ABSTRACT
Rabindranath Tagore was passionately committed to the ideal of the interaction of cultures, both from a normative conviction that universal Truth could only be revealed through the comparative study of cultures, and from a historical appreciation of the inescapable hybridity of all cultures including those of the Indian subcontinent. His outlook was persistently non-sectarian and he viewed the social world not in terms of the “clash of civilizations” but as the product of a confluence of cultures. It is this belief in interaction of cultures that led him to reject nationalism and espouse a cosmopolitan worldview. This chapter examines Tagore’s cosmopolitan weltanschauung which espouses a secular ethic breaking away from the social codes inflicted by religious and parochial prejudice.
