Rabindranath Tagore

The idea of the Nation is one of the most powerful anaesthetics that man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion—in fact, feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out.

What is a nation, in the Western sense of the term, and what is it that is so appealing in this modern idea which has taken such a strong hold upon the imagination of men?

It is the organization of politics and commerce. It is a political and commercial union of a people delimited by their geographical and ethnological unity. Nation, in the sense I have been using it, is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power.

And what is the meaning of this nationalism?

It is a spiritual suicide for the Nation, because nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness, it is not their spiritual emancipation and self-expression, it is their spiritual suicide. Because when a nation becomes nationalistic it loses its soul.

The history of nations, in the Western sense, is the history of organized selfishness, of competition and mutual distrust and suspicion, of jealousy and hatred, of the perpetual attempt of one nation to thrive upon the destruction of another.

The West has been systematically petrifying her moral nature in order to lay a solid foundation for her gigantic abstractions of efficiency. She has all along been starving the life of personal man into that of the professional.

In the meanwhile the Western nations are furiously jarring against one another and threatening to bring down the future of humanity to ruins. The very people who have created this situation are crying that the world is in jeopardy, but they are not ready to give up the thing that causes the danger.

The political civilization which has sprung up from the soil of Europe, and is overrunning the world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep the alien at bay or to extinct him. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future.

It is wholly lacking in spiritual power to give and ultimate meaning to the history of man. For such a civilization the individuals surrender their freedom of choice, their claim over their possessions and their personal preferences, and in return gain vicarious enjoyment of a power bloated far beyond all proportion.

But the blessing of the Nation can never be realized so long as it drags thechain of exclusiveness and fostered by suspicion and resentment. These spirits of exclusion, which we so carefully cultivate in our politics, can only thrive upon antagonism.

The political civilization which is scientific and not human, which is powerful and not good, shuns all personal relationship, and its pride lies in an efficiently impersonal method and an aggressively spirit of research.

When this organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is the Nation, becomes all powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day for humanity. When it allows itself to be propelled by collective passion of hatred and greed, then it surely leads not only to moral suicide for itself but for a large portion of humanity.

The political idea of the Nation with all its paraphernalia of power and glory, its flag and anthem, its beating of drums and its aggressive waving of banners, had fascinated the people of Europe into giving up all their rights to the State. The English, the French, the German, the Italian peoples have done so, and by doing so they have worn themselves into the shadow of men—they are not living beings any more, they are merely citizens.

But citizenship is a collective being, and all collectives are fictitious beings. When man allows a fictitious thing to dominate over the reality which is in him, then he himself becomes fictitious. Much of the life has gone out of Europe because she has given herself up to an abstraction called the Nation, which has no soul.

I have said this because I want you to understand why the idea of the Nation is so dangerous for the future of humanity. It is because this idea makes people feel they are moral when they are only trying to be powerful. It gives them a moral mask for greed, allows them to rob and kill and persecute in the name of patriotism.

Yet the spirit of the Nation is necessary. It is valuable so long as it does not make itself exclusive. When it tries to build up a wall against the recognition of the common fellowship of all humanity, then it is harmful. When it nurses hatred against other peoples and tries to exterminate their culture and life, then it is evil.

The true Nation is that which offers its best to humanity, not that which claims the best from others. The Nation, as a spiritual unity, can never be endangered by expansion, for expansion means growth in sympathetic comprehension, and not mechanical addition.

Such a nation immortalizes itself, because its best is contributed to the common stock of civilization. But the nation that lives for itself lives and dies for itself.