Nationalism

Based on lectures delivered by him during the First Wolrd War. While the nations of Europe were at war, Tagore urged his audiences in Japan and the United States to eschew political aggressiveness and cultural arrogance. His mission, one might say, was to synthesize East and west, tradition and modernity. As Ramachandra Guha shows in his brilliant and erudite interoduction, it was by reading and speaking to Tagore that these founders of modern India, Ghadhi and Nehru, developed a theory of nationalism that was inclusive rather than exclusive.Tagore's Nationalism should be mandatory reading in today's climate of xenophobia, sectarianism, violence and intolerance. --