Rabindranath Tagore and World Peace

Abstract

Throughout his life Rabindranath Tagore strongly believed that until the big and powerful nations, aided by their superiority and vast technological advancement, ceased their desire for territorial expansion and control over the smaller nations, world peace could never be achieved. Thus war was the consequence of the necessary logic of aggressive western materialism that developed in the early part of the 20th century, with science divorced from spirituality, by which some of those nations dragged the greater part of the world into the pit of destruction. According to the poet, peace could be achieved only when diverse races and nations were free to evolve into their distinct characteristics, whilst all would be attached to the stem of humanity through the bondage of love. He ardently believed that world peace could be achieved only if both the East and the West met on a common ground and on terms of equal fellowship:“where knowledge flows in two streams – from the East and from the West†and “in their unity is perceived the oneness of Truth that pervades and sustains the entire Universe.â€