Re-thinking Cosmopolitanism: Re-reading Tagore

This chapter explores the seeds of Rabindranath Tagore's vision of cosmopolitanism. In contrast to Nussbaum's interpretation that cosmopolitanism and nationalism are mutually exclusive, we analyze Tagore's fiction and political writings to present a more complex and interactive analysis of this relationship. We emphasize Tagore's views on colonialism to show how nationalism is a necessary presupposition and precondition for cosmopolitanism. With reference to British colonialism in India, Tagore observes that, on one hand, colonialism produced nationalism and imperialism but, on the other hand, introduced channels of learning and exchange. For him, independence lay both in denunciation of imperialism and in the retention of learning and exchange. It is in Tagore's double move that the roots of cosmopolitanism are clear. He envisioned harmony in the interactions between colonial and postcolonial, East and West, tradition and modernity, and these interactions contain the seeds of his cosmopolitanist vision.