihar, why now and not earlier, and so on, saying that
these were beside the point, which was for every individual to introspect on his
sins and use this occasion to purify himself. He concludes by saying that ‘people
who regard untouchability as a great sin are bound to connect it with the earth-
quake and endeavour to expiate and wipe out the blot as soon as possible’
(ibid, p. 395).
To conclude this section, Gandhi’s views were deliberate and did not change,
although he did not insist on them as much as he did before his exchange with
Tagore. Interestingly, Gandhi’s position is that of a negative consequentialist who
holds that even physical phenomena are incorporated into a larger pattern of
causality in which human wrong-doing will meet with negative natural conse-
quences. Gandhi does not assert that such claim is provable, nor does he wish
to impose it on others. What he does assert, however, is his right to express what
he knows to be true instinctively. He avoids a crudely ‘anti-scientific’ interpret-
ation of events in that he acknowledges the evidential limitations and subjective
nature of his view; he admits that he may be mistaken, and that what he is saying
may be regarded as a superstition, but he thinks that it presents an opportunity to
draw a moral lesson that must not be missed. Therefore, while Gandhi does not
wish merely to exploit the earthquake to drive home a moral lesson, he is never-
theless sensitive, almost in a pragmatic way, to the possibility, that such a lesson
may be derived from it. Gandhi uses the Calvinistic language of sin and repentance,
as opposed to Tagore’s more modern, value-free characterisation of physical phe-
nomena and their deleterious effects on human agents.
Tagore’s faith
In this section, I try to show that Tagore’s position in this debate, though con-
sidered ‘scientific’ by most commentators, was perhaps far less straightforward.
Much, indeed, has been made of Tagore’s interest in science, but in the vast
volume of Tagore’s writings, one rarely finds an unequivocal endorsement of
modern science. While it is true that Tagore has an early and sustained interest
in astronomy and that he met a number of leading men of science (Dutta and
Robinson 1997, pp. 527–8), an actual examination of his pronouncements on

modern science shows his ambivalence. His relationship with the leading Indian
scientist of his time and fellow Bengali, Jagadish Chandra Bose, was long and
cordial. Tagore, without trying fully to understand Bose’s work, supported him
very strongly, often raising money for Bose’s stay in Europe and his research
interests (Dutta and Robinson 1997, pp. 51–55), but as his letter to Bose on 17
September 1900 shows, one of Tagore’s motives was intellectual parity with the
West (ibid, pp. 53–5), not so much an endorsement of science itself. In an interview
with Duke Gallarati Scotti in Milan on 28 January 1925, Tagore said, ‘Science rec-
ognizes atoms, all of which can be weighed and measured, but never recognizes
personality, the one thing that lies at the basis of reality’ (ibid, p. 407). Would Bose,
Sen, and others who consider Tagore a proponent of science consider this a ‘sci-
entific’ remark? Interestingly, as I shall show later, this issue comes up in a dif-
ferent form in his dialogue with Einstein too, where Tagore takes the position that
neither the truth nor the beauty of the universe could exist without a human
observer whose consciousness apprehends them. Similarly, speaking at Carnegie
Hall on 1 December 1930, Tagore said, ‘The age belongs to the West, and humanity
must be grateful to you for your science. But you have exploited those who are
helpless and humiliated those who are unfortunate with this gift’ (ibid, p. 394). In
his letter to Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, written on 16
September 1934, the same year as the Bihar earthquake, Tagore writes ‘My occa-
sional misgivings about the modern pursuit of Science is directed not against
Science, for Science itself can be neither good or evil, but against its wrong use’
(Dasgupta 2004, p. 232). Clearly, though Tagore was not as critical of the ‘machine
age’ as Gandhi was in his well-known tirade in Hind Swaraj (1909), Tagore, too, was
not a wholly enthusiastic supporter of modern science, as his dialogues with Albert
Einstein show.
That Tagore’s scienticism cannot be taken for granted or understood in a sim-
plistic way becomes quite clear when we examine the fascinating exchanges be-
tween Einstein and himself. In fact, their conversations not only present another
side to Tagore’s views on science, but also offer us additional ways of understand-
ing his exchange with Gandhi. To say the least, juxtaposing these two interactions
shows us Tagore’s complex and protean personality. Tagore and Einstein met on 14
July 1930 at the latter’s residence in Kaputh, Germany.13 Einstein begins by asking,
‘Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?’ and follows up with,
‘There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe—the world
as a unity dependent on humanity, and the world as a reality independent of the
human factor’. Tagore clearly replies:
This world is a human world—the scientific view of it is also that of the scien-
tific man. Therefore, the world apart from us does not exist; it is a relative
world, depending for its reality upon our consciousness.

Tagore argues that there is no truth about the world that is independent of what
humans can perceive. Einstein on the other hand proposes that scientific truth
must be conceived as a truth ‘that is valid independent of humanity’. He adds that
he cannot prove it but he believes in it firmly. He also admits that while there are
truths that are relative to human beings, there are truths that are unrelated to
human experience. Tagore takes up this distinction by suggesting two aspects of
the perceiving self—individual and universal man, individual and universal mind.
He believes that there is no truth that can exist independently of the universal
mind, even if individual beings may not perceive it.
In the apprehension of truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal

human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual
process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, in
our ethics.
Tagore explains that his religion is reconciliation of the universal spirit with the
individual being, which was the subject of his Hibbert lectures—‘The Religion of
Man’.
The second dialogue took place on 19 August 1930 in Berlin.14 Citing their
common friend, Mendel, Tagore suggests to Einstein that ‘in the realm of infini-
tesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely pre-
destined in character’. Mendel’s work of course was a part of a wider body of
scientific research that showed indeterminacy in the physical world, especially at
the sub-atomic levels. Einstein found himself on the opposite side of exponents of
quantum mechanics like Max Plank. In 1929, Werner Heisenberg also demon-
strated with mathematical equations and experimental data his celebrated uncer-
tainty principle according to which, at sub-atomic levels, the very act of perceiving
was capable of changing the object of our perception. The subject–object dualism
of classical science was now severely undermined.
Dipankar Home and Andrew Robinson discuss these dialogues at some length in
an essay called ‘Einstein and Tagore: Man, Nature and Mysticism’.15 They contend
that apart from language barriers—Einstein spoke in German, Tagore in English—
they actually ‘talked past each other’ (Dutta and Robinson 1997, p. 530). They also
offer a fascinating comparison with Einstein’s dialogue with Neils Bohr, whom
Einstein accused of being a ‘mystic, who forbids, as being unscientific, an inquiry
about something that exists independently of whether or not it is observed’ (ibid,

p. 531). It would appear that Tagore, too, like Bohr, did not accept the possibility of
an objective world existing apart from the observer, while Einstein was, to begin
with, ‘a staunch positivist’ who, after 1927, ‘became an equally strong realist, and
remained so thereafter’ (ibid, p. 530). Home and Robinson summarise the upshot of
the conversations as follows:
. . . we can discern three philosophical positions concerning the relationship

between man and nature arising from the Einstein-Tagore conversations. The
first, held by Einstein, is that nature exists, objectively, whether we know it or
not . . . . The second position, held by Bohr, is that the objective existence of
nature has no meaning independent of the measurement process. The third
position, held by Tagore, is more complex, because it requires mind/conscious-
ness . . . . Tagore says, centrally, that nature can be conceived only in terms of
our mental constructions based on what we think and perceive . . . (Ibid, p. 534).
Tagore using his reading of the then current scientific research, combined with his
own intuition, was suggesting that the laws of the nature, though they largely
followed mechanistic causality and determinism, did however leave some scope of
flexibility and ‘individuality’. In other words, each atom, and every smallest par-
ticle of the universe, though governed by laws, did retain a not so insignificant
quotient of autonomy, even independence.
Tagore went on to illustrate this co-existence of determinism and freedom
through the analogy of north Indian classical music, where within the given struc-
ture of a raga which is fixed, the artist has plenty of scope for improvisation. In
contrast he points out how in both composition and lyrics, western classical music
tends to be fixed. Interestingly, Tagore’s own musical oeuvre, now called Rabindra
Sangeet, consisting of more than two thousand songs whose lyrics and melodies he
composed, rather resembles the western fixed model than the Indian improvisa-
tional one. This conversation between Einstein and Tagore ends with a discussion
about a red flower, whose nature, like that any other object, but especially an
aesthetic one, lies partly in its self and partly in the observer. Tagore’s categorical
notion of the ‘inexorableness of the universal law’ with reference to the Bihar
earthquake may thus be tempered if not somewhat mitigated by these earlier
exchanges with Einstein. Of course one might argue that an earthquake and par-
ticle physics are governed by two different sets of physical laws; so Tagore’s pos-
ition was not totally inconsistent. However, in these exchanges with Einstein, we
see Tagore taking a more subjectivist, even spiritualistic, position as compared to
his more strongly deterministic, mechanistic, materialistic views in his dialogue
with Gandhi four years later.
How to reconcile this apparent inconsistency? It seems to me that when faced
with a man of science like Einstein, who believes that scientific truths are inde-
pendent of human perception, Tagore takes a more holistic position that the two
can not be easily separated. When faced with a moralist or spiritualist like Gandhi,
Tagore seems to take a more scientific position arguing for the independence of
physical phenomena from human agency. Discussing Tagore’s views on science
and religion, David Gosling says ‘he tended to express his views one way when
communicating in English to Westerners (including Einstein) and somewhat dif-
ferently when speaking or writing in Bengali’ (Gosling 2007, p. 149).
Tagore, however, did not change his disapproval of Gandhi’s apparent
anti-modernism, which he did consider undesirable and dangerous. He still did

not see the ‘reason’ behind Gandhi’s views on the earthquake, considering them to
be merely expedient. In his tribute to Gandhi published in the Sunday Statesman of
13 February 1938, he said:
We who often glorify our tendency to ignore reason, installing in its place blind
belief, valuing it as spiritual, are ever paying for its costs with the obscuration
of our mind and destiny. I blamed Mahatmaji for exploiting this irrational
force of credulity in our people, which might have had a quick result in
a superstructure, while sapping the foundation. (Dutta and Robinson 1997,
pp. 538–9).
Luckily, Tagore did not stop there: ‘Thus began my estimate of Mahatmaji, as the
guide of our nation’, he admits, but ‘it is fortunate for me that it did not end there’
(ibid, p. 539). Tagore found a way to accept Gandhi as only he (Tagore) might—he
considered Gandhi a consummate life-artist:
I have since learnt to understand him, as I would understand an artist, not

by the theories and fantasies of the creed he may profess, but by that expres-
sion in his practice which gives evidence to the uniqueness of his mind’ (Ibid,
p. 539).
Tagore thus offers us a way out of the too-stifling clasp of the ‘prophet’ Gandhi,
who because of the earnestness of his moral appeal has the power to pull us out of
our safe zones of rationality, sometimes to our detriment. Tagore proceeds to
observe:
Great as he is as a politician, as an organiser, as a leader of men, as a moral

reformer, he is greater than all these as a man, because none of these aspects
and activities limits his humanity. (Ibid, p. 539).
Gandhi’s humanity, for Tagore, is precisely the ‘weakness’ that comes from his
extreme stances; Gandhi’s absolutism, paradoxically, makes him more human be-
cause it shows his own anxieties over his practicing to the very extreme what he
professed. His insensitivity to normal human sentiment and weakness, then, re-
veals his unease over the possibility of succumbing to them himself.
Two approaches to Indian ‘modernity’

To say the least both Tagore’s and Gandhi’s positions are far more complicated
than they may appear at first, but to me they suggest two ways of constructing a
uniquely Indian modernity. This debate which was conducted publicly, in front
of the whole nation, not only goes to the very root of the differences between
Tagore and Gandhi, but asks the Indian public to choose which way they want
to follow. To that extent, it helps us understand both these remarkable men
as almost no other part of their fairly extensive correspondence does. This is

because it is only in this exchange that we get to the root of the fundamental
philosophical differences between Tagore and Gandhi. Both Tagore and
Gandhi share a faith not only in a divine force that regulates the universe, but
also in its relationship to human life. As Gandhi says: ‘To me the earthquake was
no caprice of God nor a result of a meeting of mere blind forces . . . .Visitations like
droughts, floods, earthquakes and the like though they seem to have only physical
origin, are for me somehow connected with man’s morals’ (Gandhi 1999,
volume 63, pp. 164–5). Tagore, too, has asserted his belief in the ‘inexorable’
workings out of the laws of God, but thinks that God does not interfere in
his own laws.
It is easy, at first, to see this debate as it has been usually framed—as a science
versus superstition or reason versus faith issue. However, as I have tried to show,
the matter is neither so simple, nor so obvious. What we actually see here is a
confrontation between two kinds of faith and two kinds of reason. In Tagore’s faith
universe, the Almighty either cannot, or chooses not to interfere in workings of
the physical laws of the universe, while Gandhi’s God is not just omnipotent, but
also omnipresent. In Gandhi’s faith universe, the sovereignty of God operates in
every single iota of the cosmos; there is literally nothing other than God. It is clear
that the debate is not between a believer and an unbeliever, but between two kinds
of faith. One kind, Tagore’s, is somewhat two-tiered, separating the natural from
the supernatural, while the other, Gandhi’s, sees the whole as inseparable and
integrated under a single moral order.
It is equally clear that Tagore, in the rationalist tradition of Rammohan Roy and
the Brahmo Samaj, takes a more pro-science, post-Enlightenment position in as-
serting that the physical laws that govern the universe can be decoded only by
science, that is, by a systematic investigation into their means. Tagore, thus, sep-
arates the natural from the supernatural, without entirely denying the latter.
Interestingly for him, the human being is at the intersection of the physical and
the metaphysical, the natural and the supernatural. From his poems and songs,
which were seen from the very beginning as being spiritualist and mystical in their
orientation, it is clear that Tagore’s notion of the psyche’s relationship with God is
one of intimacy and mutuality, that Tagore’s God actually impacts in the minutest
and most intimate aspects of the life of the devotee. The human is for him thus
primarily spirit and not matter.
It was S. Radhakrishnan, noted philosopher and India’s second President, who in

the earliest study of Tagore’s philosophy published in 1918, pointed out the duality
in the poet’s thought:
There are two views regarding his philosophy of life. If we believe one side, he
is a Vedantin, a thinker who draws his inspiration from the Upanishads. If we
believe the other, he is an advocate of a theism . . . (Radhakrishnan 1918, p. 2).

Both tendencies, according to Radhakrishnan, are amply evident in Tagore’s
work, and we have seen elements of them in Tagore’s interactions with Gandhi
on the one hand and Einstein on the other. This is how Radhakrishnan solves the
conundrum, discovering the integrative formula which helps us make sense of
Tagore: ‘Is Rabindranath’s God a person and not the impersonal Absolute of the
Vedanta? Yes: Gitanjali makes of God a person’ (ibid 51). But in all his pronounce-
ments, Tagore proclaims his belief in the Upanishandic idea of Brahman,
all-pervasive, absolute spirit, which leads Radhakrishnan to declare ‘The philoso-
phy of Rabindranath is an absolute idealism of the concrete type’ (Radhakrishnan
1918, pp. 176–7). The two positions are reconciled in Tagore the artist: ‘Art, phil-
osophy, and religion are the specialised modes in which the Absolute presents
itself to mankind’ (ibid, p. 51). The reconciliation is most evident in Tagore’s
poetry: ‘The poems of Gitanjali are the offerings of the finite to the infinite. The
relation between the two is conceived of as that between the lover and the be-
loved . . . ’ (ibid, p. 52). Or as Gosling proposes, Tagore’s God was ‘The God of
Humanity’: ‘Tagore’s notion of the supreme Being is intimately bound up with
his understanding of relationship as foundational to reality’ (Gosling 2007, p. 132).
No wonder, man’s spirit yearns for the divine touch in Tagore’s poetry. ‘To
Rabindranath God is not a being seated high up in the heavens, but a spirit im-
manent in the whole Universe of persons and things’ (Radhakrishnan 1918, p. 54).
Or as Tagore said to Einstein: ‘What we call truth lies in the rational harmony
between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to
the superpersonal man . . . if there be any truth absolutely unrelated to humanity,
then for us it is absolutely nonexisting’ (Dutta and Robinson 1997, p. 534). Thus,
when it comes to man, Tagore is a spiritualist, but when it comes to nature,
especially to a phenomenon like the earthquake, he sees it as a purely physical
phenomenon, amenable to natural laws.
By now it should be clear that the debate between Tagore and Gandhi is not just
about two kinds of faith, but also about two attitudes to reason. Though Tagore
dubs Gandhi’s view as being unscientific, Gandhi very humbly suggests that sci-
ence itself is not infallible. He does not say that science is false or that faith is
superior to science, nor indeed that his views must be accepted on authority.
Instead, he admits that what he voices may actually be a ‘superstition’ as far as
science is concerned, but has a greater moral value as far as his conception of the
world is concerned. Gandhi, thus, implies that whatever is not ‘provable’ according
to certain parameters may automatically be considered unscientific or ‘supersti-

tious’, but that does not make it automatically false or unbelievable. Gandhi is
asserting that his contention, even if it is scientifically nonsensical, is eminently
sensible from a moral standpoint.
Gandhi thus does not reject reason so much as hint at a reason that is more
compelling, perhaps ‘higher’ than mere scientific logic. According to this ‘higher
law’, God and his creation are not separate. The Truth that is God in Gandhi, even
if sometimes expressed in a Judaeo–Christian way, differs from the idea of a

Judaeo–Christian, individualistic, controlling, omnipotent deity.16 It is more akin
to an all-permeating force of nature with a moral character, which directs the
course of both the physical world and human activities.17 Gandhi declares that
‘there is an indissoluble marriage between matter and spirit’ (ibid, p. 161).
According to him it is this belief that ‘has enabled many to use every physical
catastrophe for their own moral uplifting’ (ibid). Gandhi ends his own defence by
pointing out the value of a belief depends on the uses to which such a belief is put.
If it serves to uplift us morally, then according to Gandhi, it is not superstitious.
But if it is used to criticise others, to make political gains, or to promote oppressive
practices, then it is. By making this distinction, Gandhi enables us to see Indian
traditions in a different light, evaluated pragmatically in terms of their perennial
renewal in service to spiritual and social values. These traditions or customs need
not be seen as unchanging and unquestionable practices but accepted only in so
far as they help us improve ourselves.
The following year, when it came to the Quetta earthquake of 31 May 1935,
which was even more devastating, Gandhi once again reiterated his belief that
human action and physical phenomena were somehow interrelated: ‘I must repeat
what I said at the time of the Bihar disaster. There is a divine purpose behind every
physical calamity’ (Gandhi 1999, volume 63, p. 137). He says that a day will come
when perfected science would be able to predict earthquakes as it does of eclipses
today. Gandhi invites the victims of the earthquake, as well as others concerned, to
pray and to repent. However, when specifically questioned by a correspondent
whether the Quetta earthquake was consequence of some special sin, he refrained
from giving the kind of answer he gave for Bihar. He said that he did not know
enough about the social conditions of Quetta to make such a connection: ‘If I had
known Quetta, as I know Bihar and Biharis, I would certainly have mentioned the
sins of Quetta, though they might be no more its specialities than untouchability
was Bihar’s’ (ibid, p. 161).
Clearly Gandhi did not wish to generalise from his belief in the linkage between
the natural and the supernatural to create some sort of dogma. Instead what he is
asserting is his right as a rational and responsible individual, especially as a moral
agent, to see the universe in terms of complex interdependencies and causal
connections. Gandhi’s ideas of the laws of nature are, no doubt, at great variance
to that of modern science, which considers physical phenomena to be
value-neutral. To him, the whole universe is imbued and pulsating with value.
While Gandhian axiology does not permit a dualism or disjunction between the
material and the spiritual, or between the natural and the supernatural, he never
once appeals either to authority or dogma in his defence of his position. Instead,
he tries to be as reasonable as possible while disagreeing respectfully with Tagore.
Speaking about thirteen years earlier on another tour of Madras against untouch-
ability, Gandhi had voiced his revolt against a certain form of tradition: ‘I decline
to be bound by any interpretation, however learned it may be, if it is repugnant to
reason or moral sense’ (Gandhi 1999, 24: p. 372). Gandhi, who was capable of

invoking faith and instinct as proofs of the causal link between a natural disaster
and the human sin which in his opinion occasioned it, was evidently equally prone
to calling upon reason against religious authority when the occasion demanded it.
What was, however, common to both situations was his firm adherence to the
moral principle.
Needless to say, I use terms such as tradition and modernity, faith and reason,
and religion and science, not as oppositional categories, but as two simultaneously
co-existing aspects of India, which are also changing and evolving historically,
even as they impact one another. Nevertheless, if one aspect of modernity is
the triumph of scientific thinking as the primary source of our notion of reality,
then Gandhi sticks himself out for a more traditional perspective in which God is
still the source of ultimate meaning. The debate over the Bihar earthquake helps
us thus to understand the larger agenda of both thinkers. It would actually appear
that instead of being a dreamy, impractical, and withdrawing poet–artist, Tagore
was more ‘realistic’. Gandhi’s project, on the other hand, was a far-reaching as-
sertion of continuity and unity, therefore carrying a much more holistic commit-
ment to the improvement, if not perfectibility, of the human condition through
ceaseless striving and surrender to divine grace.18
Ultimately, this debate reveals two notions of what constitutes not just the
‘moral’ or the ‘rational’, but the modern in the Indian context. Commenting re-
cently on this debate, Arvind Sharma observes:
The conflict between Gandhi and Tagore continues to illustrate two main
schools of thought within Hinduism about not only natural disasters but
how to explain much of what happens in the world. Right there, you get
the basic division on whether you are going to offer a religious and moral
explanation or are you going to offer a scientific and natural explanation.
(Stern 2007, p. 166).
Sharma continues,
Of course, both have their limitations. Science can always tell us how, but has a
hard time telling us why. On the other hand, if we start attributing moral
causes to all kinds of random physical events, then that reasoning becomes
chaotic and superstitious. There are dangers on both sides. (Ibid).
Interestingly, Sharma concludes his analysis by claiming that ‘Most

Hindus . . . would probably side with Gandhi and assign some degree of moral
blame for catastrophes such as the tsunami’ (ibid 166). If this is true, India con-
tinues to be, by and large, a ‘traditional’ country, with a populace who still see
links between human action and divine consequences. Thus, we might as well say,
with Sharma, that in Gandhi ‘Hindu theodicy is softened by the doctrine of karma’
(Stern 2007, p. 168).

Conclusion
I would like before closing to touch briefly upon the personal relationship between
these two great men, which despite such disagreements, remained cordial, full of
mutual respect and genuine affection. It is said that it was Tagore who gave Gandhi
his popular honorific, ‘Mahatma’ (Bhattacharya pp. 1, 2, 4); Gandhi, on his part,
always addressed Tagore as ‘Gurudev’, an appellation which, though originally
attributed to Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, was popularised by Gandhi.19 The
latter invariably sought Tagore’s criticism and/or blessings before he undertook
decisions impacting Indian public life. In effect, critics have theorised the rela-
tionship as contrasting, similar, or similar but with key differences. The last is, by
and large, how they saw themselves and how many scholars, including
Raychaudhuri and Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, have confirmed this.
Regardless of any differences, there was never any personal animosity between
them. From the time that Gandhi first stayed in Santiniketan, on his return to
India from South Africa in 1915, to his last visit to an ailing Tagore in 1941, just a
few weeks before the latter’s death, this friendship flourished, often in the face of
stormy and public airings of differences, not to mention the usual gossip and
backbiting by other interested parties that often accompanies relations between
public figures. Paradoxically, such differences as I have described, when brought
out into the open, only added to their regard and fondness for each other. As Uma
Dasgupta, Tagore’s biographer puts it, ‘In the last years of that great trial in the
history of the Indian struggle for independence Gandhi and Tagore came closer in
their personal devotion to each other despite the arguments they exchanged in the
national debates’ (Dasgupta 2004, p. 47). This is in contrast to tendencies in the
culture of our own times. Perhaps the best proof of their continued support to
each other is the fact that Tagore entrusted the future of his beloved Visva-Bharati
to Gandhi who saved it from many a financial crisis and secured its future by
ensuring that it got the status of a federally funded central university of national
importance in independent India.
References
Bhattacharya, S. (ed). 1977. The Mahatma and the Poet: Letters and Debates between Gandhi and
Tagore, 1915–1941. New Delhi: National Book Trust.
Brett, W. B., 1935. A Report on the Bihar Earthquake and on the Measures taken in Consequence
thereof up to The 31st December 1934. Patna: Superintendent, Government Printing.
Chakrabarty, B., 2006. Social and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. Abingdon: Routledge.
Dasgupta, U., 2004. Rabindranath Tagore A Biography. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Desai, N., 2009. My Life is My Message, Vol. III. T. Suhrud (trans.). Hyderabad: Orient
Blackswan.
Dunn, J. A., Auden, J. B., Ghosh, A. M. H., Roy, S. C., Wadia, D. N., 1939. ‘The Bihar–Nepal
Earthquake of 1934.’ Memoir of the Geological Survey of India 73: 1–391.
Dutta, K., Robinson, A. (eds). 1997. Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Gandhi, M. K., 1999. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Electronic version). New Delhi:
Publications Division.
Gosling, D. L., 2007. Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein met Tagore. London,
New York: Routledge.
Jordens, J. T. F., 1998. Gandhi’s Religion: A Homespun Shawl. Houndmills: Palgrave.
Kopf, D., 1989. The Bengali Prophet of Mass Genocide. In: Lago, M., Warwick, R. (eds)
Rabindranath Tagore: Perspectives in Time, pp. 50–66. London: Macmillan.
Lal, V., 2008. ‘The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate.’ Economic and Political Weekly, 4 October,
pp. 54–64.
Mukhopadyay, Haridas, Uma, 1961. Upadhyay Brahmabandhab o Bharatiya Jatiyatabad.
Calcutta: Firmla K.L. Mukhopadhyay.
Nehru, J., 1962. An Autobiography. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.
Radhakrishnan, S., 1918. The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. London: Macmillan.
Ray, S., 1970. Gandhi, India and the World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Ray, S., 1995. The Tagore–Einstein Conversations: Reality and the Human World, Causility
and Chance. In: Tymieniecka, A.-T. (ed). Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of
Phenomenological Research. 47: ‘Heaven, Earth, and In-Between in the Harmony of
Life: Phenomenology in the Continuing Oriental/Occidental Dialogue,’ pp. 59–66.
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Raychaudhuri, T., 1999. Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India’s Colonial and
Post-colonial Experiences. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sen Gupta, K., 2005. The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Shear, J., 2003. Consciousness and Reality: The Paradox of Objective Knowledge. In:
Hogan., P. C., Pandit, L. (eds) Rabindranath Tagore: Universality and Tradition,
pp. 95–106. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.
Stern, G., 2007. Can God Intervene? How Religion Explains Natural Disasters. Westport, Conn.
and London: Praeger.
Tagore, R., 1961. The Religion of Man, being the Hibbert lectures for 1930. London: Unwin.
Tagore, R., 1966. Sangit-chinta. Santiniketan: Viswabharati.
Notes
1 The title refers to a chapter in Thomas Carlyle’s novel Sartor Resartus (1833–4),
which espouses the idea that the supernatural is latent in the natural. This
notion went on to influence Romantic poets and writers on both sides of the
Atlantic. Here I use the word natural to denote not so much ordinary or mundane
things, but natural phenomena, in this case, an earthquake. Gandhi, like Carlyle and
Emerson, tries to read in the natural signs of the supernatural.
2 This earthquake was much written about and studied, with reports appearing in
several scientific journals including Nature (1934, p. 863) Current Science (1934,
p. 323–31) and Indian Concrete Journal (1934, p. 263-234). Besides W. B. Brett’s A Report
on the Bihar Earthquake and on the Measures Taken in Consequence Thereof up to The 31st
December 1934 (1935), there was a whole issue of nearly 400 pages of the Memoirs of
the Indian Geological Survey of India in 1939 (Vol. 73) devoted to this topic, besides
several books and reports. Yet, what is notable, is that it was Gandhi who high-
lighted the human tragedy as none of these ‘scientific’ papers and books did.
3 See Dunn et al. in the ‘References’ section; the higher figure is from Gandhi’s own
estimates, which were based on very reliable reports from the ground.
4 The word occurs eighty-eight times in volume but some of these references are in

footnotes, not in actual texts that Gandhi wrote or uttered. In contrast, in the
following volume, 64 (30 May–15 September 1934), it occurs only four times.
Gandhi spent nearly a month, 12 March–9 April 1934 in Bihar, touring the whole
state, especially the affected areas, before moving on to Assam, where he carried on
his work against untouchability.
5 For instance, Bidyut Chakrabarty in Social and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi
(2006) says, ‘On this occasion, they held diametrically opposite views. A scientific
Tagore upheld reason while a moralist Gandhi privileged faith over reason’ (p. 101).
6 In his 2005 monograph, The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore, Kalyan Sen Gupta does
not even mention this controversy though it points to the roots of the difference in
their philosophical outlooks.
7 Tagore quotes Gandhi almost verbatim except that in the last part of the statement
Gandhi actually said ‘those whom we describe as untouchables, Panchamas, and
whom I describe as Harijans’, not ‘those whom we describe as harijans’ as Tagore
quoted.
8 It is hardly surprising that Gandhi’s chosen successor and favourite ‘son’ Jawaharlal
Nehru, the champion of a ‘scientific temper’ for Indians, also disagreed with Gandhi.
See his An Autobiography (1962, p. 490).
9 See the detailed chronology of Gandhi’s life available at http://www.gandhiserve
.org/information/chronology_1934/chronology_1934.html.
10 Rajendra Prasad, who later became independent India’s first President, a prominent
lawyer, and social worker from Bihar, and one of Gandhi’s earliest supporters.
11 Satish Chadra Dasgupta, an inventor, chemist, founder of the Khadi Pratishtan, and
a close associate of the Mahatma.
12 Bania refers to a business caste to which Gandhi himself belonged; pice was 1/64 of a
rupee.
13 This dialogue was first published in The New York Times magazine on 10 August 1930
(Dutta and Robinson, p. 528). It was also published in the January 1931 issue of
Modern Review and reprinted as Appendix II, ‘Note on the Nature of Reality’ in
Tagore’s book, The Religion of Man (222–5). To clarify his position, Tagore made
changes from the original draft that Einstein had approved (Dutta and Robinson,
p. 529). The dialogue is widely available on the internet; see for instance http://
www.boloji.com/perspective/064.htm (accessed 28 February 2010). My thanks to
Gangeya Mukherji for suggesting that I introduce the Tagore–Einstein exchanges
into this article.
14 First published in New York in Asia magazine 1931, this conversation appeared in
Tagore’s posthumously published Sangit Chinta (1966), along with other reflections
on music. See Sitansu Ray’s ‘The Tagore–Einstein Conversations: Reality and the
Human World, Causility and Chance’. This conversation is also easily available on
the internet: http://www.schoolofwisdom.com/tagore-einstein.html (accessed 28
Feburary 2010). Many others, including Jonathan Shear and David L. Gosling,
have commented on these dialogues. It must be pointed out that the title of the
latter’s work, Science and the Indian Tradition: When Einstein Met Tagore is quite mis-
leading; the dialogue between Tagore and Einstein occupies just about twenty pages
of the book (130–50); the cover, which shows a photograph of Einstein and Tagore,
is similarly misleading. This conversation is also easily available on the internet:

http://www.schoolofwisdom.com/tagore-einstein.html (accessed 28 Feburary
2010).
15 Published originally in the Journal of Consciousness Studies (1995, pp. 167–79), a
revised and shortened version is the first Appendix in the Selected Letters of
Rabindranath Tagore edited by Dutta and Robinson.
16 For more on Gandhi’s God, see Jordens (1998, p. 68–9 and pp. 115–16).
17 It is interesting to notice that Tagore also adheres to the ancient Upanishadic idea
of the ultimate reality as Satchidananda. But for Tagore, it is ananda (supreme joy)
that is supreme. It is because of ananda that the creation spring into being, and it is
for ananda that the human being adores and yearns for God as he would his beloved.
18 Here I would like to bring in another dimension to this issue that was suggested by
Ghanshyamdas Birla. In a letter to Gandhi, he said that it was the rich whose
property was damaged and houses destroyed; the poor, who lived in huts and
hovels, with very few belongings, had comparatively little to lose. Hence the earth-
quake was targeted at the affluent perpetrators of untouchability rather than to its
victims. But Gandhi, while considering such an argument, rejects it in his letter of
31 January 1934 to Birla: ‘It is self-evident that the poorest have suffered little; but is
it not equally true that those in possession of even a little have turned destitute?’
(Complete Works 63: 71)
19 As Tagore put it in his article published in Prabashi in September 1933, ‘Even today I
am carrying the title of ‘Gurudev’ which Brahmabandhab bestowed upon me’
[quoted in Haridas and Uma Mukhopadyay, Upadhyay Brahmabandhab o Bharatiya
Jatiyatabad (1961, p. 155)].

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The Journal of Hindu Studies 2011;4:176–204 doi:10.

‘Natural Supernaturalism?’1 The Tagore–Gandhi

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Abstract: This article is a study of the confrontation between Rabindranath

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‘Tagore–Gandhi Controversy’ by Sibnarayan Ray, follower of the radical humanist,

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The speech was reported in major English-language national newspapers: The

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Therefore, not everything that we believe is provable or needs to be based on

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An occasion on which Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore rather se-

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Desai, before coming to such a conclusion quotes from Gandhi’s speech of

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Clearly, there is no retraction, nor a fundamental change in Gandhi’s outlook,

However indefensible appear to be Gandhi’s pronouncements on the

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It seems the Bihar earthquake has completely destroyed Motihari. Rajendra

universe, is sovereign and all-pervasive, therefore everything that happens is ne-

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world,—within living memory there is no record of an earthquake of this mag-

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Gandhi, therefore, clearly rejects appeals to superstition and disassociates himself

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Having warned against the reinstation of untouchability after the reconstruction,

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offers a method of distinguishing a superstition from his kind of guesswork: the

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He concludes by saying, ‘Let anti-untouchability reformers regard the earthquake

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In the apprehension of truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal

about something that exists independently of whether or not it is observed’ (ibid,

. . . we can discern three philosophical positions concerning the relationship

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I have since learnt to understand him, as I would understand an artist, not

Great as he is as a politician, as an organiser, as a leader of men, as a moral

Two approaches to Indian ‘modernity’

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It was S. Radhakrishnan, noted philosopher and India’s second President, who in

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to certain parameters may automatically be considered unscientific or ‘supersti-

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Interestingly, Sharma concludes his analysis by claiming that ‘Most

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