ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an investigation of Tagore’s diatribe on nationalism. It illustrates why Tagore was so outraged by the idea of nationalism and why he spurned it as a “hideously profane cult.” The essay further compares Tagore’s vision of nationalism with that of his most outstanding contemporary and political counterpart in India, Mahatma Gandhi, as well as with several prominent postcolonial critics of nationalism such as Benedict Anderson and Leela Gandhi. Moreover, the essay explores Tagore’s alternative vision of creating a global society or a commonwealth of nations in which and every nation would “keep alight its own lamp of mind as its part of the illumination of the world.”
