Rabindranaths Nationalist Thought: A Retrospect

Year 2012, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 127 - 140, 01.02.2012

Narasingha P. Sil

Abstract

Tagore's anti-absolutist and anti-statist stand is predicated primarily on his vision of global peace and concord'a world of different peoples and cultures united by amity and humanity. While this grand vision of a brave new world is laudable, it is, nevertheless, constructed on misunderstanding and misreading of history and of the role of the nation state in the West since its rise sometime during the late medieval and early modern times. Tagore views state as an artificial mechanism, indeed a machine that thrives on coercion, conflict, and terror by subverting people's freedom and culture. This paper seeks to argue that the state also played historically a significant role in enhancing and enriching culture and civilization. His view of an ideal human society is sublime, but by the same token, somewhat ahistorical and anti-modern.,

Keywords

Anarchism, Babu, Bengal Renaissance, deshaprem [patriotism], bishwajiban [universal life], Gessellschaft, Gemeinschaft, jatiyatabad [nationalism], rastra [state], romantic, samaj [society], swadeshi [indigenous]

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