Rabindranath Tagore: A Sectarian or a Cosmopolitan Writer?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Polymath and ‘poet-emperor’ Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize (1913), experienced a unique blend of vilification and acclaim throughout his life. However, some critics profess that all controversies surrounding the poet ceased in his native Bengal after his death, where he is now lionised as a demigod and cherished ubiquitously and unequivocally. In this article, I first refute this assertion by illustrating how Tagore has come under attack from several conservative Muslim critics and internet trolls since his death, accusing him of Hindu chauvinism and hostility towards Muslims. I then respond to these attacks by arguing with examples from Tagore’s poems, fiction, essays, interviews, letters, and lectures that he was not a sectarian writer but a proponent of cultural and religious pluralism and a cosmopolitan who believed not just in Hindu–Muslim unity but in the solidarity and harmony of all human races, nations, and religions, in the spirit of mutual goodwill, empathy, fellowship, and fraternity. Finally, I argue why Tagore rejected political and economic forms of cosmopolitanism in favour of a spiritual and cultural one, and how his outlook could be an antidote to the proliferating racially charged, turbulent, ‘tribal’, populist politics, and various forms of virulent nationalisms.