Past Forward: Tagore Called Subhas Bose ‘Deshnayak’ but Both Frequently Argued over Nationalism

Our past can inform our choices in the future. Born four years after India’s First War of Independence in 1857, Rabindranath Tagore passed away just six years before India became free. Immediately after Das’s death in June 1925, Bose wrote to his elder brother Sarat from the Mandalay prison that while on one hand Narayan played a key role in reviving Bengal’s ancient and national culture, on the other hand it exposed ‘the hollowness of the shallow internationalism in life and literature of Tagore and his school which did not realize the fundamental truth in nationalism.’ In its issue of June-July 1917, Narayan ran an editorial critiquing Tagore’s worldview and reminiscing the fire that was seen in him during the Swadeshi movement but which was snuffed out by the first blow of wind. Tagore, Gandhi and Bose The most famous disagreement of Tagore, of course, was with Gandhi, over nationalism and the ‘cult of charkha’ which the poet expressed in the pages of The Modern Review and Prabasi, and the Mahatma responded to in the pages of Young India. Although it was not a direct response to Tagore, but Subhas Bose articulated the counter-idea of nationalism that he stood for in his presidential speech at the Maharashtra Provincial Congress in 1928.