Rabindranth Tagore - Excerpts from his essay "Nationalism"

Rabindranth tagore is a polestar in Indian literature. His intellectual contributions to the world are still relevant today.

Let us look at some thoughts of Gurudev Rabindranth Tagore. These are excerpts from his work 'Nationalism'

Free your mind

• An automobile does not create freedom of movement, because it is a mere machine. When I myself am free I can use the automobile for the purpose of my freedom.

• When you borrow things that do not belong to your life, they only serve to crush your life.

• It is a sign of laziness and impotency to accept conditions imposed upon us by others who have other ideals than ours.

• When our knowledge is vague we are apt to accuse of vagueness our object of knowledge itself.

• You can borrow knowledge from others, but you cannot borrow temperament.

• It is easy to be unfair in one's judgment when one is faced with human miseries,—and pessimism is the result of building theories while the mind is suffering.

• The living organism does not allow itself to grow into its food, it changes its food into its own body. And only thus can it grow strong and not by mere accumulation, or by giving up its personal identity.

• But he says, "You do not make any progress, there is no movement in you." I ask him, "How do you know it? You have to judge progress according to its aim. A railway train makes its progress towards the terminus station,—it is movement.But a full-grown tree has no definite movement of that kind, its progress is the inward progress of life. It lives, with its aspiration towards light tingling in its leaves and creeping in its silent sap."

Modernity

True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste.

• A mere knowledge of things can be had in a short enough time, but their spirit can only be acquired by centuries of training and self-control.

• You can never coerce nature into your narrow limits of convenience without paying one day very dearly for it.

• When he, in his eagerness for power, multiplies his weapons at the cost of his own soul, then it is he who is in even greater danger than his enemies.

Nationalism

• This political civilization is scientific, not human. It is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling this patriotism.

• It is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness.