Paras Ra­moutar

While there ap­peared to have been some, "per­son­al­i­ty con­flicts" be­tween In­dia's two In­de­pen­dence gi­ants, Ra­bindranath Tagore and Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi, the two shared soft hearts, mu­tu­al re­spect and an over­flow­ing ca­ma­raderie, re­spect and benev­o­lence.This was clear­ly gleaned in the play en­ti­tled, The Prophet and the Po­et and pro­fes­sion­al­ly ex­e­cut­ed by the Ban­ga­lore Lit­tle The­atre Group from Ban­ga­lore, In­dia, re­cent­ly staged at NA­PA.The play marked the 142nd birth an­niver­sary of Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi, Oc­to­ber 2, and the 150th birth an­niver­sary of No­bel Lau­re­ate, Ra­bindranath Tagore, May 7. It was pro­grammed by the Shri Malay Mishra, In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er, Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co-op­er­a­tion, UTT, and the In­dia Alum­ni As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Wade Mark and Sushilla Ramkissoon-Mark were among sev­er­al dis­tin­guished peo­ple in at­ten­dance. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, so­ci­ol­o­gy and pol­i­tics of In­dia were re­vealed in the let­ters.The Prophet and the Po­et is based on the ex­change of let­ters and ar­ti­cles be­tween Gand­hi and Tagore over 25 years with In­dia's Free­dom Move­ment, and the ex­change from ac­tu­al cor­re­spon­dence was in­ter­spersed with imag­i­nary di­a­logue, but based on his­tor­i­cal facts.The 100-minute play re­flect­ed on the In­di­an Free­dom Move­ment which was very well re­gard­ed as a very sig­nif­i­cant chap­ter in In­di­an and world his­to­ry, where the yoke of colo­nial­ism was shak­en off by the acts of a non-vi­o­lent move­ment. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant when one con­sid­ers that the fi­nal push for In­de­pen­dence came through 1947, just two years af­ter the end of the Sec­ond World War.

The cham­pi­on of that non-vi­o­lent move­ment was Gand­hi, and his con­stant cham­pi­on and, of­ten a con­science-keep­er, was Tagore, Asia's first No­bel Lau­re­ate.The play ex­plored the po­lit­i­cal de­bates on a philo­soph­i­cal plane be­tween Tagore and Gand­hi, both of whom shared a deep and abid­ing love for In­dia and a com­mon vi­sion for the coun­try's In­de­pen­dence.And yet, their com­mon vi­sion, at times, ran on par­al­lel lines that ap­peared to head to­wards the same di­rec­tion with­out seem­ing to meet dis­agree­ments to ever be­come dis­agree­able in their per­son­al re­la­tion­ships, as they demon­strat­ed to the world, through their ac­tu­al let­ters and ar­ti­cles, that great minds may dif­fer on mat­ters of opin­ion, but they nev­er stoop to lose their re­spect for one an­oth­er.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Win­ston Dook­er­an, ad­dress­ing Tagore's 150th birth an­niver­sary, hailed Tagore as In­dia's philoso­pher, Gand­hi as its po­lit­i­cal strate­gist, and the late Prime Min­is­ter Nehru as the prac­ti­tion­er of In­de­pen­dence."Tagore was a deep rev­o­lu­tion­ary thinker of our time, not in the way we have de­fined rev­o­lu­tion in the his­to­ry books and else­where, we do not de­fine it as an in­ner rev­o­lu­tion, we de­fine it as an out­ward ex­pres­sion of dis­con­tent or protest. Tagore sought to in­ject the con­cept of an, 'in­ner rev­o­lu­tion' in the minds of all men every­where," Dook­er­an said.Is­sues of fo­cus were: Bhadra­log, Brah­ma Vidya, Char­lie An­drews, Gopis, Kha­di, Phoenix Ashram, Jal­lian­wal­la Bagh, Har­i­jan, Poona Act, Sabra­mati Ashram, Salt Act, San­ti­nike­tan and Swadeshi, Vish­wa Bharati, Swaraj and Young In­dia.The nar­ra­tor was Aparna Nori, ac­tor ex­plor­ing Gand­hi was San­jeev ly­er, while Shashank Pu­rushotham rep­re­sent­ed Tagore. Mu­sic and au­dio was pro­vid­ed by Pree­tam Koilpil­lai , while Priyalak­sh­mi Rao took on the role of stage man­ag­er.