Tagore on faultlines between civilisations

Huntington very assuredly says: "It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among human kind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in the world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilisations.

"The clash of civilisations will dominate the global politics. The faultlines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future ... what do we mean when we talk of a civilisation? A civilisation is a cultural entity...differences among civilisations are not only real; they are basic. Civilisations are differentiated from each other by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important religion."

But the post cold war course of world politics does not prove the truth of Huntington's observations. Battles have already taken place and they don't prove out they are purely civilisation centric. I am not up to refuting all what Samuel P Huntington has got to say. Some of his observations on the global human situation of our time are real revealing. Clashes may take place anytime among civilisation based communities or sub-civilisation groups. That is the part of human history. But apart from pointing all the violent differences out, it is far more useful to prescribe how to mend the faults and how to make earth livable for all the civilisations and sub-civilisation groups in an environment of understanding, respect and amity.

In this context, Rabindranath Tagore's mission of life was to devise a meeting point between the East and the West, which was the major concern of those days and also to create an environment of harmony in his own country where all the major civilisations exist in thriving forms. I particularly remember Tagore's Nobel Prize Acceptance speech where he made no reference to poetry at all and only referred to bringing communities of man together through understanding and respect initiated through a system of education. He founded his university with this big dream of human unity.

In his speech he said: "And I can assure you that the prize which you have awarded to me was not wasted upon myself. I have used this money which I got from you for establishing and maintaining the university which I started lately, and it seemed to me that this university should be a place where western students might come and meet their eastern brethren, when they might work together in the pursuit of truth and try to find the treasures that have lain hidden in the East for centuries and work out the spiritual resources of the rest, which are necessary for all humanity. And I feel that what we suffer from in the present day is no other calamity but this calamity of obscurity and seclusion ... Because of that reason in India we have not been given the unity of races.

"Our problem is the race problem, which is the problem of all humanity. We have Dravidians, we have Mahammedans, and we have Hindus and all different sects and communities of men in India. Therefore no superficial bond of political unity can appeal to us, can satisfy us, can ever be real to us. We must go deeper down. We must discover the most profound unity, the spiritual unity between the different races. We must go deeper down to the spirit of man and find out the great bond of unity, which is to be found in all human races."

Tagore termed as difference and seclusion what the social historian of these days mean by faultlines of civilisations or cultural faultlines. In fact the faultlines are not so watertight as they are described to be. But mere identification of lines does not matter most. They have got to be overcome. Tagore thought of overcoming the differences between communities through initiating a rightly directed education in his own university. What else could he personally do when all the other universities of the world were not under his own grip. But the lesson he has left behind is: only education can save us from the peril of seclusion.

Today everybody is talking about everything, which is global. But what about global mind as Tagore anticipated? All our trading instincts will lead nowhere unless we make ready the area of human bonding. In our own society Tagore stands as symbol of unity, which overcomes all the faultlines of culture. Had there been 10 or I don't exactly know how many persons like him throughout the world today, the whole scenario would have been different.

The author is a noted music exponent