We must admit that during the personal government of the former days there have been instances of tyranny, injustice and extortion. The world-flood has swept over our country, new elements have been introduced, and wider adjustments are waiting to be made. messianic poet and Asia’s first Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), launched a fierce diatribe on nationalism. Over all this is a very good book and every one must read it to understand the true nature of Nationalism. The book ‘Nationalism’ is a composition of three dimensions of nationalism whereas Rabindranath Tagore has focused onto the nationalism in west, nationalism in Japan and nationalism in India. The British express no desire to know our culture or language but rather rule as sahibs, giving orders and setting our policies regardless of the consequences. But the power loom is relentlessly lifeless and accurate and monotonous in its production. It is social. I do not believe in an exclusive political interest. This progress of power attains more and more rapidity of pace. But now, this side has seeped out with the help of advancement of science and perfecting of organizations. A nation, in the sense of the political and economic union of a people, is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose. As a result, the suspicion of man for man stings all the limbs of this civilization like the hairs of the nettle. The Scythians of the earlier period of Asiatic history had to struggle with the scarcity of their natural resources. “West is dangerous for Japan is not the imitation of the outer features of the West, but the acceptance of the motive force of Western nationalism as her own”. But this time we had to deal, not with kings, not with human races, but with a nation, - we, who are no nation ourselves. Why is it that I saw in an English paper an expression of bitterness at Japan's boasting of her superiority of civilization - the thing that the British, along with other nations, has been carrying on for ages without blushing? Rabindranath Tagore FRAS (/ r ə ˈ b ɪ n d r ə n ɑː t t æ ˈ ɡ ɔːr / (); born Robindronath Thakur, 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941; sobriquet Gurudev, Kobiguru, Biswakobi) was a Bengali poet, writer, composer, philosopher and painter. It is not the numerousness of the outside obstacles but the comparative powerlessness of the individual to cope with them. In the products of the hand loom the magic of man's living fingers finds its expression, and its hum harmonizes with the music of life. It is merely the side of power, not of human ideals. According to Tagore, if in India people acquired these kinds of fanaticisms, the consequences could be devastating. It is the fifth act of the tragedy of the unreal. Tagore observes how the development of Japan as a nation produced a sense of bitterness amongst the British since they were unwilling to share the sources of their power to others. Then will come to an end the one-sided dominance which is galling. Disillusioned by the authoritarian and military power of the West, he argued for a new vision of freedom that he thought could be attained by means of cooperation and intermingling of the minds of the East and the West with a spirit of intellectual detachment. Nationalism for Tagore was an evil that slowly gnawed away at the vitals of human civilization. But when, instead of being numerous separate machines, they become riveted into one organized gregariousness of gluttony, commercial and political, what remotest chance of hope will remain for those others, who have lived and suffered, have loved and worshipped, have thought deeply and worked with meekness, but whose only crime has been that they have not organized? And we cannot but acknowledge this paradox, that while the spirit of the West marches under its banner of freedom, the Nation of the West forges its iron chains of organization which are the most relentless and unbreakable that have ever been manufactured in the whole history of man. Cushing & Co. ... Contributor University of California Libraries Language English. In quantity it is great, but it springs from the surface and spreads over the surface. This is the remote portion of humanity, childlike in its manner, with the wisdom of the old, upon which burst the Nation of the West. In our country records of these days have been despised and forgotten. Evil becomes powerful at the cost of the harmony of higher social life due to which individuals choose to partake in irrational activities and crime. Change ). We have seen in these countries how the people are encouraged and trained and given every facility to fit themselves for the great movements of commerce and industry spreading over the world, while in India the only assistance we get is merely to be jeered at by the Nation for lagging behind. It has also a political side, but this is only for a special purpose. Tagore, Rabindranath, Nationalism. ... Tagore deemed nationalism a … Consequently, this power becomes the ruling force. Rabindranath Tagore’s definition of nationalism, which he goes on to explain later in the book is when a human being combines with other human beings and serves the common interest of all. The teachings of the West ran counter to ours. These difficulties have been different in different peoples of the earth, and in the manner of our overcoming them lies our distinction. In fact, our history has not been of the rise and fall of kingdoms, of fights for political supremacy. In some parts of India it has been enjoined as an act of great piety for a widow to go without food and water on a particular day every fortnight. And when in India we shall be able to assimilate in our life what is permanent in Western civilization we shall be in the position to bring about a reconciliation of these two great worlds. Nationalism in India. But her thrones were not her concern. For greed of wealth and power can never have a limit, and compromise of self-interest can never attain the final spirit of reconciliation. We shall thank God that we were made to wait in silence through the night of despair, had to bear the insult of the proud and the strong man's burden, yet all through it, though our hearts quaked with doubt and fear, never could we blindly believe in the salvation which machinery offered to man, but we held fast to our trust in God and the truth of the human soul. India is the result of the contribution of a number of races and we cannot stop the British from adding their portion as once we incorporate the principles of Western civilization, then we would be able to end this one-sided dominance. The West in the voice of her thundering cannon had said at the door of Japan, Let there be a Nation - and there was a Nation. But all the same moral law is the law of humanity, and the exclusive civilization which thrives upon others who are barred from its benefit carries its own death sentence in its moral limitations. In your medieval age in Europe, the simple and the natural man, with all his violent passions and desires, was engaged in trying to find out a reconciliation in the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. I know what your advice will be. You break it, and have in your hands the nomadic atoms fighting against one another, therefore unmeaning. And we of no nations of the world, whose heads have been bowed to the dust, will know that his dust is more sacred than the bricks which build the pride of power. It is the same thing with society. It has no fear of the chasm, which is opening wider every day, between man's ever-growing storehouses and the emptiness of his hungry humanity. According to Tagore, nationalism was the root of violence. But when with the help of science and the perfecting of organization this power begins to grow and brings in harvests of wealth, then it crosses its boundaries with amazing rapidity. Until we fulfil our mission all other benefits will be denied us. The other metaphor explains how walking barefoot on a bed of rocks might feel difficult but we get used to it after sometimes. No, for the sake of your own salvation, I say, they shall live, and this is truth. Because success is the object and justification of a machine, while goodness only is the end and purpose of man. Whenever Power removes all checks from its path to make its career easy, it triumphantly rides into its ultimate crash of death. Such nationalism in the West was born out of the spirit of conflict and conquest, unlike that of India. Logic does not know that, under the lowest bed of endless strata of wealth and comforts, earthquakes are being hatched to restore the balance of the moral world, and one day the gaping gulf of spiritual vacuity will draw into its bottom the store of things that have their eternal love for the dust. The answer is, that the West has been systematically petrifying her moral nature in order to lay a solid foundation for her gigantic abstractions of efficiency. Knowledge and efficiency are powerful in their outward effect, but they are the servants of man, not the man himself. When after its enormous toil it comes to offer us its boon of peace we can but murmur under our breath that 'peace is good but not more so than life which is God's own great boon.' And what is their secret service but the nation's underground trade in kidnapping, murder and treachery and all the ugly crimes bred in the depth of rottenness? What is more, we have to recognize that the history of India does not belong to one particular race but is of a process of creation to which various races of the world contributed - the Dravidians and the Aryans, the ancient Greeks and the Persians, the Mohamedans of the West and those of central Asia. Politics in the West have dominated Western ideals, and we in India are trying to imitate you. You say to yourself that it is not with Japan of the bushido, the Japan of the moral ideals, that you have to deal - it is with the abstraction of the popular selfishness, it is with the Nation; and Nation can only trust Nation where their interests coalesce, or at least do not conflict. Society as such has no ulterior purpose. Let me give an illustration of this in point. All through the turbulent career of her vigorous youth the temporal and the spiritual forces both acted strongly upon her nature, and were moulding it into completeness of moral personality. Races ethnologically different have come in this country in close contact. As such, he respects the Western people but not the West Nation. when her hoard of wealth is bursting into smoke and her humanity is shattered into bits on her battlefields? Rabindranath Tagore provides a unique perspective in our understanding of the idea of nationalism which stems from a belief in Asian values of spiritual unity and ethical social setup. At the least pressing of its button the monster organization becomes all eyes, whose ugly stare of inquisitiveness cannot be avoided by a single person amongst the immense multitude of the ruled. What they fail to see is that the man is an aspect of the moral world and cannot be divided into compartments of morality. Such wholesale and universal acts of fearful responsibility man can never perform, with such a degree of systematic unawareness, where he is an individual human being. This European war of Nations is the war of retribution. Each country is casting its net of espionage into the slimy bottom of the others, fishing for their secrets, the treacherous secrets brewing in the oozy depths of diplomacy. It was not a mere drift over her surface of life, - drift of cavalry and foot soldiers, richly caparisoned elephants, white tents and canopies, strings of patient camels bearing the loads of royalty, bands of kettledrums and flutes, marble domes of mosques, palaces and tombs, like the bubbles of the foaming wine of extravagance; stories of treachery and loyal devotion, of changes of fortune, of dramatic surprises of fate. It is not about the British Government, but the government by the Nation - the Nation which is the organized self-interest of a whole people, where it is the least human and the least spiritual. And these shoes are the government by the Nation, - it is tight, it regulates our steps with a closed up system, within which our feet have only the slightest liberty to make their own adjustments. NATIONALISM IN THE WEST. The protection of law is not only a boon, but it is a valuable lesson to us. It makes one almost openly unashamed of inhumanity. She is already carrying in her quivering flesh harpoons sent by the unerring aim of the Nation, the creature of science and selfishness. When we are fully human, we cannot fly at one another's throats; our instincts of social life, our traditions of moral ideals stand in the way. Then he can do things which, in his normal state of mind, he would be ashamed to do. This fact has been and still continues to be the most important one in our history. The book is a compilation of three speeches: Nationalism in the West, Nationalism in Japan, Nationalism in India and a poem — The Sunset of the Century. The grammarian walks straight through all poetry and goes to the root of words without obstruction. This greedy head, with its huge dental organization, has been munching all the topmost foliage of the world, but the nourishment is too late in reaching his digestive organs, and his heart is suffering from want of blood. Tagore describes their rule on India as “being untouched by hands”, comparing it to the process and nature of tinned food. When this organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is the Nation, becomes all powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day for humanity. While depriving us of our opportunities and reducing our education to a minimum required for conducting a foreign government, this Nation pacifies its conscience by calling us names, by sedulously giving currency to the arrogant cynicism that the East is east and the West is west and never the twain shall meet. As I have hinted before, because of its quality of abstraction it has, with the greatest ease, gone far ahead of the complete moral man. We, on our side, are individuals with living sensibilities. The consequences we speak of have a much deeper impact on us due to the fact that we are living sensible beings and the policies have the potential to threaten our future. Therefore, when you produce your statistics to compare the number of gravels which our feet had to encounter in former days with the paucity in the present regime, they hardly touch the real points. And, for the reason that it is a detached part of man, it soon outruns the complete humanity. It is a natural regulation of human relationships, so that men can develop ideals of life in cooperation with one another. The portion of education allotted to us is so raggedly insufficient that it ought to outrage the sense of decency of a Western humanity. Tagore is well known for wanting Asian and even global oneness, and for disliking nationalism. ( Log Out / This process of dehumanizing has been going on in commerce and politics. Has this giant power of mechanical organization no limit in this world against which it may shatter itself all the more completely because of its terrible strength and velocity? Rabindranath Tagore was perhaps the world’s most eloquent critic of nationalism in his time. When a father becomes a gambler and his obligations to his family take the secondary place in his mind, then he is no longer a man, but an automaton led by the power of greed. She has all along been starving the life of the personal man into that of the professional. But we, who are governed, are not a mere abstraction. They caused sufferings and unrest from which we are glad to be rescued. It has given rise to a great literature. It has produced great-hearted men, thinkers of great thoughts, doers of great deeds. We have seen in our country some brand of tinned food advertised as entirely made and packed without being touched by hand. Yes, one cannot but acknowledge that these facts are the facts of the world of the Nation, and the only moral of it is that all the peoples of the earth should strain their physical, moral and intellectual resources to the utmost to defeat one another in the wrestling match of powerfulness. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. Our history is that of our social life and attainment of spiritual ideals. The hope of the unexpected was never absent, and a freer play of imagination, both on the part of the governor and the governed, had its effect in the making of history. 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