These have offered us problems and claimed their solutions from us, the penalty of non-fulfilment being death or degradation. It is superficial enough to think that all to-morrows are merely to-days with the repeated additions of twenty-four hours. And these shoes are the government by the Nation, - it is tight, it regulates our steps with a closed up system, within which our feet have only the slightest liberty to make their own adjustments. What is this Nation? Whenever Power removes all checks from its path to make its career easy, it triumphantly rides into its ultimate crash of death. If his nature were not as complex as it is, if it were as simple as that of a pack of hungry wolves, then, by this time, those hordes of marauders would have overrun the whole earth. But I am anticipating. Because success is the object and justification of a machine, while goodness only is the end and purpose of man. The book compiled here includes three lectures by Tagore - "Nationalism in the West", "Nationalism in Japan" and the third and final - "Nationalism in India". Every sound of footstep, every rustle of movement in the neighbourhood, sends a thrill of terror all around. The moral man remains behind, because it has to deal with the whole reality, not merely with the law of things, which is impersonal and therefore abstract. The nature of the man under the grip of nation and nationalism, Tagore describes as commercial rather than a moral. It is social. She has all along been starving the life of the personal man into that of the professional. I do not believe in an exclusive political interest. The easiest solution that they could think of was to organize their whole population, men, women, and children, into bands of robbers. I ask you what disaster has there ever been in the history of man, in its darkest period, like this terrible disaster of the Nation fixing its fangs deep into the naked flesh of the world, taking permanent precautions against its natural relaxation? The West owes its period of discipline to the moral development undertaken in medieval Europe. And now that it has come into existence, why do you not feel in your heart of hearts a pure feeling of gladness and say that it is good? But what happens in a Nation is that man’s satisfaction of needs gives him more space and time and in the progress of power, man detaches from humanity, overtaking the slow timers and so, the moral man gets behind as it has to deal with the whole of humanity and not only the impersonal part. This reign of law in our present Government in India has established order in this vast land inhabited by peoples different in their races and customs. I have a deep love and a great respect for the British race as human beings. Only because Japan had been able to resist the dominance of this Western Nation could she acquire the benefit of the Western Civilization in fullest measure. But will you never be called to answer for organizing the instincts of self-aggrandizement of whole peoples into perfection, and calling it good? London: Macmillan and Co., LTD. 1917. . Their service is like the service in a hotel, where it is elaborate, but the host is absent; it is more convenient than hospitable. According to Tagore, nationalism was the root of violence. The first is of the difference between a hand-loom and a power-loom. They have organized their power till they are not only reasonably free from the tyranny of Nature and human neighbours, but have a surplus of it left in their hands to employ against others. The answer is, that the West has been systematically petrifying her moral nature in order to lay a solid foundation for her gigantic abstractions of efficiency. Have you not seen, since the commencement of the existence of the Nation, that the dread of it has been the one goblin-dread with which the whole world has been trembling? Why should this be a necessity? As a result, the suspicion of man for man stings all the limbs of this civilization like the hairs of the nettle. But her thrones were not her concern. While the small feeding bottle of our education is nearly dry, and sanitation sucks its own thumb in despair, the military organization, the magisterial offices, the police, the Criminal Investigation Department, the secret spy system, attain to an abnormal girth in their waists, occupying every inch of our country. This true realization pertains to the spiritual aspect as the history of India, of social life and attainment of spiritual ideas. They passed over her head like clouds, now tinged with purple gorgeousness, now black with the threat of thunder. OUR REAL PROBLEM in India is not political. Solemn pledges become a farce, - laughable for their very solemnity. This chapter presents an excerpt from Rabindranath Tagore's 1917 essay “Nationalism in India,” in which he considers the specific challenges faced by India in developing a national self-consciousness as well as the need for that consciousness to be grounded in Indian cultural sensibilities. Her mission has been like that of a hostess to provide proper accommodation to her numerous guests whose habits and requirements are different from one another. Coming back to the West Nation, this abstract being is the one ruling India in a way which is cold and unattached. He was a prolific writer; his works include poems, novels, plays, short stories, essays and songs. The nation's bagpipe of righteous indignation has so often changed its tune according to the variation of time and to the altered groupings of the alliances of diplomacy, that it can be enjoyed with amusement as the variety performance of the political music hall. And India has been trying to accomplish her task through social regulation of differences, on the one hand, and the spiritual recognition of unity, on the other. But we feel that our task is not yet done. Society as such has no ulterior purpose. Punishments are meted out to keep in check order and due to suspicion of any rational or rebellious thinker. It was not a mere drift over her surface of life, - drift of cavalry and foot soldiers, richly caparisoned elephants, white tents and canopies, strings of patient camels bearing the loads of royalty, bands of kettledrums and flutes, marble domes of mosques, palaces and tombs, like the bubbles of the foaming wine of extravagance; stories of treachery and loyal devotion, of changes of fortune, of dramatic surprises of fate. As such, he respects the Western people but not the West Nation. The protection of law is not only a boon, but it is a valuable lesson to us. It is teaching us the discipline which is necessary for the stability of civilization and continuity of progress. We, on our side, are individuals with living sensibilities. Then will come to an end the one-sided dominance which is galling. It has evolved a perfect organization of power but not spiritual idealism. Greatest anesthetic ” Modernism in the constructive work of social cooperation these machines will into! 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