Abstract

Migration, or the movement of people from one designated place to another, has several strands which have not been explored in academic theory. Rabindranath Tagore, a 19th century humanist from the state of Bengal (then, under British rule) explores the strand of humanity in migration through the character of Rahamat, a migrant trader and moneylender from Kabul, creating a parallel between Rahamat’s absent daughter and the narrator’s daughter, Mini. He creates a juxtaposition between two forms of rebirth in terms of characters – both Rahamat and Mini experience beginnings which expose them to different perspectives of society that they did not recognize. To explore migration on the basis of a binary interaction in order to establish a world accommodative of perspectives ingrained is the purpose of Tagore’s short story, which strongly relates to ideals of humanism (the whole world being one). It touches upon modern debates on the ‘new mobile generation’ and essentializes the importance of humanity through the figure of the migrant.

Keywords

Humanism, Interaction, Moneylending, Perspectives

Introduction

“Only if we are capable of dwelling, can we build” – Martin Heidegger

In the past five years, the world has been inundated with change in all dimensions except one – a shared desire to belong. The pandemic, which has been at the forefront of most debates on transformations that have taken place, is a factor that exacerbated already existent features in society, most of which were oppressive in nature. The mass migration witnessed, besides deserving an explanation on the basis of sociological factors, also requires a moral warrant. It is crucial to label what migrants, singularly and as a community, endure on a moral basis, an area often ignored by academic theory (Kazmierska, 2006). The World Migration Report, 2020 estimates global migration to number at 281 million, which equates to 3.6% of the global population. Heidegger’s exploration of the idea of migration is one of the first instances of spatiality being explored in terms of philosophy. For him, dwelling was connected to the form of building that involves cultivating and nurturing. Heidegger felt that the four-fold entities of the universe (Das Geviert) constituted the essence of existence – earth, sky, mortals and divinities. He postulated that man’s existence (of which dwelling is an inherent part) consisted of concrete substances rather than the abstractions of science. This is particularly relevant in the context of this chapter where one notes the migrant’s tendency to locate traces of himself in the community that he presently inhabits – Rahamat, in handing over those nuts and raisins to Mini, was also reminiscing his daughter’s hand and the touch of filial affection.

A Brief History of Migration

The Beringia theory of migration is the earliest one propounded by scientists during the last glacial phase. The earliest theory of migration proposed was the Beringia Land Theory, which scientists theorized as the mechanism of our ancestors crossing over from Siberia into Alaska. They theorized that the ancestors of today’s Native Americans reached North America by walking across this land bridge and made their way southward by following passages in the ice as they searched for food. New evidence shows that some may have arrived by boat, following ancient coastlines. It is believed that a wide population arrived in Beringia from Eastern Siberia during the last glacial maximum.

To take a more contemporary approach, the Dillingham Commission’s report prepared the grounds for the end of uncontrolled immigration in the United States. The subsequent birth of the passport after the First World War led to the policing of borders due to uncontrolled immigration, mostly driven by political reasons. What emerges is not a stoppage of migration but a ceasing of hospitality generally available to the migrant. Often viewed as lowly and not belonging to society, the migrant was generally ostracized and treated as a vagrant. However, this was observed more strongly in the personal sphere, being relatively more open to exploitation.

Methodology

Peter Kok writes: “Migration is probably best defined (in general terms) as the crossing of a spatial boundary by one or more persons involved in a chain of residence” (Kok, 1997).  Migration, in the twenty-first century, has been a term characterized by erosion in terms of definition. There have been several reasons for migration to occur – economic, political, social and in certain cases, even personal. 2021 has seen one of the largest scales of forced migration in history. At least 82.4 million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes. Among them are nearly 26.4 million refugees, around half of them are under the age of 18 (UNHRC figures). The ‘new mobile generation’ of Sheller and Urry 2001 is especially relevant in the post-pandemic context (if there is one) when migration has doubled due to shortages, on both a national as well as an international level. The desire to relate it with a narrative concerning an Afghan trader and a child in British India is significant – in a legislative structure not ordained by Indians, the treatment that a migrant gets is all the more crucial. A parallel is discovered with the migrants in another land, faced with a cultural scenario that they are not quite familiar with.

The hand becomes a crucial symbol when it comes to the story. Often viewed as the receptacle of action, the hand is the embodiment of human choice and therefore, character. Rahamat being handcuffed is the state’s suppression of what is an otherwise blasphemous relationship on a socio-political level.

When he noticed that Mini did not find the answer quite amusing, he pointed to his hands and added in his heavily accented, patchy Bengali, “I would have beaten up the in-law. But what can I do, my hands are tied up.”

State-sanctioned laws, which lead to the confinement of Rahamat for murder by tying up his hands, is to be viewed in contrast with the Kabuliwala handing over the coin to Mini in the first part of the story. Having been convicted for homicide, Rahamat is sent to jail and having a deep regard for Mini, he refuses to take money from her father. Both instances involve a violation of socio-economic norms and therefore, paint an interesting contrast of the motif of and usage of the hand.

William Warner labels the migrant as an “unwanted interloper” (Warner, 2020). It is interesting because, while the migrant has been labelled as unwanted, his services are still shown to be in demand. This naturally brings in the question of humanitarianism when it comes to the prevailing service economy . Rahamat finding a sense of solidarity in Mini is also somehow their joint rejection of the service economy. Mini, by virtue of her ignorance regarding what marriage is, refuses to offer her services as a bride. Rahamat, by not taking money for the nuts and raisins that he offers Mini, refuses to offer his services as a fruit peddler. That does not quite undercut the treatment that he subsequently undergoes as a moneylender but is a revealing remark on an affirmation of their own values.

Everett Lee defines migration as follows: “Migration is a permanent or semi-permanent change of residence. No restriction is placed upon the distance of the move or upon the voluntary and involuntary nature of the act, and no distinction is made between external and internal migration” (Lee, 1966). While Lee excludes nomads and migrant workers from this classification, it is crucial to study their patterns of mobility as well. Rahamat, for instance, is a migrant worker who oscillates between Calcutta and Kabul: “Every year, in January or February, Rahamat would go back to his home country to visit his family. A money-lender, he was unusually busy during this period, collecting dues from his clients before the trip.” Douglas S Massey sums up the purpose of such an emigration as follows:

“Mirroring the flow of workers from labour-abundant to labour-scarce countries is a flow of investment capital from capital-rich to capital-poor countries. The relative scarcity of capital in poor countries yields a rate of return that is high by international standards, thereby attracting investment” (Massey, 1993).

Where does tourism figure, however, in this context of mobility? James Mak defines tourism as “pleasure travel” (Mak, 2004) and tourists as “people who travel for personal pleasure” (2004). However, in the context of this paper, this becomes an extremely contemporary definition. The narrator, for example, expresses his desire for tourism in a prose aside:

“I, never stirring from my little corner in Calcutta, would let my mind wander over the whole world. At the very name of another country, my heart would go out to it, and at the sight of a foreigner in the streets, I would fall to weaving a network of dreams,–the mountains, the glens, and the forests of his distant home, with his cottage in its setting, and the free and independent life of faraway wilds. Perhaps the scenes of travel conjure themselves up before me and pass and repass in my imagination all the more vividly, because I lead such a vegetable existence that a call to travel would fall upon me like a thunder-bolt. In the presence of this Kabuliwala, I was immediately transported to the foot of arid mountain peaks, with narrow little defiles twisting in and out amongst their towering heights. I could see the string of camels bearing the merchandise, and the company of turbaned merchants carrying some their queer old firearms, and some their spears, journeying downward towards the plains.”

The narrator expresses the dilapidated state of tourism in those days, when foreign lands constituted a mere utopian world that one might dream of. However, one was quite content to dwell in one’s hometown. Being the era of nation-states and the age when protests against the colonial regimes in different nations were unfolding, there was a desire to stay back and improve one’s own land, instead of encouraging visits to other spaces. What could also be a possible reason was the portraiture of the Indian as the adventurer, as was seen in several texts of this period. Whatever might be the cause, tourism did not receive much of an impetus until the end of the World Wars.

Moneylending, which was a source of microfinancing (Warner, 2020), turned out to be a more reliable source than the others in urban Bengal. Even today, services offered by migrant labourers prove to be in demand more than others, largely because of their accessibility and more importantly, affordability. Rahamat’s emigration, which has to do with his pursuance of the moneylending business in Calcutta (the story is set in 1892, when Calcutta was under British rule), has interesting legislative aspects to it. William Warner, who worked on the moneylending profession practised by Kabuliwalas in the 19th century, argues that Afghan moneylenders often led to the creation of a micro-financial service:

“More than simply predatory, Afghan moneylenders provided a micro-financial service when and where no one else would. As a result, Afghan moneylending operations, considered as a whole, provide insight into the cosmopolitan nature of credit relationships among the working poor in the colonial era and how social and cultural notions informed not only those relationships but also how the imperial government and its allies understood them. Beginning with the Great Depression, novel legal regimes emerged around the subcontinent aimed at eradicating Afghan moneylending and solving the social problems associated with it. In the process, the intrusion of the state into informal finance via regulation hampered deep historical patterns of interregional social connectivity and redefined the cosmopolitanism of credit relations in the informal sectors of the economy” (Warner, 2020).

The enactment of legislation to regulate a traditional business does promote a sense of fairness across the board, to put it in quotidian terms. However, the question, when it comes to the above chapter’s premise, is about the ethical implications of such regulation. To curb the practices of an entire generation is a utilitarian legislative premise that hampered the Afghan business on both a professional as well as personal level. Rahamat’s indignance is obviously inspired by the fact that he is in a different land and hence, needs to assume guard but it is also premised on his resistance against a nation-state-like structure that opposes the economic progression of migrants whilst expecting service returns. Robin Cohen comments on the presence of nation-states when it comes to the migrant question as such: “The very formation of a system of nation states depends on being able to police a frontier against unwanted immigrants though there is room for discussion as to whether this is either ethical or necessary” (Cohen, 1996). This directly relates to the emergence of the passport after the First World War, intended to ‘qualify’ migrants to cross national borders in the United States, giving rise to the melting pot syndrome in the history of America. There is also a lasting debate, commenting on the distinctions between temporary and permanent migration, which relates directly to the consequences of migration. The debate of temporary versus permanent migration, forms a dyad in migration theory – contract labour, indentured labour and guestworker systems are all examples of this phenomenon. Added to this is the issue of settler versus labour migration. Fairchild’s theory of migration utilizes tow main criteria as his axes – the difference in the level of culture and whether or not the transition between the two societies was peaceful for the migrant (Fairchild, 1913). Herbert Spencer explained Western migration in terms of “the restlessness inherited from ancestral nomads” (Spencer, 1851).

Textual Issues

Kabuliwala, like much of Tagore’s literature, is a polyvalent text. The insertion of a wide range of themes, scope for debates and the like is a parallel to Tagore’s own frame of mind, as he envisioned the world as an ideal in his head and decided to implement it, primarily through art. The construction of the figure of the Kabuliwala as a trader from Kabul with the potential to make himself a part of Bengali culture merits attention. His potential for such a social blend is displayed in the narrator’s first encounter with him.

Finally, as he was about to leave the house, he asked, “Sir, where is your little girl?

To break Mini’s unfounded fear, I called her from inside the house…

Mini’s fear, in the aforementioned lines, has a lot to do with cultural differences. The Kabuliwala’s attire (especially the emphasis on his burly sack), his way of speaking (deep voice) and his appearance – Mini’s lack of worldly experience plays out in her interactions with the man. The perspective of the trader from Kabul juxtaposed with Mini, whose parents had not introduced her to the idea of the in-laws’ house, comes forth to raise significant questions about how migrants, when treated as human beings, provide for an existent sense of social cohesion. What does it mean to treat the other like one’s own? Two major factors create an obvious constraint in equanimity – religion and gender.

Islamophobia, to examine a major cause of a lack of cohesion, has been a notable emotion across the world and manifests itself largely in the form of social groups and has been quite dominant in the current scenario of migration. Accepted notions of Islam and the idea of terrorism so oft attributed to practitioners of the religion tend to overshadow the idea of community. Culture is defined not as an opportunity for building community but in order to establish firm identities and promote exclusion on that basis. The culmination of cultural differences is achieved when Rahamat visits Mini’s house once he has been released from jail. The establishment of such differences works out on two levels – the lack of understanding on the part of Rahamat of Bengali rituals and culture, especially when it comes to marriage. What was an innocent relationship parallel to that of a father and a daughter turns into an invasion of gendered spaces – Mini leaves the room shyly upon being asked about her in-laws. The freedom to express one’s ideas is obscured by the desire to be a part of society – Mini no longer shares Rahamat’s social ignorance. Rahamat’s lack of knowledge of Hindu customs of marriage and the rituals in a Bengali household is depicted by his lack of hesitation in entering the house on Mini’s wedding day. The fact that she no longer thinks of his passing remarks as casual jests is indicative of social maturity in terms of customs and not larger values.

Relations between India and Afghanistan in the 19th century were shaped by Britain’s own interests in Kabul. The Viceroy, Lord Elgin, writing in 1896, says of the Durand Line: “The Durand Line was an agreement to define the respective spheres of influence of the British government and of the Amir. Its object was to preserve and to obtain the Amir’s acceptance of the status quo.” The establishment of Afghanistan as a princely state was related to the British’s own political understanding, in order to retain its power. The purpose of taming a land of nomadic tribes (Arlinghaus, 1988) was to strengthen control in the centre. However, the richness of the Silk Routes in terms of trade and the grandeur of the East continued to last and Afghan cultures prevailed.

The figure of the child is the most crucial one in Tagore’s story. Mini’s reception of Rahamat as a toddler is absolutely different from the other characters. When it comes to the apprehensions of Mini’s mother regarding the trader from Kabul, it is influenced by her understanding of the world, which is again influenced by her gendered identity. The fact that Mini chooses to ask her father about his relationship with her mother is naturally a display of fatherly affection but also an understanding of her father as more socially (and culturally) advanced than her mother.

Mini’s behaviour, as the narrator proudly comments, has to do with her parents’ modern outlook: “Bengali girls were commonly familiar with the term ‘in-laws’ practically since birth. But being more modern, we chose not to load our daughter’s mind with such precocious thoughts at such a tender age”. The amiability inherent in the child’s character, unfiltered by conscious thoughts of social cohesion, paves the way for their relationship:

“The two friends had a few stock phrases and jokes which were repeated in their conversations. For example, the moment she saw Rahamat, my daughter would ask with a hearty laugh, “Kabuliwala, O Kabuliwala, what is in your sack?

Adding an unnecessary nasal tone to the word, Rahamat would roar, “Hanti.”

The essence of the joke was that the man had an elephant in his sack. Not that the joke was very witty, but it caused the two friends to double up in laughter, and the sight of that innocent joy between a little girl and a grown man on autumn mornings used to move me deeply.”

The exchange, if viewed in broader terms of the relationship between linguistics and sociability, suggests that Mini had no clue about the spatiality which separated him and Rahamat in terms of culture and religion. Tagore’s suggestion in favour of adopting this sense of cordiality is not to shed caution, but to allow rationality alongside emotion. The nature of Islamophobia which plagues the world at large at present, owes itself to a sense of paranoia emerging largely from a lack of acceptance of the other and a fear which accompanies that. The comprehension of nation-states as individual entities (a concept which emerged during the First World War) makes this issue all the more relevant. Hermann Kurthen argues:

“Nation-states are results and causes of migrations and population movements in times of peace and of war. Their inclusive and exclusive capacities by means of drawing boundaries and creating collective identities have fostered emancipatory and democratic movements as much as they have been sources of bloody wars among nations, civic conflicts, xenophobia and ethnocentrist prejudice” (Kurthen 1997).

The role of mobility in terms of the formation of nation states and the inhuman treatment often meted out to the migrant is responsible largely for the nationalist activities which are on the rise. Samuel Pehrson distinguishes between two types of nationalism:

“In the study of nationalism, a common distinction is made between ethnic and civic nationalism whereby ethnic nationalism defines the nation in terms of some supposed shared ancestral, linguistic and/or cultural homogeneity and distinctiveness. Civic nationalism on the other hand defines nationalism in more voluntaristic terms, using criteria such as citizenship, as well as the institutional commitments and participation that this entails (Smith 2001). To define the national group is to define the bounds of collective sovereignty and equality, so national definitions have immense political significance (Greenfeld 2006). Therefore, within ethnic nationalism but not civic nationalism, nationality is defined in a way that immigrants are excluded” (Cohen 1966).

When one thinks of marriage and how that social institution resulted in the creation of gendered spaces when it came to the filial relationship that they shared, it raises even wider questions: how were the two beginnings so different? Both Rahamat and Mini were surmounted with the idea of beginnings. Rahamat had just been released from prison and Mini was about to be married. It is particularly interesting how gender creates a certain divide between them – Rahamat can no longer find his own daughter in her, which is when he looks at his daughter’s imprint. The reminiscence of his daughter moves the narrator and one comes back to Tagore’s central theme across his philosophy – the uniting factor across the world is human relationships.

Tagore’s Philosophy

Tagore was a humanist. At a time when Indian society was plagued by orthodoxy, Tagore preached the need to blend the flairs of both the East and the West to live a life driven by hope and not fear. In Where the Mind is Without Fear, Tagore writes:

“Where the world has not been broken into fragments

By narrow domestic walls…

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father

Let my country awake.”

Intending to build solidarity on the basis of a shared humanity and not man-made factors such as nationalism or religion, Tagore propounded the idea of Vishwa-Bharati (which is also the name of his institution at Shantiniketan), which aims at locating strands of unity in human thought in order to achieve progress which is beneficial to oneself as well as the community at large. To centre a short work of prose around the Kabuliwala is aimed at propounding strands of his philosophical thought as well: Rahamat and his love for his daughter back in Kabul is emblematic of the narrator’s love for Mini, representing human relationships as threads which unite people across borders. The narrator’s gesture of offering money to Rahamat to aid him in going home is again representative of an economic barrier. It is the ratio of Man’s need for community to economic survival that has threatened relationships and the foundation of humanity which guards them. To conquer that through sharing (as is evident in the narrator’s gesture of offering money) is the message that Tagore wishes to propagate.

While Man was being placed at the centre of Western philosophical thought in the 18th century, the Bengal Renaissance advocated for a global unity of mankind, envisioned through a common potential for rationalism. It was seen in movements such as the Young Bengal movement led by Derozio and thinkers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Tagore, who believed in mankind’s ability to reach the ideal. The fact that such a philosophical transformation was brought about at a point of time when India was reeling under the exploitations (both social and material) brought about by colonisation is particularly intriguing. The challenge that lay before thinkers in the province of Bengal was to unify thought with innovation in order to reach what they ordained as the highest purpose of mankind.

Contemporary Issues

The ‘new mobile generation’ brought in by Sheller and Urry (2006) deals with the idea of a population that has undergone displacement for a cause, the relevance of which is naturally open to interpretation. When it comes to the aforementioned debates, the migrant figure appears to be a homogeneous image – an individual in search of better opportunities from a different society (and culture). However, a study carried out by Filippo Osella on migrant communities in Kerala suggests different results:

“Utilizing the example of Kerala, it is said – “Kerala is a state in which Hindu communities are, as is in India as a whole, the majority population, but there are substantial populations of Muslims and Christians. The three populations have high concentrations and dominance in geographically specific zones. I have worked in two main field sites: throughout the 1990s in an inland rural area (pseudonym Valiyagramam) in South Kerala , roughly split between various Hindu and Christian communities, formerly dependent upon rice paddy, in which ties to the Gulf developed only after the 1970s; and since 2002 in an urban coastal city in the north of the state known as Calicut or Kozhikode, in the zone of greatest Muslim significance where recorded ties to the Gulf stretch back to the tenth century. These differences, notwithstanding, in both locations, and the state as a whole, Dubai, Doha or Dammam are more familiar than are Delhi and Kolkata, and the Gulf could be considered as part of the place that is Kerala” (Osella, 2015).

There is little emphasis on the treatment of migrants or attempts to reform it through policy. Current policies, while directed at their welfare, aim at domestic protectionism, which has its own causes (Neil, 2021). What remains to be seen is an adoption of policies, on an individual as well as a community level, which will enable immigration as well as ensure domestic safety, stability and progress.

Conclusion

Rahamat embodies the anxieties of the contemporary migrant and locates solidarity in Mini, who views him as a human and not as the other. To assess the needs of the migrant figure would be a complicated response to the question of solving the issue, which is to create an amiable society for all who inhabit it. The answer lay not in an erasure but an acceptance and celebration of divisions. However, the purpose is not to seek answers, but to ask a different question – why does such a division exist in society? To that, Tagore suggests, the answer is to view all as one – his idea of the Vishwa-Bharati. It is the achievement of that spiritual society where Tagore wished for God to “let my country awake”, to be the repository of material, political, cultural and spiritual freedom.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Proud Pen for this incredible opportunity to publish as a young author. I am also incredibly thankful to Laura Johnson, who considered me for this esteemed endeavour and the conference organisers of ICARSS 2021, which proved to be the start of my academic career. On a personal level, I’ll remain forever thankful to Dr. Shernaz Cama, who has always been more of a beloved friend than a professor, for believing in me throughout, my father, without whom I would have never reached here and lastly, my friends for their incredible support and company.