Poet-laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s, essay was first published one hundred years ago in 1917 when

India was under the British rule. This essay is a mass message to the citizens of the colonial India that
inorder to gain independence they need to rise above the narrow barriers of social systems and the
blind traditions of past.

During the time these lectures were delivered, the World War I was on and World War II was to follow,
in 1939-45, bringing into focus the extreme nationalism of Hitler and Mussolini - which caused, perhaps,
more than 10 million deaths.In the name of nationalism and racial purity, humanity has suffered two
world wars and South Asia has suffered one million killings in 1947 with the Partition and the creation of
the new nation state of Pakistan - with 10 million people suffering untold miseries of displacement.

He questions the western concept of the nation, which holds, "A nation, in the sense of political and
economic union of the people, is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organised for a
mechanical purpose. Society as such has no ulterior purpose. It is an end in itself. It is a spontaneous
expression of man as a social being. It is a natural regulation of human relationships, so that men can
develop ideas of life in cooperation with one another. It has also political side, but this is only for a
special purpose. It is for self-preservation."

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.

In the Indian context too, Tagore comes heavily on national jingoism: "Nationalism is a great menace, it
is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of India's troubles. And in as much as we
have been ruled and dominated by a nation that is strictly political in its attitude, we have tried to
develop within ourselves, despite our inheritance from the past, a belief in our eventual political destiny.

Tagore's critique of nationalism emerges most explicitly in his essays and lectures: ''Nationalism in the
West,'' ''Nationalism in Japan,'' ''Nationalism in India,'' ''Construction versus Creation'' and
''International Relations.'' It is also foregrounded in his novels, The Home and the World and Four
Chapters, as well as in several poems of Gitanjali and ''The Sunset of the Century.'' In these works, he
roundly criticizes nationalism as ''an epidemic of evil'' or a ''terrible absurdity,'' posing a recurrent threat
to mankind's ''higher humanity,'' through the canonization of ''banditry'' or the ''brotherhood of
hooliganism'' (Tagore's phrases).

Tagore has sung Bengal into a nation.” But soon after, the movement took a violent turn and he made
an about-face, never having anything to do with nationalism again, except to launch a systematic
indictment to ''destroy the bondage of nationalism.'' Even Gandhi's urgings to join the satyagraha
movement, which eventually brought about Indian independence, after the protracted period of
colonial rule, in 1947, could not alter Tagore's position on nation and nationalism. In a letter to Gandhi,
he questioned the latter's wisdom, when he asked dismissively, after explaining how in the West many
''higher minds'' were trying to rise above the superficiality of nationalism, ''And are we alone to be
content with proceeding with the erection of Swaraj on a foundation of telling the beads of negation,
harping on others' faults and quarrelsomeness?''