ABSTRACT
In Gora modernity is recontextualized in relation to nationalism. With Gora, Ghare Baire and Char Adhyay, Tagore introduced a new kind of novel in Bengal, the novel of ideas, imbricated in contemporary politics. He had before him the example of Bankimchandra Chatterjee's Anandamath. Yet he moved beyond Bankim's nationalist rhetoric to create a modern reinterpretation of the limits of nationalism. Saratchandra Chattopadhyay's Pather Daabi and Tarashankar Bandopadhyay's Chaitali Ghurni were the only two other important novels in the genre of the novel of ideas to appear between 1910 and 1934. Gora's confrontation with the British magistrate and his subsequent imprisonment, for instance, express the mood of the time when the novel was composed, rather than that of the late nineteenth century, when the action is ostensibly set. The method of Gora is fundamentally dialogic. The text vibrates with social and political tensions.
