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Agey George (140038)

Miss. Sharon Pillai

BA English Honours 1

October 9, 2014

Discuss Ghare Baire as a Critique of Extremist and Expedient Nationalism.

Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861, a period during which the
nationalist movement in India against the British rule was crystallising and
gaining momentum. In 1857, only four years before the poet was born, the
first military uprising for self-rule broke out in India. In 1905, the
Swadeshi movement started on Tagores doorstep, as a response to the
British policy of partitioning Bengal. (2)

Ghare Baire is a critique of the extremist and expedient nature of nationalism by Indias
incandescent writer and Asias first Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).
Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for
the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I
live (quoted. in Sen 86). Tagore denounced patriotism that, like religious formalism, breeds
sectarian arrogance, mutual misunderstanding and a spirit of persecution (5).
In a letter to C.F. Andres, written from New York, he explained, This is the ugliest side of
patriotism. For in small minds, patriotism dissociates itself from the higher ideal of humanity. It
becomes the magnification of self, on a stupendous scale magnifying our vulgarity, cruelty,
greed; dethroning God, to put up this bloated self in its place (5).

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This anti-nationalistic sentiment as quoted by Mohammad A. Quayum ...that nationalism is a

source of war and carnage; death and destruction, rather than a concept encouraging a more
united vision of the country or the world remains at the heart of Tagores imagination.. in
most of his writings, including this novel, but yet the utter contradiction occurs, as Tagore
himself was highly patriotic and penned 'his' notions about a patriotic nationalist through his
characters, like the protagonist Nikhilesh (Home and The World) who championed the doctrine
of non-violence well before Gandhi , and places humanity above the limitations induced by
nationalism, reduced to an incomplete, monolithic and unipolar ideology (2) .

The Home and The World tries to deal with three distinctive ideologies about nationalism,
through the characterizations of the three main protagonists.
Nikhilesh, an idealistic landowner, is patriotic but wouldnt place nation above truth or
conscience, whereas Sandip, supports extreme nationalism, and believes that if he wants
something, he must struggle for it, even if he has to force others. The two modernists, as change
harbingers, present a fundamental opposition between the two contesting ideologies. As the two
men negotiate the demands of the nationalist project through different means to accomplish
the common end. (7)

The story unfolds as Bimala, a traditional "pativatra" who worships her husband [Nikhilesh] and
wants to be no where except in her home, must choose between the two men and their respective
visions.
Bimala is portrayed with a physiological and psychological resemblance of the nation (3) to
represent the dilemmatic view on nationalism (3) and this signifies the crossroad of changes in
fate of the entire nation in that era.

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Throughout the narrative Tagore also identifies several of those "emblems of nationalism:
bonfires; the image of Bengal or India as a woman and a goddess; and most frequently of all, the
phrase Bande Mataram (1), to portray the dangers of such iconography.
Gradually, we find her [Bimala] obsessively drawn towards Sandip who, with his flamboyance
and jingoistic rhetoric appeals to her own sense of patriotism.(1)
Captivated by Sandips magnificent and dominating persona-an ambitious leader, capable of
gathering large crowds, hypnotizing the masses with powerful speeches and using phrase "Bande
Mataram" with deep sense of patriotic passion. She too, blinded by the impulsive passion
becomes willing to do anything for this noble cause, including violently protesting, forcing the
poor traders to stop dealing with foreign good and burning them up in bonfires and even stealing
her husbands money.

Tagore here, conducts a multidimensional analysis; firstly, of the citizens who lacked a fairly
incisive political understanding of the movement, but are drawn to it like flies to flame merely
excited by the desire of basking in the glory of being a patriot and an insensate love for tyranny,
instead of bailing the poor out of their pitiable condition, they worsened their condition by
forcing the poison of patriotism down their throat (8), all in the name of the love for the
nation.
Sandip argues that True patriotism will never be roused in our countrymen unless they can
visualise the motherland. make a goddess of her [India] (6).
Tagore vehemently opposes the idea of turning the nation into a goddess for it was a
superfluous deification of nation. An insidious act of invoking the nation as visual image, that
can only appeal to the minds of the Hindus, ignoring Muslim population, goes to illustrate the

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exclusivist and sectarian nature of the movement." (1) This precise harm is also caused by of the
over-use of Bande Mataram as it dominates over any other forms of expression, completely
shutting out the possibility of any other point of view.

Tagore captures the paradoxes of the Swadeshi movement and in turn nationalism, as he brings
numerous loopholes into the spot light. He points out these hidden pitfalls of the nationalist
movements, created by overzealous tendencies of the apparent public heroes who become so
unscrupulous that they do not hesitate to abuse the movement for personal and political gain (1).
gradually becoming self-obsessed and vainglorious in their cause, losing sight of their
dharma of dispassionate, disinterested action (as advised by Krishna to Arjuna in The Bhagavad
Gita), and use violence as a fetish for personal gain; thus their early optimism is replaced later by
a sense of nada. (2)
Nikhilesh acts as Tagores mouthpiece and brings out a lot of his own views in the matter. The
reasons cited for such a remark is the striking similarity between real life Tagore and the
fictitious character of Nikhilesh, both the benevolent landlords tried to establish alternate
economies to help the poor, did not support the idea of a divided nation and destruction in the
name of the Swadeshi (8)
Nikhilesh does not use the force of his will unlike Sandip, even though he has the power to do
that as he thinks that it violates human rights and human. Tagore also uses Nikhilesh to make the
readers aware of the perils of nationalist chauvinism, which prompts oneself to declare himself
as an Indian first, a citizen of the world second, which would then lead to other corollaries
invoking caste and creed and so on, also the heartless practice of denouncing commodities
(even people like Mrs.Gilby as English commodities) simplistically as foreign is in fact the

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intolerance towards the countrys pluralism and multiplicity. (8) This explains Nikhileshs
rejection of the extreme nationalism.
Nikhilesh calls into question both the constructed aspect of nationalism, shamelessly
overemphasizing commercial and political aspects, at the expense of mans morality, which
stifles the innate and instinctive human conscience.
But like Nikhilesh, Tagore too had a hard time, convincing his ideas to people and this attempt
on Tagores part earned him the flak of the critics and the Bengali bhadralok readers who
branded the Nobel laureate as an anti-Nationalist, a traitor and an ally of the British. (3)
Yet, Home and The World stands on Tagores hopes that people will eventually open their eyes
to reconsider extreme nationalism, just as Bimala realizes that her devotion to Sandip is not
appropriate since, Nikhileshs morality was vastly superior to Sandips empty sloganmongering, which could only arouse passions (2). Yet, Bimalas and Nikhileshs fate is not
known, this is clever representation of Tagores anxiety and skepticism towards the future of
India.
The novel dramatises how exploitation, violence and killing become ritual acts when the
individual sacrifices his self to an abstraction, and nationalism is put on a pedestal, sacrificing
righteousness and conscience. (2)
Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nationworship, is the goal of human history. Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism

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Works Cited

(1)Tagore, Rabindranath. Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, University Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1997
(2)The Home and the World: A critique of Nationalism and the Swadeshi,
http://www.sgtbkhalsadu.ac.in/colleges/tutorial/112703052009120709.pdf.
(3) Aikant, Satish C. "Reading Tagore: Seductions and Perils of Nationalism" Asiatic, Vol. 4,
No. 1, June 2010
(4) Tagore, Rabindranath. The Home and the World; translated by Surendranath Tagore. All
references to the text are from this edition.
(5) Quayum, Mohammad A. Rabindranath Tagores Critique of Nationalism Imagining One
World:
(6) Riza Sovia Nur Priandhita, Inayatul Fariha The Representation of Indian Nationalism in
Rabindranath Tagores The Home and The World State University of Malang
(7) Sen, Amartya. Tagore and His India. Ed. Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein. India: A
Mosaic. New York
(8) Tagore Dualistic Modernity and the Illegitimacy of Nationalism in Tagore's The Home and
the World;V Wadhawan - the-criterion.com