How Rabindranath Tagore’s Worldview is expressed in “Punishment”
By: J. Garcia
Tags: India, Literature, Universalism, Analysis, Literary Criticism

One of the recurring dichotomies of modern times is the nationalist and antinationalist trope. Humankind and society can be viewed through the lens of nationalism or universalism. Nationalist philosophy is sectarian and tribal by its very nature. It proposes that people should focus on a certain group’s wellbeing in exclusion of others. While the universalist thought lies in a humanist approach. All people regardless of station, race, or location can be lifted. It approaches social interactions from a universal viewpoint. In his short story, “Punishment,” Tagore flushes out universal tendencies that transcend national boundaries.

What is needed is eagerness of heart for a fruitful communication between different cultures. Anything that prevents this is barbarism. (Tagore, Rabindra Rachanabli 3)

To say that Tagore is a complicated figure is an understatement. Debashi Banerji in “Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century” explains Tagore is “celebrated in his native Bengal and in India as a larger than life icon whose songs presently make up the national anthems of two nations.” Tagore’s body of works is immense, which lends itself to a tremendous range of interpretation. Banerji continues, “Poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, writer of dance dramas, songwriter and composer, artist, nationalist, internationalist, educator, and social thinker, Tagore enjoyed a legendary reputation in his time and in the twentieth century. ” However, “Punishment” is emotive and personal from a universalist’s perspective. Tagore uses debt, poverty, and violence to ground his novel in universal human experiences.

The opening paragraph offers ponderous introspection on the status of interpersonal relations. “Just as nobody questions the rising of the sun in the east, nobody in the neighbourhood was curious about why the two sisters — in — law started quarreling [sic] in the morning each day.” (Tagore 204). Tagore stages conflict at the most basic of levels. The sister-in-laws are at each other’s throats constantly, but it is presented as a very natural state of things. The universality of family and personal struggle is laid bare from the very beginning. “Tagore… from [his] respective margin… created solidarities on the basis of wider and more universal principles” (Jelnikar 7). There is personal struggle, family feud, and class suffering from the first paragraph of the story to the end. The focus on universal elements opens “Punishment” to the world at large.

The two brothers considered domestic life as a long journey on a bullock cart, and the ceaseless creaking noises and jerking movements of springless wheels, only a natural, necessary part of this journey (204).

Tagore also focuses on a universal plague, debt. No matter what form it takes, debt is often times a universal ailment. In richer nations, it comes in the form of credit cards, mortgages, leases, payday loans, etc. In less developed countries it comes in the form of personal loans, co-op loans, landlords, and traditional credits measures. However, it is a universal construct. Credit and debt can be abused by the lender and the borrower. However, it normally places the borrower in a power imbalance. Normally, the lender has more protections under the law. They can come after you. “Punishment” is no different. We see how “Ramlochon… suddenly remembered that Dukhi, his tenant, owed him a lot of back rent” (205). Tagore purposefully uses universal constructs to connect to a wider audience. It pulls readers from all walks of life to a narrative that ponders questions large than itself.

In her book, Universalist Hopes in India and Europe: The Worlds of Rabindranath Tagore and Srečko Kosovel, Ana Jelnikar further writes, “Tagore gave his anti-colonialism a broader base, envisioning it as a larger search for liberation, leading on to universalism” (2). “Punishment,” fits this argument. The story emanates from a single household and expands into the justice system. And, yet, at its center is not the systems of justice and laws of the land. At its center, “Punishment” is about the treatment of woman; it is about the struggle between guilt and loyalty; it is about the fear of death and how we react to it. The story is not about one particular set of laws under a colonial system. It is broader than colonialism and its injustices.

The household’s abject poverty is another thrust into the universalist sphere. Remember, Radha shouts, “There is no rice! Where is the rice that I will cook for you? Did you bring any rice? Do I have to go out and earn money myself?” (205). After working all day the men have nothing to show for it. They have no money. The wifes have no food. The children are naked. They owe back rent. The house is devoid of furniture. Clearly, these two family’s live in abject poverty.

There is another story layered into the story’s poverty. Their condition wasn’t unusual. This family was and is not an outlier. Across the world, billions live in abject proverty. Michael Collins in his essay “Rabindranath Tagore and Nationalism: An Interpretation” states, “Tagore saw World History as the steady unfolding of an idea… he placed India at the centre of that process. In this regard, Tagore developed an alternative conception of modernity which saw the ideas, politics and technology of the West as only one aspect of a developing historical process, rather than its core movement.” By focusing in on a poor South Asian family, Tagore is shifting the audience away from the rich centers of the world and pointing it on the majority of people across the world. However, just like poor nations have rich individual, rich nations of poor individuals and thus the universitality of poverty flushes out a line of communication between differing peoples.

Then, there is violence. To build and to destroy is at the center of human experience. We build cities to destroy them. Take a look at Aleppo. We often build cultures, intitutions, and societies to tear them down. We often build lives on the back of others. “Punishment” is an ode to the human capacity for destruction and violence. The further humanity gets from its origin, the more destructive it has become. We now have bombs that can wipe all live from the face of this planet, but this capacity for violence, destruction starts from the individual and works its way through society.

Tagore himself argues, “when this idea of the Nation, which has met with universal acceptance in the present day, tries to pass off the cult of selfishness as a moral duty… it not only commits depredations but attacks the very vitals of humanity” (Tagore, “Creative Unity” 550–551). Tagore saw the nation-state as a vehicle driven the by same universal passions across the world. If one was to control those passions it must start at the individual level regardless of origin. When Dukhiram kills his wife, violence becomes the universal agent. Heat, hunger, poverty, anger, exhaustion, etc become the vehicle for universal comprehension and—at that instance—rejection of Dukhiram’s act. The conundrum is obvious though. Unfortunately, Violence is also universal.

Tagore’s “Punishment” drips of universalism. It explores the passions, pettinness, and cruelness of humanity. It is a vision of a distant world, but, really, not that far away. Who hasn’t heard of an abusive husband in their local social interactions? Who hasn’t seen the local news and been devastated by the cruelness of the world? The themes in “Punishment” hash out and permeate throughout the world at large. In his attempt to bridge nationalist and universalist thought, Tagore explores the similarites between cultures, ethnic groups, and across borders. “Punishment” pulls the curtain back on Tagore’s universalist thoughts.