Among the Indian luminaries of the first half of the 20th Century, well-known in the East as well as the West, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913), was arguably the most ‘gifted’ personality. An ‘ambassador’ of Indian culture to the West, Tagore also wrote voluminous essays and letters on socio-political issues—engaged himself in various protests against the raj; as a pacifist in international arena; and also as a polemical writer.

It is not an easy task to carve out Tagore’s Political Philosophy from an ocean-like and multifaceted works of the poet. It is more difficult to draw a coherent and cohesive position/perspective of the poet on various related issues like justice, gender, ecology, community development and so on. Even when his ideas on a particular phenomenon were very fluid, Tagore always tried to evaluate them in order to justify his standpoint. And the axes that helped him to judge/evaluate an event/issue/phenomenon were twofold: Satya/Truth and Sundara/Beauty, which can also be understood as Ethics and Aesthetics. These axes formed Tagore’s axiology of weighing and evaluating all the social phenomena around him, including politics.

The present book attempts to revisit Tagore’s opinion and standpoints on these constituent elements of politics from the stance of this marker—axiology, so that many well-known aspects of his thought may be seen in a different light.

The book also includes a long Tagore-Einstein conversation and a longish dialogue with H G Wells; his creative writings––poems, fictions, plays and ‘personal’ letters—along with his direct political discourses to understand his Political Thought in a more comprehensive way. Moreover, some of his lesser known articles in English and some relevant documents have been compiled in the Appendix of the book.

Sibaji Pratim Basu teaches Political Science as Professor at Vidyasagar University (West Bengal, India) and has a long teaching and research experience. Formerly the Vice-Chancellor of Vidyasagar University, some of his monographs and edited books include: The Poet and the Mahatma: Engagement with Nationalism and Internationalism, The Fleeing People of South Asia: Selections from Refugee Watch, Politics in Hunger Regime: Essays on the Right to Food in West Bengal, Forced Migration & Media-Mirrors, and Populism.

Basu is also a known political commentator, contributing to a large number of op-ed articles to Anandabazar Patrika, the highest circulating Bengali daily and also in Desh, a leading Bengali literary fortnightly along with other Bengali journals and books.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

The Poet and His Axiology

Contours of Political Thought

Axiology of Justice and the Question of Rural Reconstruction

Axiology of Ecology

Axiology of Gender

Axiology of Nationalism

Nationalism in the Gandhi Age

Axiology of Internationalism

Appendix

Index

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