ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Tagore’s locus standi vis-à-vis the various concepts of colonial transaction and briefly reviews purvapaksha, the main currents within postcolonial thought, with special reference to four central figures in the ‘culture of résistance’: James Connolly, Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and Edward Said. Cultural identity remains a strong ground for resistance to the political or commercial hegemony of forces ranged against pluralism. Postcolonialism has come to be accepted as a broad-based thought process containing within it an amazing variety of experience, with no essential ‘political disjunction’ between anti-colonialism and postcolonialism. Most theories of postcolonialism originated in the West, but were modified by the experience of anti-colonial movements on three continents: Latin America, Africa and Asia. Rural reconstruction forms a major component in Tagore’s vision of national regeneration. In ‘City and Village’, he details in his inimitable style the neglect of villages because of rapid urbanisation, and the decay in values that the village sustained.
