Some Freedom Within a Small Range: Tagore on Moral Standard

Abstract

The drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character. Duality is there in the depths of existence. The contradiction of free impulse and directive will work upon life and evolves an orderly scheme of things. But, all the orders are temporary, tentative, flexible, elastic, dynamic and after all, transitory, and different from place to place and from time ff t ot ime. Our individual impulses, passions and desires are unruly and rebellious. But our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. That is why despite occasional violence or turbulence the drama of existence is not altogether hopelessly desultory. Despite the possibility of eruption of unruliness, there is also a constant harmony of chance and determination which has been making our dynamic existence eternally new and living. There is in human affairs an element of elasticity – ‘‘some freedom ff within a small range’’,1 which is for the experience and expression of our personality, never rigidly fixed. Even within the superstructure of arrangement, i.e., law and prescribed regulations, one can give spontaneous expression of one’s moulded and refined variations of passion in the forms of newer and newer creations between apparent reality and idealistic, artistic and creative illusions. If we do not cut ourselves adrift from the centra ll aw of existence, we can have enjoyable freedom for almost full self-expression within the limits of social norms. Furthermore, if in our conduct we can follow the law of some sort of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. Some sort of uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience. And yet there is also a constant process of reconcilliation, ‘‘the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.’’2 However, is there any fixed universal standard? That is also tentative and just in vogue for the present. When Dilipkumar Ray asks Rabindranath Tagore whether sexual enjoyment between a man and a woman is immoral, Tagore explains to him in a letter3 that the same is not itself immoral. Had it been so, then the sons and daughters would have been outcomes or issues of immoral acts, i.e., sin. But, Tagore asserts that sexual enjoyment must be limited