Nationalism

Rabindranath’s Nationalism was first published in 1917 and Manabendranath’s in 1942. The perspectives or the ways of regarding nationalism were, naturally, more or less different, though they stood on a common gound of all-pervading philosophy of human progress. Rabindranath’s ideas and views had great concern and anguish for warring nations of Asia and Europe. He was troubled and tormented if and when haughty and powerful nations did encroach upon the sovereignty of other nations in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The rise of Fascism, too, had roused his agonized concern for humanity. Manabendranath concentrated his vision to the rise of Fascism (the other name for vulgar nationalism) in variegated forms in these two continents and its offensive attack on freedom and democracy in the last two decades of the century. He held the view that it might be the most dreadful destroyer of human civilization, with which history of mankind had ever come in confrontation.