‘Practicing’ Cosmopolitanism in Knowledge Spaces,Cityscapes and Marketplaces

‘Where Knowledge is Free’

Tagore has expressed himself as a cosmopolitan thinker through some of his works, such as, Sadhana (1915), Creative Unity (1922), Thought Relics (1921), Home and the World (1916) and the famous letters which he exchanged with Mahatma Gandhi (see Bhattacharya, 1997). Although there are different phases in the thinker’s life which might generate different contrasting viewpoints against his position as a cosmopolitan, we can trace Tagore’s cosmopolitan ideal in the creative aspiration of opening dialogues between the West and the East through freedom of knowledge: ‘I believe in the true meeting of the East and the West. Love is the ultimate truth of soul. We should do all we can, not to outrage the truth, to carry its banner against all opposition’ (Tagore, 1997, pp. 59).

Tagore’s cosmopolitan worldview centres itself around knowledge domains. This finds an expression in his ideal of an institutionalized abode of knowledge—a university which he founded and named Visva-Bharati. Visva-Bharati represents Tagore’s vision of an ideal space which necessitates the freedom of knowledge. The very motto of Visva-Bharati, Yatra visvam bhavatyekanidam, ⁵ seems to underline the significance of creating a dialogical knowledge space. Tagore creatively has conceived Visva-Bharati as an institution that becomes the ‘nest’—a home to the world. Tagore in his work, Creative Unity, has expressed his concern over the diversity of human races and stresses the necessity of mutual exchange for a cumulative growth of human knowledge across cultures (1922, p. 30). He has embarked on a voluntary quest for a space which felicitates the organic growth and mutual existence of diverse knowledge terrains. The summation point of such a mission was the establishment of an institution:

We must find some meeting-ground, where there can be no question of conflicting interests. One of such places is the University, where we can work together in a common pursuit of truth, share together our common heritage, and realize that artists in all parts of the world have created forms of beauty, scientists discovered secrets of the universe, philosophers solved the problems of existence, saints made the truth of the spiritual world organic in their own lives, not merely for some particular race to which they belonged, but for all mankind. (Tagore, 1922, p. 172)

Tagore’s emphasis on sharing of human knowledge without any limitations actually goes back as Uma Das Gupta says, ‘to the Upanishadic perception of the notion of one world—as a dominant ideology in the new system of knowledge’ (Das Gupta, 2002, p. 28). Visva-Bharati was instituted on Tagore’s ideal of a cosmopolitan world ⁶ as an epicentre of knowledge and also as a node of interconnected cultures. For him, it is the knowledge and knowledge generation that form the basis of a cosmopolitan vision. At Visva-Bharati, Tagore was engaged with a quest for spirituality through unity among differences. It was modelled like a world knowledge centre where the East–West binaries did not seem as dichotomies, but they were complementary to one another. According to Mohammad A. Quayum, ‘Tagore was an avid advocate of inter-civilization alliance; his vision was given to a symbiosis of the East and West’ (2006, p. 34).

With Tagore, cosmopolitanism emerges as a value of inter-living within each other’s knowledge spaces. Through Tagore’s idea of Visva-Bharati, one can realize what Martha Nussbaum in the contemporary times has been emphasizing as ‘Education for freedom’ (Nussbaum, 2007). She stresses on the possibility of a cosmopolitan realization and points out the necessity of constructing a cosmopolitan worldview through knowledge generation and exchange: ‘I am in fact optimistic that Tagore’s ideal can be successfully realized in schools and universities in democracies around the world, and in the formation of public policy’ (Nussbaum, 1994). With Visva-Bharati, Tagore has institutionalized the cosmopolitan possibility in academia not only through iteration of its motto, ‘Yatra Vishwam Bhavatekanidam’, but also through what he has believed would be the ideal meeting ground of cultures. Tagore’s cosmopolitan ideal manifests itself as a human value of knowledge acquiring and mutual exchange in academic spaces. He has conceptualized unification of human minds across boundaries at the level of knowledge and its consistent pursuit for ‘truth/s’.

Therefore, in Tagore’s worldview, cosmopolitanism connotes the quest for understanding the dignity of human values through intellectual freedom and ‘truths’ in the domain of knowledge. It brings out both the possibility and the implication of academic spaces to aspire cosmopolitanism within their construct. Where, on one hand, there is Tagore idealizing knowledge spaces to be the cosmopolitan grounds of human experience, Aurobindo understands cosmopolitanism at the level of consciousness, connecting the individual to the lived space of the city.

Soul of the City

In Aurobindo’s The Ideal of Human Unity (1915–1918), cosmopolitanism emerges in the recognition of differences and the progression towards richer cultural exchanges. In the freedom of expression of ‘all human endeavors’ and in the matters of ‘language, culture and ethnicity’ exist the essential factors that catalyze human advancement to a cosmopolitan world order through the acceptance of diversity ⁷ (Mohanty, 2008). Therefore, in Aurobindo’s works, being a cosmopolitan does not entitle the individual to be oblivious of the borders. He has emphasized the identity of individuals and has acknowledged the existence of communities, nations and the international boundaries. Aurobindo has discussed individual consciousness and the necessity of inculcating a way of ‘inclusive understanding and realization’ (Giri, 2009, p. 3).

Like Tagore, Aurobindo has institutionalized his cosmopolitan thoughts through Auroville, the planned township at Pondicherry in India. Auroville was built according to the principles of Aurobindo’s idea of an ideal human unity. It represents his cosmopolitan worldview. The motto of Auroville, as defined by Mirra Alfassa, emphasizes the aspect of universal humanity and a common realization of human unity: ‘Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity’ (Mirra Alfassa as quoted by Umar, 2001, p. 270).

With Auroville, the idea of human unity is crystallized in the lived spaces of a city as Tagore’s academic vision is realized through an academic institution. Aurobindo has stressed on the realization of human harmony through consciousness. The ‘Matrimandir’, at the centre of Auroville, is the symbolic exemplification of the soul of the city and the epicentre of universal consciousness. The idea behind such a golden spherical structure at the heart of the planned city is to demonstrate Aurobindo’s conception regarding the unity of human knowledge through consciousness and transcendence from an individual to a collective community. Thus, Auroville stands as a representation of Aurobindo’s ideal of a cosmopolitan life space which recognizes the place of the individual and the spiritual integration of the individual with a global consciousness. The Auroville charter predominantly announces its cosmopolitan nature, first two of which are: ⁸

Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to the humanity as a whole. However, to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.

Aurobindo has conceptualized cosmopolitanism both as a philosophy and as a value system that governs an ideal human existence. He has prioritized the individual as the preliminary point for realizing the values of freedom, equality and brotherhood. Aurobindo has asserted that values have their importance as qualities to be inculcated as policies in the state, but they would be innately functional when realized as a priority of the ‘inner nature’ (Mohanty, 2008, p. 86) and ‘inner way of living’ (Mohanty, 2008, p. 86) of an individual. In The Ideal of Human Unity, Aurobindo has stated, ‘Even cosmopolitan habits of life are not uncommon and there are a fair number of [such] persons (but) unless man in his heart is ready, a profound change in the world conditions cannot come’ (Aurobindo as quoted by Giri, 2006, p. 1280). There is a persistent emphasis on the fact that it is only through the changes in the inner vision of life that one might reach up to a potential capability of letting oneself experience the outward manifestation of that vision. It should also be realized that cosmopolitanism as a human value might arise in the inner recesses of the soul but has to be experienced or ‘lived’ within the society. In his book, The Human Cycle (1970), he proposes the necessity of inculcating a ‘religion of humanity’ for a complete realization of an individual’s value within the collective self of the social lived space:

[…]the need for preserving and bringing to fullness the principle of individual and group freedom within human unity, and the insufficiency of human unity without a growth of the religion of humanity which can alone make it a great psychological advance in the spiritual evolution of the race. (Sri Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 258)

Aurobindo has explored the idea of a religion of humans that binds spiritual quests with material living. His ideology rests on the realization of spirituality in the humanitarian values and the integration of the individual (self) with the state (other) through consciousness. Aurobindo’s cosmopolitan ideals thus integrate the practical modes of everyday living with ideal forms of governance and politics which might assist in getting alternative perspectives to understand a wider aspect of human life. Moving from the institutional experience in Tagore’s ideal university system to the lived expression in Auroville, one can locate several shades and different manifestations of a cosmopolitan world vision across thinkers. Aurobindo has marked the synthesis of the individual with cultures, where they are important as separate entities but also are in a constant dialogic relationship with each other attempting to fill up each other’s gaps in human consciousness. Sachidananda Mohanty sums up Aurobindo’s worldview in the preface of his book, Sri Aurobindo: A Contemporary Reader (2008), where he says:

While Sri Aurobindo recognizes the importance of each category: the individual, the community, the nation and the world, he also stresses upon the importance of integration and harmony. Integration, he suggests, cannot be achieved by effacing differences, but by recognizing them. (Mohanty, 2008, p. 18)

With Aurobindo, cosmopolitanism ascends to the idea of spiritual living and a sense of interconnectedness among different people within a community, and even beyond that. In Aurobindo’s cosmopolitan worldview, recognition of differences and a spiritual necessity of understanding them play a pivotal role. Thus, cosmopolitanism does not simply restrict to a way of looking at the world through the contours of one’s home but also is spiritually connected through realms of the mind. With Auroville, Aurobindo has institutionalized the significance of a human habitation in promoting and sustaining cosmopolitanism in lived spaces. Auroville conceptualizes Aurobindo’s emphasis on community living and realization of one’s spirituality through the presence of the other. The planned township represents his vision of a dialogical space where religion interacts with human values and facilitates cosmopolitanism that is realizable in the everyday life.

Like Tagore who could formulate his cosmopolitan vision through Visva-Bharati, Auroville is Aurobindo’s conception of a cosmopolis—a city that is a microcosmic representation of the world. While Tagore was concerned with the exchange of knowledge in institutional spaces, Aurobindo was engaged with the transcendence of the lived experience in an ideal cityscape. Thus, with Auroville, Aurobindo has opened the possibility of a cosmopolitan existence in the city-space, through identification of an individual consciousness with the collective consciousness. The aspect of a polyphonic presence in understanding multiple cosmopolitanisms is perhaps closely understood through the works of Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin primarily through his book Rabelais and His World (1965). While Tagore has romanticized knowledge while conceptualizing Visva-Bharati, and Aurobindo has idealized in the lived spirit of Auroville, Bakhtin’s concepts on the other hand exist in the recognition of collective voices in the carnival space of a marketplace.

Cosmopolitan Encounters of the Marketplace

Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World has discussed the mediaeval time in the works of Francois Rabelais where he describes the inn, hearth and the market as the spaces that proliferate with the ‘free intermingling of bodies’ (Bakhtin, 1984). Within these spaces, cosmopolitanism emerges from the unrestricted indulgence with food, bodily pleasure and participation among people in populated cultural spaces like carnival squares. With Bakhtin, the everydayness of a cosmopolitan world incorporates both the gross and the sublime that is realized within the polyphonic voices in the marketplace. The market-place proliferates with the promise of the folk culture where the ordinary and regular exist as spaces opening up for the fecundity of human interactions. It (the marketplace) opens up the possibilities to simultaneously understand the sublime within the grotesque elements of the physical body. Bakhtin’s dialogical plurality propounds itself through the spirit of the carnival (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 7). The realization of truth and sublimity within the spaces that constitute everyday activities of life, entail an aspiration to connect to the other through the interaction of one’s voice with the polyphony of random voices: ‘Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction’ (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 110).

The marketplace in Bakhtin’s Rabelaisian world provides a space for the carnival to operate and exist. This marketplace is characterized by the virtue of its freedom from the ‘official’ and opens up a possibility of human mutuality in the face of extreme contradictions. The marketplace resounds with the idea of cosmopolitanism through the bodily experiences of life in food, festivity and fornication in an unrestricted manner. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin says, ‘Man experiences this flow of time in the festive marketplace, in the carnival crowd, as he comes into contact with other bodies of varying age and social caste. He is aware of being a member of a continually growing and renewed people’ (1984, p. 92).

The spirit of the festival highlights a cultural and socio-economic where people are with a sense of ‘collectivity’ which is made possible by the ‘unique sense of time and space that reigns in the carnival’ (Clark & Holquist, 1984, p. 302). Carnival dissolves the boundaries between the physical body of the individual (private) and the body of the community (public). Bakhtin’s literary investigation into Rabelais’ work centres on the existence of the individual in the collective through the expression of the ‘grotesque body’ ⁹ in the carnival square.

Thus, Bakhtin’s understanding of carnival is replete with his interpretation of the ‘folk’, where he discusses the ‘free intermingling of bodies’. Therefore, we may say, that for Bakhtin, cosmopolitanism begins at the level of the organic physicality where he gives emphasis to the basic human acts which are common to everybody and connected across various geographical locations. The human body according to Bakhtin may perhaps become a metonymical representation of the universal cosmopolitan body with its grossness as well as sublimity. With his analysis of the ‘body’, there is a definite ground provided to the elementary necessities of human beings, the importance on accountability of everydayness of life and ‘lower bodily stratum’ (Clark & Holquist, 1984, p. 312). Bakhtin’s engagement with physicality of the body and its lived experiences almost border on a new set of universal ideals that make it realizable in the lived aspect of cultural life:

The question raised by Bakhtin’s carnival, with its emphasis on brotherhood, universalism, and antidogmatism, is whether such a horizontally ordered world can be maintained for any length of time with introducing some kind of hierarchy, be it epistemological or political. There is in other words, a strong element of idealization, even utopian visionariness, in Bakhtin’s analysis of carnival. (Clark & Holquist, 1984, p. 310)

In this light, we argue that Bakhtin was trying to propose what might be called as a Marketplace Cosmopolitanism. By ‘marketplace cosmopolitanism’, we mean a kind of cosmopolitanism that ensures the presence of the grotesque (carnal elements) and the sublime (knowledge) fused together in exchanges at the marketplace. His ideas symbolize the intersection of both space and place as well as the fusion of the grotesque with the sublime principles of life. Bakhtin’s cosmopolitanism functions both at a material/physical level firmly placed in a geographical locale like the market or the carnival square and also at an intellectual space that plays along the subtle lines of demarcation between the public and private spaces of the individual and the collective. ¹⁰ Bakhtin’s approach to the Rabelaisian world can be considered as an initiating ground for this ‘marketplace cosmopolitanism’. The presence of folk, laughter, festivities and food in the marketplace invite and respect heterogeneous voices that are meant to break the class and public–private stereotypical boundaries.

In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin has opened up a dialogical aspect of the marketplace (market as the cosmopolitan square) where transaction does not limit itself to exchange of commodities but also of ideas, experiences and common human bonding through laughter and mirth. Bakhtin’s depiction of the marketplace is like a carnival square where there are images ‘of the new humanist culture’ (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 170). The market, in Bakhtinian analysis of Rabelais’ work, is a space which is populated with excess and enjoyment of the ‘lower bodily stratum’. Locations, such as, the ‘inn’, ‘hearth’ and ‘market’ represents spaces of unconstrained interaction and exchanges occur both at the level of spiritual and material transactions. These spatial locations constitute the transient cosmopolitan carnival squares where exchange is a form of enlargement from the limited physical and mental spaces of associations.

In the carnival square, according to Gardiner, there is scope for an alternative social space that felicitates the ‘excesses’ to flourish through their actions, rituals, shared interactions among people. The carnival squares, such as, the market, inn and hearth are spaces incorporating the utopian assurance of abundance and hope of emancipation from the hierarchies of social systems to the more liberated, unrestraint spirit located within the folk culture of these places (Gardiner, 1993, p. 767).

Therefore, in the Bakhtinian conception, the market is a cosmopolitan space involving the presence of the collective and the individual, recognizing the existence of the gross, common, everydayness with the utopian, abundance and festive elements. The folk nature of the interactions presents an alternate side to the relations between human beings and nature, different from the usual social orders which are based on definite laws and structural binaries (Gardiner, 1993, p. 768). Bakhtin’s market is the subversion of the established social structures, challenging the monologue of authority and closure for an openness of ideas, speeches etc. with an inflow of multiplicity, infinitive possibilities and the ‘unfinalizability’ of decisions and opinions.

The market as a carnival square is the cultural space of everydayness, incorporating both the natural propensity ingrained in the folk celebration and the universal aspects of humanity. The Bakhtinian market conjures an achievable (realizable) space of cosmopolitanism, where there is openness for ‘all people’.

The Cosmopolitan Polyphony

Cosmopolitanism has been discussed and debated ¹¹ across disciplines. There have been question regarding its practical realization in human life. Although the concept tends to open up several dialogues and spaces of interaction of the local with the global, of the home and the spaces beyond, it has been mostly observed as a prerogative of the academic discourses. However, in this article, we have shown the possibility of understanding cosmopolitanism through spaces that we tend to encounter everyday and which are considered inseparable from the constructs of human living. The thinkers like Tagore, Aurobindo and Bakhtin who have institutionalized and analyzed their cosmopolitan worldviews in the common spaces of human life assure the possibility of nurturing one’s identity as a cosmopolitan through everyday experiences. These thinkers are the precursors who lead us to the realization that as individuals, the value of being interconnected to the other through common grounds of everyday interactions can open up broader realization of the self through the other. Tagore and Aurobindo have illustrated ideas to comprehend cosmopolitanism through sharing knowledge and spaces of habitation, by being conscious of the other and by the recognition of differences as an integral part of human existence. With Tagore, the idea of understanding an academic institution as a cosmopolitan space enables one to realize the necessity of dialogues within and beyond the constructed boundaries of the mind.

Cosmopolitanism, therefore, comes with an innate realization of the necessity of knowing the other as significantly as one strives to decipher one’s self. Practicing these ideas within an institution might help people to grow with a broader outlook, beyond the prejudice of hierarchies within disciplines, knowledge system, scholars and nations. This cosmopolitan ideal of Tagore thus goes beyond the hegemonizing forces of certain ‘types’ of knowledge and certain ‘disciplines’ within the knowledge domains. Tagore has practiced an ideal that knowledge irrespective of its place and time of generation should be available to humankind freely without any social, economic or cultural constrictions.

Rabindranath and Aurobindo emphasize on the spiritual component of cosmopolitanism as a way to break away from the shackles of prejudice and narrow understanding of human living to the recognition of individuality within the global order. In Aurobindo’s idea, the human values get imbibed within the individual spaces (self) and are actualized in the cultural space and lived entities of the city/state. Aurobindo has talked of these combined consciousnesses that spread from the recognition of one’s family to the nation and across international borders (Aurobindo, 1999, p. 21). Ananta Giri argues the way Aurobindo’s ‘cosmopolitan meditations’ finds resonances in some of the contemporary thinkers like Ulrich Beck (Giri, 2006, p. 1280). He points to Beck’s idea of ‘cosmopolitan perspective’ as ‘an imagination of alternative ways of life and rationalities’, and as still a long journey to be covered (Giri, 2006, p. 1280). He emphasizes the fact that Aurobindo in the Indian context have been able to practice cosmopolitanism. To add to Giri’s analysis our reading of The Ideal of Human Unity proves that Aurobindo has tried to implement the abstractions involved in the understanding of cosmopolitanism as a ‘meditative consciousness’ in the lived space of human life through Auroville. B.S. Chimni discusses Aurobindo’s ‘integral vision of the future of global society’ where spiritualism forms the core of the individual and collective growth (2013, p. 130). The idea of building a township, which grows as concentric circles around the Matrimandir, symbolizes his spiritual cosmopolitan worldview realizable in one of the basic constituent of human life as crucial as a habitat.

With Bakhtin, the emphasis on the significance of experiencing cosmopolitanism among plurality in culture/s opens up. The Bakhtinian space is dynamic and open to combative, interpretative, cheerful interactions and other interrelations. The indeterminate cultural space has the gaps, silences, leaps, potential arrival of the next and no subsumable voices (Gurevitch, 2000, p. 245). Even the rogue or the fool has a space in the cosmopolitan construct of a Bakhtinian marketplace, as is evident in his study on the Rabelaisian worldview. With focus on the openness of the grotesque body in the carnival square and a free space for different voices (selves), Bakhtin has initiated a cosmopolitan ideal through polyphony. Cosmopolitanism might be understood as an interconnected state of being which begins at the initial level through acknowledging the presence of the individual in culture/s. The cosmopolitan worldview of Bakhtin is like the carnival square where there is a place for multiplicity of dialogues and polyphony of voices.

To conclude, cosmopolitanism may be understood as an interaction of the individual with the other through dialogues and intermingling in different cultural spaces, such as, academic institutions, habitats and marketplaces. With the recognition of the individual, there arises the significance of the local (as a place of habitation like the city), the need to interact along the gross and mundane aspects of life involving everyday interaction at places like marketplace. These everyday exchanges eventually open up the possibilities to realize the sublimity of an intercultural connection not only with people within institutions but also with humanity at large. Cosmopolitanism, conceptualized in this manner thus allows an understanding of both the familiar and the unknown with a respect for differences within human society rather than limiting the idea to conceptualization. Cosmopolitanism, realized through different pragmatic spaces within social institutions lay out the future vision of moving beyond theoretical discourses, making a progress towards the understanding of a humane cohabitation across differences.