As politics is taking a right-wing turn in several countries around the world, the idea of

nationalism is debated anew. From the traditional understanding of nationalism as being bounded
by ideas like culture and territory, the discourse now needs to shift to more complex ideas and
reflects of nationalism. Nationalism that is dependent on the identification and demonization of
an ‘other’ be it another country or another community, is obviously divisive and helps to foment
a culture of violence.

Tagore opined that the term nationalism was derived from the term nation-state which nothing
but the embodiment of Western ideas of capitalism and mechanization. He believed that these
ideals were intrinsically against the Indian tradition of self-autonomy, pluralism and religious
tolerance which one would find in what he termed as the Samaj. Tagore’s understanding of
nationalism that is, its genuine European version that took its final shape in the 19th century as
an inseparable adjunct of the modern nation state and the idea of nationality is explicit in a
number of essays and letters. In effect argues that the idea of nationalism is intrinsically non-
Indian or anti-Indian, an offence against Indian civilisation and its principles of religious and
cultural plurality. Ghare Baire is a story of how nationalism dismantles community life and
releases the demon of ethno religious violence. Similarly, Char Adhyay is an early, perhaps the
first exploration of the roots of industrialised, assembly line violence as a specialisation of
the modern times.

Tagore’s critique of modern civilisation finds clearest expression in his reflections on the
concepts of nation and nationalism. Tagore defines nation as the political and economic union of
a people and this union is the one that ‘a whole population assumes when organized for a
mechanical purpose. Commerce and science are used by nationalisms instrumentally to attain
their ever-expanding power goals. Tagore traced all the deep flaws of modern Western ‘political
civilisation’back to the nexus of the political and the commercial in the apparatus of the modern
state. In contrast, the defining feature of the Indian, as also of the Chinese, was for him
communities’ self regulation of their own affairs. In fact, if his essays on nationalism and on the
theme of samaj (community) are read together, a clear distinction emerges in his works between
the nature of the political in case of the nation state and the pre-national political formations.

Tagore’s encompassing definition of patriotism is a solution to distortions of the term which was
primarily the work of Hindu nationalists of the time. His definition is embedded with values o
cooperation and coexistence that transcends boundaries and is meant for humanity at large. This
is comprehensively reflected in his work entitled Gora

Rabindranath Tagore’s first political novel Gora (1910) is part encomium on the ethicopolitical
potential of love and part historiography of a key moment of anti-colonial world-making, which
spans from the 1857 Indian War of Independence to the Swadeshi Movement (often thought to
have begun in 1905). The novel enjoys the status of a foundational text in India—printed,
disseminated, and translated into many Indian languages, reprinted at moments of communal
unrest. Together, this signifies something of the novel’s significance in political projects of love.
This section offers a brief overview of Tagore’s novel Gora, distilling its historical context, plot,
and key themes.11 The two subsequent subsections construct a typology of love that emanates
from it. Gora was written following Tagore’s disillusionment with elements and excesses of the
same swadeshi movement he once led. The movement followed the Viceroy of India , Lord
Curzon’s proposed partition of Bengal and coincided with a split between the “moderate” and
Hindu-nationalist branches of the Indian National Congress. Rather than a parochial movement
of failed revolutionary zeal in Bengal, the swadeshi movement signified a key moment in the
global history of decolonization. In India, it entrenched the economic critique of empire and
ushered in forms of political activism that centered on indigenous manufacture, boycott,
noncooperation, and passive resistance.

Along with the rhetoric of “swaraj” (self-rule) and “atmashakti” (soul-force), it offered a
template for anti-colonial resistance that was subsequently mobilized by Gandhi. Beyond India,
it sparked “an insurgency against empire” that extended beyond the British Empire. Swadeshi is
commonly understood as establishing “a concrete and durable linkage between state, economy,
territory, and nation within popular anti-colonial imagination’. However, swadeshi was not a
monolithic moment. As Tagore’s Gora and subsequent historiographies attest, it contained a
kaleidoscopic range of visions of possible future worlds. As in India, then, it inspired disparate
groups of liberals, anarchists, and socialists to imagine and enact “an alternate map of freedom”
that resonated from “Mexico to Singapore, from Berlin to the Philippines, and from Paris to
Johannesburg”.

However, if the swadeshi movement contained the promise of national independence, it also
contained the peril of communal violence, which culminated in the postcolonial partition of
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and led to the deaths and displacements of millions. In
beginning his narrative with the Indian War of Independence or “the Sepoy Mutiny”—one of
many global anti-colonial revolts that led to the abolition of the East India Company, and the
direct reign of Queen Victoria in India—Tagore effectively offers commentary on a period that
saw the passing of a civil marriage bill, oppression in the indigo fields, racial anxieties
surrounding a bill that allowed Indians to preside over criminal trials involving Europeans, a
consensus that ossified the category of caste, and the rise of Hindu nationalism. It is against this
backdrop and competing projects of worldmaking—nationalist and imperial, racialized and
casteized, international and indigenous, reactionary and rebellious—that Tagore theorizes the
constitutive and ethicopolitical work of love.

The protagonist and eponym of the novel, “Gora” translates to “fair-skinned” or “white.” A
shortened version of the name “Gourmohan,” it literally evokes the medieval Bengali saint,
Chaitanya Gourango (fairbodied), who advocated aspirituality based on “love and equality rather
than hierarchized differences”. Based on how “Gora” is pronounced in Bengali, “it is fairly close
to goda meaning root, or gnoda, adjectivally orthodox, conservative, reactionary” This play on
meaning alludes to what I read as the central theme of the novel, which is the
ethicopolitical potential of love in the making and unmaking of worlds.
Written almost 100 years ago, many of the critical questions that it had asked at that time remain
unresolved and contentious matters even today; caste, faith, freedom of country and of individual
self-determination, socially forbidden love and patriotic love. It reproduces and then thoroughly
problematizes certain arguments of Hindu nationalism: first elaborated by late 19th century
revivalists and then, in a different way, powerfully developed in Bankimchandra
Chattopadhyaya’s novel Anandamath, written three decades before Gora. In a contrapuntal
mode, Gora then offers a radically new way of being an Indian patriot.

On the other hand Tagore saw Japan as a symbol of hope as well as caution. Japan being an
Asian nation reinvented itself to become a force to reckon with. It became an example for other
Asian nations and broke the myth that only Western nations were capable of modernization.
However, Tagore also expressed a note of caution saying that the method by which Japan
achieve transformation was similar to that of other Western nations that followed a form of
aggressive nationalism which he believed was corrosive and characteristic of nationalism in the
20th century.

Amartya Sen in his article wrote: Rabindranath Tagore appreciated and praised the importance of
the Japanese experience in economic and social development as something that gave hope and
some basis of self-confidence to countries outside the West.

The India Tagore imagined, however, was more than just a freedom from British rule; Tagore
imagined a society ordered according to an ideology that was radically different from British
imperialism. His vehement criticism of nationalism, orientalism, and imperialism means that his
writing is still of value in our contemporary time. This is because Tagore’s vision for India did
not merely imagine a future without British rule; it proposed an India organised not as a nation
state, but as a developed, open society that relies on humanity rather than patriotism. As such, it
appears Tagore’s thought can make a valuable contribution to the imagination of
cosmopolitanism.Tagore’s “rooted cosmopolitan” ideals borne out of his experience as a colonial
subject and richness of his own tradition was indeed a meeting point for him and the members of
the Unitarian and Universalist community at Urbana–Champaign.