Rabindranath Tagore’s <i>The Home and the World</i>: Story of the Failure of the Nationalist Project

Abstract

As an intense literary text, The Home and the World could be read in more than one way, and through different interpretations. This paper attempts to compare the novel with early twentieth century Vietnamese novels. The Home and the World is a novel that reads like an allegory on the failure of the Indian nationalist projects, circling around the issues of “Home†versus “World,†tradition versus modernity, created by the active involvement of the colonisers in the cultural, economic and administrative life of the colonised. It could be read as an allegory on the failure of Indian nationalism to accept tradition and modernity, home and the world, concurrently. In addition, the novel offers an alternative nationalist project that could free India from its obsession with the colonising powers: true freedom of the nationalist imagination will be gained by going beyond every form of ideological prejudice and separation, and by synthesising every conceivable value that could be useful for the development and maintenance of the nation. And as a concrete example of his alternative nationalist project, Tagore founded Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan in 1921.