The recognition of the fraternal bond of love between Japan and Russia, which has lately been celebrated with an immense display of rejoicing in Japan, was not owing to any sudden recrudescence of the spirit of Christianity or of Buddhism, - but it was a bond established according to the modern faith in a surer relationship of mutual menace of bloodshedding. In his book, Nationalism, Rabindranath Tagore says that nationalism is an invention of the west. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. 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. What I was about to say is this, take it in whatever spirit you like, here is India, of about fifty centuries at least, who tried to live peacefully and think deeply, the India devoid of all politics, the India of no nations, whose one ambition has been to know this world as of soul, to live here every moment of her life in the meek spirit of adoration, in the glad consciousness of an eternal and personal relationship with it. The Scythians of the earlier period of Asiatic history had to struggle with the scarcity of their natural resources. And for all this the Nation has been claiming the gratitude of history, and all eternity for its exploitation; ordering its band of praise to be struck up from end to end of the world, declaring itself to be the salt of the earth, the flower of humanity, the blessing of God hurled with all his force upon the naked skulls of the world of no nations. According to Tagore, nationalism was the root of violence. This European war of Nations is the war of retribution. Over all this is a very good book and every one must read it to understand the true nature of Nationalism. And they were irresistible to those who were chiefly engaged in the constructive work of social cooperation. But we know that when we walk barefooted upon a ground strewn with gravel, gradually our feet come to adjust themselves to the caprices of the inhospitable earth; while if the tiniest particle of a gravel finds its lodgment inside our shoes we can never forget and forgive its intrusion. In fact, these nations are fighting among themselves for the extension of their victims and their reserve forests. In this reign of the nation, the governed are pursued by suspicions; and these are the suspicions of a tremendous mass of organized brain and muscle. I know what your advice will be. review : nationalism in the west, tagore Rabindranath Tagore begins by describing how the one problem India had to face since the beginning of history was the problem of race. 38 by Rabindranath Tagore; Nationalism by Rabindranath Tagore. And yet men are not by nature cruel to such a degree. When the humanity of India was not under the government of the Organization, the elasticity of change was great enough to encourage men of power and spirit to feel that they had their destinies in their own hands. I have not come here, however, to discuss the question as it affects my own country, but as it affects the future of all humanity. 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. We were not confronted with a future which was a dead white wall of granite blocks eternally guarding against the expression and extension of our own powers, the hopelessness of which lies in the reason that these powers are becoming atrophied at their very roots by the scientific process of paralysis. This could never have been possible if the god had been as real as the individual. In fact your instinct tells you that the advent of another people into the arena of nationality makes another addition to the evil which contradicts all that is highest in Man and proves by its success that unscrupulousness is the way to prosperity, - and goodness is good for the weak and God is the only remaining consolation of the defeated. that of a man to a man? It is the fifth act of the tragedy of the unreal. It has produced great-hearted men, thinkers of great thoughts, doers of great deeds. He had observed European forms of nationalism and concluded that the West had turned chauvinistic. Some of the newspapers praised my utterances for their poetical qualities while adding with a leer that it was the poetry of a defeated people. He was aware of the admiration of the concept of nationalism and We have seen in our country some brand of tinned food advertised as entirely made and packed without being touched by hand. This is a condition not only prevailing in India, but among all nations. Wherever there is a dark corner, there is the suspicion of its secret malevolence; and people live in a perpetual distrust of its back where it has no eyes. Man's history is being shaped according to the difficulties it encounters. This state of things inevitably gives rise to eternal feuds among the elements freed from the wholeness and wholesomeness of human ideals, and interminable economic war is waged between capital and labour. "Nationalism in Japan" is based upon two lectures delivered in Japan before the Imperial University and the Keio Gijuku University in June and July, 1916. 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. The role of science here is important as it helps strengthen power but not humanity. We, on our side, are individuals with living sensibilities. Mahatma Gandhi wished to develop a more Indian-centric nationalism which would be far more welcoming and rooted to Indian -traditions, and cultures rather than being influenced by the west: Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – August 7, 1941) was an ardent supporter of nationalism until the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914-1918. I could well believe you, if you had said, Be more good, more just, more true in your relation to man, control your greed, make your life wholesome in its simplicity and let your consciousness of the divine in humanity be more perfect in its expression. It confers on him the benefit of a greater range of time and space. But Tagore felt as he spelt out in all his three political novels (Gora [1909]; Ghare Baire [1916] and Char Adhyay [1934]), that that will be a poisoned victory because in the course of that victory against West, you have become like the West. Therefore he can easily outstrip those who live in a world of a slower time and of space less fully occupied. He explains that the kind of political nationalism of the west is farcical and India must not get into its trap. Tagore described theirs as a mechanical humanity with tentacles of machinery engraving itself deeply onto others. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. For greed of wealth and power can never have a limit, and compromise of self-interest can never attain the final spirit of reconciliation. It is like a hydraulic press, whose pressure is impersonal and on that account completely effective. having anything to do with nationalism again, except to launch a systematic indictment to ‘‘destroy the bondage of nationalism’’. Her mission has been like that of a hostess to provide proper accommodation to her numerous guests whose habits and requirements are different from one another. There are other peoples in the world who have obstacles in their physical surroundings to overcome, or the menace of their powerful neighbours. This reign of law in our present Government in India has established order in this vast land inhabited by peoples different in their races and customs. A Nation checks the growth of other civilizations as it born of need of power and supremacy, creating a conflict of interests. Therefore the Western Nation acts like a dam to check the free flow of the Western civilization into the country of the No-Nation. We are realizing through it that there is a universal standard of justice to which all men irrespective of their caste and colour have their equal claim. Because each nation has its own history of thieving and lies and broken faith, therefore there can only flourish international suspicion and jealousy, and international moral shame becomes anaemic to a degree of ludicrousness. 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. Because her homes, her fields, her temples of worship, her schools, where her teachers and students lived together in the atmosphere of simplicity and devotion and learning, her village self-government with its simple laws and peaceful administration - all these truly belonged to her. When questioned as to the wisdom of its course the newly converted fanatic of nationalism answers that 'so long as nations are rampant in this world we have not the option freely to develop our higher humanity. It is the continual and stupendous dead pressure of this unhuman upon the living human under which the modern world is groaning. Subsequently, he was shocked by the rising nationalism found in Germany and other nations prior to the World War II. The weakening of humanity affects us all and the people of the Nation have yet to be disillusioned about their freedom and acknowledge their accountability to the people of the no nations. This abstract being, the Nation, is ruling India. Tagore describes their rule on India as “being untouched by hands”, comparing it to the process and nature of tinned food. These monsters grow into huge shapes but never into harmony. Take away man from his natural surroundings, from the fulness of his communal life, with all its living associations of beauty and love and social obligations, and you will be able to turn him into so many fragments of a machine for the production of wealth on a gigantic scale. India, as Tagore describes, was a no nation with an “ambition to know the world as a soul”. Men, the fairest creations of God, came out of the National manufactory in huge numbers as war-making and money-making puppets, ludicrously vain of their pitiful perfection of mechanism. The West owes its period of discipline to the moral development undertaken in medieval Europe. The benefit of the Western civilization is doled out to us in a miserly measure by the Nation trying to regulate the degree of nutrition as near the zero point of vitality as possible. Japan protests that she has her bushido, that she can never be treacherous to America to whom she owes her gratitude. Trading upon the greed and fear of man, it occupies more and more space in society, and at last becomes its ruling force. We feel this all the more, because the teaching and example of the West have entirely run counter to what we think was given to India to accomplish. Rabindranath Tagore begins by describing how the one problem India had to face since the beginning of history was the problem of race. And out of the long birth-throes of mechanical energy has been born this fully developed apparatus of magnificent power and surprising appetite, which has been christened in the West as the Nation. 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. Now let us from our own experience answer the question. 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. We must admit that during the personal government of the former days there have been instances of tyranny, injustice and extortion. It has a political side which used to be kept till the professionals. 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. Therefore it is ready to send its poisonous fluid into the vitals of the other living peoples, who, not being nations, are harmless. He reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 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