Impact Of British Imperialism On Rabindranath Tagore

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British Imperialism in India deeply affected attitudes to politics, society, community, nation, and gender and intercommunity relations. This inevitably conditioned the thought process of the then common masses as well as the intelligentsia. Colonialism in India and also elsewhere made it impossible to understand the history of the country and what emerged was deconstructed notions largely conditioned and shaped by the imperialist’s missions to ‘civilize’ the colonized and the broad agenda of the ‘white man’s burden’. Studying Rabindranath Tagore from this broad rubric shall lead one to understand how Imperialism and colonialism moulded and shaped his entire career as the polymath who ventured into the arenas of literature, art, and politics and into the daily lives of common masses. Tagore’s political thoughts, apparently seeming dispassionate, can actually be studied vis-à-vis their dialogical relation with the socio- cultural conditions of India at the macrocosmic level and Bengal at the microcosmic level. He was the hybrid or the cosmopolitan man who took India to the rest of the world in her entire glory as

Voice: Shall I explain? In the earth’s lower level are lumps and lumps of stone, iron, gold; therein lies the icon of strength. At the upper level grass grows, flowers blossom on a little bit of fresh turf- therein lies the game of magic. I bring diamonds, rubies, from the impenetrable; but I cannot wrest that bit of life’s magic from the accessible.

Nandini: You have plenty, why do you still talk so much like a greedy man?

Voice: All that I have is a burden. Gold hoarded away still doesn’t become the touchstone- however much I increase my power it hasn’t arrived at youth. So I want to bind you by keeping guard over you; if I had youth like Ranjan’s I could have left you free yet bound you. My time’s been spent in knotting thus the ropes of your confinement. Ah, but all else may be captured only happiness can’t. (Lal