Critique of Nationalism by Tagore

-Simran Gupta
(16ume050)

Sometimes states are multinationals, they don't want to say that in Indian cases. They
claim to be one nation. And if you object, they say that our idea of country is distinct, our
notion of secularism is distinct, but it often boils down to the same thing in reality. And
my sense is that Tagore's hostility to nationalism stemmed from the understanding that
the nation-state structure and the concept of nation and nationality and nationalism
were completely incongruent with Indian self-definition and contradicted the
fundamental principle on which both Indian civilization and Indian unity as such are
structured. So that is the background of Tagore’s criticism of nationalism. That criticism
was not lightweight. He believed in it strongly.

Born into an era of increasing tensions among the superpowers of Europe, and the ever
growing nationalist movement in India, Tagore, in an attempt to attack the modern
institution of the nation state, wrote

―The last sun of the century sets amidst the blood red clouds of the West and the
whirlwind of hatred.

The naked passion of self-love of Nations, in its drunken delirium of greed is dancing to
the clash of steel and the howling verses of vengeance.

The hungry self of the Nation shall burst in a violence of fury from its own shameless
feeding.

For it has made the world its food,

And licking it, crunching it, and swallowing it in big morsels, It swells and swells

Till in the midst of its unholy feast descends the sudden heaven piercing its heart of
grossness.ǁ

An anti-national tendency is very evident from these words. The sentiment of

nationalism being the root cause of war, aggression and death remains at the core of
Tagore's teachings. Yet, he is referred to as the greatest nationalist figure of the Bengali
renaissance.

Tagore considered nationalism a recurring threat to humanity because it trampled on

the human spirit and human emotion with its propensity for the material and the rational.
It upsets the moral equilibrium of man under the shadow of soulless organisation,
obscuring his human side.
Tagore also discovered a source of conflict, hatred and shared suspicion among
countries in the fetish of nationalism. He asserted that British colonialism found its
justification in the ideology of nationalism as the colonizer came to plunder India and the
world's other wealthy pastures and thus further their own nation's prosperity. They have
never been sincere in creating colonized nations as it would have been contrary to their
national interest to transform their hunting grounds into cultivating areas. They thrived
by other countries being victimized and violated.

However, Tagore also understood and acknowledged the significance of the foreigner in
his home country. It was his belief that the single “most significant fact” of his day was
that “the West had met the East.” A meeting of the West and the East, as Tagore would
have it, implied a spiritual union between men who had come together on an equal
footing. For Tagore, had India not come into contact with Europe, “She would have
lacked an element essential for her attainment of perfection.” What disturbed him,
however, was that the West had come to India not with its “humanity” but its “machine.”

Herein lies his critique of the modern condition. The ‘machine’ that Tagore refers to is
the nation-state model (and its accompanying paraphernalia) imposed on India by the
colonizer.

Tagore believed that modernity ought to be embraced in a manner that “minimises the
immense sacrifice of man’s life and freedom that it claims in its every movement.” He
was attentive to the toll that the supposed by-product of modernity called nationalism
was claiming, lecturing as he was in the midst of the Great War. Again, Tagore’s
disapproval of this one aspect of Western modernity, namely nationalism, does not lead
him to reject its other aspects that comprised “above all things” the “banner of liberty” –
“liberty of conscience, liberty of thought and action, liberty in the ideals of art and
literature”, which is curiously why, for him, the way for Europe to redeem itself is through
European ideals itself (such as liberty) after Europe has been judged “before her own
tribunal and put…to shame.”

Tagore believed that, unlike India, Europe had fewer differences to begin with. Here, he
was thinking not just in racial terms but also with regard to “their ideals of life” where
“western peoples are so near each other that practically they are acting as one in
building up their civilisation.” Also, for Tagore, materialism can never be the basis for
any enduring union of peoples.

Peace, according to Tagore, could only come about once men realised their ‘spiritual
unity’ with other men. It was futile for a warring Europe to build peace on a foundation of
science and trade.

For Tagore, humanity is indivisible and societies such as India’s could redeem
themselves by adopting the principles of sarvadharma samabhava (deference to all
religions) or the Upanishadic dictum of vasudhev kutumbakam (the entire world as one
family) which can be extended to political domain for a state of peaceful coexistence
among all nations, and also within the national boundaries. It is in this spirit that he
envisions a world “which has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic
walls”

To sum up, Tagore, as he sees the real tradition of India, says that it is to work for
‘adjustments of races, to acknowledge real differences, between them, and yet seek
some basis of unity.’ It is this solution─ unity through acknowledgement of differences─
that India has to offer to the world.’ This conception is the principal element of Tagore’s
idea of universal nationalism. His desperate search was for ananda (an idea of sublime
bliss), which can be realized only in the unity of mankind and he lived all through his life
complimenting the notion of exclusive nationalism with the inclusive plural notion of a
nation and sought for human unity. Tagore says that people are greater than the nation,
all those individuals all over the world who think clearly, feel nobly, and act rightly, thus
becoming the channels of human unity. It is not an alternative system, it works like
trees, and they spread their roots in the soil and their branches in the sky, without
consulting any architect for their plans for an alternative system.