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II

It goes without saying that when Rabindranath refers to asymmetrical communicative relationship, he underlines power inequality that encourages distantiation from others (absence of solidarity) which is expressed in our resolute difiance to listen to or understand others with the warmth of the heart. In other words asymmetrical communicative relationship reveals distorted social relation governed by power asymmetry. Let us hear it from Rabindranath himself. First, we may recall some of his observations regarding communication gap between the Indians and the English community, the powerful ruling class during his time. He holds: 'Nobody can make the English rulers understand that we are not indifferent to the insult inflicted on us by them. But we are poor and none of us is autonomous like the westerns, On the contrary, every individual is only a representative of a larger family. On him depends the lives of his parents, brothers and sisters, as well as his wife and children. Hence he has to make many compromise and self-sacrifice. And he is trained and accustomed in that way. Not that he sacrifices his self-dignity out of self-interest but that he does it out of this profound sense of duty to his larger family. It is well known how many days do the poor Bengali employers return from their office with an intense feeling of humiliation and yet the very next day they attend their office without any outburst or protest. Instead they sit on their respective chairs and open his files. They thus digest silently the undue insult of their white employers. They yield to the injustice issuing from one way track of power. They do so because unlike the English people they are required to shoulder the responsibility of the entire family. So they visualize in their imagination how any kind of protest, however justified, will lead their family to starvation and ruin. But this is something me Englishmen do not understand. They take this timidity of the native people at its face value, and are unable to capture the real import of this timidity for the sake of others. And this prompts their disregard for the Bengalees, nay the Indians,'²

Rabindranath also points out that English literature has provided much fuel to activate this disregard, this unwillingness to understand the Indians: 'English literature, particularly stories, travelogues, history, geography, political essays and satirical poems are provoking the distaste of the Englishmen for the
Indians.'³

What, according to Rabindranath, propels this disregard, this distaste and apathy is the conviction of the Englishmen that they are the stronger side, and that only those who have power can sit on judgements and can have the sole right of ignoring others.⁴ This is why their indifference to the beliefs and modes of action of the Indians, to the internal logic of their social situations: 'Prohibition of widow marriage and acceptance of the system of early marriage may seem harmful in many respects: but he who understands the social structure of the Hindus cannot explain them away as mere barbarism.'⁵

Why? for 'the Hindus recognise all such practices only to protect the integrity of the family'.
This does not mean that Rabindranath speaks in favour of these practices, gives assent to them, or glorifies them. In fact, the force of his contention lies elsewhere. He wants to insist that these practices which had continued or were prevalent in Hindu society at least at some stage (even if not now) must have sonic reason behind them embedded in the social framework. Hence the point is to try to capture the relevant style of reasoning, the norms which govern those Hindu beliefs, institutions and evaluative standards. What is needed is to grasp the point of these practices and their place in the social tradition of which they form part. Perhaps we can put the contention of Rabindranath in a stronger way by holding that regarding social practices there is not anything one could be right or wrong about. There is no way in which others can challenge what we do because there is no position outside belief from which the validity of a set of beliefs could be adjudicated. Therefore, what is most appropriate is to understand the point of a social practice instead of defying it simply because it does no I tally with our beliefs and practices. But this is what, according to Rabindranath, the Englishmen do not see. They do not like to pay heed to the point of Hindu practices, since it does not correspond to their beliefs. What prevents them is illusory' belief in their supremacy, both in knowledge and action. However, this does not mean that Rabindranath has entered into a general philosophical delibration about the problem of understanding or evaluating others. This in itself is quite intriguing no doubt. But his objective here is only to highlight asymmetry in communicative relationship where the powerful does not bother to listen to the powerless. This, in other words, is only to insist on unhealthy interaction around power difference which begets distantiation and stands in the way of solidarity. And what Rabindranath apprehended many years before is perhaps true even today. The western world still nourishes in its heart, at least unconsciously, the feeling of power difference. This contributes, as Rorty admits, to their failure to sustain their part in the dialogue with other cultures, particularly of the Third World.

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