Tagore and the Sikh Gurus : A Search for an Indigenous Modernity

Contents: Foreword. Preface. Introduction. 1. Nationalism Indian civilization and its regeneration in Tagore’s imagination. 2. The early encounter with Sikhism. 3. Tagore’s idea of nationalism and the Sikh Martyrs. 4. Guru Gobind as a nationalist Icon. 5. Caste discrimination  the Sikh Gurus and the Poet Saints of the Shri Guru Granth Sahib. 6. The West versus the east. 7. In retrospect. Bibliography. Index.

The volume tries to portray how Rabindranath Tagore looked back to the teachings of the Sikh Gurus and the Bhagats of the Shri Guru Granth Sahib like Ramanand, Kabir and Ravidas for resolving the crisis of Indian unity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The so-called nineteenth century Indian Renaissance had failed to reach the Muslim minority and the most numerous section of the population-the untouchables. Attempts to consolidate a national consciousness in the face of colonial rule often ended up in a misguided Hindu revivalism which looked upon the Muslim as the other. Tagore had recoiled from such narrow nationalism during the days of the Swadeshi. In his more mature years he could identify this kind of nationalism as giving rise to an aggressive imperialism. Instead of seeking a solution in some Western philosophy like Bolshevism or socialism, Tagore turned to the rich heritage of an indigenous modernity evolved in the ideas of the Sikh Gurus and the Bhagats from various corners of India who had worked out a common idiom of India in their simple, vernacular shlokas and dohas. (jacket)