Work · South Asian & Tibetan Philosophy
Nationalism
Lectures given in Japan and the United States: the nation as an organisation of power and greed that devours the moral life of peoples.
Introduction
Tagore, who had received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, gave these lectures during a tour of Japan and the United States in 1916–17; they appeared in 1917 as three essays, “Nationalism in the West”, “Nationalism in Japan” and “Nationalism in India”. He distinguishes the nation, a mechanical organisation of a people for power and profit, from society, the natural and moral life of a people. He warns Japan against imitating Western nationalism and argues that India’s central problem is not political but social, above all caste. Delivered during the First World War, the lectures met with criticism in Japan and the United States as well as among Indian nationalists.
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