Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Imagination: Nation, Gender, and Global Justice

Abstract

This paper focuses on Tagore’s increasing activism and his bid to persuade his readers in his later works of the importance of thinking globally and abandoning exclusionary perspectives. It shows how he strove in his writing to alter mentalities underlying the politics of domination and division in the world he lived in. The paper also attempts to draw out the implications of his critical approach to imagination and emotion and the way he used emotion-and affect enhancing literature to oppose divisive and instrumental attitudes and to bring people together by transcending nation or gender divisions.