¹ For recent affirmations of Tagore’s preoccupation with the social domain—or samaj—see Singh, Mohinder, ‘Tagore on Modernity, Nationalism and the “Surplus in Man”’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. LII, no. 19, 2017, pp. 46–52Google Scholar; and Majumdar, Rochona, ‘A Conceptual History of the Social’, in Trans-Colonial Modernities in South Asia, (eds) Dodson, Michael and Hatcher, Brian (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 165–188Google Scholar.

² Tagore, Rabindranath, Nationalism, edited with an introduction by Guha, Ramachandra (Delhi: Penguin Books, 2009).Google Scholar

³ Tagore, Rabindranath, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, in Tagore, Rabindranath, Greater India, authorized translation (Madras: Everyman’s Press, 1921)Google Scholar. Tagore’s reflections on ‘swadeshi samaj’ were originally in a public address he gave in 1904, which was more than a decade before he delivered his lectures on nationalism. Reading the texts on swadeshi samaj and nationalism together provides rich bases to probe Tagore’s views about forms of political community.

⁴ Cited in Collins, Michael, ‘Rabindranath Tagore and Nationalism’, Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics; available at http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/8844/1/HPSACP_COLLINS.pdf, p. , [last accessed 22  January 2021]Google Scholar. Michael Collins agrees with E. P. Thompson’s view that Tagore endorsed anti-politics.

⁵ Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Tagore and the Legitimacy of Nationalism’, in Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom, (eds) Baum, Bruce and Nichols, Robert (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), p. Google Scholar.

⁶ Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, ‘Rethinking Tagore on the Antinomies of Nationalism’, in Tagore and Nationalism, (eds) Tuteja, K. L. and Chakraborty, Kaustav (New Delhi: Springer, 2017) p. Google Scholar.

⁷ Ashis Nandy’s engagement with Tagore’s social and political thought is an example of such an interpretation. See, for example, Nandy, Ashis, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

⁸ Singh, ‘Tagore on Modernity’, p. 50.

⁹ Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 178 and Singh, ‘Tagore on Modernity’, pp. 50–51.

¹⁰ Singh, ‘Tagore on Modernity’ contains a discussion of the autonomy of the social as a long-standing feature of Indian orders. For a good discussion of the autonomy of the social domain in premodern India, see Kaviraj, Sudipta, ‘On the Enchantment of the State’, European Journal of Sociology, vol. 46, no. 2, 2005, pp. 263–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Singh, ‘Tagore on Modernity’, p. 50.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 179.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 180.

¹⁶ Ibid., p. 184; I think the point about Tagore seeking psychic unity for nationalism needs qualification, given the general tenor of his critique of the doctrine of nationalism.

¹⁷ Tagore, Nationalism, p. 71.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 39.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 76; pp. 77–78.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 66.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid., p. 67.

²³ Ibid., p. 66.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ibid., pp. 67–68.

²⁶ Ibid., p. 66.

²⁷ Majumdar also notes that most discussions of samaj ‘remained distinctly Hindu’. Even when thinkers such as Tagore emphasized the ‘syncretic character of Indian society and the need for peaceful coexistence’, the ‘categories they deployed to think about the social did not look to the conceptual repertoire of Islam’: Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 184. But she also adds that for Tagore, ‘Hindu samaj was not simply an ethnic community. Hinduism was a repository of values essential to the preservation of Indian unity’: ibid., p. 185. As the discussion of samaj in the second part of this article will demonstrate, Tagore’s understanding of the values required for oneness amid diversity is free from notions of domination and exclusion. The hope, rather, is for communities to coexist on amicable terms, and for a fair degree of co-mingling too, as is evident in Tagore’s recollection of the way Nanak and Kabir brought people together: Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’.

²⁸ Kaviraj, Sudipta, ‘Modernity, State, and Toleration in Indian History’, in Boundaries of Toleration, (eds) Stepan, Alfred and Taylor, Charles (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. Google Scholar.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Tagore, Rabindranath, The English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Volume 3, (ed.) Das, Sisir Kumar (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2006), p. Google Scholar.

³¹ For a good biographical account of Tagore, see Sen, Amartya, ‘Tagore and His India’, in Nobel Laureates in Search of Identity and Integrity, (ed.) Hallengren, Anders (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2004)Google Scholar. For a fantastic and illuminating discussion of the difference between the ways in which Tagore and Okakura Tenshin—a prominent Asian idealist, and someone credited with bringing Asian idealism to Bengal—approached the idea of Asia, see Bharucha, Rustom, Another Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² Adam Kirsch captures the situation nicely when he says the following: ‘Just as there was hardly a literary genre that he did not attempt, so there wasn’t a cultural or political question that he did not engage with, from the condition of women to the rise of nationalism, from the Hindu-Muslim divide to the need for industrial development. In seeing Tagore as an unworldly mystic, the West made the mistake of identifying the man with his literary persona—much as if one were to imagine Yeats, the theatre producer and Irish senator, forever planting bean rows on Innisfree.’ See Adam Kirsch, ‘Modern Magus: What Did the West See in Rabindranath Tagore?’, available at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/30/modern-magus, [accessed 3 October 2022].

³³ Isaiah Berlin, quoted in Chatterjee, ‘Tagore’, p. 159.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 37.

³⁵ Bhattacharya observes this with some tentativeness. See Bhattacharya, ‘Rethinking Tagore’, p. 26. But I think a stronger recognition of the nexus between nationalism and the nation-state can be attributed to Tagore’s reflections.

³⁶ Tagore, Nationalism, p. 37.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Ibid., pp. 37–38.

⁴¹ For Tagore, nationalism and its inculcation of a ‘cult of patriotism’ in modern times is such that people can be indoctrinated from very early on in their lives to ‘foster hatreds and ambitions by all kinds of means—the manufacture of half-truths and untruths in history, by persistent misrepresentation of other races and the culture of unfavourable sentiments towards them’. This could be destructive of the very ‘fountainhead of humanity’. Ibid., p. 22.

⁴² Ibid., p. 38.

⁴³ Ibid., p. 39.

⁴⁴ We need to fight against the education that teaches that ‘a country is greater than the ideals of humanity’. Ibid., p. 71.

⁴⁵ But not all—his identification of the loss of freedom in bureaucratic modes extends to colonizers’ own countries too.

⁴⁶ Tagore, Nationalism, p. 40.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 41.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Ibid., p. 40.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Ibid., p. 41.

⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 47.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 48.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Richard Sorabji clarifies, rightly, that for Tagore, creativity was not limited to the realms such as those of poetry. Rather, for Tagore, as Sorabji points out, creativity lay also in participating in activities to create one’s village and, through that, one’s country; such activities would include participation in the constructive work that Tagore prioritized, as well as efforts to drive out epidemics from one’s village. Sorabji, Richard, ‘Tagore in Debate with Gandhi: Freedom as Creativity’, Sophia, no. 55, 2016, pp. 555–556CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I agree with Sorabji’s interpretation of Tagore’s notion of creativity, and I also share with him the understanding that Tagore prized creativity. But I diverge from Sorabji’s claim that Tagore endorses freedom as creativity. Creativity is vital for Tagore, no doubt, but freedom itself is a power whose absence or presence can affect the enactment of important responsive dimensions of persons’ lives, including their creativity. For Tagore, national rule is problematic from the point of view of freedom because its structures enfeeble individuals’ powers for creative responses—powers that are prioritized in Tagore’s conception of political community. Such enfeeblement is problematic because it diminishes the possibilities for creative responses that may well embody enactments of crucial forms of political involvement and participation. See ibid., pp. 553–562.

⁶⁰ Tagore, Nationalism, p. 42.

⁶¹ Ibid., p. 48.

⁶² Ibid., pp. 48–49.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 49.

⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 42.

⁶⁵ These techniques were highly sought after even by colonized subjects whose imaginations of self-rule kept intact visions of national power encountered via colonialism.

⁶⁶ In this regard, Tagore appears to anticipate strikingly the way Anibal Quijano discusses the coloniality of power. Quijano, Anibal, ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’, Cultural Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 2007, pp. 168–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁷ Tagore, Nationalism, p. 16. In this context, Tagore offers Japanese and European modes of interaction as examples of each of the two models. ‘The genius of Europe,’ he says, ‘has given to her people the power of organization, which has specially made itself manifest in politics and commerce and in co-ordinating scientific knowledge. The genius of japan has given … the vision of beauty in nature and the power of realizing it in your life.’ Ibid., p. 17.

⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 16.

⁶⁹ Ibid., p. 17.

⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 54.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 55.

⁷² Ibid., p. 54.

⁷³ Ibid., p. 55.

⁷⁴ Ibid. Emphasis mine

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 55.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Ibid., pp. 55–56.

⁸⁰ I find it helpful to illuminate Tagore’s point here by recalling Michael Walzer’s argument about ‘complex equality’ in Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983)Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Harmony was Tagore’s preferred mode for addressing the question of relations between women and men whom he considers distinct from each other; ‘life finds its truth and beauty, not in any exaggeration of sameness, but in harmony’. See Tagore, Nationalism, p. 6; and Tagore, R., ‘Woman and Home’, in Creative Unity (New York: Macmillan 1922)Google Scholar, available at http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/search/english_search.php, [accessed 3 October 2022]. In the context of the increasingly mechanical organization of life, he observed that the ‘very psychology of men and women about their mutual relation is changing and becoming the psychology of primitive fighting elements, rather than of humanity seeking its completeness through the union based upon mutual self-surrender’: Tagore, Nationalism, p. 38. Tagore was well able to criticize the unequal sexual division of labour grounded in convention and necessity: Tagore, ‘Woman and Home’. And he could advance that critique without neglecting to elaborate on the vital importance for human relationships of the realm of the home: Ibid. In the essay ‘Woman and Home’ Tagore seems to uphold what can be called a feminine principle. He had strong normative expectations with regard to the espousal and expression of that principle in public life, and he exhorted women to step out into the public realm and suffuse it sufficiently with that principle: Ibid. To add to the complexity of Tagore’s reflections about the role of women in an ideal political community, it should be noted that many of the contents of the feminine principle appear to connect with the values that Tagore associated with India and with the East more broadly, and which he wanted the East to cleave to and also uphold with vibrancy. Tagore, Nationalism, pp. 11–12, and Tagore, R., ‘Woman’, in Personality (London: Macmillan; 1917)Google Scholar, available at http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/search/english_search.php, [accessed 3 October 2022]. Admittedly, Tagore’s engagement with the women’s question is sophisticated and demands detailed engagement. But it is beyond the immediate scope of this article to undertake that exercise here.

⁸² Tagore, Nationalism, p. 39.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ Ibid., pp. 39–40.

⁸⁵ Ibid., p. 56.

⁸⁶ Ibid., p. 55.

⁸⁷ It is such engagement that Tagore values in the praise he attributes to Japanese civilization. On themes of judgement and receptivity, I have found it helpful to read the work of scholars such as Beiner, Ronald, Nedelsky, Jennifer, and Zerilli, Linda. Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Nedelsky, Jennifer, ‘Receptivity and Judgment’, Ethics and Global Politics, vol. 4, no. 4, 2011, pp. 231–354CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zerilli, Linda, A Democratic Theory of Judgment (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁸ Wolin, Sheldon, ‘Fugitive Democracy’, in Democracy and Difference, (ed.) Benhabib, Seyla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar is a good example.

⁸⁹ Williams, Melissa, ‘Justice Toward Groups’, Political Theory, vol. 23, no. 1, February 1995, pp. 67–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is a relevant example in this context.

⁹⁰ Some of these aspects of Tagore’s position become clearer in his reflections on samaj, which are spelt out later in this article.

⁹¹ Tagore was concerned that the national movement led by a charismatic leader like Gandhi could thwart independent judgement on the part of those led by him. This was one of his reasons for his opposition to the non-cooperation movement led by Gandhi.

⁹² Says Tagore: ‘The Nation has thriven long upon mutilated humanity. Men, the fairest creations of God, came out of the National manufactory in huge numbers as war-making and money-making puppets, ludicrously vain of their pitiful perfection of mechanism. Human society grew more and more into a marionette show of politicians, soldiers, manufacturers and bureaucrats, pulled by wire arrangements of wonderful efficiency.’ Tagore, Nationalism, pp. 61–62Google Scholar.

⁹³ Ibid., p. 62.

⁹⁴ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 15.

⁹⁵ Chatterjee, ‘Tagore’ tends to interpret Tagore’s defence of samaj as a rejection of nation.

⁹⁶ Bharucha’s very insightful analysis of Tagore’s invocation of samaj appears to conclude that Tagore endorses social forms suited to localized contexts: Bharucha, Another Asia.

⁹⁷ I am grateful to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to sharpen my claim regarding Tagore’s conception of societal politics through an engagement with Sumit Sarkar’s reflections.

⁹⁸ Sarkar, Sumit, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903–1908 (Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1973), p. Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., pp. 55–56; p. 308; p. 309; p. 311.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., p. 52; p. 53.

¹⁰² For a discussion about Tagore’s stance on sati in this period, see Chakravarti, Sudeshna, ‘Rabindranath and the Bengal Partition of 1905: Community, Class and Gender’, in Tagore—At Home in the World, (eds) Dasgupta, Sanjukta and Guha, Chinmoy (Delhi: Sage, 2013), especially pp. 157–158Google Scholar. For a good discussion of Tagore’s engagement with the status of women, see also Sarkar, Tanika, ‘Country, Woman and God in the Home and the World’, in Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World: A Critical Companion, (ed.) Datta, P. K. (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003)Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement, pp. 53–54.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., p. 82; p. 85.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., pp. 82–85.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., p. 85.

¹⁰⁷ Sir Rabindranath, Tagore, M. Gandhi, K., Andrews, C. F. and Tagore, Dwijendranath, Ethics of Destruction (Madras: Tagore and Company, 1923), available at http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/search/english_search.php, [accessed 3  October 2022]Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ Sarkar notes how some of the ‘revivalist’ aspects of Tagore’s political involvement were a ‘passing phase’: Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement, p. 156. Such observations raise the need for the supplementation of biographical and chronological accounts with an analytical basis for comprehending shifts in the nature of Tagore’s political involvement.

¹⁰⁹ Kaviraj, Sudipta, The Enchantment of Democracy in India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2011), p. Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹¹ Ibid., pp. 49, 50.

¹¹² Ibid., p. 50.

¹¹³ Ibid.

¹¹⁴ While discussing the history of the concept of samaj, Rochona Majumdar points out that there may no ‘easy equivalences’ between samaj as it evolved in the ‘nationalist, Bengali context’, and the ‘European idea of society’: Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 167. Majumdar also points out that in the second half of the nineteenth century there was an attempt to develop the notion of ‘that [which] would be an organic unity undercutting the excesses of wealth and poverty, the fissures of caste—in other words the alienation between man and man and between town and country that many began to see as a product of Western civilization and capitalist culture’: Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 169. But I would like to clarify that Tagore’s invocation of samaj does not entail any notion of an organic unity. It does attempt to generate a sense of belonging and unity, but it is not of an organic kind—there are no biological metaphors at work, nor is there any sense of a part and whole that need to synchronize. Nor is samaj any kind of a natural phenomenon. Rather, it is very much an aspiration that has to be pursued, enacted, and sustained with the utmost attention and care.

¹¹⁵ Kaviraj, The Enchantment of Democracy, p. 50.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., p. 52.

¹¹⁷ Ibid., p. 53.

¹¹⁸ Ibid.

¹¹⁹ My use of the term alternative modern derives inspiration from Rajeev Bhargava’s articulation of the notion of an ‘alternative modernity’. See Bhargava, Rajeev, ‘Are There Alternative Modernities?’, in Culture, Democracy and Development in South Asia, (ed.) Vohra, N. N. (Delhi: Shipra Publications, 2001), pp. 9–26Google Scholar.

¹²⁰ In the authorized English translation, the term for sammelan is ‘synthesis’. Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, pp. 27, 28.

¹²¹ Ibid., p. 26.

¹²² Ibid., pp. 26–27.

¹²³ Ibid., p. 27.

¹²⁴ Ibid., pp. 27–28.

¹²⁵ Ibid., p. 28.

¹²⁶ Ibid.

¹²⁷ Ibid.

¹²⁸ Ibid., p. 31

¹²⁹ Ibid., p. 32. Again, these are portions of the text of ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, from the period before the 1907 Bengal riots, that provide evidence of the difficulty of classifying Tagore’s perspective in that period as revivalist and non-modern. The Hindu Samaj that is being endorsed, and in fact aspired to, here is of the kind that enables sammelan where different groups would not have to fight with one another for supremacy. See also footnote 27 of this article.

¹³⁰ Ibid.

¹³¹ Ibid., p. 27.

¹³² Ibid.

¹³³ Ibid.

¹³⁴ Bharucha, Another Asia, pp. 99–100.

¹³⁵ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 16.

¹³⁶ Ibid.

¹³⁷ Ibid., pp. 15–16.

¹³⁸ Ibid., p. 16.

¹³⁹ Bharucha, Another Asia, p. 57.

¹⁴⁰ Ibid.

¹⁴¹ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 15.

¹⁴² Datta, P. K., ‘Tagore: Democracy as Dilemma’, Seminar, available at http://www.india-seminar.com/2015/674/674_pradip_kumar_datta.htm, [accessed 3  October 2022)Google Scholar.

¹⁴³ Ibid.

¹⁴⁴ Ibid.

¹⁴⁵ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 9. There is an elaboration of these issues in the very next section of the article.

¹⁴⁶ I discuss Tagore’s views about the mela in a later subsection.

¹⁴⁷ Chatterjee, ‘Tagore’, p. 168.

¹⁴⁸ Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 181.

¹⁴⁹ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 28.

¹⁵⁰ Ibid.

¹⁵¹ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 29. Tagore’s reflections here are supplemented by those in his Nationalism lectures where, with reference to caste regulations, he describes Indian society’s weakness in terms of ‘the blind and lazy habit of relying upon the authority of traditions that are incongruous anachronisms in the present age’. Tagore, Nationalism, p. 76.

¹⁵² Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 29.

¹⁵³ Ibid., p. 30.

¹⁵⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 31.

¹⁵⁶ Ibid.

¹⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 15.

¹⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 5.

¹⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 6.

¹⁶⁰ Ibid., p. 14.

¹⁶¹ Ibid., p. 9.

¹⁶² Ibid.

¹⁶³ Ibid., p. 25.

¹⁶⁴ Ibid., p. 8

¹⁶⁵ Ibid., pp. 8–9.

¹⁶⁶ Ibid., p. 9.

¹⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 10.

¹⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 9.

¹⁶⁹ See also footnote 102 of this article.

¹⁷⁰ Ibid., p. 6. Even in his nationalism lectures Tagore recalls the views he expresses in ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’. He says what India needed most was ‘constructive work coming from within herself’ but that early Indian nationalists had restricted themselves to asking for larger representation in councils. ‘They wanted scraps of things, but they had no constructive ideal.’ The extremist nationalists who followed after the split in the Indian National Congress also neglected to pay attention to the weaknesses in the ‘social organisation’. Tagore, Nationalism, p. 75. The point of mentioning this is to show that Tagore’s commitment to constructive work and attention to social organization were constant, even if the nature of his own personal involvement with political causes changed over time.

¹⁷¹ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 6.

¹⁷² Ibid., p. 10.

¹⁷³ Ibid., p. 11.

¹⁷⁴ Ibid.

¹⁷⁵ Ibid.

¹⁷⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷⁷ Ibid.

¹⁷⁸ Ibid., pp. 10–11.

¹⁷⁹ Ibid., p. 12.

¹⁸⁰ Ibid.

¹⁸¹ Ibid.

¹⁸² Ibid., p. 25.

¹⁸³ Ibid., pp. 24–25.

¹⁸⁴ Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 180.

¹⁸⁵ Ibid.

¹⁸⁶ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 15.

¹⁸⁷ See also Ganguly, Swati, ‘The Poush Mela in Santiniketan’, The Public Historian, vol. 35, no. 2, 2013, pp. 104–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸⁸ I quote here from Kathleen M. O’Connell’s analysis of Tagore’s interest in utsav as her comments are helpful for approaching Tagore’s interest in mela. She mentions how the notion of utsav for Tagore denotes a celebration where ‘both individuals and groups could come together in ever widening circles of inclusion and integration’. See Kathleen M. O’Connell, ‘Utsav-Celebration: Tagore’s Approach to Cultivating the Human Spirit and the Study of Religion’, https://www.parabaas.com/rabindranath/articles/pKathleen_Utsav.html, [accessed 3 October 2022]. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for encouraging a consideration of Tagore’s reflections on utsav, in the context of this article’s engagement with the institutional aspects of samaj.

¹⁸⁹ Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 180.

¹⁹⁰ Selections from Dewey, John, ‘The Public and Its Problems’, in Democracy, (ed.) Green, Philip (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1993), p. Google Scholar.

¹⁹¹ Ibid.

¹⁹² Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 15.

¹⁹³ Ibid.

¹⁹⁴ Ibid., p. 5.

¹⁹⁵ Ibid., p. 24.

¹⁹⁶ Ibid., p. 3.

¹⁹⁷ Ibid., p. 4.

¹⁹⁸ Datta, ‘Tagore’.

¹⁹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰⁰ Ibid.

²⁰¹ Tagore, Nationalism, p. 44.

²⁰² Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, pp. 22–23.

²⁰³ Ibid., p. 23.

²⁰⁴ Tagore et al., Ethics of Destruction.

²⁰⁵ Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 179.

²⁰⁶ Tagore, ‘Our Swadeshi Samaj’, p. 9.

²⁰⁷ Tully, James, On Global Citizenship, (London, New York: Bloomsbury, 2014)Google Scholar.

²⁰⁸ Ibid., p. 38.

²⁰⁹ Ibid.

²¹⁰ Ibid., p. 10.

²¹¹ Ibid., p. 38.

²¹² Ibid., p. 18.

²¹³ Majumdar, ‘A Conceptual History’, p. 178.

²¹⁴ Ibid., p. 180.

²¹⁵ Ibid.

²¹⁶ Ibid., p. 184.

²¹⁷ Majumdar, too, notes this: ‘Tagore clarified that a commitment toward did not mean that Bengalis abjure all relationship to the colonial state or to the fruits of Western education. Once a society has been exposed to outside influences, a complete inward turn was not only impossible but its result, if achieved, could only be retrograde’: ibid., p. 180. ‘But preservation of the social demanded a commitment to channel all knowledge acquired through an exposure to the West to increasing the strength of indigenous society’: ibid.

²¹⁸ Bharucha, Another Asia, p. 94.

²¹⁹ Ibid.

²²⁰ Ibid., p. 56.

²²¹ Ibid., pp. 56–57.

²²² Ibid., p. 95.