International Research Journal of Social Sciences_____________________________________ ISSN 2319–3565Vol. 2(2), 48-51, February (2013) Int. Res. J. Social Sci. International Science Congress Association 48 Rabindranath Tagore: In the Age of Globalization Sarkar Rimi and Ghosh AritraGuest Lecturer, Chapra Bangaljhi Mahavidyalaya, Chapra, Nadia, INDIA Available online at: www.isca.in Received 24th January 2013, revised 1st February 2013, accepted 9th February 2013 Abstract The some and substance of Rabindranath’s view about the impact of capitalistic form of economy leading to the globalization of economic market is that it has completely destroyed all the human qualities of mankind replacing the craving for earning excessive money. This has not only produce digester effect on an individual’s human life but it has destroyed the human qualities and society as a whole. The result of new economic system goes against the forces a society, degrading the human qualities. It will inevitably rob the human society of all peace of mind and healthy living. To find a solution to this problem Rabindranath has delved deep into the history of human society, to find a remedy to this problem. In short he came to the conclusion that equally of production and distribution as Marx propounded in his economic theory may lead the society to save the mankind from the impending digester. Keywords: Rabindranath Tagore, globalization, global market, power of money, capitalism. Introduction There is a great difference between the ages in which Rabindranath lived with the age in which we live today. Rabindranath saw nothing of the modern age namely computer, internet, the revolution of software, face market, the ledge of Global village, the all pervasive assault of television etc. He did not see the expansion of Global market, disaster of socialism, World Wide Web. How far the Words of Rabindranath is applicable to this changed world? The first thing that is worth mentioning is that the digital depended on technology did not jump suddenly. Today this age is called variously as global village, electronic republic, digital commerce etc. After Rabindranath a great change took place in the world. But the debatable things are that the things in common at Rabindranath’s time continue its existence even today. Concept of Exploitation Rabindranath tied the present civilization characterized by exploitation. More or less the masses are exploited. This leads to unsocial individualism. However which the propagation of software technology is made, the modern civilization is based on the principle of exploitations. To be brief, the difference between the richest countries with the poor was in the ratio of 1:11. It increased to 1:44 in 1973 and in 1972 it is 1:72. It means the rich countries possess 72 times resource than the poor countries. In 2003 the two and a half country of rich American’s income has equal to 200 crores of poor men. The report of 19 states that the income of Europe is three times than the African’s in 2003 but at present it becomes 13 times. According to the report of World Bank out of 600 crores, 280 crores live below poverty line. According to report of WHO (World Health Organization) maximum people are dead due to the poverty. Beside this, 4.4 percent people died due to mal-nutrition, lack of treatment etc. in 2004 than 2000. The difference revealed here exists in great equality at present. The main conflict of the society remains the same. Propagation is made to the effect that world has been reduced to a Global Village. Software technology which has brought about the division due to before two sections, one enjoying the advantage of software technology and the other section deprived of the same benefit. Change in Communication and Relationship It is true that it has brought about a change in communication but the communication and relationship are not the same. Relationship is a practical thing depended on mental condition. The Rabindranath’s whole life centered establishment of relationship among men. The main aim of his life is to put an end to the separation among men and to unite them leading to the evolution of a full fledged man. But the modern age fail to make this aim successful. The difference among men becomes more acute. The age, in which Rabindranath lived, the difference lay in the money and authority. All the comfort is enjoyed by the power of authority. According to Rabindranath, the poor sections of the people were left without any means to enjoy life. They stand with lamp on their head, all get light leaving them. Today the difference is based on the same element of the power of money. According to Gates who is the proprietor of Information Highway that the advantage will continue to be produced with profit in mind. The revolution in Software technology only added a new dimension with Global Market. According to International Research Journal of Social Sciences____________________________________________________ISSN 2319–3565Vol. 2(2), 48-51, February (2013) Int. Res. J. Social Sci.International Science Congress Association 49 Gates, The future may become a wonderland of opportunity only for the minority among us who are affluent, mobile and highly educated. And it may at the poor, the non-college educated, and the so called unnecessary. The global village has become the digital bazaar. According to the richest men of the west the software technology has brought about the marriage of software technology and marketing. As a result of this information highway is the most important and productive market place of the twenty first century. Time’s (1993) remark that it is even easier to picture the information highway being exploited to make a lot of money. Michel Dawson and John Bellami Foster jointly remark in an essay that the information highway will be grafted on to a global capitalist system already characterized by vast and growing inequality, economic stagnation, market saturation, financial instability, urban crisis, social polarization, graded assess to information, ecological degradation etc. The combination of marketing and the new information technology will enable certain firms to obtain higher profit margins and larger market shares, and will thereby promote grater concentration and centralization of capital. It will create a wider universe of commodity Fetishism. Capitalism and Human Relationship Rabindranath was aware that capitalism will destroy the human relationship. It deprived men of their entity. He made his own assessment about the result of capitalism. Due to the close relationship of capitalism with software technology the division of men remains the same as it was in the age of Rabindranath. Rabindranath wrote that, the enlightened soul of man is eclipsed by the guise of profit motif. He remarked, this money has caused aliment and this has quite overwhelmed mankind. Money has, as it were, become a devilish power. In a society based on economy, human mind is so much over showed and over powered by monetary gain that the interrelationship of human existence led to the regrettable downfall of moral standard. In his own words what is becoming a constant source of disaster for humanity hypnotism of money and its secret action upon the mind. He also said that man is always craze for money and it has carried to our society a distinct deviation from its moral orbit, its mental balance being upset and its aspiration brought down to the dust. It has not only separated mankind from morality and humanity but also it resulted in the mental balance being upset. Else where has said wealth has spread its wings beyond its boundary of other assets has created inequality to a great extend afflicting human lives and nature or in other words there had never been so great an enemy of mankind because there is nothing so much instinct for committing great in human activities like that of desire for wealth. About the economically based society Rabindranath expressed the similar view. The essence of Rabindranath statement is that in a society where man gives the most important to money should incredibly destroy all goods qualities of a man. This consciousness creating crisis in the society is to be found in very fast stage of Rabindranath literary carrier. His short stories bear eloquent testament to this fact. In the later stage of his life while Rabindranath was making and extensive tours in the countries of Europe and America, he witnessed the ugly shape of profit making culture. He has written his personal experience in details in the drama like ‘Raktakarabi’ together with the lectures delivered by him on Nationalism. In a number of books ha also express the same opinion. In fact we may rightly call the stage of his literary carrier down from the short stories to the drama Raktakarabi. The fact may precisely be termed as the evolution of Rabindranath’s social consciousness. Tagore’s Short Story about Capitalism The short story entitled Painter depict the mentality given to making money bears proof to the fact that every where in the society men are rushing after making money sacrificing all pursuits of human goals. Rabindranath commented about short story that men are so much fascinated to wards earning money that he looses himself into the earning of money and money has become be all and end all of life. To him it’s seemed that the worm out money is so powerful that it can easily play with human mind, it can subdue man’s all other desires and lords over the kingdom of human mind. It has become as it were as adorable as God. It has compiled men to worship him with all its various forms. Rabindranath thought that it was different in earlier ages. Even only before the appearance of capitalism the craving for wealth was non existence. Karl Marx while surveying all the problems of making in the light of history has clearly shown that in ancient time when there reigned the agricultural economy , the society was depended on the theory of equality in regarded to production and distribution of wealth. What Karl Marx meant to say is that everything in the society centered round the mankind and not to the wealth. Again he has shown us clearly in those olden time man had no indulgence to producing excessive wealth and if it occurred by chance , everything was distributed in the society , can by no means be said. What we endeavor as an importance point of view is that Rabindranath traversed deep into the society to find out the cause of the malady of human society. When we go through the stories of Rabindranath’s short stories we can not help thinking that Rabindranath has presented before our eyes the same picture of the society as had been revealed by Karl Marx in his great economic theory. Development of Personality Rabindranath thought deeply over the all round development of human personality in the spear of social life. He did not wanted to see the wellbeing of a limited few men who are already made International Research Journal of Social Sciences____________________________________________________ISSN 2319–3565Vol. 2(2), 48-51, February (2013) Int. Res. J. Social Sci.International Science Congress Association 50 considerable progress in this regarded. He was by heart and soul craved for the attainment of total evolution of personality in general. It is here Rabindranath would not see eye to eye with the capitalistic system of economy where human personality is fragmented neglected and separated. To a man of advance views it is completely impossible to go against the force of historical truth where mankind is shrouded in superstition steeped in religious blindness of scientific intellectuality in short to a modern man it is quit impossible to go back again to the static feudalistic society. The history has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man is more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the commercial man, the man of limited purpose. Today there is no craving for authority, but the craving lies in the spread of commerce. All try to prove themselves as a rich man in the world. The ordinary man’s identity has been to a buyer. It prevents in from being a complete man. Rabindranath wrote that, wealth is characterized by difference. It begets poverty for the sake of wealth. This capitalist system has increased the working hour straining on the mental and physical health of the workers. Thus it has caused four elements; Behavioral Stress, Inter personal Stress, Physical Stress and Organizational stress. Crisis of Civilization The chief aim of the employee is to draw out the power of the workers. The same condition of the labour class is reflected in the report of an important survey. In a week workers have to work for 48 hours in a week. They are allowed 40 minutes for Tiffin, 15 minutes for taking tea. This is recorded. In fact, they are not allowed leave. They have to wear headphone with eyes on the computer. In the global labour system the workers are imagined to utter that they are but numbers to the employee instead of men. The exploitative labour system destroyed all the good qualities of mankind. This is what Rabindranath called “Crisis of Civilization”. Globalization by the revolutionary system of software technology failed to deliver men from this crisis. This led to the static condition of the working masses. Even the working hours of the American workers have been greatly increased in the last three decades. The opportunities of work are less and the wages are still more less they have no time of their own, no security for their job. The exposed truth of separation between man and man has become a fact. 19% speak of over work and 60% opine that they can not finish their work in a fixed period of time. In 1996 women were alarmed at the damaging effect of their family life. Rabindranath and Concept of Money Globalization has different meaning for different stakeholders. For some globalization brings new opportunities and increase in living standard, for others it may mean loss of jobs and increased migration. Today we find the selfishness of earning money has become the soul purpose of mankind. Rabindranath has said, history has come to a stage when the normal man, the complete man is giving way to make room for the commercial man, the men of limited purpose. After a century the history of the modern world has become the history of mankind without any good quality. The complete man has become a rare case. The commercial men today lead a life of lower most animal, and a man of limited purpose. Now we have an organized avarice- frequently simple in its purpose, mechanically complicated in its process. They are abstraction at once far and near and therefore awful, they are obscure to us in the dark secrecy of their political laboratory and yet grimly concrete in their grasp upon our vitals. When men make use of men, they use every Varity of machinery to strengthen themselves or their selfish ends against the dissolving power of beauty and love, the trust, the company, stocks and shares, investments, machinery through which they can avoid all human connection and so cut themselves off from their fellows whilst they extract for their benefit the very essence of the lives of their neighbors, organization are set up with the best of aims and of executive machinery. In such organization men have become number. Rabindranath wrote in his book ‘Nationalism’ is that men can develop ideals of life in co-operation with one another but in future with the help of science and the perfecting of organization, a new society is born where the competition grows keener, organization grows vaster, and selfishness attains supremacy. Trading upon the greed and fear of man, it occupies more and more space in society, and at last becomes its ruling force. Software technology has increased strength of capitalism reducing the workers and general men to a separate entity. The difference between men and men is increasingly going up. This was uttered by the Rabindranath long ego. The greed for profit power truly man has been as it was overpowered or in other words time has been weighed by money leading to the difference between mankind. In his book (Nationalism) he told something about organization. He clearly told that this state of things inevitably gives rise to eternal feuds among the elements freed from the wholeness and wholesomeness of human ideals, and interminable economic war is waged between capital and labour. Today another factor has made itself immensely evident in shaping and guiding human destiny. It is the sprit of organization, which is not social in character, but utilitarian. Naturally in all organizations, variation of personality is eliminated, and the individual members in so far as they represent the combination to which they belong give expression to a common type and very little to their uniqueness of individuality. Conclusion Rabindranath has clearly shown that men are always engaged in earning money. This process in the one hand gave rise to the giving importance only to money and deprived of money to enjoy life. He has reminded that the greed for money has created the enmity among mankind. Rabindranath wrote money being the chief aim of life; it has made men fell ashamed of them International Research Journal of Social Sciences____________________________________________________ISSN 2319–3565Vol. 2(2), 48-51, February (2013) Int. Res. J. Social Sci.International Science Congress Association 51 without having money. This has creating artificial demand. When Rabindranath saw the vulgar reflection of capitalism then he said at the least pressing of its button the monster organization becomes all eyes, whose ugly stare of inquisitiveness cannot be avoided. The relevancy Rabindranath’s thought about society to modern age is thus proved true and till has passed the test of time. His realization has its revolution with the three phases of beginning, middle and end. Thus Rabindranath has clearly explained to us how capitalism deprived men of all human qualities and forces the modern men to lead in class divided society in an indescribable miserable condition. 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