Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (Bangla: ??????????? ?????, Robindronath ?hakur) (May 7, 1861 – August 7, 1941) (in the Bangla Calendar, 25 Baishakh, 1268 – 22 Srabon, 1348), also called Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, Brahmo philosopher and nationalist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, becoming the first Asian to

Nationalism

Tagore's richest legacy for today's

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polarized world is perhaps his eloquent denunciation of Nationalism, which

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he perceived, in the shadows of our last great war,

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as one of the largest threats to humanity.

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"A nation," he wrote, ". . . is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose", a purpose

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often associated with a "selfishness" that "can be a grandly magnified form" of

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personal selfishness.

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His international travels sharpened his understanding of the shallowness of

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human divisions. Once when visting a Bedouin camp in today's

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battleground of Iraq, the

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chief told him,

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"Our prophet has said that a true Muslim is he by whose words and

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deeds not the least of his brother-men may ever come to any harm..."

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Tagore noted in his diary: 'I was startled into recognizing in his words the voice

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of essential humanity.' (Dutta/Robinson p.317).

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During his intensive travels in Europe, America and the Far East, he gradually

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formed a vision of the unity of East and West. Subsequently,

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he was profoundly shocked by the intense nationalism he found breeding in Germany

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and other nations before the Second World War. In a series of lectures on

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Nationalism that were enthusiastically

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received in much of Europe, but not so much in the United States, he said

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The moment is arising when you also must find a basis of unity

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which is not political. ... There is only one history -

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the history of man. All national histories are chapters in the larger

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one.

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This internationalism and sensitivity to the fundamental unity of man is

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perhaps Tagore's lasting legacy to the world.

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However, among the Bangla-speaking people of West Bengal and Bangladesh, his literary legacy continues to

Related Topics:
West Bengal - Bangladesh

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inform an unusually vivid artistic and cultural life.

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