Reviewing Tagore’s Project of Cultural Synthesis of East and West: A Study of Tagore’s Essays on Nationalism

Abstract

This paper looks into Rabindranath Tagore’s profound vision of a cultural synthesis between the East and the West, challenging Rudyard Kipling’s postulation that "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." (“The Ballad of East and West”), which is achieved through a critical study of the essays on “Nationalism in the West,” “Nationalism in Japan,” and “Nationalism in India.” The study highlights Tagore's firm postulation that the West, despite its grim Western imperialism and its brute materialism, has much to offer through its intellectual achievements, enlightenment, scientific spirit, love of justice, and great-hearted men (Tagore 17), and so on. and to learn from the East to refine the mechanical, materialistic, aggressive, and "soulless" (16) "mechanical organisation " (43), and on the opposite side, the East, with its rich spiritual heritage, has much to offer and learn, asserting that East and West are "complementary" (15) and in search of each other. The article’s general conclusive concern is to show Tagore’s call for a harmonious “common crusade” (The Essential Tagore 128) as a vital and visionary remedy to foster universal humanism for contemporary global conflicts and a pragmatic response to the divisive and destructive tendencies of exclusionary nationalisms.