Question

What is the concept of nation and nationalism, according to
Tagore? Do you think that it represents the same idea of
nationalism popular in the contemporary world? Give reasons in
support of your. answer in 1000 words.

Answer 1

Today's buzzwords are ''national security'' and ''national interest.'' Any action is legitimate in the name of the nation, no matter how remote it may be from truth or justice. How many wars have been waged in the name of the nation? How much innocent blood has it claimed? Yet people are worked up into a frenzy when the idea of the nation is invoked the same hollow hysteria that religion aroused in the medieval era and still does among some in the so-called ''third-world'' nations. Nation is the most desirable political institution of our time; a fictive concept, without any scientific grounding, it is still inviolable and enshrined in the modern imagination. Competing visions of the nation are now pushing the world to the brink of destruction. Metropolitan nationalism, with its robust secular ideology, is bent on wiping out the pan-religious nationalism that still enjoys some acceptance in parts of the ''third world,'' considering it an anathema and anachronism. This monocular, exclusivist approach, an attempt by the forces of secularism to appropriate the centre of civilization, has resulted in a cycle of retribution and retaliation, a horrific dance of destruction, opening the doors to a new pandemonium.

Given this present global crisis, in which nations are flying at each other's throat, sometimes unilaterally and in pre-emptive action, ignoring world opinion, perpetuating a logic of mutual malevolence and fear, it may be appropriate to pause for a moment and review in hindsight the anti-nationalitarian ideology of the Bengali poet, and Asia's first Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore's alternative vision of peace, harmony and the spiritual unity of humankind seems more relevant now than ever. What the world needs in the face of present widespread unrest and agitation, is Tagore's healing message of love, simplicity, self-reliance and non-violence or ahimsa.

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 was born in 1861, a period during which the nationalist movement in India was crystallizing and gaining momentum. The first organized military uprising by