This chapter reconstructs how Tagore and Nag’s agenda for a global humanism, inspired by the template of Greater India, was put to the test at Visva-Bharati university, a space closely monitored by the colonial authorities as a potential breeding ground for sedition. Tagore’s peculiar blend of Orientalism and internationalism resonated with an international group of intellectuals, including Romain Rolland, Carlo Formichi, Sylvain Lévi and Yone Noguchi, but ultimately lost traction amidst the ideological turmoil and political developments that marked the 1920s and 30s. As Tagore’s controversial visit to Fascist Italy painfully revealed, a vision of world order premised on the cooperation of cultural ambassadors from the East and West sharing the same humanist ideals, became increasingly untenable. Furthermore, the Indian exceptionalism and cultural essentialism that energized Tagore’s vision turned out to be unpalatable for figures such as Lévi, who supported the GIS but dismissed any notion of an Eastern mission to ‘redeem the West’. Japan’s geopolitical ascendency altered the East for good and shattered the dream of a united Asian front inspired by the legacies of ‘Greater India’.

Using French, German, and British examples, this chapter provides an overview of the lively world of pre-war and wartime literary magazines and periodicals in Europe, with an emphasis on transnational connections. It also touches on the resumption of transnational magazine culture after the end of the war. Literary magazines in this period were characterised by close transnational ties and cross-border collaboration and exchange, disrupted but not always stopped by the outbreak of war. The chapter reflects in particular on the magazines’ understanding of poetry as a means of gauging the state of the nation in crisis, and their recognition of poetry as an indicator of the national psyche and of national cultural identity.