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A Note on Political Appropriation of Tagore

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A Note on the Political Appropriation of Tagore

Charvak

Introduction

Apart from connecting the landmass and establishing communication of the people through
railroads, newspapers and telegraph, the other important footprint that the British colonizers
had inflected upon the process of birth of modern India was the influence of their European
nationalism through their western education and media. For many decades, this influence was
considered to have a cardinal contribution in shaping Indian nationalism.1

Dadabhai Naoroji hinted about this fallout of British education in India as early as 1901, when
he had said that: ‘Formerly there was not a common language, no common vehicle of thought.
But now English was the common language. All Indians now understand one another and
freely interchange their ideas and views as to whether their common country has one hope,
one fear, one aim, and one future.’2

Acknowledging the indebtedness of Indian nationalism to the British-built railroads, Lala

Lajpat Rai said that the colonial masters had economically and financially contributed to the
unifying of India and to the growth of Indian national consciousness; they had broken down
social barriers, facilitated travel, and thereby aided social reform and broadened the outlook of
the Indian people.3

M. N. Roy wrote in 1922 that the British government through its educational policy created
an intellectual class, trained in modern political thought, and brought forth the leaders of
Indian nationalism, and their appearance laid the basis for the idea of the political nationality
of the Indian people.4 P.P. Pillai, however, noted that the building of railroads tended to unite
the country into an economic whole, with the result that India ceased to remain a
‘geographical expression’.5

The academic discourse on nationality had a colonial hangover that continued for decades
after India’s independence which prompted the discourse to analyse ‘Indian nationalism’
predominantly as an imported or induced or derived construct from Europe. During the recent
decades, it has been however established that the nationalism of Asia and Africa was not one
of derivative in nature. To mention at least one instance: we may refer that instead of
accepting it as a version of European concept of nationalism, Partha Chatterjee6 argued that
Asian and African nationalism were based on difference, not on derivation.

1
In difference with its European version of that period, Indian nationalism in the twentieth
century needed a form of identity and ideology that was to be based on inclusivism and
universal unifying principles, instead of the segmentation of traditional society. There were
certain contradictions and scepticisms towards this idea of nationalism. One of the major
longstanding debates on this was on the question of India's unmanageable diversity and the
difficulty it constituted for a modern nation-state.7

There is no doubt that Tagore, apart from Mahatma Gandhi, Baba Saheb Bhim Rao
Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru and others, is one of the key foundational thinkers behind
the ideological construct of the modern nation of India. In our regular sweeping observations
on almost every occasion, we never fail to regard Tagore as one of the ‘father figures’ of the
nation. Despite that, it is perhaps an interesting as well as strange matter that even today,
political parties ignore Tagore in their political approach and policies they adopt. This has
brought forth the scope of this paper.

In the Indian Parliament and outside, most of the political parties do swear by Nehru, Gandhi,
and depending upon which party it is, also by Ambedkar (or Savarkar at present)! But Tagore
is referred to only occasionally, that too, superficially for a literary quote or two here and
there (one such most frequently and internationally quoted lines being ‘Where the head is held
high …’). We have parties claiming that they follow Gandhi and Nehru by heart, overriding
their dichotomy on many important issues. We have parties following Ambedkar. But we
have no political entity even pretending to take lessons of politics from Tagore.

In this article, we shall attempt to appropriate Tagore for deriving a politics at a higher level
than that of the usual neglect through construction of a selective narrative of some of his
activities and thought from available literature for forwarding a political scheme of Tagore –
from memoirs and writings of others on Tagore on such issues which may constitute the body
of Tagore’s politics.

In the past there was an infantile snobbery of neglecting Tagore’s political thought with the
excuse of half of a logic that he was the son of a zamindar, and a zamindar himself –
Rabindranath Tagore has written quite a number of articles on rural reconstruction, and had a
particular educational experimentation of his own in Sriniketan and Santiniketan which reflect
his socio-political thought as well. That constitutes all about Tagore’s politics.

The objective of this paper is to present some more related facts connecting those within the
realm of Tagorean politics, and by putting together the two apparently unconnected political
postures of Tagore, to forge a political perspective from his actions and policies – thus
appropriating Tagore for politics.

2
A possible distinction of the politics of Tagore and his writings may be noted here. When we
say appropriation of Tagore, we are particularly referring to his numerous writings from
where his politics can be derived. In this paper, we would try to focus on his personal
activities in that sphere which should first be explored to understand the strength of his
political thought. The background of Tagore’s political thought and praxis, as is being
presented here, can only be a starting point to analyse his writings and to appropriate him for
politics.

Humanity in the core of political thought:

The core idea in the ideology of Tagore is Humanity. This was the touch-stone he was
searching everywhere, including his concept of ‘international mind’ to even in his relatively
short-lived political practice of the concept of ‘nationalism’. No wonder in the course of a
conversation with Romain Rolland, Tagore said:

It is curious to note how India had furnished probably the first internationally minded
man of the nineteenth century. I mean Raja Ram Mohan Roy; he had a passion for
truth…He realized that a bond of spiritual unity links the whole of mankind and that it
is the purpose of religion to reach down to that fundamental unity of human
relationship, of human efforts and achievements. 8

Nehru, after narrating this, went on to say, what he said about Ram Mohan Roy applies to
Tagore himself:

“For all his Indian-ness, he was essentially a person of international mould and thinking.
Nationalism is sometimes apt to become a narrowing creed. Tagore helped, to some
extent, to break these barriers and yet he believed firmly in a people growing from their
own soil and according to their own genius.”9

Nehru was writing this introduction to Tagore’s Centenary volume in 1961— even a decade
and half after India attained political freedom in 1947. This fact itself says volumes on the
importance of Tagore’s thought as foundational basis of Indian nationalism when Nehru,
another pioneer of Indian nationalism, himself quotes Tagore as above, and then further goes
on to quote Tagore:

How to be free from arrogant nationalism is today the chief lesson to be learnt.
Tomorrow’s history will begin with a chapter on internationalism, and we shall be unfit
for tomorrow if we retain any manners, customs or habits of thought that are contrary to
universalism. There is, I know, such a thing as national pride, but I earnestly hope that it
never makes me forget the best efforts of our Indian sages were directed to the abolition
of disunity.10
3
Thereafter, Nehru points out that both Tagore and Gandhi were against the earlier politics in
India of praying and petitioning.

“I try to make my countrymen see that man doesn’t have to beg for his rights, he must
create them for himself. Man lives by his inner nature and there he is his own master.
To depend on gains from outside is to hurt one’s true self. The denial of our political
rights was indeed less grievous than the shameful burden of our prayers and petitions.

I understand the fact that we must win over our country, not from some foreigner, but
from our own inertia, our indifference. If our own national endeavour holds no
intimations of a universal message in this dawn of the world’s awakening, the poverty
of our spirit will be laid piteously bare.”

It was only for three or four years in his lifetime that Tagore became visibly active—visible in
the newspaper headlines as well as in day to day politics of the land. His son Rathindranath
Tagore has recounted this episode of Tagore’s association with politics and his participation
in political movement and returning to remain aloof from day to day politics thereafter. This,
he has also conceded, had given rise to much misunderstanding among many of his
contemporaries.

When the British province of Bengal was planned to be partitioned by Lord Curzon,
Rabindranath started taking an active part in the swadeshi movement of Bengal from1904 to
1906 against that proposed partition. All his creative energy became focussed on that
movement against partition. After the proposal of partition of Bengal was made public, ‘(h)e
(Rabindranath) had led the movement forward from the front with his lectures and writings
and his patriotic songs. He emerged from his seclusion to become almost overnight the high
priest of Indian nationalism. In songs and poems and in trenchant addresses on public
platforms, he bitterly attacked Curzon’s policy of divide and rule.’ So wrote Rathindranath. 11

Patriotic songs with the connotation of Bengal as the country—for example, ‘Amar sonar
bangla, ami tomay bhalobasi…’ [I love you, my golden Bengal, for your sky and your air
always play on the harp of my heart…]—the song which later was adopted as the national
anthem of liberated Bangladesh in 1971; or the song ‘Banglar mati banglar jal’ [Let the earth
and the water, the air and the fruits of my country be…]. These are all written during this
period. Tagore also wrote a series of essays culminating in ‘Swadeshi Samaj’ in
Bangadarshan which he was editing at that time. This article is the missing link between his
activity in the political front during this particular time and his inactivity during other phases
of his life. This essay also provides the crux of his political thought.

The essay ‘Swadeshi Samaj’ was first read at a public meeting in Kolkata. ‘The thesis
presented by him was that the distinctive way of life in India had a societal basis rather than a
4
political. So, the best way to combat an alien political power would be to ignore it and to
establish a self-governing community in the villages.”12 And Tagore really tried this out even
before he had come up with this essay, and he continued with that even afterwards. That was
the mainstay of his politics.

Rathindranath wrote: ‘not content with posing a mere theory, he drew up a set of down-to-
earth rules’. In 1908, he made this public in the Presidential Address of Pabna Provincial
Conference. His call for service to the country or nation (desh) through service to the village
or rural areas was severely criticised by the press. Such criticism was quite natural because his
opinions were unheard of till that time; moreover, Tagore did not have any constituency in the
press and among the intelligentsia as there was none who was interested in reconstructing the
nationalist movement for a whole-hearted devotion to bring self-reliance to rural Bengal.

But for Tagore, humanity was the central focus of his political thought. His participation in
the swadeshi movement against partition of Bengal was only a response to a time-specific
challenge thrown by the colonial rulers. The long-term politics of Tagore was to seek
reclamation of the dignity and freedom humanity through a journey towards self-reliance of
our villages. Thereafter, he disassociated himself from the active political struggle against the
colonial rulers and devoted his energy for realization of his own political vision.

Politics of self-reliance through building bottom-up collectives: Hitaishi Sabha:

Rejected by the press and the intelligentsia, a disappointed Tagore took it up on himself to
start his political journey in the zamindari estates of their family. These were Shelidah and
Potisar as we know. For tactical reasons, he had concentrated on Potisar. Potisar was the
headquarters of Kaligram Pargana which consisted of 150,000 bighas of land—roughly 70
square miles, sixty to seventy thousand people living in those days spread in about 125
villages.

The bottom-up self-governing mechanism Rabindranath instituted had envisaged each village
having an elected head, ten such heads electing one Pradhana, and these Pradhanas again
electing five representatives called Pancha-Pradhana amongst themselves to represent the
total population of the estate. Tagore divided his Potisar estate into three zones – called
Vibhaga and each of these three Vibhagas had this set up with the three Pancha-Pradhanas
coming under a federative body named Hitaishi Sabha.

This bottom-up federative body Hitaishi Sabha also levied rent or betterment tax for carrying
out their activities and met once a year to draw up a budget and scrutinize past accounts, plan
on what to do and basically started running a development administration. Education, health
and roads were three important tasks for the Hitaishi Sabha to begin with.

5
Rathindranath wrote: ‘The money was spent through the Vibhaga organizations in
establishing and maintaining schools and dispensaries, constructing roads, filling up stagnant
pools, re-excavating tanks, and, in general, carrying out public welfare projects.’ Later on
they started judicial activities to take care of the village disputes as well.

In order to liberate the peasants from the trap of money lenders, Tagore instituted a banking
set-up to strengthen their self-governing endeavour. It was through borrowing some money
that he started Potisar Agricultural Bank. Later he deposited the money he got from Nobel
Prize to this Bank so as the annually accrued interest of that money could help the school he
had established in Santiniketan, whereas the deposit would enable the Bank to give loans to
the farmers.

Tagore thought: “If I can free only one or two villages from the bonds of ignorance and
weakness, there will be built, on a tiny scale, an ideal for the whole of India.”13 In the 1920s,
Tagore expanded his experimentations along this line in Sriniketan as well. However, the
element of decentralised bottom-up governance which could have changed the scenario was
not properly executed in that experiment.

The Tagore- Gandhi Dialogue:

The difference of approach of Tagore and Gandhi on nation building can perhaps best be read
from a dialogue of the two mentioned by Leonard Elmhirst, who had heard it from Tagore
himself.14 His position in terms of his difference of opinion with Gandhi, rather his difference
with Gandhi’s politics of quest for a Swaraj through spinning Khadi with a charka is well
exposed in this dialogue.

It starts with Gandhi recalling how Tagore led the Swadeshi movement from the front two
decades ago and then Gandhi telling him that his movement for Swaraj was the natural
culmination of Tagore’s Swadeshi movement. ‘Gurudev’ should therefore come forward to
lead this as well– that was Gandhi’s request.

While Gandhi was thus pleading with Tagore to join the nationalist struggle for Swaraj,
Tagore was told him: “the whole world is suffering from a cult of selfish and short-sighted
nationalism. India has always offered hospitality to all nations and creeds. I have come to
believe that we in India still have much to learn from the West and its science and we still
through education have to collaborate among ourselves.”

The ensuing dialogue between the two stalwarts of India (quoted here from Elmhirst’s
memoirs) continued as follows:

Gandhi: But I now already have achieved Hindu-Muslim unity, Gurudev.

6
Tagore: No. I don’t agree. You have introduced it only on the political platform,
where Muslim and Hindu happily join together to crack a whip at the British. I
have never had any love for British officialdom, but can you really say that you
have a genuine friendship with the Muslim deep in your hearts? When the British
either walk out or are driven out, what will happen then?

Gandhi: But my whole movement is based on the principle of non-violence,

Gurudev, and that is why as a poet, who believes in peace, you can enter my
movement and work for it.

Tagore: Come and look over the edge of my verandah, Gandhi-ji. Look down
there and see what your non-violent followers are upto. They have stolen cloth
from the shops in Chitpore Road, they’ve lit that bonfire in my courtyard and are
now howling around it like a lot of demented dervishes. Is that non-violence?

Tagore: We are, as you yourself know, Gandhiji, a very emotional people. Can
you keep these emotions under a strict control with your non-violent principles?
You know you can’t. Only by educating their children together for two or three
generations can you eventually overcome the violent feeling that still exists
between Hindu and Muslims.

Gandhi: “Well, Gurudev, you say you believe in education of Indians by Indians.
You can, therefore, support my movement for establishing a national system of
education. Thousands of young teachers and students are leaving the government
missionary schools and enlisting in these new schools everyday.

Tagore: Yes, and you first pick out the best of them to man your political
programme and the more stupid you allow to stay behind and open schools of a
kind that offer only a travesty of education and not the real thing. I don’t yet
believe in your national education plan.

India should today be inviting teachers and professors from all over the world to
come and teach in India, and also to learn from us of our own cultural heritage.
This is what I am now trying to encourage at Santiniketan.”

Gandhi: Well, Gurudev! If you can do nothing else for me, you can at least put
these young impractical bhadralog with their Calcutta degrees to shame by
getting them all sit down and spin. You can lead the whole nation and spin
yourself.

7
 Tagore: Poems I can spin, songs I can spin, but what a mess I would make,
Gandhiji, of your precious cotton!15

The symbolism of Charkha for spinning Khadi as the metaphor of self-reliance as was then
practised by Gandhi was thus not accepted by Tagore who perhaps disliked the high pitch
symbolical connotation of nation building through Swaraj, rejecting the positive aspects of
European civilization on the one hand, but more importantly, by utilizing human talent and
energy in a way that Tagore did not approve. Instead of spending more energy on political
agitation, Tagore wanted to put that on expansion of education and self-empowerment of
villages in a real sense through bottom up planning and initiative. He was strongly against the
“cult of selfish and short-sighted nationalism”, the world was suffering from.

Making Sense of Nationalism:

Here it becomes pertinent to consider the concept of Nationalism which is comes back again
and again in this context. Imperialism of the West and the nationalism of the colonies were
two dominant themes of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nationalism in
the colonies is identified with such consolidation of peoples’ movements which voiced
interests and grievances of the subjugated people. In case of India, some scholars have shown
that the history of nationalism was riven from within. Consequently, it now seems impossible
to organize modern Indian history around the old dichotomous notions of imperialism and
nationalism. 16 Tagore was the one who had realized this weakness of our national struggle or
the seed of so called Indian nationalism and tried to focus on that.

Therefore, to recall Tagore’s words as quoted above: ‘India still have much to learn from
the West and its science and we still through education have to collaborate among
ourselves’ to which Gandhi answers by saying: ‘But I now already have achieved Hindu-
Muslim unit, Gurudev.’ And Tagore refutes: ‘No. I don’t agree. You have introduced it
only on the political platform, where Muslim and Hindu happily join together to crack a
whip at the British. … When the British either walk out or are driven out, what will happen
then?’

Tagore had no less affection for political freedom. 17 But even then, when arguing for the right
of self-determination for India,18 he was never prepared to sacrifice humanity, truth, and
justice. He was not a believer of the Machiavellian maxims that ‘the end justifies the means’
or ‘reason of state’ must take ‘precedence, in political life, of the moral code valid between
man and man’. Tagore did never separate politics from ethics.19

When Tagore was having that dialogue with Gandhi (1921) we quoted above, he was starting
the experiments at Sriniketan. He had seen no reason therefore to divert his focus to the high
pitch political struggle which cannot ensure an ‘overall progress of the soul’ and a
8
‘transcendental realization of freedom’. His vision was that freedom cannot not be curbed by
anybody, if it comes from within. Tagore made his ideological position clear through his
numerous writings as well. When the state-institutions or state-sponsored institutions were
utterly exploitative and repressive, as we see in three of his most important plays—
Muktadhara, Raktakarabi, and Achalayatan, Tagore does not hesitate to assert the cause of
the people or the oppressed against violence. But even that assertion against violence is also
in principle non-violent, strengthened by such generation of capabilities that violence
becomes redundant.

Tagore also expressed deep love and affection for geographical location —for Bengal as well
as the Indian subcontinent— and emphasised on forging unity of people. The songs he
composed were made national anthems for three nations: India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
(the last case is arguable though, as whether it is a translation, and if so, where is the original,
or if that is just a song inspired by Tagore). Therefore, in a way, his identity was linked to the
identity of the Indian sub-continent as a whole. His idea was for unity but he was always
against closing our doors to others and stopping receiving good education from others in the
name of nationalism. In his scheme of self-reliance, ‘samaj’ (society) was given centrality,
unlike the European model of state-centric civilization.

After the First World War, particularly, from 1921 onwards, existence of a communalism of
subterranean nature became clearer than ever before. Tagore had discerned this trait of
politics even bitterly and had taken recluse in his scheme of service to humanity. After the
First World War, arguably its experience brought forth Rabindranath Tagore, Romain Rolland
and Albert Einstein emerging as critics of the modern idea of nation/ nation-state. This we
have to juxtapose with what Gandhi had said in his obituary to Tagore: ‘we have not only lost
the greatest poet of the age, but an ardent nationalist who was also a humanitarian’. 20

This concept of Indian nationalism, if the politics of Tagore has to be appropriated, therefore
cannot be a unipolar, unique, linear, one-dimensional concept. Particularly since, for Tagore,
mere political freedom as understood to be the paramount state of independence in the
modern West, was merely of a secondary importance. Tagore was of the opinion that freedom
as understood in the West and which often led to conflicts, for which vigilance and aggression
may become necessary, is not at all adequate freedom: ‘political freedom does not give us
freedom when our mind is not free’.

While recognising the open texture of Tagore’s brand of nationalism, Sen has written:

‘Tagore's “dual” attitude to Nationalism—supporting its emphasis on self-respect

but rejecting its patriotism—was not an easy one to get across, even in India. His
criticism of Japan and of Britain was received with easy understanding in India,
9
 but when similar criticism was made of India and Indians, there were many
attempts to see Rabindranath as a lukewarm Indian. But Tagore remained deeply
committed to his Indian-ness, while rejecting both patriotism and the advocacy of
cultural isolation.’ 21
Ashish Nandy has made an important point on this dichotomous understanding of
nationalism, patriotism and the risk that underlies the understanding of these two in this
context. He has argued that nationalism is not sheer patriotism. It is an ideology and is
configured in human personality the way other ideologies are. It rode ‘piggyback into the
Afro-Asian world in colonial times as an adjunct of the concept of nation state’. Patriotism, he
argues, on the other hand, is a non-specific sentiment centring on a form of territoriality that
humans share with a number of other species’. This unacknowledged difference is central to
the critique of conventional nationalism by Gandhi, and the total rejection of nationalism by
Rabindranath Tagore.22 Absorbing the philosophy of Tagore, Nehru recognized that
following colonial thinking in devising Indian nationalism was a mistake. Despite their
differences, the arguments of Tagore, Gandhi, and Nehru converged somewhere to offer a
powerful refutation of the politics of replication thesis that called for a homogeneous Indian
nationalism. 23

Conclusion

Tagore’s approach was complete non-participation in the violence of power struggle—even

for political freedom. His way out to seek political freedom was based on self-empowerment
for self-reliance and economic freedom; one may say, freedom flowing out of one’s own
capabilities. Once we are capable, all shackles of dominance will wither away—that was his
view. This was evident in his experimentation with Hitaishi Sabha combined with Potisar
Agricultural Bank in short which can be termed as ‘Village planning by the villagers’.24

Instead of the electoral politics of provincial government—his choice was to bring forth
bottom up self-governing institutions which will start from self-reliance and economic
freedom and extend their activities to full-fledged self-governance including judiciary and law
and order. His political project for rural India was that cooperation was to be forged through a
bottom-up process and exploitation had to be abolished through that mechanism.

Tagore’s opinion was that once exploitation and coercion are taken care of, by enhancing
capability from within and in a bottom-up process, freedom would automatically reign. He
had held this idea of politics as dearer than any other project of so called ‘nationalism’ and
‘struggle for freedom’. Hence, any specific political appropriation of Tagore should use this
understanding as the point of departure.

10
 To conclude, we may note that the praxis of politics of Tagore was completely devoid of any
focus on power of dominance and coercion; rather it was against all power of dominance and
coercion, and therefore, very difficult, if not impossible, to be practised or imbibed within the
domain of a parliamentary politics, which revolves around the idea of domination by the
groups with proven parliamentary majority. Perhaps that is why Tagore has remained limited
to ‘quotations only’ for some occasional lip-service by our political leaders.

[Charvak aka Charbak Mukhopadhyaya does not officially use his caste denoting surname. An alumnus of Patha
Bhavan, Santiniketan, Visva Bharati, University of Calcutta and Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum
under Jawaharlal Nehru University, he had been a National Consultant on Decentralization of Planning to
UNDP-India in 1998, Consultant on Participatory Planning to Human Development Report of West Bengal
(2004), and Founder News Editor of Doordarshan News in Tripura.]

References:
1
There are many other important factors as well – including commercialization of agriculture leading to changes in the
production system and production relations – but we are not focusing on those aspects here.
2
Dadabhai Naoroji at Croyden, England, April 27, 1901, India, N.S., No. 174 (1901), p. 29.
3
Rai, England's debt to India (New York, 1916), p. 283.
4
Manabendra Roy, Indien (2d ed.; Hamburg, 1922), pp. 150-52.
5
P.P. Pillai, 1924. "Economic evolution of India," Calcutta Review, 3d ser., X, 254-93.
6
Saswat S. Das, Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha, Sandeep Sarkar. 2014. De-familiarising nationalist discourses: Performative
ironies of the normative Indian episteme. Asiatic - IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature. Vol 8, No 2
(December 2014).
7
Sudipta Kaviraj, 2000. Modernity and Politics in India, Daedalus, Vol. 129, No. 1, Multiple Modernities Pp- 137-162.
8
Jawaharlal Nehru, 1961. Introduction to A Centenary Volume - Rabindranath Tagore – 1861-1961. Sahitya Akademi.
ISBN: 81-72-01-332-9. P.-xv.
9
Jawaharlal Nehru. Ibid. P.-xv.
10
Jawaharlal Nehru. Ibid. P.-xvi.
11
Rathindranath Tagore. 1961. Father As I knew Him. A Centenary Volume - Rabindranath Tagore – 1861-1961. Sahitya
Akademi. ISBN: 81-72-01-332-9. P.-52.
12
Rathindranath Tagore. Ibid. P.52.
13
Rathindranath Tagore. Ibid. P.58.
14
Leonard Elmhirst. 1961. Personal Memories of Tagore. A Centenary Volume - Rabindranath Tagore – 1861-1961. Sahitya
Akademi. ISBN: 81-72-01-332-9. Pp.-14-15.
15
Leonard Elmhirst. Ibid. P.15.
16
Anil Seal, 1973. Imperialism and Nationalism in India, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 321-347
17
D.N. Banerjee, 1944, Rabindranath and the Cult of Nationalism, The Indian Journal of Political Science. Indian Political
Science Association, pp- 1-2
18
Rabindranath Tagore, Collected Works published by Visva Bharati. Volume 9, 125th Birth Anniversary Sulabh Edition.
Pp.649-661.
19
D.N. Banerjee, 1944, Rabindranath and the Cult of Nationalism, The Indian Journal of Political Science. Indian Political
Science Association, pp- 1-2
20
M.K.Gandhi, 1941, ‘Obituary of Tagore by Mahatma Gandhi’, 7 August 1941, in Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (ed.), The
Mahatma And The Poet, Delhi: National Book Trust, 2005, p. 216.
21
Sen, A. 1997. Foreword. In K. Dutta, & A. Robinson, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
22
Ashis Nandy, 2006. Nationalism, Genuine and Spurious: Mourning Two Early Post-Nationalist Strains, Economic and
Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 32 Pp. 3500.
23
Sudipta Kaviraj, 2000. Modernity and Politics in India, Daedalus, Vol. 129, No. 1, Multiple Modernities, Pp-153-154.
24
In 1970s, Prof. Ajit Narayan Basu of Kharagpur IIT and Surya Kanta Mishra, the then Chairperson of Midnapur Zilla
Parishad led such a decentralised planning venture in some villages of Midnapur district of West Bengal somewhat in this
line of action; In 1990s, entire KSSP and panchayats of Kerala led by M.P.Parameswaran, Prof. I.S.Gulati, and
Prof.T.M.Thomas Issac led such another state-wide process of decentralisation for bottom up planning; and in 1999-2003,
Jalpaiguri Zilla Parishad, FOSET-North Bengal Sub Centre and all the Gram Panchayats of Jalpaiguri district had
undertaken such a district-wide bottom up planning with the present author as Advisor-volunteer. The last venture was
named as Campaign for Village Planning by the Villagers. All these processes were however appropriated by the ‘state’
pretty soon and turned in to mere skill development and dole-management scheme of the Panchayats (with the help of
DFID money and expertise in the last case).

11

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