Nationalism (Illustrated)

Tagore's politics exhibited a marked ambivalence — on the one hand, he denounced European imperialism, occasionally voicing full support for Indian nationalists; on the other hand, he also shunned the Swadeshi movement, denouncing it in his acrid September 1925 essay "The Cult of the Charka" (an allusion to elements of Gandhism and the Non-Cooperation Movement). For example, in reaction to a July 22, 1904 suggestion by the British that Bengal should be partitioned, an upset Tagore took to delivering a lecture — entitled "Swadeshi Samaj" ("The Union Of Our Homeland") – that instead proposed an alternative solution: a self-help based comprehensive reorganization of rural Bengal. In addition, he viewed British control of India as a "political symptom of our social disease", urging Indians to accept that "there can be no question of blind revolution, but of steady and purposeful education".