Socio-Political Thought of Rabindranath Tagore: A Universalist Voice in the Nationalist Context

This book is a political biography of Rabindranath Tagore. It identifies the principal threads in Tagore’s ideational universe and discusses them with reference to his written treatises. The book looks at the issues that made Tagore a thinker of visions and were complementary to the uplift of humanity regardless of race, religion and ethnicity. According to Tagore, religion, caste and gender were the major deterrents to the socio-cultural uniformity of contemporary India. He championed an ideational vision castigating those socio-cultural practices which impaired the coming together of human beings. The book also analyses his debate with Gandhi and the contestations around ideas of nation, industrialism and colonial exploitation.

An important addition to the study of Tagore’s politico-ideological views, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, political science, literature, nationalism, sociology and South Asian studies.

Bidyut Chakrabarty was a former Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal. Before he was appointed Vice Chancellor of Visva-Bharati in 2018, he served the department of Political Science, University of Delhi for more than three decades. He has published in many areas in Political Science.