The problem of the nation and nationalism in the social-philosophical thought of Rabindranath Tagore

Abstract

Rabindranath Tagore’s lectures Nationalism (1916) were an early attempt to interpret and analyze the phenomenon from the social-philosophical point of view. In non-Western social thought it was one of first approaches to comprehend nationalism in its fullness and complexity of content with the complex of its objective consequences. Based on hermeneutical methods and phenomenological approach, the author offers a reconstruction of Tagore’s theoretical interpretation of nationalism in a broad social context from India to the East and the West. The interpretation is based on Tagore’s understanding of the nation as a mechanical organization for economic and political purposes, born in the “political civilization” of Europe. According to him, the nation is the problem for all societies both Western and non-Western, because it destructs its freedom, morality and humanity, and generates conflicts, aggression, violence and war. Nationalism is presented as “perfect organization of power” for domination over other peoples, as well as over their own society. Both constructs are exported to non-Western peoples who are not nations, and consequently create difficult problems in their societies. For Eastern peoples both ways of responding to Western nationalism’s challenge are dangerous in Tagore’s opinion. The first is nation-building by the state according to the Western model which turns into statism and militarism (the example of Japan). The second response is an attempt to solve social problems through belief in the achievement of political independence (the example of India). Essentially, Tagore had anticipated the modernist (constructivist) approach to the analysis of nationalism as an artificial and purposeful mechanism for achieving political goals, primarily in regard to the state, and pointed to the borrowed nature of nationalism in non-Western societies.