in which of his work Tagore analyse the relation between state and Society
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Answer:
Rabindranath Tagore was first and foremost a poet and a visionary.
Yet he had strong views on the political states of affairs of India of his time - the
social and moral predicaments brought about by the British rule. He was also
critical of the world political situation between the two world wars, and the rise
of nationalism in India and the world outside. Tagore's political ideas are
intertwined with his philosophy of history, ideas of social regeneration and
human freedom. These are not accidental. Beneath the sub-soil of the Indian
polity there was already an undercurrent of patriotism nourished by the message
of the nineteenth century renaissance. The talk of humanism, free will and selfrespect was very much in the air. It is no wonder that for a poet and humanist of
Tagore's sensibility, it was not possible to remain aloof from the dawning
political awareness of his time, and in fact he got drawn into it
It is not easy to comprehend the thoughts of Tagore on the state. Varied as
they are remaining scattered in many of his Bengali and a few English writings.
But there are good works done on Tagore's political thought. Sachin Sen's of
The Political Thought qfTagore has been a pioneering work. Another is Stephen
Hay's Asian Ideas (~f ~ast and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China
and India.
One may ask the question: Why should one get interested in the political
views of a poet who was not a politician in the technical and professional sense,
and who did not found a political school or launched a political party? We may
very well recount the answer in the words of Sachin Sen who regards Tagore as
a political thinker. He says: "Tagore had definite political speculations which are
rich, multicolored, systematized and unconventional, and they call for serious
attention in the perspective of world thought He has made constructive
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contributions to our political thought. .. "1 Sen refers to Goethe who has described
the role of the poet in the realm of politics "as a man and a citizen who will love
his native land, but the native land of his genius lies in the world of goodness
and beauty, a country without frontiers or boundaries ... "
2 We may also add that
a poet, in fact, all artists can provide an answer to what man can aspire for.
Mathew Arnold3
, while mourning the death of Byron, Wordsworth and Goethe,
hails Goethe as "Europe's sagest head" and, "physician of the iron age', who
undertakes pilgrimage for the "suffering human race".
Explanation: