Asian Theatre Journal

The volume, Tagore and Nationalism, edited by K. L. Tuteja and Kaustav Chakraborty, presents a broad gamut of works by scholars from universities in India, Bangladesh, Scotland, and Italy. As the preface articulates, the conversations around Tagore's contribution to the discourse of nationalism emerged out of a critical need "to be inspired by Tagore's unshaken faith on the essential goodness of humankind that would restore the 'human' to this desolated world of antagonists and combatants" (p. vii) at a time when "the world seems to be getting fragmented by the fundamentalist designer of the narrow walls" (p. vii).

Part I has eight chapters, each looking at a specific site of ambivalence. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya introduces the idea of "antinomies" in Tagore's nationalism, the jostling between a state and a society, between competition, and cooperation, where he considers a nation-state to be a mechanical organization, as opposed to a society, which has a more organic character. While Bhattacharya establishes the evolving nature of Tagore's ideologies, Krishna Sen defends Tagore's nationalism by pointing out the coexistence of Anglophilia and a disdain for the colonial state, ascribing it to Tagore's "multistranded background" (p. 35).

Citing from Tagore's essay, "Nation ki?," Sukanta Chaudhuri notes Tagore chooses to retain the English word in the title of his essay due to his inability of finding a Bengali equivalent term. Chaudhuri explains that unlike the Western concept of a militant power-hungry nation-state, and the disjuncture between "private morality" and "public expediency" that it necessitates, for Tagore, the "political is the ethical" (p. 69).

Tilottama Misra offers a critique of the limitations in Tagore's views of linguistic nationalism and echoes Krishna Sen on differences between an "English Tagore" and a "Bengali Tagore" (p. 32). Misra points out that despite promoting notions of inclusion and diversity in his English essays and international lectures, one cannot overlook the exclusions of India's Northeastern states—even "in his well-known [End Page 351] paean to the 'ruler of India's destiny (Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka)'" (p. 54). Taking this argument further, Misra points out how his 1898 Bengali essay "Bhasha-Bichhed," meant primarily for the emerging Bengali elites, supports a kind of colonial modernity that reinforces the evolutionary theory of languages and merging of "weaker languages" with "stronger ones" (p. 56).

While Makarand R. Paranjape reminds us that Tagore restated the difference between a nation-state and social organization in his essays and lectures, R. Siva Kumar illustrates the making of a community as an example of vernacular nationalism through the example of Santiniketan.¹ Tagore addressed the urban-rural divide and the "race problem" through indigenous education, reconstruction of village life, focus on nature, arts, and humanities, with the vision of making Santiniketan "national in aspect, international in spirit" (p. 95).

K. Satchidanandan mentions the possibility that Tagore, foreseeing the rise of Hindu nationalism, was critical of a nation built purely on Hindutva values, while simultaneously being skeptical of "heartless globalization" (p. 119). Offering examples from Tagore's poems in the 1916 volume of Balaka, his political novels Chaturanga, Ghare Baire, and Gora, and his 1922 verse poems from Lipika, Fakrul Alam concludes Part I with his essay pointing the readers to Tagore's "alternative modernism" (p. 129), which celebrates experimentations with form, modernist techniques of narrative perspectives and a constantly evolving and enlarging sense of self.

Part II explores relationships of national identity, Hindu culture and religion, and literature. Supriya Chaudhuri's essay identifies the gaps in Benedict Anderson's established relationship between a novel and a nation (in his Imagined Communities), arguing, while invoking Ranajit Guha, that subaltern communities are not included in this print-culture-led "imagination." Again citing Ghare Baire and Gora as examples, Chaudhuri proves Tagore's refusal of this correlation established by Anderson, as Tagore puts "notions of self and nation to the test" (p. 145), inevitably creating for the readers a "profound, inalienable feeling of self-difference, a...