Revisiting Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of nationalism

Abstract

This article revisits Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of nationalism as well as his interventions on the theme of samaj. The claim is that contained within Tagore’s reflections on nationalism and samaj is a vision of political community that is stipulated as an alternative to the one espoused by the nation-state mode of politics. Tagore’s formulations of the possibilities within samaj suggest his commitment to normative orders grounded in a notion of relationship as a basis for social cooperation. Tagore contrasts and prioritizes the relationship-based orientation of samaj with what he calls the ‘mechanical’ emphasis of forms of community associated with the nation-state. Tagore articulated his views during the high noon of anti-colonial nationalism in India, and he offers a striking secular and modern political alternative to nationalist visions of community, which I classify as upholding a vision of societal politics. In underscoring the modern and political bases of Tagore’s critique of nationalism and his endorsement of social and political forms related to samaj, I suggest that it would be a mistake to classify Tagore’s perspective on nationalism and samaj as reflecting anti-political, or local-traditionalist, or aesthetic responses to the problems attached to national models of community.

Introduction

Analyses of Rabindranath Tagore’s reflections on nationalism have led scholars in very diverse directions. Tagore’s preoccupation with the domain of the social is well recorded.¹ However, his stance towards the domain of the political has been interpreted variously. In his Nationalism ² lectures, as well as in essays such as ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’,³ Tagore’s preoccupation with the notion of samaj (roughly translatable as the domain of the social) and his critique of state-centred models of politics led thinkers like E. P. Thompson to the view that Tagore was committed to ‘anti-politics’.⁴ Still others qualify Tagore’s proposals for alternatives to national models of politics as belonging to ‘an ethical stance that is primarily aesthetic’.⁵ Some claim him to approximate ‘philosophical anarchism;’⁶ others adduce post-colonial and postmodern shades to his thought and consider him sceptical about secular modern institutional power.⁷ Parallel to such perspectives about the place for politics in Tagore’s thought is a stream of commendable scholarly reflection on the primacy Tagore attached to the social domain, expressed in his usage of the term ‘samaj’, and to the limits imposed by modern regimes of state power on ‘the self-governing powers of the samaj’.⁸

Some scholars highlight Tagore’s views about the social domain as relevant for comprehending ‘“Indian” thinking about the social’.⁹ And I think it is a turn-of-the-twentieth century India that is being referred to here, given the clustering of Tagore with figures like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. However, little is said in such work about either the meaning of the prioritization of the social or of its implications for politics. I agree that Tagore is making a plea for the autonomy of the social.¹⁰ However, how exactly the autonomy of the social can consolidate or maintain the ‘self-governing powers of the samaj’ remains implicit.¹¹ Which functions of society does ‘modern governmentalized state power’ weaken?¹² What exactly is the problem with the homogenizing influence of modern legal-political apparatuses? In addition, what is the difference between modern governmentalized state power and ‘precolonial sovereign power’?¹³ Further, what is the importance of noting Tagore’s observation that the West differed from the East? Rochona Majumdar points out that, for Tagore, state and political power constituted the ‘epicenter of societies belonging to Western civilization’, while the ‘core of Eastern civilizations lay in society’ which ‘was made up of households … the strongest social bonds depended on the authority of parents and other elders within the family. The specific forms of social regulation in India reflected this domestic character of traditional society. But, under colonial rule this pattern of society was changing.’¹⁴

What does it mean when Tagore says sovereignty lies in returning attention to society?¹⁵ Was a cohesive social domain a requirement for generating a new nationalist order, as is implicit in the claim that Tagore is searching for sentiments of psychic unity needed by nationalism in the face of an inadequacy of social contract views of cooperation?¹⁶ In what way is cohesion an important theme for Tagore, as Rochona Majumdar seems to suggest?

The aforementioned concerns surrounding the notions of the political and the social in Tagore’s thought motivate the exercise in this article. On the one hand is a claim that Tagore advocates keeping away from politics and, on the other, is a claim that Tagore vested all his faith in the revival of samaj or the social. In this article I want to argue that Tagore’s perspective is one that accords a very important place to politics and to a conception of the political. Integrated attention to his conception of the social, alongside his commentary on nationalism, holds the key to comprehending the political nature of Tagore’s interventions. Clearly, Tagore is searching for a political alternative to communities organized as national statist orders. I will argue that Tagore espoused a sophisticated understanding of the political, which was not reducible to institutional arrangements, even though it did not exclude institutions from its purview. His trenchant, and prescient, critique of the phenomenon of nationalism, and especially of the model of administrative power that Tagore thinks ineluctably accompanies it, demonstrates what he finds wanting in conceptions of politics governed by the centrality of an administrative state.

A critical analysis of Tagore’s lectures on nationalism, his conception of samaj, and his reflections on the nature of relations between the East and the West reveals that Tagore distinguished between state and politics. In fact, Tagore’s perspective offers resources for making a distinction between two models of political membership and belonging. One model is centred on the nation-state and its predominantly deleterious consequences for the themes of individual freedom and creativity. This can be classified as the national politics model. The second model of politics is rooted in what Tagore calls the ‘social’ domain and it is much more in keeping with what he terms as the ‘ideals of humanity’.¹⁷ I classify this as the societal politics model.

Both models of politics involve the arena of state power and the domain of the social. But each is distinguishable from the other in terms of the nature of the relationship between the aforementioned arena of state power and the domain of the social, with significant implications for the types of tie between governors and the governed as well as for notions of freedom. Tagore was not suspicious of institutions. Consider, for example, his endorsement of a two-tiered leadership model in ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’ as part of his reflections on alternatives to the state-politics model. Nor was Tagore averse to the idea of rule. In fact, he interpreted anarchist positions of his time as a response to a situation when power had become ‘too abstract’, like a ‘scientific product made in the political laboratory of the Nation, through the dissolution of personal humanity’.¹⁸ However, Tagore is very sceptical of ‘organization’ and its detrimental implications for human freedom.

The main argument of this article is that Tagore’s view centres around a concern with the way a relationship-centred approach to cooperation among persons becomes displaced and disordered by a mechanically oriented approach that produces separation. I want to suggest that the core insight expressed in Tagore’s reflections on nationalism is his astute recognition of a common problem everywhere, which he posits as a struggle between mechanical and separationist forces, on the one hand, and relationship-oriented forces, on the other. Every society struggles with this dynamic between mechanical-separationist-oriented and relationship-oriented approaches to social cooperation. Both the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ have their own versions of this struggle to contend with. The problem of mechanical ordering of life is not Western in origin or location. Even before the advent of colonial modernity, Tagore identifies how Indian social forms were decaying because of an overdose of a mechanical approach to social life. Tagore describes the Indian tendency to use caste-based categorizations as a procrustean bed within which to fit all social life as an example of India’s struggle with the pathology of mechanically oriented forms of social cooperation.¹⁹ For the West, the preoccupation with national orders and the homogeneity they produced presented a site for the struggle between mechanical and relationship-oriented forms of social cooperation.

In this article I want to suggest that recognizing issues related to separation as Tagore’s primary concern holds the key to properly comprehend the conceptual core of his critical discussions of nationalism, samaj, as well as his pointed reflections about, and comparisons of, what he calls the East and the West. Much of the extant scholarship about Tagore in English notes his anti-nationalism, or his preoccupation with the social, or his reflections about the East versus the West. But it is important to go beyond these observations and ask: what integrates his critique of nationalism, his interest in samaj, and his evaluations of civilizations Western and Eastern? Here I want to add that, for Tagore, the problems associated with mechanically oriented approaches afflict both the East and the West. More than viewing him to be offering a choice between, say, nationalism and anti-nationalism, or between the East and the West, or between the domain of the social and that of the political, or any simple resolution of his position with both sides of the pairs mentioned above, I think it is important to note Tagore’s core interest in and commitment to the notion of relationship. Tagore advances a conception of political community that prioritizes relationship and offers a superior alternative to the nation-state model of political community ridden with problems of separation. Let me spell out briefly what is indicated by the term ‘relationship’ in the context of Tagore’s political thought.

Tagore recurs to the power of love and sympathy. In his understanding, human beings have historically engaged in a struggle between ‘serving their own interest’ and fighting one another, on the one hand, and combining with others to pursue the ‘common interest of all’, on the other.²⁰ While each individual has his ‘self-love’ and is goaded toward ‘sole pursuit of his self-interest’, Tagore also suggests that humans have ‘higher instincts of sympathy and mutual help’.²¹ These higher instincts, which he also calls ‘the moral power of love and vision of spiritual unity’ enable persons to cooperate with others.²² Those who lack moral power ‘must perish or live in a state of degradation. Only those peoples have survived and achieved civilization who have this spirit of co-operation strong in them.’²³ Tagore gives importance to the powers of sympathy and mutual help listed above because they can enable individuals to enact what he calls the ‘moral spirit of combination’; those ‘who are lacking in this higher moral power … cannot combine in fellowship with one another’.²⁴ For Tagore, if

armaments go on exaggerating themselves to unimaginable absurdities, and machines and storehouses envelop this fair earth with their dirt and smoke and ugliness, then it will end in a conflagration of suicide. Therefore man will have to exert all his power of love and clarity of vision to make another great moral adjustment which will comprehend the whole world of men and not merely the fractional groups of nationality.²⁵

Relationship, in the way I think is a priority for Tagore, refers to the effort to ‘combine in fellowship’ with others and to keep a ‘common interest’ in view.²⁶ A lot is involved in that. For example, to see things as a matter of common interest, or as a matter of common concern, itself requires a certain kind of individual disposition as well as an ethos of ideas and practices that can provide opportunities for combining in fellowship in that way. Tagore is interested in advancing a normative order that, at its best, would facilitate human action in accord with the ‘higher moral power’ mentioned above. At the very least, such an order would not encumber possibilities for action in that direction. A national order, with its mechanical orientation, is bound to fail on both fronts, for Tagore. Tagore uses a host of terms such as ‘freedom’, ‘spiritual’, ‘social’ to denote where his priorities for his chosen conception of normative order lie. In the detailed discussion that follows I wish to elaborate how his employment of these terms can point to his prioritization of the theme of relationship.

The article is divided into two parts. The first part, titled ‘Nationalism and national politics’ contains two sections. This part of the article outlines Tagore’s critique of nationalism and considers how that critique sheds light on key concerns for Tagore’s vision of a normative order, including attention to the problem of separation. The second section shows how Tagore traces the problems of national politics to what he considers to be the epistemological bases of Western modernity. The second part of the article is titled ‘Societal politics: Tagore’s discussion of samaj’. In this part of the article I demonstrate how Tagore’s interventions with regard to samaj contain resources for addressing the problems of national politics. The discussion in the sections of this part of the article spells out what I have classified as societal politics, which I suggest is the political model Tagore endorses over the national politics model because of how the former yields a relationship-oriented model of community and action.

A final prefatory remark is in order here. Tagore’s outline of a societal politics model is an alternative to the national politics model, and it is a non-religious one. Tagore’s discussion of nationalism is strewn with the term ‘spiritual’. But neither his critique of the nation-state nor his considerations on samaj reflect any bid to express the problem as one between religion and politics. The primary distinction for Tagore is that between the social and the political. Religious harmony was an important commitment for him, and its achievement was tied to efforts that had to be made in the social realm. In his discussion of samaj, Tagore recalls the tolerance of what he calls ‘Hindu Samaj’, and he even vests his future hopes for the achievement of unity in diversity in the resources contained in a Hindu samaj.²⁷ If anything, Tagore’s reliance on the term ‘Hindu’ may well be connected to an older understanding of religious community—a predominantly precolonial understanding—in which there was no sensibility of it ‘as a community of collective actors’.²⁸ The sensibility of a group as a community of collective actors in India, says Sudipta Kaviraj, sharpened after the encounter with colonial modernity, and the introduction of enumeration processes of the colonial state which changed not just ‘the ways of seeing communities, but ways of being communities’. The new mentalities of rule, and the context of the rise of nationalism and awareness of numerical strength of communities, produced ‘an understandable apprehension among groups who feared that they might become minorities in modern political orders’.²⁹ But, as will be demonstrated, Tagore’s emphasis on samaj does not recall Hindu samaj as a community of collective actors that wish to possess state power to reform society in a particular manner. The notions of relationship and collective belonging that he stresses with regard to samaj are expressions of a modern understanding of societal politics that is nevertheless not preoccupied with making distinctions between the religious and the secular.

Nationalism and national politics

The ‘nation of the West’ and national rule

The anti-colonial movement in India was marked by a distinctive strand of thought that associated self-rule with the search for a model of political community that was different from the standard one associated with the nation-state. M. K. Gandhi contributed to this strand, as did Rabindranath Tagore. Both these thinkers endorsed the primacy of love. Their visions of associational activity were untied to the centrality of a law-governed order and its capacity for dispensing justice. To be sure, Gandhi and Tagore differed on the extent to which modern legal and political instrumentalities were dispensable. For example, Tagore acknowledged more space for these instrumentalities with respect to their role in enabling justice than did Gandhi. Nevertheless, even for Tagore, ‘the creative force needed for true union in human society is love. Justice is only an accompaniment to it, like the beating of a tom-tom to the song.’³⁰

During his lifetime, Tagore—a poet, philosopher, musician, writer, painter, and educationist—enjoyed renown all over Asia as well as Europe not only as a Nobel laureate but also as someone who represented Asian idealism in the first half of the twentieth century.³¹ The West received him primarily as a mystic but even Tagore’s erstwhile friends (such as W. B. Yeats) eventually became disappointed by his this-worldly preoccupations, visible not least in Tagore’s trenchant critique of nationalism and the nation-state model of politics.³²

Isaiah Berlin notes that Tagore, who was faced with England, on one side, and ‘the marvelous Indian past’, on the other, chose a ‘difficult middle path, drifting neither to the Scylla of radical modernism, nor to the Charybdis of proud and gloomy tradition’.³³ Writing in the context of a growing anti-colonial national movement, Tagore advocated neither a return to traditional ways of doing things nor a need to catch up with the West through an imitative embrace of all things Western. However, as Partha Chatterjee also indicates, it would be a mistake to construe Tagore’s adherence to a middle path to suggest that he mounted a moderate critique of anti-colonial nationalism.³⁴ Rather, as is manifestly evident in Tagore’s writings on nationalism, he advanced an unyielding critique of nationalism, and the modern nation and state—phenomena that he viewed in combination.³⁵ In fact, Tagore strongly urged people in both the East and the West to abandon adherence to the doctrine of nationalism and to models of political community associated with it.

What, according to Tagore, is the phenomenon of nation? He says: ‘A nation, in the sense of the political and economic union of a people, is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose.’³⁶ Notice that Tagore does not understand nation as constituted by forms of ascriptive identification, such as religion, language, culture, and so on. Rather, as I hope will become clearer in what follows, nation, for Tagore, relates to the prioritization of a mechanical form of the organization of society. Society, prior to the advent of the form of the national state, by itself does not have an ‘ulterior purpose’. ‘It is an end in itself. It is a spontaneous self-expression of man as a social being. It is a natural regulation of human relationships, so that men can develop ideals of life in cooperation with one another.’³⁷ ‘Society as such’, when it is unrelated to nation, does have ‘a political side to it’, which, according to Tagore, ‘is only for a special purpose. It is for self-preservation. It is merely the side of power, not of human ideals.’³⁸ Further, the exercise of power for self-preservation—and this is part of what Tagore conceives as politics—was ‘restricted’ to ‘professionals’.³⁹ However:

when with the help of science and the perfecting of organization, this power begins to grow and bring in harvests of wealth, then it crosses its boundaries with amazing rapidity. For then it goads all its neighbouring societies with greed of material prosperity, and consequent mutual jealousy, and by the fear of each other’s growth into powerlessness. The time comes when it can stop no longer, for the competition grows keener, organization grows vaster, and selfishness attains supremacy. Trading upon the greed and fear of man, it occupies more and more space in society, and at last becomes its ruling force.⁴⁰

Nationalism, for Tagore, contains resources to prod a mode of rule for a bounded community devoted to the single-minded pursuit of its own interests. These interests are framed and pursued in ways that can render the very members of that community powerless. Nation, ultimately, is an institutional phenomenon ensconced within a doctrine of rule that prioritizes the fulfilment of a territorially bounded entity’s agenda of aggrandizement.⁴¹ Such an organization of a bounded society breaks up ‘the living bonds of society’ and leaves room for ‘merely mechanical organization’.⁴² The ‘organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is Nation, becomes all-powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life’.⁴³

Tagore repeatedly states that a main attribute of rule in the context of nation, or national rule as I will call it, is its grounding in a framework of mechanical organization for expedient and efficient achievement of goals of the national entity. In this context, he focuses a lot on the administrative component of the nation-state and its negative consequences for human freedom anywhere. The reliance on administrative rule works to the detriment of what Tagore calls the ‘ideals of humanity’, the contents of which are specified later in this article.⁴⁴

A significant part of Tagore’s delineation of the administrative aspects of national rule is based on his observations about the arrival of the ‘abstract being’ of the ‘Nation’ in India, thanks to colonialism.⁴⁵ Abstraction is a chief feature of modern national administrative power and he expresses grave concern that ‘[t]his abstract being, the Nation, is ruling India’.⁴⁶ Part of what makes national rule abstract is that it is ‘as little touched by the human hand as possible’.⁴⁷ He likens the remoteness of national administrative forms of rule to canned food marketed by emphasis that its packaging is not ‘touched by hand’.⁴⁸

In the contexts of colonialism, geographical remoteness contributed to the abstractness of national power. For example, the sheer physical distance between England and India was, for him, part of the reason English newspapers could neglect reportage of calamities in India ‘over areas of land sometimes larger than the British Isles’.⁴⁹ The impossibility of experiencing ‘pathos’ with regard to the plight of other people, owing to obstacles for the establishment of a fulsome sympathetic relationship between England and India, was one way in which national rule came to acquire an abstract and separationist character. Remoteness of rule could result in the infliction of heartless policies on the governed without ever touching ‘the chord of humanity’ of governors, or touching it only in a ‘most inadequately feeble manner’.⁵⁰ The infliction of such policies by human beings upon others can ‘only become possible where man is represented by an octopus of abstractions …. In this reign of nation, the governed are pursued by suspicions; and these are the suspicions of a tremendous mass of organized brain and muscle.’⁵¹ There were other contributors to the sense of abstraction, too. ‘The governors need not know our language, need not come into personal touch with us as officials; they can aid or hinder our aspirations from a disdainful distance, they can lead us on a certain path of policy and then pull us back again with the manipulation of office red tape.’⁵²

What Tagore establishes above is that unresponsive bureaucratic and technocratic modes of power can end up having little connection with or relation to the ‘living sensibilities’ of the ‘governed’.⁵³ Tagore emphasizes that he is not talking about such modes of power only in the context of colonialism. Rather, his diagnosis of the problem of national power is one that he suggests will affect the future of all humanity. In the course of his lectures on nationalism that were delivered in Japan and the United States, he says: ‘I have not come here, however, to discuss the question as it affects my own country, but as it affects the future of all humanity. It is not a question of the British government, but of government by the Nation—the Nation which is the organized self-interest of a whole people, where it is least human and least spiritual.’⁵⁴

Tagore’s worry is that an order-producing administrative system will focus too much on regulation through a ‘closed-up system’.⁵⁵ Such a system may remove some inconveniences and may score higher than previous mechanisms of rule in terms of efficiency and convenience with respect to the production of material goods. But Tagore wants to shift focus away from the celebration of a reduction in the ‘number of outside obstacles’ to a more important consequence of the ‘comparative powerlessness of the individual to cope with them’ that is set afoot by the enactment of national rule.⁵⁶

Prior to the establishment of national forms of rule, ‘the elasticity of change was great enough to encourage men of power and spirit to feel that they had their destinies in their own hands. The hope of the unexpected was never absent, and a freer play of imagination, on the part both of the governor and the governed, had its effect in the making of history.’⁵⁷ Looser, non-national, arrangements of rule did not have the consequence of narrowing down the range of freedom available to individuals to respond to inconveniences on their own. In contrast, the new ‘narrowness of freedom is an evil which is more radical, not because of its quantity but because of its nature’.⁵⁸ Quite clearly, by espousing his concern in the languages of freedom and humanity, Tagore is referring to the danger of atrophy of individuals’ powers to respond creatively to any situation.⁵⁹ This is how ‘the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost without knowing it, to make room for the political and the commercial man, the man of the limited purpose’.⁶⁰ Tagore notes a paradox here that, while the spirit of the West ‘marches under its banner of freedom, the Nation of the West forges its iron chains of organization which are the most relentless and unbreakable that have ever been manufactured in the whole history of man’.⁶¹

Evidently, Tagore bemoans two consequences of national rule: the first is a diminution of the possibilities for both imagination and hope, and the second is the withering away of non-national forms of rule containing conceptual space for both the governors and the governed to determine the outcome of things together. Tagore rues the waning room for joint efforts of the governors and the governed in the national political system. Its centralized, remote, impersonal, and abstract attributes are part of the reason for precluding the governed from playing any active role in national rule. There was no ‘dead white wall of granite blocks eternally guarding against the expression and extension of our own powers’ in the period of pre-national rule. However, national rule is characterized by a certain ‘hopelessness’ because these powers—of imagination, hope, and of a combined role in rule—‘are becoming atrophied at their very roots by the scientific process of paralysis’.⁶² And this paralysis is effected by the centralizing grip of national rule, which comes about in the following way:

For every single individual in the country of the No-Nation is completely in the grip of a whole nation—whose tireless vigilance, being the vigilance of a machine, has not the human power to overlook or to discriminate. At the least pressing of its button, the monster organization becomes all eyes, whose ugly stare of inquisitiveness cannot be avoided by a single person amongst the immense multitude of the ruled.⁶³

What is endangered everywhere is freedom and humanity, which for Tagore is constitutive of the ‘moral vitality’ of the ‘human world’.⁶⁴ Forms of rule that disempower individuals’ freedom—understood here as the capacity to respond creatively, and to participate in co-determining with their fellows the terms of social cooperation—are the subject of Tagore’s scrutiny. The structural requirement for freedom to respond creatively is a normative order that does not cramp human beings in a procrustean bed of classificatory rule motivated primarily by concerns of speed and efficiency.

Analytical knowledge versus the pursuit of reality

For Tagore, the techniques and mentalities of national power—impersonal rule and mechanical organization motivated by efficiency—impeded cooperative engagement in domestic, international, and inter-civilizational domains.⁶⁵ Tagore traces the mechanics of national power to modes of knowledge production that Tagore associated with the modern West.⁶⁶ Tagore’s views in this regard can be discerned from noting the distinct ways in which he said nature could be approached. Tagore distinguishes between approaches grounded in ‘sympathy’ and those framed by a pursuit of what he calls ‘analytical knowledge’. Sympathy, for Tagore, is a disposition expressed by engagement in a process of gradual discovery of that which is engaged. Sympathetic engagement takes time, and entails ‘training and self-control’. For example: ‘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. Dominating nature from outside is a much simpler thing than making her your own in love’s delight, which is a true work of genius.’⁶⁷ An exchange that occurs via the sympathetic mode facilitates ‘reception’; it is marked by ‘creation’ rather than ‘acquirement’.⁶⁸

Tagore associates the skill for mechanical organization as part of the ‘genius of Europe’.⁶⁹ But he also labels the kind of intellect associated with Europe’s ‘age of intellect’ and ‘science’ as ‘impersonal’.⁷⁰ The mind, for Tagore, is capable of detaching itself ‘from the personal man’ to ‘freely move in its world of thoughts’.⁷¹ This is in contrast to ‘our life and our heart’, which are ‘one with us’.⁷² Tagore indicates how the intellect can facilitate a discernment of the law of something. In addition, discernment of the law of a thing can enable mastery in that domain. On this, he says:

Our intellect is an ascetic who wears no clothes, takes no food, knows no sleep, has no wishes, feels no love or hatred or pity for human limitations, who only reasons unmoved through the vicissitudes of life. It burrows to the root of things, because it has no personal concern with the thing itself. The grammarian walks straight through all poetry and goes to the root of words without obstruction, because he is seeking not reality, but law. When he finds the law, he is able to teach people how to master words. This is a power—the power which fulfills some special usefulness, some particular need of man.⁷³

Based on the above, discernment of the law of a thing can enable mastery of it. But, in contrast to the pursuit of mastery, which can be obtained by discerning the law of a thing, is the pursuit of what Tagore classifies as ‘reality’.⁷⁴ For Tagore, the reality of something is ‘the harmony which gives to the component parts of a thing the equilibrium of the whole. You break it, and have in your hands the nomadic atoms fighting against one another, therefore unmeaning. Those who covet power try to get mastery of these aboriginal fighting elements, and through some narrow channels force them into some violent service for some particular needs of man.’⁷⁵ Tagore’s reflections on harmony clarify what is at stake when the pursuit of mastery exceeds that of reality.

It seems, then, that burrowing to the root of a thing can give thorough knowledge about it. For Tagore, the tendency to employ mastery in one sphere for fulfilling some needs is understandable. It can grant ‘the benefit of a greater range of time and space’ and allow humans to do things ‘in a shorter time’ and to occupy ‘a larger space with more thoroughness of advantage’.⁷⁶ In an unintended rejoinder to John Locke’s statements about industrious and rational uses of land, Tagore rues how advances in mastery can allow some to ‘easily outstrip those who live in a world of slower time and of space less fully occupied’.⁷⁷ Tagore says that when the power to do things in a shorter time ‘attains more and more rapidity of pace’, and when it becomes ‘a detached part of man, it soon outruns … humanity’.⁷⁸ Tagore’s point here is that when a specialized capacity of human beings outruns humanity, there is a sort of disintegration or dismemberment that occurs. The value of humanity for Tagore has to be understood in conjunction with the priority he attached to harmony and reality. ‘Moral man remains behind’ because he has ‘to deal with the whole reality, not merely with the law of things, which is impersonal and therefore abstract’.⁷⁹

It is worth continuing to elaborate the sense underlying the use of the terms ‘impersonal’ and ‘abstract’ here. As seen in the previous section, abstraction, for Tagore, relates frequently to a phenomenon produced by modes of government related to the nation. Now it also refers to a certain peeling off from human beings of their moral and social personae for the organization of material production in expedient, convenient, and efficient ways. Such peeling off is connected to methods of knowledge production. Some of these, such as the analytical method, can helpfully enable reaching the core of a particular matter, and facilitate mastery in that domain. However, on the other hand, there could be misuse of the insights and mastery gained from such methods to seek knowledge for the furtherance of a zealous and overreaching reordering of social and political relations for permitting efficiency and maximization of production.

Tagore’s reflections on nationalism and his considerations in ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’ suggest that the subjugation of different spheres—for example, those of politics and society—to the logics and requirements of material production and economic gain generate two related problems. First, a violation of the autonomy of different spheres occurs when the purposes of one domain begin to dominate and determine the functioning of other domains.⁸⁰ There is, according to Tagore, a loss of harmony implicit in the suppression of different domains to a single set of purposes.⁸¹ This loss of harmony is the second problem. It comes to the fore both when economic motives overwhelm the normative structure of more autonomous expressions of the domains of the social and the political, and when the epistemological purchase of ‘analytical’ modes of knowledge allows the prioritization of mastery over the pursuit of reality. But when mechanically efficient and speedy fulfilment of particular needs become the predominant motive—as is the case with the ‘organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is the Nation’—then the ‘harmony of the higher social life’ is lost. Man then becomes ‘an automaton led by the power of greed’.⁸² ‘Then he can do things which, in his normal state of mind, he would be ashamed to do.’⁸³ This is part of what Tagore means when he observes how humanity is left behind. Tagore goes on to say that ‘it is the same thing with society’ when it ‘allows itself to be tuned into a perfect organization of power’. After that ‘there are few crimes it is unable to perpetrate, because success is the object and justification of a machine, while goodness only is the end and purpose of man’.⁸⁴ The ‘moral’ aspect of humanity entails, for Tagore, an engagement with ‘the whole reality, not merely with the law of things, which is impersonal and therefore abstract’.⁸⁵ Speedy and efficient attainment of success through mastery of the law of things can always only be the progress for ‘a detached part of man’, which ‘outruns’ what Tagore calls ‘complete humanity’.⁸⁶

Let me offer some concluding remarks before turning to the next part of the article. Up to now, I have attempted to show how Tagore associates separation with forms of national politics. Separation is discussed via themes of abstraction, impersonality, mechanical ordering of people and things, homogenization, and a pursuit of mastery rather than reality which, for Tagore, is opposed to harmony. Separation entails the severing of human beings from their own creative powers for generating and sustaining meaningful forms of community. Tagore highlights both the features of such separation and the epistemologies underlying it in his uniquely rich critique of nationalism. He draws on words such as ‘spiritual’, ‘whole’, and ‘harmony’ to offer a this-worldly critique of the forms of political community engendered by nationalism.

National rule ranks high on the list of dangers to the human power to respond creatively. As a form of rule, it has an analytical link with historical developments that prioritize intellect, haste, speed, and efficiency at the cost of eroding space for engagement grounded in listening and reception,⁸⁷ both of which are crucial in determining creative response, and for the exercise of political judgement by members of a political community. The aforementioned historical developments foster hubristic and humiliating dispositions that produce domination and also fuel a widespread sense that national modes of politics alone are most appropriate for enabling social cooperation. The general assumption whilst designing the institutions of a nation-state is that they can pre-empt the dangers of individual fallibility. However, Tagore is concerned about the oversight here with respect to how these very institutions atrophy the power of individuals to act and participate in responding creatively and receptively to commonly experienced conundrums.

Contemporary political theorists have addressed some of the conundrums of nation-state models of politics, both in terms of their administrative bureaucratic implications⁸⁸ and the difference-blind nature of institutions in heterogeneous polities.⁸⁹ Tagore, however, seems to be focusing not just on institutions but (even primarily) on the background requirements of a normative order committed, for example, to giving both governors and the governed a part in determining the nature of political community. In particular, he seems to have fixed his gaze on the background requirements for the consolidation and sustenance of a demos whose constituents are not subject to forms of rule that impede the exercise of creative powers for meaningful relationship among members of a political community.⁹⁰ A notion of common belonging is a crucial requirement for meaningful relationship and participation in the co-determination of the terms of social cooperation. Cognizant of this requirement, Tagore deepens its pursuit by underscoring the importance of individual and collective dispositions for generating a sense of belonging. This sense of belonging is crucial because it enables use of the human powers of sympathy and creativity for acting in ways that register recognition of belonging to a community, and a willingness to perceive some of its issues as matters of common moral and political concern. As will become evident in Tagore’s discussion of samaj, the very sense of belonging seems to be a primary requirement for any normative order.

Openness to, and acceptance of, belonging in an enterprise with others for identifying and addressing matters of common concern are not natural dispositions. Nor is it natural for individual participants in such common projects to maintain a free and independent stance for responsiveness and creative enactment of political judgement.⁹¹ All of these have to be consciously cultivated. Some institutional forms may erode the cultivation of such disposition more than others might, and Tagore lists political orders centred on national lines to be among those corrosive forms.⁹² Thus Tagore hopes for a reversal of the dominance of the national form so ‘that man will have his new birth, in the freedom of his individuality, from the enveloping vagueness of abstraction’.⁹³

Societal politics: Tagore’s discussion of samaj

I now turn to illustrating Tagore’s conception of samaj and for this I draw mainly on his considerations in ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’. The primary point I wish to forefront is that Tagore’s critique of modern notions of rule, expressed in his critical comments on sarkar (government), is grounded in a concern about the harm it can foist on normative orders sustained by what Tagore classifies as samaj. The normative order that gets displaced by sarkar-related notions of rule is grounded in what, taking inspiration from a phrase used by Tagore, can be called ‘the powers’ of the ‘people’.⁹⁴ In other words, the claim here is that Tagore’s critique of nation, and his defence of samaj, reveal a democratic concern about the nature of relationship between governors and the governed, and among the governed themselves.

In accordance with the aforementioned remarks, the discussion in the following part of the article eschews a characterization of Tagore’s interest in samaj either as a sign of his complete rejection of nation⁹⁵ or as a plea for a return to traditional social forms best fitted for a rural or localized contexts.⁹⁶ Rather, the aim is to probe what Tagore finds interesting in samaj, and to glean insights with regard to democratic concerns that can be garnered from his comparison of nation and samaj. To put it differently, I want to elaborate how Tagore’s defence of features he associates with samaj reveals commitment to an understanding of political community and membership in which heterogeneous groups can experience a sense of belonging.

A note on the choice of texts in this article, as well as the historical context of Tagore’s interventions, is important here. This article’s critical focus on Tagore’s interventions in two different time periods—the address pertaining to samaj was first delivered by him in July 1904, and his lectures on nationalism were delivered almost a decade later, during the course of the First World War—permits identification of an analytical and normatively salient core of Tagore’s political thought, especially with regard to his vision of political community. Such identification imparts theoretical coherence to the views that Tagore advanced about different themes and across different periods of time; here in this article I demonstrate this coherence with regard to Tagore’s interventions on the themes of samaj and nationalism. As suggested in this article, the concern with forging a form of relationship among members of a political community in ways that involved ‘all’, the generation of a sense of belonging within a heterogeneously constituted whole (in the face of the alternative possibilities of separation or mechanical divisions); and the search for cooperation over conflict, bind conceptually Tagore’s reflections on samaj and nationalism.

The submission about the theoretical integrity underlying Tagore’s views in his discussions of samaj and nationalism contrasts with Sumit Sarkar’s observations about the different phases of Tagore’s involvement in the politics of his times.⁹⁷ Sarkar points out how, by the end of the nineteenth century, Indian nationalists in Bengal, Punjab, and Maharashtra were becoming impatient with the ‘moderate’ strategy of petitioning the British government for political reform in India, which they claimed reeked of ‘mendicancy’.⁹⁸ Instead, nationalists began to emphasize the need for ‘self-reliance and constructive work’, which ‘became the new slogans’. Self-reliance propelled the move toward swadeshi enterprise.⁹⁹

Sarkar notes how the main trends in the Bengal swadeshi movement were reflected in Tagore’s writings in the late nineteenth century, and in the political stances he took in the early years of the first decade of the twentieth century.¹⁰⁰ Tagore’s writings during this time consisted of an attack on the policies of the British government and ‘the overall white arrogance which lay behind them’. They were marked by a call for self-reliance or ‘atmashakti’, calls for the need to move towards forms of politics that involved the masses, and emphasis on what Sarkar calls ‘traditional’ notions of mela, as well as the ‘traditional samaj’, which was said to denote the main centre of Indian social life.¹⁰¹ The time was also marked by a kind of Hindu revivalism that exalted the Indian past,¹⁰² and attributed its putative achievement of unity in diversity to Hinduism.¹⁰³ In all of the above, Tagore’s stances reflected those of the Bengal swadeshi movement more generally. In broad terms, Sarkar draws attention to how the Bengal swadeshi movement was the immediate setting for Tagore’s reflections with regard to swadeshi samaj, articulated first as an address July 1904, and subsequently in written form in 1905.

However, after the riots of 1907, Tagore parted ways with the mainstream of the Bengal swadeshi movement.¹⁰⁴ Sarkar notes Tagore’s disappointment over the communal turn and Tagore’s subsequent split from the extremist-dominated Bengal’s swadeshi politics, and from discourses that were tradition-oriented, antimodernist, and Hindu revivalist. Sarkar indicates that Tagore withdrew from ‘active politics’ and after the retreat turned his focus mainly on constructive work in the social domain, which Sarkar describes as ‘far reaching schemes’ for ‘autonomous rural development’.¹⁰⁵ Sarkar also claims that Tagore’s writings after 1907 displayed an ‘anti-traditionalism’.¹⁰⁶

Sarkar’s close study of Tagore’s political involvement leads him to classify broadly Tagore’s political involvement and interventions up to 1907 as revivalist and those after that as ones that were marked by a more modern orientation and by a withdrawal from ‘active politics’. But the findings of this article suggest something else, which is the presence of a continuous analytical and normative core in Tagore’s political thought articulated, on the one hand, in the 1905 essay on ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’ and, on the other, in his nationalism lectures nearly a decade later during the First World War. The analytical core of Tagore’s thought pertains, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, to a concern about the way relationship-centred approaches to cooperation among persons is displaced by mechanically oriented approaches that generate separation. As I demonstrate in this article, some of Tagore’s core—and longstanding—political convictions are already discernible even before he parted ways with the extremist-revivalist strand. Tagore’s views in ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’ reveal these convictions. The convictions pertain to an emphasis on unity and oneness in ways that respect heterogeneity (including religious difference), as well as the commitment to consolidate among members of a political community a sense of belonging in a common enterprise, for example, via participation in the activities of samaj in ways that enabled the exercise of political judgement. It is in keeping with the above convictions that constructive work is already emphasized in ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’. Tagore’s employment of the notion of samaj, even in 1904–1905, already involved a conceptual translation of samaj in the direction of a modern understanding of the requirements of political community, as I point out at the start of the next subsection of this part of the article. Finally, the convictions expressed in ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’ are present even in Tagore’s critique of nationalism.

The argument of this article is that Tagore’s texts on samaj and nationalism are connected to one another in the way they each uphold the aforementioned core concern in the context of forms of politics associated with samaj and nation-state formations. Even in 1923 Tagore affirmed his continued commitment to the views he articulated in the 1905 text version of ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, when he exhorted his contemporaries to give up their indifference and inertia, and to take up constructive work.¹⁰⁷ My conclusions with regard to the analytic core of Tagore’s political thought do not jeopardize the soundness of Sarkar’s observations about the changing nature of Tagore’s political involvements.¹⁰⁸ A question could arise, though, whether the core commitments of Tagore’s thought determined his response to be involved in or withdraw from different political alignments in his time. I cannot develop that line of discussion here. But it would be worthwhile to undertake a study of the connections between the dynamism of Tagore’s political involvements and the extent to which they are related to a fundamental normative core of Tagore’s political thought.

The following discussion of this part of the article is in four sections. The first contains an analysis of what Tagore finds significant in the inheritance of samaj. This entails a detailed discussion of how Tagore recalls sociological and historical aspects of samaj in ways that give to samaj normative salience with regard to contemporary political concerns. The terms ‘sammelan’ and ‘atmashakti’ are accorded relevance in this section. The second section points out the internal and external sources of weakness with respect to the vibrancy of samaj. The third section considers Tagore’s suggestions for the revitalization of samaj, and this includes a discussion of the possibilities for samaj that emanate from institutions such as the mela and the office of the samajpati. The concluding section of this part reflects on the political nature of Tagore’s interventions with regard to samaj, and calls for its acknowledgement in the face of a general tendency to neglect the political dimensions of samaj, and of Tagore’s perspective. Altogether, in what follows, I suggest that Tagore’s complex discussion of samaj yields a conception of societal politics with important practical and aspirational dimensions as well as, importantly, a regulatory dimension with the potential for regulating aspects of what has been classified as the national political model. It is only by means of societal politics that conundrums pertaining to mechanical and relationship-oriented approaches to social cooperation may be addressed appropriately.

The inheritance of samaj and its significance

Samaj is the concept through which Tagore advances his alternative vision of politics, and it is irreducible to ‘government’, which is denoted by the term ‘sarkar’. Before proceeding further it would be helpful to consider some details about the term ‘samaj’ in nineteenth-century colonial India, especially Sudipta Kaviraj’s observations with regard to a shift in its usage. The shift came in the direction of the term’s usage to denote ‘an abstract field, or combination of all possible groups and individuals’.¹⁰⁹ This was in contrast to an earlier sense when the term ‘samaj’ connoted ‘a group of things/beings who are not clustered accidentally, but exist together habitually. In social discourse it referred to individuals who lived inside the normal entanglements of social/domestic life.’¹¹⁰ In other words, on the earlier mode, samaj (society) referred to something very ‘context-dependent’ and it was used to refer to ‘primary groups composed of local, everyday concrete relationships’.¹¹¹ Kaviraj mentions that whereas the earlier sense of the term permitted terms like ‘Brahmin-samaj’, or ‘Vaishanva samaj of a town or a locality’, a term like ‘Bengali samaj’ would have ‘appeared linguistically awkward and referentially opaque’.¹¹² The new usage of the term permitted consideration of ‘something like a second-order or abstract field of relations in which such primary groups all existed, and which could be known by rational analysis’; this kind of field of relations was not imaginable within the ‘grammar of traditional concepts’.¹¹³ In this article I presuppose Tagore to be employing predominantly the new usage of the term ‘samaj’.¹¹⁴

One feature of the new orientation to the concept of samaj is that it offered a view of a field of relations within which ‘all communities’ of the primary kind existed (kinship-, religion-, village-based ones, or ‘other specific forms of sociability’).¹¹⁵ The second feature consists in a new kind of voluntarism and choice attached to all those associations that would be part of samaj when it was understood in a broader and abstract sense. There was ‘something important in the relation of a group of people to themselves; the individual’s inclusion in this group was out of rationally grounded choice, not mere ascription’.¹¹⁶ Each of the groups, such as caste associations, that now constituted the bigger and more abstract sense of samaj demonstrated ‘a strange combination of apparently contradictory principles: the universality of modern liberal associations and the particularity characteristic of traditional groups’.¹¹⁷ Eventually, however, ‘a common alphabet of rational reasoning was accepted as a general intellectual currency’.¹¹⁸ Tagore’s use of the term ‘samaj’ seems to presuppose this kind of mixture of new and old meanings. Old-style familial relationships offer the model for the generation of broader social ties. But it is also the case that the old-style notion of relationship is being extended to bind together heterogeneous collectivities that in Tagore’s time were already transforming, to use Kaviraj’s terms, from ‘fuzzy’ into ‘enumerated’ entities. The reason for detailing the above is to indicate that there is a modern sensibility attached to both Tagore’s use of the term ‘samaj’, and his depiction of the heterogeneous social forms, expressed via distinctive religious groups, that samaj will bring into relationship with one another. Samaj, in the way Tagore extols it, refers to an abstract field of relations within which new kinds of groups can be found aligned with one another. A traditional notion such as samaj is repurposed and translated for a modern context, and the result is the endorsement of a form of political community that is both modern as well as distinct from conventional Western understandings of state-centred understandings of the political. Although I will not develop the point here, it must be noted that Tagore’s discussion of samaj contains conceptual resources for an alternative modern imagination of political community.¹¹⁹

Returning to details of his celebratory evocation of the inheritance of samaj—denoting the recall of a field of interactions in the Indian subcontinent within which different communities coexisted and co-mingled—Tagore seems to highlight at least two dimensions. The first relates to sociological observations about the kind of diversity witnessed over time, going back as far as the emergence of Buddhism and its challenge to pre-Buddhist conceptions of the good, bookended on the other side with the advent of British colonial power. The second dimension pertains to Tagore’s observations about the normative aspects of the inheritance of samaj. The normative observations recount an overall ethos of accommodation and coexistence that functioned as the background understanding within which, and/or because of which, heterogeneous world views lay ensconced and interacted. The receptivity of that samaj with regard to heterogeneous influences seems connected to frameworks of relationship and interaction marked by openness to diversity. Tagore highlights how an ‘intimacy’ among different world views stemmed from this framework, which, he claims, paved the way for the consolidation and recognition of a ‘unity of Ideal’ that existed in spite of all the heterogeneity. Interactions among different world views worked to fade the ‘boundary lines’ among groups such as Hindus and Muslims. Let me elaborate.

Tagore refers to the hospitable environment of samaj for what he calls ‘sammelan’—this is the term used in the Bengali edition of ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’ and refers to something like a forum or meeting ground that allowed adherents of diverse religions to live together well.¹²⁰ He identifies the ‘Buddhist age’ as one in which a certain ‘intimacy’ obtained ‘between India and every kind of foreigner. Such intimacy was far more serious for her than any conflict, for, in the absence of the latter the instinct of self-preservation is not awake….’¹²¹ Further, he says: ‘During that Asia-wide religious inundation, widely differing ideals and institutions found entry unchecked.’¹²² And, in spite of ‘all that she had before, and all that had come upon her, she set to reconstruct her Samaj afresh, and in the midst of all this multifarious diversity she preserved and consolidate her unity of Ideal’.¹²³

With the coming of the ‘Mohamedans’, Tagore says, ‘a common ground was in course of preparation where the boundary lines between Hindu and Muslim were growing fainter and fainter’. He cites the followers of Nanak, of Kabir, and the lower orders of Vaishnavas as cases in point.¹²⁴ So, here too, conditions for sammelan were created; the meeting ground was not one of passive coexistence but one where give and take occurred. According to Tagore, Nanak and Kabir paid attention to the ‘makings and breakings which are going on beneath the surface of the Samaj, among the common people’.¹²⁵ This, he rues, was something the ‘educated classes’ in his time were not doing. ‘Had they done so they would known that these reactions have even now not ceased to work.’¹²⁶ Then, referring again to his own times, Tagore declares that ‘all the four great religions of the world are here together—Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohamedanism and Christianity. It is evident that India is God’s chemical factory for the making of a supreme religious synthesis.’¹²⁷

It is in the capacity for generating sammelan, as a context that permits interaction and relationship, that Tagore identifies one aspect of the ‘inherent powers’ of samaj and its inhabitants. He says:

realization of unity in diversity, the establishment of a synthesis amidst variety—that is the inherent, the Sanatan Dharma of India. India does not admit difference to be conflict, nor does she espy an enemy in every stranger. So she repels none, destroys none; she abjures no methods, recognizes the greatness of all ideals; and she seeks to bring them all into one grand harmony.¹²⁸

It seems, then, that an ethos conducive to the search for common ground in the face of great difference structured the relationship among adherents of diverse world views. It was a form of relationship that upheld the greatness of all ideals and did not permit difference to become a site for conflict. Accordingly, and returning to his time after the reverie of the inheritance of samaj, Tagore holds that it was owing to such ‘genius of India’, that ‘Hindu, Moslem and Christian need not fight here for supremacy’; instead, they will find ‘common ground under the shelter of her hospitality’.¹²⁹ Tagore adds that this common ground ‘will not be un-Hindu, it will be more especially Hindu. And, however foreign the several limbs may be, the heart will still be the heart of India.’¹³⁰ The centre for the ‘unity of the Hindu religion, of the Hindu Samaj’ mentioned above was located, in the context of ‘self-contradictory, mutually conflicting differences’,¹³¹ was, according to Tagore, difficult to locate. For, the ‘larger the circumference, the harder it is to locate the centre; but nevertheless the centre exists’.¹³² By ‘centre’, Tagore refers to unity. He says: ‘We may not be able to lay our finger on the spot, but each one of us knows that the unity is there.’¹³³ Tagore’s inability to identify the spot where that centre lies directs attention to how the notion of a centre may be better approximated as a point that holds together a context that allows unity to be perceived in the face of mutually conflicting differences. On a related note, Bharucha highlights Tagore’s interest in ‘outlining philosophical ideas relating to India’s heterogeneous, conflictual unity, in which differences are reconciled without being legislated into uniformity or homogenized into sameness. It is the complexity relating to India’s unity (as opposed to Europe’s specious notion of ‘equality’) … that are among his central concerns ….’¹³⁴

Tagore offers further insights for discerning how the notion of relationship was embedded in the inheritance of samaj. He indicates how the ‘main endeavour’ in India has been to draw people ‘into the circle of relationship’ and into ties with one another—‘not ties prescribed by religion or law, but of the heart’.¹³⁵ An avoidance of the ‘habit of looking on man as a machine, or a tool, for the furtherance of some interest’ was, for Tagore, ‘the way of the East’.¹³⁶ As such, the choice to weave a web of relations was not borne out of mere necessity. In the form that he lauds it, relationship could extend to ‘the most distant connections’ in addition to ‘neighbours and villagers irrespective of race and caste’.¹³⁷ Tagore admits that such a circle of relationship could have ‘a bad as well as a good side’ but regardless of that, ‘it was the way of our country—nay, more, it is the way of the East’.¹³⁸

Bharucha notes Tagore’s emphasis on relationship, and how Tagore’s interest in samaj is almost synonymous with an aspiration to work out an ‘intricate web of social relationships based on kinship’ and ‘implicit bonds of sociality’.¹³⁹ Bharucha indicates a neologism employed by Tagore to designate the importance of ‘intimate ties of kinship’—‘atmiyasambandhasthapan (literally, the “establishment of the relationship of relatives,” the word atmiya for “relative” and sambandha for “relationship,” stimulating a complex web of social relations)’.¹⁴⁰ Arguably, the mode of establishing a ‘relationship of relatives’ is linked to what Tagore calls the ‘powers of [our] people’.¹⁴¹ In the original Bengali text, the terms used by Tagore for ‘powers of our people’ are ‘atmashakti’ and ‘swadesh’ and I suggest this is a site that reveals how Tagore envisioned the resources of samaj as relevant for resistance of the onslaught of nation. While swadesh refers to ‘my country’, what might the reference to atmashakti invoke? Here it is helpful to turn to P. K. Datta’s reflections about the notion of atmashakti in Tagore’s perspective. ‘While the notion of atma was derived from Brahmanical metaphysics of the individual self that carries the essence of the cosmic self of the Brahman, Tagore reoriented the idea of the Brahman to mean the world. Thus placed, the atman then indicates the relationship between the individual self and its others in the world.’¹⁴² What is clarified here is that, for Tagore, the notion of atmashakti refers to the shakti (power) of a domain that is activated by ‘the relationship between the individual self and its others in the world’.¹⁴³ As such, it is plausible to hold that Tagore’s faith in the powers of the people indicates attention to the generation of a source of collective power that could set off an intersubjectively constituted world, through the establishment of connection among people and groups via what Tagore prioritizes as ‘relationship’.

But it is worth adding more content to the kind of power expressed by individuals when they are in a web of relationships with one another. Here it is helpful to recall Datta’s observation about Tagore’s reliance on the notion of atmashakti, especially with reference to privileging the domain of samaj in the context of a refusal to ‘make demands of the state’. For Datta, the ‘foundation of this version of atmashakti was that the nation had to be based on an autonomous and integrated samaj or society, one which made its own choices and looked after itself’. Samaj had to be made resistant to intrusions by the mechanically oriented agencies of modern state power. Those statist intrusions were problematic because they ‘formalized social relationships, thereby creating subjects dependent’ on the state.¹⁴⁴ The problem was that the state was formalizing ‘affective relationships’, which were ‘immanent social relationships between people’. This was an intrusion that, according to Datta, Tagore resisted.

But what explains Tagore’s interest in affective relationships in samaj? I think the answer lies in Tagore’s focus on how those affective relations were bases for generating connections among people—connections that permitted the establishment of relationship among people. Severing those relations would diminish in samaj the bases for self-reliance. Further, Tagore’s choice to protect affective relationships is less the result of a desire to preserve traditional forms of community and more to safeguard avenues for the establishment of relationship. This was especially necessary in the context of an onslaught, by modern forms of statist power, on societal structures that could sustain conceptions of the political, grounded in self-reliance and in the need to involve the whole. In contrast, the centralized statist model encouraged a political orientation marked by (i) dependence on a centralized bureaucratic state instead of societal self-reliance in at least some important matters (such as provision of water, health, and sanitation services), and (ii) decreasing salience of the need to engage ‘the whole community’ and of attempts to ‘mould the mind of the people into one’, which would be necessary for encouraging among the people an orientation to matters of common concern.¹⁴⁵

To be sure, the establishment of the power, via intersubjectivity, which in turn emerges from the establishment of relationship that generates a sense of belonging, requires the use of imagination and that is how Tagore’s reflections on the mela (a type of market fair) acquire significance.¹⁴⁶ Arguably, one of the normative dimensions of Tagore’s recalling of and appeal to samaj pertains to the priority it accords to a mode of relationship that can enable a heterogeneous people to see things as one. Atmashakti—the powers of the people—is a reference to the deliberate, imaginative, intersubjective efforts on the part of individuals, the possibilities for which must be nurtured. This is the power of the people to generate a bond of belonging—‘an imagined bond of kinship’¹⁴⁷—and it is a power that is nested within the collectivity called samaj. Entailed here is much more than what Datta names as ‘affective relationship’, and which Chatterjee would classify under the heading ‘aesthetic’. What is involved, rather, is a full-throated political relationship among persons; it is about the ability to forge ties with others to see things as one, in a way that involves all. This is what is at stake in the notion of relationship as conjured by the appeal to samaj, and it would be insufficient to say that that Tagore’s interventions in this regard are bereft of political significance.

Internal and external problems for samaj

In ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’ Tagore mentions that, historically speaking, Indian society was able to withstand changes in rule because it conducted its own affairs and did not depend on rulers for the provision of water, or health or sanitation services. It was the degree of self-reliance in these matters that contributed to the sovereignty of samaj. With the ushering in of government-oriented visions of rule, and of patterns of politics that expressed reliance on government for the performance of functions that were hitherto within the jurisdiction of samaj, came a weakening of samaj and its sovereignty. It was by responsible performance of their share of actions in the domain of samaj that Indians could properly ‘stake their ownership claims upon the country’ in the face of colonial rule.¹⁴⁸ As such, attention to the sources of weakness of samaj was relevant. What were these sources?

Tagore highlighted two related sources for the weakness of samaj—internal and external. The internal sources of weakness for samaj can be found in the following observations of Tagore. Writing about it during his own time, Tagore found ‘Hindu Samaj’, as he called it descriptively, to be suffering internally from the problem of ‘an utter dread of novelty or change’ and ‘this constant fearfulness is hampering its further progress, and makes it difficult for it to rise superior to obstacles’.¹⁴⁹ For Tagore ‘any’ samaj that ‘concentrates all its attention on sheer self-preservation’, ‘cannot freely move or act and comes to a state of death in life’.¹⁵⁰ Hindu samaj had ‘entrenched itself’ within ‘barriers’ and that was leading to its decline; ‘fear’ had entered into India’s ‘soul’ and she has lost her place in the world.¹⁵¹ ‘Once India was the world’s guru, for her thought ranged fearlessly over religion, philosophy and science, far and wide.’¹⁵² India’s shakti is lost, by which Tagore implies that India’s ‘creative power’ is lost and is like a ‘paralysed limb’ that allows ‘mere continued existence’ with no ‘virtue’ attached to it.¹⁵³ In the face of the British onslaught, India’s ‘crouching, run-away samaj began to give away in places, and through the gaps the Outside, in dread of which we had shrunk into ourselves, came hurtling upon us. Now who shall thrust it back?¹⁵⁴ This very outer entity—in the form of the nation-state model of rule—posed the external threat to samaj. Instead of working to revive samaj, Indian nationalists had begun to imitate the nation-state model of rule, and in this imitation lay the external threat to samaj. But imitation of the (nation-state) model of the conqueror (colonial power) would only weaken samaj. Tagore identifies attempts to imitate the nation-state model, which he refers to as sarkar, itself as the external source of worry for the revitalization of samaj. No ‘policy of funk’ could redeem the situation, and the ‘true way of self-defence is to use our inherent powers. The policy of protection by imitation of the conqueror is a self-delusion which will not serve either,—the imitation cannot prevail against the reality’.¹⁵⁵ Tagore reiterates that the ‘only way to stem the tide of waste of heart and taste and intellect is, to become our true selves, consciously, actively and with our full strength.’¹⁵⁶

Tagore’s scepticism toward imitation of a model of politics that relied upon a centralized government (foreign or Indian)—for matters like health, education, sanitation, and water supply—was grounded in his criticism of that model. He considered political activities framed in terms of dependence on sarkar (government) via petitions for matters such as the ones listed above to be a ‘sign of the truly pessimistic wretch’.¹⁵⁷ The disposition encouraged by politics modelled around sarkar was that of ‘keeping the state ever alert, eternally vigilant’.¹⁵⁸ Politics, on the perspective allied with sarkar, entailed the application of pressure on government for it to act in particular ways. Inasmuch as they were following a such a line, Tagore considered Indian nationalists to be resorting to notions of politics similar to the one in England, especially with regard to the role of the state. England’s conceptions of politics and the emphasis on centralizing ‘the business of public welfare in the hands of a specialized Government’ may have evolved by a ‘natural process’ there. But Tagore argued for pause before Indian nationalists thoughtlessly assumed those conceptions of politics to be suitable for India too.¹⁵⁹ Tagore sought a model of politics that would be an alternative to the ‘path’ that saw ‘petitioning the Government as the highest form of political activity’.¹⁶⁰

The significance of the alternative mode recommended by Tagore becomes comprehensible when one looks at what Tagore himself understood as the meaning of politics. Politics, for Tagore, was not reducible to associational activity that sought attention of the government. Rather, for Tagore, politics entailed the task of making the whole community one, ‘from the highest to the lowest’.¹⁶¹ Further, for Tagore, ‘the ultimate object of political work is to mould the mind of the people into one’.¹⁶² The absence in the sarkar model of engagement with ‘the whole community’ was problematic, and associational activity that did not entail this would fall short of the goal of politics. The oneness that Tagore stressed here went hand in hand with a conception of unity to which he refers in the essay on ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’. The problem with sarkar-oriented politics is that it deflects attention away from the notion that India ‘has always been endowed with the power of binding together’ difference and heterogeneity.¹⁶³ Tagore emphasizes this power, shakti.

So, one main problem with the pursuit of the sarkar model of politics was its impoverished sense of politics. Tagore clarified that his animus toward sarkar was not related to a nativist predisposition that might oppose nationwide mobilization and associational activity. He was not of the opinion that there was ‘no need to stir outside’ one’s native village ‘to gain knowledge or recognition’.¹⁶⁴ On the contrary, Tagore applauded the opportunity that was afforded by the new political trends for broadening one’s realm of activity.¹⁶⁵ But he is critical of the terms of exchange, and even language, followed by Indian nationalists because they were creating greater distance between English-educated Indians and their ‘countrymen’.¹⁶⁶ Instead of engaging Indian people, the new forms of nationalist sarkar-centred politics, said Tagore, were ‘designed to capture the mind of the foreigner’, and ‘political education’ was the name given to the process that aimed to do so.¹⁶⁷ Further: ‘We have become used to keeping the great mass of our countrymen outside our deliberations, and so have set up an impassable barrier between them and ourselves. We have, from the very first, spared no effort or artifice to win the heart of England, but have clean forgotten that the heart of our own country is of greater value, and requires at least as much of striving for its conquest.’¹⁶⁸ Missing, then, in the Indian nationalists’ sarkar-inspired orientation of politics is any sense of robust involvement and engagement with the ‘great mass’ of people, as well as aspiration towards involving the ‘whole’ community. It is important to reiterate that Tagore’s invocation of samaj is not directed at strengthening a structure with ‘organic unity’.¹⁶⁹ Nor does it prioritize a culturally oriented communitarian understanding of a collectivity. Tagore’s interest in reviving samaj via modalities such as the mela, which, for him, offered an invitation to everyone to meet openly with all others, is not structured on the basis of ascriptive identity. The reminders related to the true meaning of politics and his laudatory recalling of interactions based on sammelan, coupled with his reflections about what happens to the creative powers of individuals under conditions of modern state rule, all point in the less considered direction of securing for all individuals a sphere of freedom for creative response.

There was a second problem with the growing currency of politics aligned with the primacy of sarkar, and that was the way it caused a diminution in the potential of samaj to generate activities that would involve the many and produce a sense of involvement and belonging (and oneness) among people. He says: ‘Government—the Sarkar’ in India during his time had ‘no relations with our social organisation—the Samaj’.¹⁷⁰ Not only was there no link between the governed and governors, but also the more the ‘relief from duties’ for samaj (because of appeals to sarkar to get things done) the more was the loss of Indians’ capacity for freedom. The incapacitation of samaj directly affected the ability of people to perform some responsibilities on their own by engaging with each other, and this had led to ‘an incapability which was not of its essence in the past’.¹⁷¹

While Tagore, above, eschews dependence upon an English-led government, and a sarkar-inspired notion of politics, I think his point here extends to any form of rule that spawns dependence on the part of the ruled. If a model of politics fails to engage the powers of the people, by which is meant modes for engagement of the whole, and for the generation of a sense of community—an essential oneness or a sense of unity, as he calls it, in a heterogeneous society—then it is merely instrumental.

Revival of samaj: the institutions of mela and samajpati

Tagore’s interventions with regard to institutions such as the mela, and to administrative aspects of samaj as contained in his discussion of the position of samajpati allow reflection on the revival of samaj.

Tagore stressed the revival of fairs and markets such as were found in a mela. The mela would be an occasion for people from different villages to gather. In contrast to an ‘English style’ meeting, it would be an occasion marked by ‘arrangements for play and song and festivity galore’ that would bring ‘crowds hurrying from the most distant places’.¹⁷² Most importantly, ‘the mela is the invitation of the village to the world to its cottage home’; ‘when the village desires to feel in its veins the throb of the greater life of the outside world the mela has always been its way of achieving that object. On such festive occasion the village forgets its narrowness in a hospitable expansion of heart … in mela time the village is filled with the spirit of the Universal.’¹⁷³

The ‘heart-to heart’ conversations that the mela would afford were by no means meant to secure only an intimate and inward-looking, heart-centred solidarity across heterogeneities. Far from endorsing closed and exclusive community-based solidarities, Tagore rooted for practices that would rouse a sense of political membership through ‘a hospitable expansion of heart’.¹⁷⁴ The leisurely setting of a mela, in contrast to the setting afforded by a formal meeting that persons may attend ‘burdened with doubt and suspicion’, could enable an opening up of hearts.¹⁷⁵ Attending a mela already meant being in an ‘open’ and ‘holiday’ mood, for people would have ‘left plough and hoe and all cares behind’.¹⁷⁶ The mela marked ‘the place and time to come and sit by the people and hold converse with them’.¹⁷⁷ To quote Tagore again:

There we could hold our markets and our exhibitions of homemade goods and agricultural produce. There we could award prizes to our bards and reciters and those who came to sing or play. There we could arrange lantern lectures on sanitation. There we could have heart to heart talks with each other, and bethink ourselves of ways and means, in regard to all matters of national interest,—and with gentle and rustic alike we could hold communion in our own language.¹⁷⁸

Tagore held that real, as opposed to ‘empty politics’ alone could allow the ‘country soon to awaken into life’.¹⁷⁹ For this, the country’s leaders would have to ‘make it their business to give new life and objectives to these melas’.¹⁸⁰ An important object in doing this was to work to bring ‘together the hearts of Hindu and Muslim’ and then to ‘confer about the real wants of the people,—schools, roads, water reservoirs, grazing commons and the like’.¹⁸¹ The resolution of ‘friction’ between the Hindus and Muslims was high on Tagore’s agenda early on. Swadeshi samaj had to eradicate that friction by means of ‘equity of treatment and regulation of communal interests—failing this repeated disruptions will only weaken’ those relations.¹⁸² Tagore notes that there can be forces that weaken the samaj but if there is ‘an internal vital force ready to combat it’ then there is no cause for worry.¹⁸³

Majumdar says that unlike Bhudev Mukhopadhyay ‘Tagore did not dismiss the importance of civil-social organizations, though the nature of these organizations should be linked to the hriday (heart) of India.’¹⁸⁴ Majumdar points out that Tagore criticized the colonial model of politics which was ‘alien to most’ because ‘ordinary people, in thousands of villages in India, could hardly every identify with this style of campaigning. Indian civil society, he submitted, should resurrect the mela (fair) that had been in vogue in the country in earlier times’.¹⁸⁵ For reasons of maintaining true independence of the people from the forms of politics spawned by the nation-state, and for enabling oneness that was irreducible to the machinations or favours of foreign government, Tagore thought it important to identify what was the ‘true way of India’.¹⁸⁶

However, while noting Tagore’s reliance on indigenous social forms like the mela because they were close to the heart of India, it should also be recognized that very much like the repurposing and translation of the notion of samaj, Tagore recalls the social form of the mela too for distinctively modern political purposes, including those of responding to the conundrums posed by the modern national form of state power. It seems that, for Tagore, the idea of building bonds of community with others can be set into motion via practices such as the mela.¹⁸⁷ The mela could enable communication among different people in a way that opens the heart of all involved. The possibilities in the mela for expansion of receptivity towards that which is of common concern to all, and the generation of a sense of oneness or unity in the face of religious or other differences, all entail that the mela creates a kind of ‘overall public space’ with the possibility for ‘meaningful creative sharing’.¹⁸⁸ By generating a site in which people could expand their perspectives in a leisurely manner, the modern mela could offer a public context for individuals to practise receptivity to the wider world and express thereby also their willingness to participate in common enterprise.

Scholars like Majumdar hold that Tagore focused on samaj only as something related to rural India.¹⁸⁹ But Tagore’s emphasis on samaj as a call to establish a form of relationship that can enable a kind of oneness for viewing issues of common concern together can well be extended from rural to urban contexts. It is true that the mela has an earthy and local flavour. However, it can be helpful to recall John Dewey’s emphasis on how crucial the restoration of local communal life can be for producing publics within democratic communities. It can help in an appraisal of the politically relevant point in Tagore’s emphasis on mela. Dewey highlights how even if local, the activities involved in restoration of communal life need not be ‘isolated’ for they are ‘enmeshed’ in a wider context.¹⁹⁰ Tagore’s words are similar: the mela is an occasion for the local level to feel the pulse of something wider. To quote Dewey on local communal life:

Its larger relationships will provide an exhaustible and flowing fund of meanings upon which to draw …. Territorial states and political boundaries will persist; but they will not be barriers which impoverish experience by cutting man off from his fellows; they will not be hard and fast divisions whereby external separation is converted into inner jealousy, fear, suspicion and hostility.¹⁹¹

Dewey’s choice of words to explain the significance of the restoration of communal life in the context of the ever-present possibilities for persons being separated from one another are serendipitously relevant for illuminating aspects of the democratic core of Tagore’s concerns about nationalism, especially with regard to the forms of separation associated with modern territorial states and notions of boundaries.

While Tagore emphasizes mela for generating relationship and enacting an orientation to matters of common concern, he also makes suggestions for institutional measures for setting afoot constructive work related to social organization. This includes delineation of the role of a samajpati, and I turn now to a discussion of this institution.

With regard to nationalist politics in the context of colonial power, Tagore eschewed ‘dependence on the favours of others’ and said: ‘I refuse to be a party to the attitude that unless we bend our knees and fold our hands there is no hope for our country. I believe in our country and I have a great respect for the powers of our people.’¹⁹² The powers of the people are at the centre of Tagore’s understanding of samaj; that is where lies the ‘seat of life’ of samaj. Recognition of this alone could enable an independent ‘realisation of India’s essential oneness from within’, in contrast to the attainment of a sense of unity that depended on the ‘changing … mood’ of ‘the foreigner’.¹⁹³ Tagore identifies the core of Indian political traditions—‘the seat of life’¹⁹⁴ as he put it—in samaj. In his considerations of where the centre of gravity of a country may be located, and of the importance for the energy—shakti—of a country to have a centre, Tagore once again prioritizes samaj. Samaj is the centre where the power of a country ‘will accumulate, and from where it can be appropriately distributed’.¹⁹⁵ Tagore found Indian nationalists were toeing a line of politics similar to the one in England, especially with regard to the role of the state. To tackle what he thought was impoverishing imitativeness, he emphasized the need to replace the centrality of state with a vision of politics in which responsibility for ‘primary activities of the community’¹⁹⁶ would be ‘divided in a wonderfully adaptive way among the members of the community themselves’.¹⁹⁷ Thus it is that Tagore outlines the role of a samajpati (leader of samaj) and a set of people who would assist that samajpati in carrying out administrative tasks. P. K. Datta points out that, in the face of having to ‘work against an all-India power’, Tagore was in search of a form of mobilization that could meet the requirements of ‘centralized authority’ but ‘without surrendering the affective bonds of the samaj’.¹⁹⁸ The resolution for Tagore, says Datta, ‘lay in the persona of the representative social leader, the samajpati, who would personalize authority and through that, act as a point of mediation between persons who did not know each other but whose relationships needed to retain an intimate connection’.¹⁹⁹

However, Datta is apprehensive about the centralization of power in the office of samajpati and he claims that ‘issues of power would stubbornly remain and shadow the samajpati’.²⁰⁰ It seems the worry here is that samaj in its modern interpretation could go the way of a centralized modern state. To address this concern, it would help to acknowledge that the suggestions for the revival of samaj, and perhaps even the overall discussion of samaj itself, operate on two registers. On the first, the focus is on the conceptual resources within samaj for generating a regulative ideal for evaluations of the nature of relationship among the governed and the governors in modern centralized systems of rule. Let me call this the ‘regulative register’. The regulative register allows an assessment of whether state power in a particular political community operates in a way that has conceptual space for the powers of the people. As mentioned at the very outset of the article, it is not presupposed that Tagore’s vision requires a choice between the modern state and samaj. Rather, Tagore’s perspective seeks an alternative to a state-centred conception of political community. In fact, there are aspects of the institutions of the state as ensconced within the ‘spirit of the west’, such as ‘the protection of law’ (which he calls both a ‘boon’ and a ‘valuable lesson’) as well as the notion that ‘there is a universal standard of justice to which all men irrespective of their caste and colour, have their equal claim’.²⁰¹

On the second register, the focus is on institutional devices to revivify the normative possibilities within samaj with regard to generation of relationship, enactment of collective self-reliance via exercise of the powers of the people, and the pursuit of a sense of oneness that does not hinge on the erasure of heterogeneity within a political community. Let me call this the ‘institutional register’. The institutional register of samaj includes the office of the samajpati but is irreducible to it; there is also the social form of the mela, for example, and a general involvement of people in the social organization of their lives. The office of the samajpati is vital because it is in service of the enactment and sustenance of the goods of atmashakti (people’s power) and swadesh (self-reliance) associated with samaj. Tagore says often people tire of finishing their commitment to constructive work; sometimes it is the sense of unity among them that is lost.²⁰² The samajpati assisted by a team of workers are there to address these eventualities. But the goods of the regulative and institutional register cannot be dependent on the samajpati’s work alone. If ‘samaj be alive and alert’ then ‘the worst of them can do it no permanent injury’.²⁰³ Tagore expects a vibrant and resilient samaj, and surely one individual samajpati cannot be expected to direct that phenomenon, which, as seen in a previous section, is a power constituted by all inhabitants. The civilizational inheritance of Indian society’s capacity for ensuring ‘unity in diversity’ is one that cannot be sustained by a samajpati alone. The responsibility for that lies with all inhabitants of samaj. An important characteristic of samaj is that its constitution and sustenance rely upon a voluntary assumption of responsibility by individuals for the sake of enabling a normative social and political order. I agree with Datta that Tagore is looking to find a centre in samaj by way of responding to the threat to samaj posed by the dominance of a centralized model of power. But it looks like that centre—sometimes unidentifiable, says Tagore—is located ultimately more in the powers of the people, enacted when they belong within a circle of relationship, than in the office of the samajpati. Tagore would worry more about the ‘indifference’ and ‘inertia’ of the people than he would about the limits of the limited office of the samajpati.²⁰⁴ Viewing the matter like this does not, of course, render Tagore’s conceptualization of samaj free of foreseeable problems, one being the effort to combat the indifference and inertia of the people. At the least, more thought would have to go into asking how the samajpati, working with a team, can perform the function of representing an active and vibrant samaj. But it does clarify that the model of political community that prioritizes samaj may not be assumed as centred in the samajpati.

The political dimensions of Tagore’s interest in samaj

Majumdar correctly notes how Tagore posits a contrast between the East and the West in terms of the ‘epicenter’ of their societies. While ‘state and political power constituted the epicenter of societies belonging to Western civilization’, the ‘core of Eastern civilizations lay in society’.²⁰⁵ But it would be a mistake to infer that this state versus society difference can reduce to a difference between politics and non-politics. A more appropriate way to consider the difference in emphasis—focus on state in the West versus that on samaj in the East—is to see how each jurisdiction organized itself politically to achieve social cooperation. In other words, the point is to see how any jurisdiction is able to strike a balance in terms of enabling efficient rule with a commitment to the following three dimensions of concern: (i) ensuring the enactment of appropriate relations between rulers and ruled such that the latter is not rendered powerless with respect to being able to creatively respond to issues of common concern as and when required; (ii) protecting society’s powers—atmashakti—to function autonomously, and to offer bulwarks against excessive administrative statism and centralization—the task is to ensure that society’s powers in this regard are not enervated because of intrusion by political frameworks linked to state-centred government/sarkar; and (iii) cleaving to the real meaning of politics which involves making the whole community ‘one’.²⁰⁶ Thus, laying emphasis on the social cannot simply be viewed to be tantamount to a lack of interest in politics, or to being anti-political. For Tagore, the institutions underpinning the construction of community along the lines of a nation coordinated by sarkar were of concern because they thwarted the potential within samaj for generating a sense of belonging, oneness, and unity, which in turn would provide the larger background within which statist politics could be enacted. Nation thwarted samaj, and in doing so it was causing harm on all three levels listed above.

In his endorsement of samaj, Tagore seems to be anticipating something akin to the distinction that Jim Tully draws between civil and civic models of citizenship.²⁰⁷ One way of understanding the distinction is the following:

Civil citizens are civilized by the rule of law, commerce, anonymous processes of civilization, whereas civic citizens criticize and reject this disempowering picture that conceals the real world of histories of civic struggles. They ‘civicize’ themselves. They transform themselves into citizens and their institutions into civic spaces and free ‘cities’ by civic activities and the arts of citizenship, whether or not these activities are guaranteed by the rule of law or informal customs, or neither.²⁰⁸

While civil citizenship is defined in terms of the nation-state, civic citizenship refers to ‘negotiated practices in which one becomes a citizen through participation’.²⁰⁹ Tully points out that ‘by interrogating the universality of the civil model, the civic model ‘desubalternizes other modes of citizenship’.²¹⁰ In these senses, samaj is an insistence on the importance of a domain of political membership that resembles the civic citizenship model that Tully advances. ‘Civic citizenship is not brought into the world by coercion, the institutions of law, the nation state or international law but by citizens engaging in civic activities and creating civic worlds.’²¹¹ However, whereas civic citizenship practices as outlined by Tully are associated with attempts to enable the inclusion of people within the formalized membership patterns associated with civil citizenship and the rule of law,²¹² the kind of membership and disposition extolled in the realm of samaj is different. The emphasis on belonging, relationship, and membership in samaj represents a plea to revitalize societal politics in a way that prioritizes the domain of samaj. Unless there is a domain for the expression and enactment of the inherent and creative powers of a people, there remains the danger that statist orders can diminish the freedom and powers of the governed systematically. Furthermore, the kind of membership entailed in samaj need not be adversarial with regard to statist forms of belonging. As noted by Majumdar and Bharucha as well, Tagore’s defence of samaj does not entail a complete rejection of the statist model. Rather, it is a rejection of the way the dominance of a statist order diminishes the possibilities for vibrant societal politics. A vibrant societal politics, in turn, is key but not only for reining in statist domination. Rather, the extent to which a statist order can function without curbing the vibrancy of societal politics may well function as a yardstick for judging the appropriateness of that statist order. This, I think, is one of the main insights yielded by an analysis of Tagore’s discussion of samaj, and I call it the ‘regulative register’ of the discussion of samaj. Societal politics need not be dependent on the state, but the statist model of politics can thwart it. Hence, it is crucial to guard against statist domination, expressed as administrative centralization or via homogeneity-imposing techniques of rule.

I agree with Majumdar that Tagore’s reflections on swadeshi samaj ‘found deep resonances with many outside of Bengal, and were constitutive of “Indian” thinking about the social’.²¹³ But I think it is important to clarify what might be implied in her claim that Tagore’s ‘prescription for combating the might of the British on the eve of the partition of Bengal was not through a struggle for political power’.²¹⁴ Perhaps what Majumdar implies here is that Tagore was not asking for a share of political power related to the state. Because the assertion of samaj by Tagore is a straightforward suggestion for an alternative political model, it is by no means not a struggle for the relocation of political power. The mistake that must be avoided in any quick interpretation of Majumdar’s view would be to associate everything that is political only with state and government. Doing so would obfuscate from view precisely what Majumdar herself says about Tagore: ‘Sovereignty, he argued, would be secured by returning our attention to society.’²¹⁵ And, a point that Majumdar herself notes, but neglects to develop in her analysis of samaj, is that in their ‘conception of society, many Bengali writers folded the function of politics into the social’.²¹⁶ She stops short of elaborating what this entails, and does not develop the implications of the twin-fold sense of politics ensconced in Tagore’s social and political thought: politics as appeal to government—the ‘national politics’ model—and ‘societal politics’ where politics is understood as the pursuit of making all one.

Rustom Bharucha, whose engagement with Tagore’s thought is insightful, also pays insufficient attention to the distinction between national politics and societal politics. He correctly notes Tagore’s interest in European models of legal and political institutions.²¹⁷ And he acknowledges the importance of samaj in Tagore’s search for an alternative to national orders, and Tagore’s emphasis on ‘the implicit bonds of sociality’ in samaj. Bharucha notes Tagore’s ‘profound faith in civil society, a category that the poet never specifically invoked, but to which he alluded in his constant search for a society based on mutual trust and respect for the individual, based on autonomous social relationships, free of statist strictures and repressive laws’.²¹⁸ In light of this Bharucha considers it understandable that scholars like E. P. Thompson adduce to Tagore a perspective of anti-politics.²¹⁹

Bharucha also notes that Tagore pits samaj and its modes of association, interaction, structure of leadership, etc. against the institutional arrangements and politics of the nation-state. But Bharucha veers in the direction of noting how Tagore contrasts the statist sense of the political with the ‘indigenous category of sadhana (vocation), as in the construction, “political sadhana”’.²²⁰ From here Bharucha concludes that in seeking ‘an alternative epistemology of samaj to the institutional language informing colonial civic and social institutions’, Tagore fashioned ‘society on indigenous and traditional grounds’.²²¹ Regrettably, Bharucha says it is ‘difficult to assert what he is for in the existing language of contemporary political discourse’.²²² And so he stops short of probing the political implications of Tagore’s invocation of samaj in the context of modernity.

In contrast, in this article I have suggested that Tagore’s critique of nationalism and his reflections about samaj reveal a conception of societal politics that is committed to preserving space for the creative powers of human beings for political purposes in ways that can stave off some of the problems with models of national politics.