Nationalism

English language

Published Dec. 25, 2017 by Penguin Books India PVT, Limited.

ISBN:
978-0-14-306467-1
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4 stars (1 review)

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize. Nationalism is based on lectures delivered by him during the First World War. While the nations of Europe were doing battle, 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. The lectures were not always well received at the time, but were chillingly prophetic. As Ramachandra Guha shows in his brilliant and erudite Introduction, it was by reading and speaking to Tagore that those founders of modern India, Gandhi 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.

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Review of 'Nationalism' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

According to Ramachandra Guha, there are three primary founders of modern India: Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar (the father of the India Constitution), and Rabrindranath Tagore. However, Tagore is often overshadowed by the first two much to the detriment of India and the world as a whole. Tagore was a rare polymath - an accomplished author, playwright, poet (first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature), musician (only person who authored two national anthems), choreographer, and, in his last decade, an accomplished painter. But this little volume of three speeches show Tagore as a shrewd political commentator whose voice deserves to be heard. The three speeches on Nationalism in Japan, Nationalism in the West, and Nationalism in India revolve around his definition of nationalism as an organizing principle that stifles life and the spirit. His analysis, especially about nationalism and violence, are still just as relevant today. I especially recommend …

Subjects

  • Nationalism, japan
  • Nationalism, india

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