Tagore is better known as a poet and writer, but he also made a significant contribution to the development of Indian philosophy in the early 20th century. Nationalism was originally delivered as three speeches: on Japan, the West, and India. It allows us to look at the world of the early 20th century from a different perspective than the one we usually encounter, and the warnings he gave to Europe at that time turned out to be incredibly prophetic.
For Tagore, one of the main threats to humanity is the idea of a nation, which he compares to a mechanical structure that defines boundaries between people and builds animosities, built on the idea of belonging to a specific group, and not humanity as a whole. Long before the notion of the rat race appeared in the language, he points out that a life based on the pursuit of something external and imposed from above leads to forgetting one’s humanity and place in the world of nature and unlearning the humility that comes with it. And all this makes people feel uncomfortable and unhappy in their lives. Sounds familiar?
Tagore writes fantastically in English (although most of his poetry and prose was written in Bengali) – these essays should be read carefully and without haste, because of their beautiful prose and still very validon the relationship of man to the world in which he lives.
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