Whose patriotic poems fuelled the flame of nationalism?
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:This poem was written on the last day of the nineteenth century. Following this first stanza, it goes on to lament the plight of Tagore’s motherland. In it, he notes that human greed, manifest in the “self-love of the Nation”, is responsible for the crimson light on the horizon that indicates a burning pyre instead of a peace-filled dawn. He pleads to his country to be content and embrace humility, non-aggression, and meekness. He views these as the antitheses of nationalism, which symbolizes, pride, power, and aggression for him The poem ends on this note—“… know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.”
It is intriguing that someone who is considered by many to be among the most accomplished Indians ever, felt so disillusioned by the nationalist struggle as to have penned this tirade against nationalism. What led the first Asian Nobel Laureate and first Indian to be knighted to turn against the “nation”? How did nationalism become anathema to the poet who was his nation’s pride and joy? Why for Tagore did nationalism imply complete annihilation of world peace? Why did Tagore identify pride in one’s motherland with carnage, destruction, and gore? How did this become the rallying point around which the disagreement between Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi centered? These are the questions that this essay attempts to address.
I
Tagore’s views on nationalism can only be understood by first arriving at a generic definition of the “nation” and then of “nationalism”. It has been admitted by many scholars over the decades that the term “nation” was not, is not and will likely not ever be able to lend itself to a concrete, tangible form. At best, one can agree with Benedict Anderson’s classic phrase, “imagined community”, which posits the idea of a “community” as an intangible, malleable and above all fictional social construct that is the product of a specific stage of human development. Mohammad Quayum, collating from many sources, states, “Nationalism as a political expression, with people sharing a common geographical boundary and some unifying cultural/political signifier is relatively new, although cultural nationalism has prevailed since the beginning of society.” The origins of nationalism are, therefore, fairly modern. While Anderson pins its emergence to the period of 18th century Enlightenment, when rationalist, secular thought came to acquire political shape, Ernest Gellner associates it with the growth of industrial capitalism, and Timothy Brennan attributes it to the literary wave in the 19th century, especially the rise of the novel.
It seems appropriate to begin by analyzing the text for which Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. “Gitanjali”, or “Song Offerings” (in English translation), is undoubtedly Tagore’s most famous work. May Sinclair opines that the poems in this volume were reflective of a united emotional appeal made “in a music and a rhythm many degrees finer than Swinburne’s—a music and rhythm almost inconceivable to Western ears—with the metaphysical quality, the peculiar subtlety and intensity of Shelley; and that with a simplicity that makes this miracle appear the most natural thing in the world.” Sinclair surmises that the poems offer a degree of subtlety that can only be achieved in a rich, textured language like Bengali. For her, the spirituality of the songs of divine love in the text cuts across national barriers and unites the world in its appeal for bridging the great “gulf fixed between the common human heart and Transcendent being”. The introduction to this text was written by the renowned Irish poet-playwright, W. B. Yeats, who was also Tagore’s close friend. According to Yeats, in this volume, poetry and religion chorus in unison and the poet, in his attempt to discover the soul, surrenders to its spontaneity. Nature comes to symbolize a child-like innocence that bespeaks the beauty of God’s creation.