The Vision of an Inclusive India: Contextualizing Tagore in the Contemporary Crisis of Indian Secularism

Abstract

There were multiple and often conflicting imaginaries of nationhood in the preindependent India. While all those versions of nationhood had either religious or regional characters, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) in his literary works projected the vision of a broad, inclusive and secular India. A “dissenter among dissenters” 1 with the idea of the Western nationalism, Tagore rejected nationalism because of its grossly political, commercial and exclusionary nature. He considered India as a sacred place, where an astounding variety of race, religion, language and culture had congregated from time immemorial, and the unique mission of India had been to assimilate all those cultures into its tradition. Tagore strongly resisted the monolithic concept of the Western nation and asserted that the principles of tolerance, inclusion and heterogeneity were the quintessential cultural values of India. Secularism, as embodied in the Indian Constitution, is in keeping with Tagore’s ideas of religious pluralism and universal tolerance . But, the rise of aggressive nationalism, communalism, fundamentalism threatens to disturb not only the perennial Indian ideals of harmony and fellowship among the people of diverse cultures and religions, but also the democratic and secular values of the Indian Constitution. The paper argues that Tagore’s vision of an inclusive India can act as antidote to the current political crisis.