1st Edition
Tagore and the Margins of the Nation under Colonialism
This book focuses on India’s anti-colonial politics which Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) brought into the mainstream of nationalist thinking. It browses through the entire corpus of Tagore’s writings in the genres of poetry, fiction, and essays, to glean both used and hitherto unused/un-translated writings that illumine Tagore’s gender consciousness and (proto)feminist thought and empathy, presenting it in a wholly new light. It teases out Tagore’s original views on India’s industrial-capitalist development and his views on the roles of applied scientists and engineers in it to highlight his critique of the nature of science teaching in colonial India. The volume also delineates Tagore’s Upanişadic ecologism that creatively evoked anticolonialism and patriotism.
Lucid and topical, the book will be indispensable for students and researchers in the fields of comparative literature, history, political science, international relations, and sociology at all levels, and anybody interested in literary criticism and cultural studies.
1. Introduction: Tagore’s Mainstreaming of the Issues Existing on the Side-lines of Anticolonial Politics in India 2. Acquiescence in, Protest against, and Prevarication about Patriarchy: Change of Tagore’s Gender Thinking in a ‘Ruthless’ Novel, Eight ‘Subjunctive’ Stories and Four ‘Indicative’ Ones 3. Inconsistent Feminist?: A Study of Tagore’s Genres of Feminist Writing 4. Industrial Revolution’s Engineers in Tagore’s Tinsangī Stories and Their Capitalist Ethic 5. Journey from Shallow to Deep Ecology and Tagore’s ‘Green Fuse’
Biography
Amartya Mukhopadhyay is former Professor and Chair of Political Science Department and Dean, Faculty of Arts and Commerce at Kalyani University, India; and former Professor and Chair of Political Science Department, Calcutta University, India. His research interests include political theory, political thought, IR theory, policy studies, cultural politics and sociology of literature. His recent publications include, India in Russian Orientalism: Travel Narratives and Beyond (2013); (Coedited) Contextualizing Democratic Governance in India: Some Perspectives (2013); and Bengali Fiction, Tura, Trisha and Debang-er Galpo (Stories of Tura, Trisha and Debang) (2023).
