Tagore’s exploration of Hindu identity in Gora

Bibliographic Data

ID9002337
AuthorsAshim Dutta (0000-0003-2386-8884, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume58
Issue2
Pages463-479
Publication date2021-02-20
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989420988581
OpenAlexW3132076055
LanguageEN
References cited6

Published between 1907 and 1910, Rabindranath Tagore’s novel Gora reflects its author’s evolving cultural, political, and ideological views in the first decade of the twentieth century. This period was significant not only for Tagore’s engagement in and disenchantment with the Swadeshi movement, but also in terms of his critical assessment of the viability of a Hindu cultural-national identity for India. Reading the novel in the light of some of his relevant writings in and around the 1900s, this essay puts Tagore’s exploration of Hindu identity into perspective in order to distinguish it from the exclusionary Hindutva ideologies later promoted and popularized in Indian politics. Using a dialogic method in the novel, Tagore pits a limited, divisive, and communalist Hindu ideology against an open, liberal, and alternative Hindu selfhood for India which is compatible with the universal-humanist perspective propounded at the end. Despite endorsing the latter perspective, Tagore nevertheless reveals his concerns and uncertainties about the position of minority communities and outsiders within that holistic paradigm of Indian identity

Aesthetics · Dialogic · Dystopia · Hindu nationalism · Hinduism · Hindutva · Humanism · Identity (music · Identity politics · Ideology · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Gender Studies · Indian History and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora · Religious Studies

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