Book Review: Tagore and Nationalism (original) (raw)

The volume, Tagore and Nationalism, edited by K. L. Tuteja and Kaustav Chakraborty, presents a broad gamut of works by scholars from universities in India, Bangladesh, Scotland, and Italy. As the preface articulates, the conversations around Tagore's contribution to the discourse of nationalism emerged out of a critical need "to be inspired by Tagore's unshaken faith on the essential goodness of humankind that would restore the 'human' to this desolated world of antagonists and combatants" (p. vii) at a time when "the world seems to be getting fragmented by the fundamentalist designer of the narrow walls" (p. vii). Part I has eight chapters, each looking at a specific site of ambivalence. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya introduces the idea of "antinomies" in Tagore's nationalism, the jostling between a state and a society, between competition, and cooperation, where he considers a nation-state to be a mechanical organization, as opposed to a society, which has a more organic character. While Bhattacharya establishes the evolving nature of Tagore's ideologies, Krishna Sen defends Tagore's nationalism by pointing out the coexistence of Anglophilia and a disdain for the colonial state, ascribing it to Tagore's "multistranded background" (p. 35). Citing from Tagore's essay, "Nation ki?," Sukanta Chaudhuri notes Tagore chooses to retain the English word in the title of his essay due to his inability of finding a Bengali equivalent term. Chaudhuri explains that unlike the Western concept of a militant power-hungry nation-state, and the disjuncture between "private morality" and "public expediency" that it necessitates, for Tagore, the "political is the ethical" (p. 69). Tilottama Misra offers a critique of the limitations in Tagore's views of linguistic nationalism and echoes Krishna Sen on differences between an "English Tagore" and a "Bengali Tagore" (p. 32). Misra points out that despite promoting notions of inclusion and diversity in his English essays and international lectures, one cannot overlook the exclusions of India's Northeastern states-even "in his well-known