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Society
The Story of the
Raiyat *
by Rabindranath Tagore
 According to our
scriptures this world is like a strange tree which has its roots above.
It grows from the top and spreads its branches downwards; which means it
is not standing on its own, it is hanging from above.
Reading your
‘Raiyater katha’ (The story of the raiyat) it seems to me that our
politics is of a similar kind. At the time of its birth the Congress
party was found to have struck its roots among those who rule us – both
for its sustenance and existence it was dependant on the same higher
sphere.
Those whom we call gentlemen appear to have decided among themselves
that politics consisted in their sharing the power of ruling this
country with its rulers. All its fights, truces and treaties were to be
conducted with lectures from the podiums and writings in the pages of
newspapers and the weapon to be used was the King’s English – sometimes
it was an incessant whining for some small pittance and sometimes it was
the heated expression of some anger. And when this whirlwind of voluble
verbosity is creating airy bubbles in the upper atmosphere those who are
the sons of the soil are being born and dying as they have done for
generations – they are ploughing their fields, weaving their cloth,
feeding both men and beasts with their flesh and blood and lying full
length they are bowing before the temple of the very god who loses his
purity by their mere touch, they are laughing and crying in their mother
tongue and with all kinds of indignities pouring in on their head like a
heavy shower they are striking their forehead with their hands and
saying, ‘It’s all our fate!’ Between those politicians and the common
people of our country there is an immeasurable distance.
Today that politics has turned its face in another direction just like a
lady feeling hurt and offended in her love turns her face away from her
lover, telling her friend, ‘No, I won’t look at those black clouds any
more’. So long it was a time for courtship and love tryst, but now the
relationship has soured and is threatened by separation. The style has
changed but the game goes on. Previously we said very emphatically, ‘We
want’, now we are saying equally emphatically, ‘We don’t want’. We
however hasten to add that we want to improve the conditions of our
villagers. In other words, we want to say that they are our own people
and the rulers are not. But we exhaust all our energies, both vocal and
physical, in noisily shouting ‘we don’t want’. What we want we utter in
a very feeble voice. What little money we are able to collect is spent
in organizing the political fracas of our gentlemen and what remains for
the welfare of our villagers is only some noise. That means, from the
beginning of our modern day politics we have been practicing what may be
called an unidentifiable patriotism, precluding from it the people of
our country.
Those who supply money for the practice of this kind of hollow
patriotism are either zamindars or factory owners and those who supply
noise are legal practitioners. The villagers have no place among them;
that means in this ghostly world what we call our country is not to be
found. They have no power, either of making noise or of money. When
civil disobedience is launched they may be needed only to die stopping
to pay their rents; those who live from hand to mouth are also called
sometimes to shut down shops and markets to make a hartal successful.
The purpose of all these is to display our unfriendly political stance
before our rulers.
Thus the matter relating to the raiyats always remains postponed. First
let the throne be in place, the crown be made, the scepter be brought in
and Manchester be pauperized – only then we shall find the time to
attend to the problems of the raiyats. In other words, politics will
come first and the people of the country would come later. This is the
reason why, like a tailor making a dress, we are busy fashioning the
form of our polity. It is very easy because we do not need any living
creature to take the measurements. What we have to do is only to send to
the tailor a ready made sample borrowed from abroad where the people of
those countries made their dress after a lot of experiments keeping in
view their physique and their climate. We know the name of the dress –
it has been crammed right from the pages of learned treatises – because
in our factories the name of the product comes long before it is
actually produced. They are democracy, parliament, the constitutions of
Canada, Australia, South Africa etc, all of which we can imagine with
our eyes closed – because we do not have to take the trouble to take
measurements from a living human being. To enjoy this ease we say that
we should have swaraj or self-rule first, the people for whom it is
meant will come later. Everywhere else in the world people are evolving
their self-rule themselves according to their nature, capabilities and
needs whereas we are the only people on earth who will have their swaraj
on an auspicious first day of January chosen from the almanac and then
we will somehow impose it on the people of our free country. Meanwhile
there is malaria, there are epidemics, famines, moneylenders, the
zamindar, the policeman, the marriage of the daughter like a mill-stone
around the neck, the last rites of the mother, taxes of various kinds
and above all baring its fearsome jaw there is the rapacious lawyers’
court of law.
For all these reasons, I am afraid, in our politics your Raiyater katha
will be totally out of context. You are not joining those who are
harnessing the horse behind the coach – not only that, you want to know
before harnessing it whether the horse has been fed and has enough
strength. Don’t you have someone among your friends who can advise you,
‘First make it draw the coach and at some auspicious moment you will
reach your destination and you will find enough time thereafter to
enquire whether the horse is still able to move or it is alive or dead’?
You ought to know that in the current politics the time table is ready
and the main thing is to get on the coach with your portmanteau. The
coach will of course reach no destination, but that is not the fault of
the time table; everything would have been right if the horse did its
duty rightly. You are prone to argue; in the face of so much enthusiasm
you want to pause and say that the horse doesn’t move has been the basic
problem for a long time. You are very careful and a man of traditional
wisdom; therefore you want to know the state of the stable first. But
the men of current fashion in their enthusiasm are restless to get on
the coach; drawing a similarity with the house-on-fire they are saying,
‘We have to reach without any delay and that is the most important
thing. It is sheer wastage of time to enquire about the condition of the
horse. It is necessary to get on the coach first.’ Your Raiyater katha
is the story of the horse which may as well be called the story of the
root cause of its problems.
But there are reasons to worry because at present some stout young men
have directed their attention towards the raiyats. From the very
beginning they have begun to flex their muscles. It is clear that they
have found something exotic to imitate. When with a lot of fanfare our
mind becomes patriotic it is found that the things which inspire it have
‘Made in Europe’ stamped on them. Their circumstances have made the
Europeans feel a natural urge to experiment with socialism, communism,
syndicalism etc. But when we say ‘we shall do good to our raiyats’ we do
so only borrowing some stock phrases from the Europeans. During my
recent visit to eastern Bengal I found that some small transient
literary groups have sprung up like prickly weeds. Each of them is
flying a flag with a bloody message. They are saying, ‘Crush them,
trample them all under your feet’. In other words let the world be free
of zamindars and moneylenders. As if sins could be wiped out by force,
as if darkness could be beaten up with a club! The wives for their own
safety want to do away with their mothers-in-law by force, but they
forget that as mothers-in-law they in their turn will be much worse
oppressors of their daughters-in-law. According to our scriptures
liberation from the mortal bondage cannot be achieved merely by putting
an end to one’s life, the bondage has to be uprooted from our inner
nature. The Europeans are aggressive by nature. It takes time to uproot
sins from within; they cannot wait and so kill people from without.
Imitating the English, as children play with their dolls, once we had
started to play a mock game of parliamentarian politics. Because at that
time what engaged our attention most was the political ideal of Europe.
The European literature of that time that captured our mind glorified
people like Mazzini and Garibaldi. Now there a different act of the
drama is being played. In the Lanka episode (Lanka kanda) of the
Ramayana it was the heroic king who won because the heroine had to be
rescued from a monster. But in the epilogue of that epic (Uttar kanda)
it is the villain who wins by vilifying the king who in shame has to
banish the queen to please his subjects. In times of war the king was
important, but now the commoners are prevailing. The theme of our ballad
was our victory against the enemy who had invaded us from outside; now
the theme of our song is the victory of the courtyard over the citadel.
We cannot say that we fully understand the origin and nature of the
movements like Bolshevism, Fascism etc that are emerging in the West
today, but this much we realize that brute force is gradually becoming
entrenched in the society. As clever imitators some of our countrymen
have readily started to think that brute force is the most important
thing. The world had once sunk under muck and God in His incarnation as
a boar (Baraha avatar) raised it with the help of His tusks;
these people want to do it with the help of their clubs. They have
neither any time nor courage to ponder that the inequality between the
high and the low cannot be removed by force. It is rooted in the very
psyche of man. If the man who is on the lowest rung today is raised up
tomorrow he will equally press upon the man at the bottom. The regimes
of the Tsar and the Bolsheviks are two faces of the same monster. It is
nothing but insanity to dance wildly in joy after transferring the boil
on your left hand to your right hand. Those who are very robust may
become insane because of rush of too much blood to their head, but those
who are weak and anemic will develop hysteria from the same cause. So
when I came to know that in our literature attempts are being made to
propagate slogans like, ‘Cudgel the moneylender’, ‘Crush the zamindar
into pulp’ I realized that the source of these bloody slogans is not
their own organism. It is an example of the Bengalis’ exceptional
capability of imitation highlighted by bold colors. Outwardly it is very
exuberant but within it is lifeless.
I am myself a zamindar; so it may appear that I am anxious to protect my
own interests. If I want to do so I cannot be blamed – it is human
nature. Moreover, those who want to save their right and those who try
to take it away are both activated by the same motive. And in none of
them it is exactly noble; it is sheer instinct of preservation of
self-interest. Today if those who want forcibly to take away my right
become successful, like a cat that becomes wild when let loose in the
jungle, those very people will turn into petty predators before the day
is over. The object to be preyed upon may change, but the manner in
which teeth and claws are used will by no means be as harmless as that
of the vegetarian vaishnavas. From the high-sounding words they are
uttering today when trying to take away others’ rights I am convinced
that they are only devout in their professions. But when the time will
come for them to do some altruistic acts I shall certainly see their
tongues lolling for non-vegetarian food. Because our professions are in
our words but our greed is in our mind. So the zamindar who has been
born in the psyche of this land will sprout again in full vigor even
after he has been thoroughly crushed like a weed full of thorns. Because
the soil has not been changed.
By birth I am a zamindar, but by nature my profession is that of an idle
dreamer. That is the reason why sincerely I don’t want to cling on to
land. I have no respect for it. I know that the zamindar is a
blood-sucking leech, a parasite that lives on others. We do not labor,
without earning a farthing, without taking any responsibility we enjoy
wealth and make our body unfit and our mind idle. We do not belong to
the class of people who win the right to enjoy luxury by dint of their
vigorous efforts. Our tenants supply our sustenance and our servants put
it into our mouth – it is neither manly nor something to be proud of.
There is of course a feeling of pride in imagining oneself as a petty
king. Rummaging through the old papers from the archive you have broken
that pleasant dream. You want to prove that we are no more than
hereditary revenue agents of the British rulers. We are receiving
commission from the king yet we are calling ourselves kings and our
tenants subjects – what a deception indeed! Isn’t it better to give up
such zamindari? But to whom? To another zamindar? In the game
Jack-the-thief to whomsoever we may pass on the jack it will not stop
the thieving jack from doing mischief. Shall I give it to the tenants?
Soon it will give rise to ten small zamindars in place of one big
zamindar. And I cannot say that there is much of a difference between a
big and a small leech in their blood sucking inclination. In your view
land should belong to the actual tiller. But how is it possible if it
remains a tradable commodity and there is no bar to its transfer? It
stands to reason to say that books should belong to the man who reads
them. The man who does not read but only keeps them neatly stacked on a
shelf deprives the man who uses them in a useful manner. But if there is
no bar to the sale of books from a Pataldanga book shop then how is it
to be ensured that the man who has a shelf but is not learned will not
buy them? In this world shelves are much cheaper than knowledge. This is
the reason why books end up in the shelves of the rich and not on the
desks of the learned. The picture that is painted by the man blessed by
the goddess of learning is ultimately owned by the man who has been
blessed by the goddess of wealth. It is not because he has a right but
because he has enough money in the bank. In such circumstances some men
with a hot temperament but lacking money get excited. They say, ‘Kill
those moneyed men and take away the pictures.’ But as long as the
painter has hunger, as long as the paintings continue to come to the
market no body will succeed in stopping the paintings from going to the
man having a lot of money.
If land is sold in the open market then it will be least possible for
the tiller to buy it; most of it is bound to go to the man who does not
cultivate but has money. It is also true that the incidence of land
transfer will increase with the passage of time, because due to
inheritance the holdings will get increasingly subdivided and smaller in
size rendering them incapable of supporting the cultivators’ families.
For poverty cases of transfer of land will increase. This is how small
holdings end up being caught in large numbers in the big nets of the
local moneylenders. Like grains the cultivators get crushed between two
grind-stones. When there is the zamindar alone the cultivators may have
some right in their land but when the moneylender steps in to join the
former little of that right remains. I have saved many of my raiyats
from bankruptcy by stressing on the prohibitions against transfer of
land. In the process however I did not deprive the moneylender of his
dues; I only compelled him to come to a compromise. Sometimes I found it
impossible to save some tenants in this manner. When they realized that
crying before me was in vain they cried before God. It is not the
subject of this essay to consider whether they will ever get any
compensation in the world beyond this world.
It was the zamindar who saved his raiyats during the time of indigo
cultivation when the indigo planter tried to take away their land by
catching them in the trap of loans and advances. Had there been no law
prohibiting transfer of land at that time the land of the raiyat would
have been swept away by the indigo flood. Suppose today for some reason
with a view to establish a monopoly in the trading of the agricultural
produce of Bengal the Marwari businessmen intend to take away the land
of the raiyats. They can easily do it thereby extracting all the sap of
Bengal through the operation of their business like an oil mill. There
is no reason to think that some of them have not already thought so. If
they face obstacles to earn profits from their present business they are
bound to seek this kind of channel to invest their blocked capital. Now
the question is – will it be good for the raiyats to dig a canal that
will facilitate the inflow of flood waters to drown them?
The basic problem is this – the raiyats are very simple; they are
illiterate, weak and extremely poor. They don’t know how to protect
themselves. None is more dangerous than those among them who know it.
Nobody knows better than me how dangerous can be a raiyat who thrives on
other raiyats. The devil himself is present in his various forms in the
various modes of their operation through which they gradually fatten
themselves into a zamindar. They don’t feel any qualm of conscience in
committing forgery, instituting false civil and criminal cases, arson
and looting. Repeated imprisonments harden them into expert criminals.
Like big businesses in America gobbling up small businesses the more
powerful raiyats by hook or by crook misappropriates the small holdings
of weak raiyats and become zamindars. In the beginning they themselves
cultivated their lands, sold their crop in the market carrying it in
their own carts drawn by their own bullocks; except their cunning
character they were in no way different from other raiyats. But as the
extent of their landed property grows bigger and bigger they begin to
use clubs in place of their fingers. The outer limits of their bellies
bulge out; they need a dumpy bolster behind their back, by conducting
false civil and criminal cases they become prosperous and there is no
end to their blustering and bullying. Small fries can escape through big
nets but small nets do not spare even the smallest fry, all of them get
caught. And these smallest fries are the small raiyats.
In this connection one thing needs to be borne in mind – the real skill
of the litigant is seen in his capability to turn the unfavorable
provisions of law in his own favor. To hit back with the same law which
is likely to hit one is the lawyer’s masterly trick like that of a
master wrestler. Many master wrestlers are engaged in this job. So long
as the raiyat remains poor in both cunning and money he is likely to
fall in deep waters even where the law is in his favor.
It is neither pleasing to say nor to hear that the raiyat should not be
allowed to use his land in the manner he would like. In a sense full
freedom also includes the freedom to cause harm to one’s own self. But
such freedom suits him who is not immature as a child. To prohibit
someone who is a mature person to walk along a road which is used by
motor cars is nothing but an unlawful restriction; but if we do not
prohibit an immature person to use that road we would be guilty of
inconsiderate action. From my experience I would like to say that to
give the raiyat the right to transfer his land without any restriction
is to give him the right to commit suicide. In course of time he will
have to be given that right; but will it last long if it is given now?
In commenting on your monograph I only express this doubt.
I know it well that the zamindar is not without greed. Wherever there
are restrictions on the right of the raiyat over his land the zamindar
gets ample scope to exploit the raiyat. In our society there is a time
limit within which daughters are to be married and that time limit gives
the party of the groom a scope to squeeze the parents of the bride.
These cases are similar. But there are no reasons to feel elated at the
prospect of the zamindar’s ultimate loss as a result of gradual transfer
of land to the moneylenders. To the raiyat the grip of the moneylender
is more remorseless than that of the zamindar - even if you don’t agree
on this point, you must admit that it would be an additional grip.
It is very much true that the rent payable by the raiyat should not be
enhanced. The revenue paid by the zamindar to the government will remain
fixed forever whereas, like a sentence in which putting commas and
semicolons but no full stop are allowed, the enhancement of rent payable
by the raiyat to the zamindar will be allowed under certain conditions
but cannot be totally stopped is indeed inequitable. In fact it acts as
a great disincentive to the improvement of the land. Hence it is harmful
not only to the raiyat but also to the country as a whole. Moreover, the
bar on felling of trees, erection of pucca (brick-built) houses, digging
of ponds etc can by no means be supported.
These are small issues; the most important thing is – no law can protect
the man who cannot protect himself. And this capability is to be found
not in any stray process but in the whole way of life. It is inherent
not in law or in the charka (spinning wheel), or in khaddar (home-spun
cloth) nor in the right to vote in the Congress party bought with four
annas (quarter of a rupee). If we can infuse our villages with life in
its full vigor in a comprehensive manner only then their vitality itself
will find out the power of self-protection.
How it is to be achieved? Over this question I have been pondering in my
mind and through my work for quite some time. I don’t know whether I
shall be able to give the right answer, because it takes time. No matter
whether I succeed or fail in this, the fact remains that a simple answer
has got to be found out. And the answers to all other incidental issues
will be found in that answer. Otherwise all ad hoc measures will be
wastage of time and who knows if the one for whom they are meant will at
all remain so long alive.
June 1, 2008
*
Translation of the essay Raiyater katha
written by Rabindranath Tagore in 1333 BS (1927-28) as the introduction
to the monograph of the same name written at his behest by Pramatha
Chaudhury. It is of interest to note that the subject of this essay had
become a burning issue at the time when, among other things, tenancy
rights were proposed to be given to the share-croppers by the 1928
amendment of the Bengal Tenancy Act, 1885 but was withdrawn at the last
moment. It succinctly depicts the conditions of the agricultural
population of Bengal during the British rule under the land revenue
system known as the Permanent Settlement. It is a vitriolic criticism of
the utter neglect of the problems of rural population by the Congress.
To see how sarcastic Tagore could be one should read the original essay.
Translation by
Kumud Biswas
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