The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self (Oxford India Paperbacks) Tapa blanda - 1994

In the early years of the freedom movement, most nationalist leaders in India were convinced that the absence of a proper nation state and proper nationalist sentiments were major lacunae in Indian society and indices of its backwardness. Yet, by the 1920s, some ambivalence towards the idea of a monocultural nation state and towards nationalism itself had appeared within the Indian freedom movement. Nandy recounts the story of one such dissenter, by analysing Tagore's political novels (all of them available in English translation), his major writings on nationalism, and his complex relationship with his 'double' Brahmabandhav Upadhyay. He also touches upon similar ambivalences in two other nationalist thinkers, to show that Tagore's dissent was not idiosyncratic. Though it deals with Indian self-constructions, the insights the essay offers into the working of a political idea are of universal significance especially in this period of political upheaval and questioning.