Mukta-Dhara - Rabindranath Tagore

Mukta-Dhara, from which the play takes its name, is a mountain spring whose waters, rushing down the slopes of Uttarakut, irrigate the plains of Shiva-tarai, whose people are held in subjection to the king of Uttarakut. In order to enforce this subjection more effectively, the King of Uttarakut desires to control the source of their economic well being. In order to cherish this end he wanted  a great dam to be erected to prevent the waters of Mukata-dhara from reaching the plains below. It was a difficult and hazardous operation, but the skill of the royal engineer Bibhuti, utilizing the resources of modern science and technology with the help of conscripted labour, has at last successfully achieved the feat, though with considerable loss of life. A mighty engine-tower, out- soaring the trident of the Temple of Shiva on a mountain peak, has been erected. The play opens with the King and the citizens of Uttarakut preparing to participate in a religious festival in honour of the Machine. The King as well as the bulk of the people of Uttarakut, are very proud of the Machine and quite confident that the poor defenseless people of Shiva-tarai will now forever be at their mercy. Neither the recurring wail of the poor, demented mother, Amba, looking for her son, one of the conscripted victims sacrificed in the building of the dam, nor the warnings of the simple, god-fearing folk who presage ill for such colossal pride and greed, touch their hearts. 

The crown Prince Abhijit, however, professes open sympathy for the people of Shiva-tarai and protests against Bibhuti’s soulless achievement. The character of the Prince provides the main psychological interest in the play. In him, love of freedom and sympathy for the oppressed discover their appropriate symbolism, or as the author so aptly puts it, their objective counterpart, in the fate of Mukta-dhara, whose free current has been imprisoned by the dam.  The emotional significance of this symbolism gains intensity till it becomes a passion, when the Price learns that he is not the son of the king but a foundling picked up near the source of Mukta-dhara. ‘This unexpected revelation profoundly affects his mind, making him believe that his life has a spiritual relationship with this waterfall; that its voice was the first voice which greeted him with a message when he came to the world. From that movement the fulfillment of that message becomes the sole aim of his life, which is to open out paths for the adventurous spirit of Man’. He determines to sacrifice his life in an attempt to liberate the imprisoned current by forcing the dam at a point, which he happens know was weakly built. He succeeds. The leaping torrent breaks free, carrying away the body of its foster-child in its turbulent rush. The social motive of the play, if it had any, is sense of mystic self-fulfillment, as in some of Ibsen’s later dramas. 

The author has also re-introduced into the play the remarkable character, the Ascetic Dhananjaya, who first appeared in Prayaschitta (Atonement), published in 1909. In that play as in the present one, Dhananjaya teaches the people to resist their ruler’s unjust claims non-violently but fearlessly.  He exhorts the subject people, ‘as soon as one can hold up your head and say that nothing has power to hurt you, the roots of violence will be cut … nothing can hurt your real man hood, for that is a flame of fire. The animal, that is flesh, feels the blow and whines. But you stand there gaping – don’t you understand?’  A disciple answers, ‘we understand you, but your words we don’t understand.’ Dhananjaya replies, ‘Then you are done for.’ Both the personality and the words of Dhananjaya are a remarkable anticipation of the shape that the struggle for Indian Independence was to assume later under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. In the earlier play Dhananjaya even leads the people in a sort of no-rent campaign.   

Perhaps no other play of Rabindranath expresses his political convictions with such directness and force. Technically too the drama is not overburdened with any sub-plot or extraneous incidents, which might break the continuity of the main theme. Incidentally the Greek classical unites of time and place are fully observed.

The drama is packed with meaning and rich in suggestions, which may tempt critics into a variety of interpretations. But he has gently warned his readers against missing the main significance of the play, which is psychological and lies in the growing identity that is achieved in the Prince’s mind between his own spirit and the current of Mukta-dhara. The last desperate act of self-sacrifice, the awful nature of the consummation sought and achieved by the Prince, which brings the play to its close, leaves one with a sense of the tragic splendour of man's spirit, silencing all contentions for the moment. What happens to the people of Shiva-tarai, we have forgotten to inquire.

There is no doubt the Mukta-dhara is one of the most moving and well-knit of the author’s dramas. Mr Edward Thompson has called it ‘the best of his prose dramas’. Without endorsing so categorical a judgement, it is well quoting the English critic’s excellent appreciation of the play.

‘It is a reasoned though highly allegorical presentation of his convictions, as expressed during many previous years, on modern politics. It has many strands of significance woven into it, so that it is like shot silk suggesting many colours; the play’s achievement is that in it he has attained a synthesis of his different convictions and message. His deep distrust of all government machinery and of all prostitution of science to serve violence and oppression. His hatred of a slavish system of education, his scorn of race-hatred and of all politics, which seek to make one tribe dependent on another instead of risking the gift of the fullest freedom. His certitude that it is in freedom that God is found – all these are so prominent that each may with justice be claimed as the play’s message.  Through all, as a tender undertone, runs the murmur of the Free Current, a haunting sound in the soul of the boy whose foster-mother she was, and whose lifeless body, after he has broken her fetters, her waves are to carry majestically away. There are impressive passages, as where the Machine is seen, sinister against the sunset, crouching over the land and its life, over topping even God’s temple; or where the noise of the breaking dam and the raging waters is first heard. All through the play sounds the menace of God’s gathering anger at the hardness of men’s hearts and the sordidness of their hopes. Finest of all is the constant quiet drift of folk along the roads, the procession of life. It is the greatest of his symbolical plays.  

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