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This collection of letters exchanged by Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, along with some essays by them, began as a modest project without any funding in 1992. While I was at VisvaBharati, the university founded by Tagore, I came across the Gandhi-Tagore correspondence in the university's archives and I was struck by the significance of these letters in terms of the differing perceptions they had of major national issues, as well as the intimate light the letters throw upon the relationship between these two friends and adversaries in debate. A collection of these letters was intended to be part of the National Book Trust's publications in the 125th Gandhi Jayanti year, 1994-95. However, as I began editing the letters I realised that the dialogue between Tagore and Gandhi needed to be contextualised by including in this collection some of the published writings in which they addressed the issues they raised in their private correspondence. Some of the sources from which material for this volume could be gathered were dispersed and not easily accessible. Thus the project demanded more time than I could devote to it until I could demit the Vice-Chancellor's office to return to my research interests. This accounts for the unconscionable delay in completing the task I had undertaken five years ago.

In the 'Introduction' to this book I have tried to sketch the historical backdrop against which we see the beginning and growth of that intellectual exchange between Gandhi and Tagore which is the focal theme of the book. I have also attempted an overview of the major issues which united or divided the two, issues which they frankly discussed in their private letters, not meant for publication, and also in a more guarded fashion in their published writings. What may be considered an unusual feature of this collection is the interweaving of the public discourse and their private communications. The documentation is designed to dovetail these two kinds of writings in the chronological framework of the four different phases into which I have periodised the narrative. Editorial notes at the beginning of each of the four parts of the collection elucidate details regarding the letters and writings which belong to each phase.

I have tried not to burden the text with footnotes which may be of no interest to most readers and redundant to the specialists of Gandhian or Tagore literature. Editorial notes, in italics, at the top of the documents indicate the source; unless stated otherwise, the letters are from the Tagore Archives in Rabindra Bhavan, Visva-Bharati. The Appendix contains letters from Tagore or Gandhi to other correspondents, statements to the Press, etc. which do not form a part of the Gandhi-Tagore correspondence but are, nevertheless, essentially relevant to that exchange. The correspondence has been reproduced in the original form, to the extent possible, with only minor editorial changes to bring consistency in the text. I may add that in transliterating non-English words diacritical marks have not been used due to technical constraints. Finally, translations from Bengali into English have been acknowledged wherever possible; in the last two decades of Tagore's life translation was done by diverse hands, not always easy to establish. Translations done by myself and not by the author or ap- proved by the author have been indicated.

This book puts together letters exchanged by Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore along with some essays which they wrote debating major national issues. These letters, preserved in the archives at Visva-Bharati, the University founded by Tagore, are of great historical interest. Of more than historical interest is the debate between Gandhi and Tagore over certain issues and questions which continue to be relevant to this day and age. This intellectual exchange began in 1914-15 when Mahatma Gandhi along with the students of his Phoenix School in South Africa visited Tagore's Santiniketan. Gandhi recalled later: "It was here that the members of my South African family found warm hospitality in 1914, pending my arrival from England, and I too found shelter here for nearly a month".

At that time, Tagore's school at Santiniketan was not yet 15 years old. Tagore was 53 years of age and he had received the Nobel Prize just a year earlier. Gandhi was younger by eight years and yet to attain a national stature in India, though his great work in South Africa was widely known. There were many striking contrasts between these two personalities. Yet, they found some common chord and there began a friendship which lasted till Tagore's death in 1941. As early as February 1915 we find Tagore referring to Gandhi as 'Mahatma' and Gandhi readily adopted the form of addressing Tagore as 'Gurudev'.

But theirs was not a friendship based on just mutual admiration. They had differences on fundamental philosophical questions, which led to disputation about many political, social and economic matters. Both were unsparing in their debate and, indeed, it cannot be said that either of them was very successful in persuading the other towards a path of convergence of views. Each accepted cordially the other's right to differ. These differences on public issues never affected, as far as one can judge from the letters, their personal relationship.

In editing this volume, I had to choose between two possible ways of organising the letters and essays. One could place the material before the reader simply following the chronological order. Alternatively, one could group the material around the major issues discussed by Tagore and Gandhi, e.g., the efficacy of boycott of educational institutions, the possibilities and limits of handicraft industries and the charkha, the discourse of science as opposed to that of religiosity, etc. The course adopted in this collection of writings is to present the writings within a chronological framework, but also to highlight the issues being debated in the period to which they belong. The chronological framework in the following pages is one suggested by the private and public communications included here. It broadly corresponds to the rhythms of development of the discourse of nationalist politics and culture.

What were the circumstances in which the intellectual exchange between Gandhi and Tagore commenced and developed? Rabindranath Tagore's experience as an active participant in the swadeshi movement following the partition of Bengal (1905) may have sensitised the poet to the limitations of the pre-Gandhian Congress and its politics. He saw, perhaps before many of his countrymen, that Gandhi promised to give an altogether new turn to the Indian struggle for freedom. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi of South African fame might have sent his Phoenix School students to Tagore's Santiniketan because he saw that something was under way in that remote comer of Bengal, which shared some traits with his own endeavor and philosophy.

They were not total strangers to each other. It is on record that in 1901 at the Calcutta Session of the Indian National Congress, M.K. Gandhi moved a resolution "as a petitioner on behalf of the hundred thousand British Indians in South Africa.'? On that occasion, he met Rabindranath's elder brother Jyotirindranath and, shortly after that, a translation of one of Gandhi's articles on the Indian settlers in South Africa was published in the journal Bharati, with which the Tagores were associated.

There is no evidence of personal encounter at this time between Rabindranath and Gandhi. However, there is an affinity of spirit evident in what Tagore wrote of the Indian struggle as early as 1908: "God save us from the disastrous notion that dharma is not for the powerless. Let us not depart from the path of Truth (satya), that which is Right.... It is regrettable that the terror and upheavals of Europe are the only models before us. But the Christian saints who, by the strength of their faith: withstood the oppression of the Roman Emperor triumphed in their death over the Emperor. ... dharma can help us surpass oppression .... " In this statement and in others, Tagore's philosophical approach appears to approximate that of Gandhi's.

It was Gandhi's work in South Africa which made him known to Tagore, and in this matter Tagore's friend A.F. Andrews and one of his colleagues at Santiniketan, W.W. Pearson, played an important role. At the end of 1913, Andrews and Pearson resolved to visit Gandhi and to advance his cause in South Africa. On the eve of their journey to Durban from Calcutta, they saw Tagore to seek his blessings and two days before their departure a meeting was held at the Town Hall of Calcutta on 5 December 1913 to consider the position of Indians in South Africa. Tagore was one of the organisers, and the letter requesting the Sheriff's permission to hold the meeting bore his signature," Andrews, a prolific correspondent, regularly kept Tagore informed of Gandhi's activities in South Africa.

Few letters of this early period have survived. Nor do we have any account of Gandhi's first visit to Santiniketan except for Gandhi's own words quoted earlier and a letter Tagore wrote to him thanking him for sending the Phoenix School boys to Santiniketan-for "allowing your boys to become our boys as well."? But it is evident that from 1914 a close friendship bur- geoned rapidly.

Despite formal address till 1919 ("Dear Mr. Gandhi") Tagore refers to Gandhi as the 'Mahatma' as early as February 1915. His friend C.F. Andrews used this nomenclature for Gandhi in a letter to Tagore even earlier, in January 1914: "I had no difficulty in seeing from the first Mr. Gandhi's position and accepting it; for in principle, it is essentially yours and Mahatmaji's-a true independence, a reliance upon spiritual force, a fearless courage in the face of temporal power, and withal a deep and burning charity for all men. "

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