Rabindranath Tagore and Critique of Critiques

Tagore’s critique is an expansion of India’s argumentative tradition. While critiquing a phenomenon, he engaged himself with analytically dissecting the dominant, and also, derivative discourses which were at variance with what he upheld in consonance with his exclusive ideational vision. A careful analysis of his innovative essays and creative literary texts reveals that he attributed India’s civilizational decline to (a) the hiatus between the narrow governing design of the rulers and (b) the feeble challenges to the divisive socio-cultural practices permanently partitioning humanity in India. His creative writings are testimony to his concerted endeavour to meaningfully address these issues.

By drawing on Upanishads, in particular, Tagore discharged a historical function since his initiative resulted in a resurgence of interests on those ideas which were, so far, dismissed as archaic and irrelevant. Contrary to such a perception, the bard reinforced those ideas by showing that they continued to be pertinent in dealing with inter-personal relationships even when concerted attempts were made to champion the derivative Western discourses. In so far as his conceptual tapestry is concerned, Tagore was perhaps one of those innovative thinkers who privileged indigenous source of knowledge so long as it was complementary to the ideational goal he espoused.

This book is a thorough study of the ideas which Tagore articulated to develop his own distinctive ideational vision.

Author Biography

Professor Bidyut Chakrabarty taught in the department of Political Science, University of Delhi for nearly three decades. He served Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan as its Vice Chancellor for five years (2018-2023).