The document provides a comprehensive overview of Rabindranath Tagore's life, his literary contributions, and his philosophical stance on nationalism. It discusses how Tagore's ideas challenge contemporary notions of patriotism and nationhood, emphasizing his belief in universalism and humanism over strict national identities. His critique of nationalism is framed within historical and cultural contexts, highlighting the conflict between his views and those of contemporaries like Gandhi.

1. Webinar Presenter:
Dilip Barad
M K Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar, Gujarat

2. Robindronath Thakur –
7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941
• Pen name Bhanu Singha Thakur (Bhonita)
• Popularly known as - Gurudev, Kabiguru, and Biswakabi (Vishva-kavi)
• 1913 – Nobel Prize in Literature – ‘Gitanjali’
• A polymath – poet, novelist, dramatist, painter, musician
• an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance
• his legacy also endures in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati
University – Shanti Niketan.

3. Nationalism - 1917
• A book published in United States
• Translated by Tagore himself.
• It consists of three lectures delivered in Japan in 1916
• Nationalism in the West
• Nationalism in Japan
• Nationalism in India
• The Sunset of the Century (a poem)

4. Today, our interest in Tagore is to see him . . .
As a humanist,
universalist,
internationalist, and
ardent anti-nationalist.

5. Tagore – the West’s own Creation
• He is recurrently viewed as “the great mystic from the East,” an image with a
putative message for the West, which some would welcome, others dislike,
and still others find deeply boring.
• The West’s tradition of message-seeking from the East, particularly from
India, which – as Hegel put it – had “existed for millennia in the imagination
of the Europeans.”
• Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling, Herder, and Schopenhauer were only a few of
the thinkers who followed the same pattern. They theorized, at first, that
India was the source of superior wisdom.
• Ezra Pound, W B Yeats – ( - Amartya Sen)

6. Nation and Literature
• Talk on Retrospection and Relevance of Tagore’s literature in 21st
century, especially in post-covid19 time will always be incomplete
without reference to non-fictional literature of Tagore – On
Nationalism. . .
• The Literature and the Nation – a complicated relation
• Devdutt and Kapila with Padmini
• The Mind, the Body > People’s love for the body
• The ‘spirit’ of human ethos, mythos, emotions, feelings > its physical
manifestation > and its perception as ‘truth’, ‘fact’, ‘reality’.
• Three dimensional approach to Nation & Literature

7. Nation and Narration (1990)
This complicated concept of the
relation between
Literature (mind)<><> Nation (body)
gets its theoretical manifestation in
Homi K Bhabha’s ‘Nation & Narration’
'Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of
time and only fully encounter their horizons in the mind's
eye'.

8. Homi K. Bhabha: ‘Introduction: Narrating the Nation’ (Nation
and Narration)
• Nation – the modern Janus: the uneven development of capitalism
inscribes both progression and regression, political rationality and
irrationality in the very genetic code of the nation – it is by nature,
ambivalent.
• Nation is narrated in ‘terror of the space or race of the Other; the
comfort of social belonging, the hidden injuries of class, the customs of
caste, the powers of political affiliation; the sense of social order, the
sensibility of sexuality; the blindness of bureaucracy, the strait insight
of institutions; the quality of justice, the commonsense of injustice;
the langue of the law and
the parole of the people’.

9. Why do people have sentimental attachment
with ‘Nation’?
•The people display a sort of aversion and
hatred towards those who make a critique
of nation, religion, culture, society – the
Identity Markers > the Anti-national!
•The Urban Naxal!
•If Tagore is alive today . . . .

10. Farrukh Dhondy: The Nation and the Novel
(3 Nov, 2012 – ToI)
•How is South Asian writing in a universal human
context to be evaluated? Perhaps as all literature
has ever been? The European short story was born
of the parable and the fable.
•The novel in England, France, Russia and Germany
was, in an important way, born of a crisis of
religious faith.

11. F.D.: Nation & Novel
•when a culture ceases to live and assess itself by the laws
of Moses or Jesus, when Dorothea of Middlemarch or
Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary feel what they feel and do
what they do, they can call upon no strictly biblical
justification.
•It takes George Eliot, Tolstoy and Gustave Flaubert to
construct a form which captures those nuances of feeling
and brings an inclusive sympathy to the possibilities of
human and social behaviour.

12. F.D.: Nation & Novel
•The novel in the European context was called upon
to supply in narrative the definition of 'love', 'faith',
'loyalty', 'generosity', 'compassion', 'priggishness',
'snobbery', 'war', 'peace' and every other abstract
noun in the dictionary.
•It took up where faith left off and did the opposite of
what heroic myths used to do. Some European
writing, the novels of Dostoevsky and the
philosophical works of Nietzsche took this crisis of
faith and the death of myth head on, asking and
explicitly answering questions.

13. F.D.: Nation & Novel
•And South Asia?
•Of which necessity was South Asian writing in English
born?
•The obvious answer is nationalism and the struggle
for Independence.
•The influence of the writing, though widely
translated, suffered from the limitation of being in
English.

14. Both Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi
were against the nation-state –
Swaraj vs Suraj
For Tagore, the concept of India was
not territorial but ideational i.e. India
for him was not a geographical
expression but an idea.
His view of nationalism was more
about spreading a homogenized
universalism than seeking political
freedom for India.
Gandhi – ‘our struggle for freedom is
to bring peace in the world’.

15. To understand Tagore’s Nationalism, we need to
understand the conflict with Gandhi
Gandhi Tagore
Idol worship Gandhi defended them, believing the
masses incapable of raising themselves
immediately to abstract ideas
cannot bear to see the people eternally treated as a child
Scientific temperament earthquake is a divine chastisement sent
by God for our sins
“It is,” he wrote, “all the more unfortunate because this
kind of unscientific view of [natural] phenomena is too
readily accepted by a large section of our countrymen.” He
protested against this interpretation of an event that had
caused suffering and death to so many innocent people,
including children and babies.
Economics Charkha – Sacrifice - rural the charka does not require anyone to ‘think’
Population control Celibacy Contraceptives
Nationalism Necessary for internationalism can limit both the freedom to engage ideas from outside

16. Umashankar Joshi – ‘The Idea of Indian Literature’
• Umashankar Joshi – The Idea of Indian Literature – “Indianness
is rather an ongoing search for, a vision of, a pattern of Indian
literature and culture to which the literature and culture in every
part of the country is more or less converging”.
• “… We shall always be viewing the composite identity of Indian
literature within the parameters of the composite culture of
India.”
•“…True Indianness transcends India and genuine
Indianisation is a synonym for humanization.”
•Indian ethos is one of synthesis rather than exclusiveness
… plea for swaraj in ideas.
• K. Satchidanandan – ‘Umashankar Joshi and the Idea of Indian Literature’ – Indian Literature 268)

17. Umashankar Joshi’s Idea of Indian Literature
•His significance – partial rejection – S. Radhakrishnan’s
statement - ‘Indian Literature is one written in different
languages’…
•His recognition of the complexity of idea, the gaps and
silences in the earlier formulations, the inherent plurality
of Indian literature, the importance of translation in the
understanding and sustenance of the idea and the need
for a relative and comparative approach rather
than an absolute and normative one.

18. •He recognized possibility of the idea being hijacked
by the right wing Hindu ideologues – idea means
upper caste Hindu community.
•He was careful to distinguish himself from these
dogmatists who refuse to recognize the multi-
religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nature of
the country and its literature that lends itself to a
plurality of readings.

19. Does it mean that Tagore was Westernized and
thus a colonized mind?
• Even in his powerful indictment of British rule in India in 1941, in a lecture which
he gave on his last birthday, and which was later published as a pamphlet under
the title Crisis in Civilization, he strains hard to maintain the distinction between
opposing Western imperialism and rejecting Western civilization.
• While he saw India as having been “smothered under the dead weight of British
administration”, Tagore recalls what India has gained from “discussions centred
upon Shakespeare’s drama and Byron’s poetry and above all … the large-hearted
liberalism of nineteenth-century English politics.”
• The tragedy, as Tagore saw it, came from the fact that what “was truly best in
their own civilization, the upholding of dignity of human relationships, has no
place in the British administration of this country.” “If in its place they have
established, baton in hand, a reign of ‘law and order,’ or in other words a
policeman’s rule, such a mockery of civilization can claim no respect from us.”

20. Critique of patriotism
• Rabindranath rebelled against the strongly nationalist form that the
independence movement often took, and this made him refrain from taking a
particularly active part in contemporary politics.
• He wanted to assert India’s right to be independent without denying the
importance of what India could learn – freely and profitably – from abroad.
• He was afraid that a rejection of the West in favour of an indigenous Indian
tradition was not only limiting in itself; it could easily turn into hostility to other
influences from abroad, including Christianity, which came to parts of India by
the fourth century; Judaism, which came through Jewish immigration shortly
after the fall of Jerusalem, as did Zoroastrianism through Parsi immigration later
on (mainly in the eighth century), and, of course – and most importantly – Islam,
which has had a very strong presence in India since the tenth century.

21. Ghare Baire – The Home and the World (1916)
• “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not
buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph
over humanity as long as I live.” His novel Ghare Baire (The Home and the
World) has much to say about this theme.
• In the novel, Nikhil, who is keen on social reform, including women’s liberation,
but cool toward nationalism, gradually loses the esteem of his spirited wife,
Bimala, because of his failure to be enthusiastic about anti-British agitations,
which she sees as a lack of patriotic commitment. Bimala becomes fascinated
with Nikhil’s nationalist friend Sandip, who speaks brilliantly and acts with
patriotic militancy, and she falls in love with him. Nikhil refuses to change his
views: “I am willing to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for
Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as
a god is to bring a curse upon it.”

22. Nationalism & Colonialism
• Isaiah Berlin summarizes well Tagore’s complex position on Indian nationalism
– Communal Sectarianism:
• Tagore stood fast on the narrow causeway, and did not betray his vision of the
difficult truth. He condemned romantic overattachment to the past, what he
called the tying of India to the past “like a sacrificial goat tethered to a post,”
and he accused men who displayed it – they seemed to him reactionary – of
not knowing what true political freedom was, pointing out that it is from
English thinkers and English books that the very notion of political liberty was
derived.
• In 1917 he once more denounced the danger of ‘leaving everything to the
unalterable will of the Master,’ be he brahmin or Englishman.

23. Amartya Sen
• Rabindranath insisted on open debate on every issue, and
distrusted conclusions based on a mechanical formula, no matter
how attractive that formula might seem in isolation (such as “This
was forced on us by our colonial masters – we must reject it,” “This
is our tradition – we must follow it,” “We have promised to do this
– we must fulfill that promise,” and so on).
• The question he persistently asks is whether we have reason
enough to want what is being proposed, taking everything into
account. Important as history is, reasoning has to go beyond the
past. It is in the sovereignty of reasoning – fearless reasoning in
freedom – that we can find Rabindranath Tagore’s lasting voice.

24. The case of Japan – the economical
advancement and . . . militarism
• admiration for Japan widespread in Asia for demonstrating the ability
of an Asian nation to rival the West in industrial development and
economic progress
• But then Tagore went on to criticize the rise of a strong nationalism in
Japan, and its emergence as an imperialist nation.
• Letter to Rash Bihari Bose – anti-British Indian revolutionary in Japan
• ‘ Japan has now become itself a worse menace to the defenceless
peoples of the East.’
• Military aggression before second world war – India’s concern –
Subhash Chandra Bose.

25. • Tagore is very clear that a naturally-built human society is much
more humane in essence than the so-called artificially created
nationhood.
• The present-day nationhood would have been considered "evil" by
Tagore, who wrote: "When this organisation of politics and
commerce, whose other name is Nation, becomes all powerful at
the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day
for humanity.”
• “This nationalism is a cruel epidemic of evil that is sweeping over
human world of the present age, eating into its moral vitality".

26. • And the idea of the Nation is one of the most
powerful anaesthetics that man has invented. Under
the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry
out its systematic programme of the most virulent
self-seeking without being in the least aware of its
moral perversion - in fact, feeling most dangerously
resentful if it is pointed out.“
• "True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of
taste. It is independence of thought and action, not
tutelage under European school-masters. It is science,
but not its wrong application in life."

27. •Tagore rejects the idea of "national history" even:
"There is only one history - the history of man. All
national histories are merely chapters in the larger
one. And we are content in India to suffer for such a
cause.“
•Tagore's book is a bold, rational and humane critique
of the idea of "nationalism", which has caused so
much misery in the world and continues to do so.
•The world today is ruled by the powerful leader, the
anaesthetists. Tagore’s booklet on Nationalism is a
powerful ‘antidote’ to such evil pandemic of
anaesthetics.

28. Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection …
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward . . .
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom,
my Father, let my country awake.

29. Gurudev! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
World hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free.
(Wordsworth’s London – on Milton – 1802)

30. The frame of mind behind literary oeuvre
• It is in this frame of mind that we need to retrospect
when we search for relevance of Tagore’s literature,
fictional and non-fictional, in the times of pandemics.
• The corona pandemic - we will overcome. . .
•The toughest battle is with the
pandemic of anti-democracy which is in
holy nexus with hyper-nationalism.
Thank you!

31. References:
• Hegel analysed these “exotic” approaches to India (along with other Western approaches) in “India and the
West,” The New Republic, June 7, 1993, and in “Indian Traditions and the Western
Imagination,” Daedalus, Spring 1997.
• Isaiah Berlin, “Rabindranath Tagore and the Consciousness of Nationality,” The Sense of Reality: Studies in
Ideas and Their History (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), p. 265.
• Lal, Chaman. India at 70: Togore Rejected Nationalism and his worst fears have come True
https://www.dailyo.in/politics/nationalism-tagore-nation-independence-day-india/story/1/18968.html
• Martha Nussbaum initiates her wide-ranging critique of patriotism (in a debate that is joined by many others)
by quoting this passage from The Home and the World (in Martha C. Nussbaum et al., For Love of
Country, edited by Joshua Cohen, Beacon Press, 1996, pp. 3-4).
• Romain Rolland and Gandhi Correspondence, with a Foreword by Jawaharlal Nehru (New Delhi:
Government of India, 1976), pp.12-13.
• Sen, Amartya. Tagore and His India. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/06/26/tagore-and-his-india/
• Tagore and his India. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. Wed. 6 May 2020.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1913/tagore/article/
• Tagore, Rabindranath. Nationalims. 1917. Tagore Web. https://www.tagoreweb.in/