Louise Blakeney Williams

Overcoming the "Contagion of Mimicry": The Cosmopolitan Nationalism and Modernist History of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats

Rabindranath Tagore and William Butler Yeats first met in 1912. The Indian poet, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature the next year, was very impressed by the Irish poet who would win the same prize ten years later. Tagore compared Yeats's work to that of the greatest ancient Indian poets and claimed that Yeats was "someone capable of comprehending the world through the un-trammelled power of his soul."¹ Equally as enthusiastic, Yeats described Tagore as "a great poet—if not the greatest poet at the present time in the world."² The poets admired one another not just for their creative writing, but also for their contributions to the nationalist movements of their respective countries. Tagore credited Yeats's return to "the ancient poetic tradition of Ireland" for the "national awakening" of Ireland, while Yeats claimed that Tagore's poetry was crucial for a "new Renaissance" that had "been born in" India.³ Many of their countrymen agreed that the two authors were important representatives of their nations' genius. Tagore's poems about India, for example, were considered so moving that one of them was chosen for India's national anthem in 1947, while Yeats was so distinguished that he was appointed one of independent Ireland's first senators.⁴

Yet, although Yeats and Tagore were lauded as the greatest poets of their countries, they were not particularly well liked by anticolonial nationalists. Both authors were criticized harshly, and were accused periodically of being pro-British elitists rather than true nationalists. Some commentators are still suspicious of them today. Ashis Nandy, for example, argues that Tagore "rejected the idea of nationalism," while Stephen Regan writes that "the nationalist sentiments Yeats espouses are essentially those of déclassé Irish Protestantism."⁵ That the greatest national poets of two widely separated British colonies could find themselves accused of betraying their own nations is an interesting paradox.⁶ It also is a problem connected directly to academic debates in the fields of nationalism and imperialism. Tagore and Yeats were nationalists, but they have been misunderstood because their particular forms of nationalism, which were remarkably similar, were different from those of more well known nationalists. Rather, the nationalism they espoused resembles the "new" cosmopolitanism that many scholars in the past decade have attempted to define, the study of which has been called "a revolution in the social sciences."⁷

This new cosmopolitanism is contrasted to most nineteenth- and twentieth-century forms of nationalist thought because it questions the value of nation-states with unique, unitary cultures opposed to all others. At the same time, it also differs from the "old" cosmopolitanism or universalism of the eighteenth century, which proposed that national differences be minimized in favor of one uniform enlightened culture. Rather, "new" cosmopolitans, who also have been called "rooted" or "realistic" cosmopolitans, respect the variety of traditions and nationalities, but also believe in universal values that all people in all countries should accept.⁸ They think that individuals can be nationalists by retaining their national identities and primary loyalty to one nation, while at the same time being "respectful of cultural diversity, interested in dialogue across cultures, and committed to forms of cultural hybridization."⁹ Some scholars argue that if this theory were adopted today, it might help combat disturbing trends in nationalism, because, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta puts it, cosmopolitanism avoids "both the logic of assimilation that eroded difference" and "an enclavism that made dialogue impossible."¹⁰ Critics, however, question the practicality of the new cosmopolitanism; it succumbs to "the fallacy of the possible middle" by attempting to combine the particular and universal, and is "too abstract to motivate individuals to engage in moral action."¹¹

Tagore and Yeats were not such skeptics. This may be because they lived at a time when nationalist thinking was more fluid than it is today. After years of scholarly analysis, it often seems that the only choice is between dichotomies, first between nationalism and universalism, and then, if nationalism is adopted, between religious and secular, traditional and modernizing, conservative and liberal varieties.¹² Yeats and Tagore did not see the need to make such choices and instead hoped for a balance of opposites that, as Tagore put it, accepted "neither the colourless vagueness of [universalist] cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship."¹³ They did this in all areas of their lives, becoming cosmopolitan individuals as well as thinkers. Both authors read widely in the works of many different nations, and combined features of diverse cultures in their own creative writing. Like most cosmopolitans, they traveled to, and resided in, many places; Yeats alternated between living in Ireland, England, and France, while Tagore was constantly on the move throughout the entire world. Both also participated in social and professional communities that provided places for artists and scholars from many nations to interact as equals. In London, Yeats's circle included natives not only of Ireland, England, America, and Europe, but also of India and Japan. In Calcutta, Tagore socialized with citizens of all those places, as well as with individuals who had a more hybrid sense of national identity, such as half-British, half-Sri Lankan Ananda K. Coomaraswamy and Irishwoman-turned-Hindu nun Sister Nivedita.¹⁴

It was on one of his many overseas travels that Tagore met Yeats, and was drawn into his cosmopolitan circle of friends in London. A grand public banquet was organized in Tagore's honor, at which Yeats was supposed to take the chair. Plans had to be changed at the last minute because, according to one account of the event, Yeats "was unable, as a loyal Irish nationalist, to propose the King's health."¹⁵ Yeats's cosmopolitan mixing of cultures, therefore, did not preclude an anticolonial nationalism. In fact, Yeats and Tagore are much better comprehended not by denying their nationalism, but through the concept of new cosmopolitanism. In this way, both authors can be seen as significant nationalist thinkers as well as great artists.

This approach also contributes to a deeper understanding of the history of nationalism. That history cannot be characterized as merely the story of unitary, oppositional ideologies competing with universalism. It must acknowledge a cosmopolitanism that "surfaced from time to time" as well.¹⁶ Tagore and Yeats were the best exponents of a nationalism that was shared by the larger group of artists and art critics with whom they worked and associated. Tagore's and Yeats's ideas, thus, give us some insight into one fairly widespread cosmopolitan moment that has yet to be explored in detail. This particular moment is especially interesting because it illustrates the complex, multidirectional, and hybrid nature of imperialism.¹⁷ It also highlights an ironic feature of imperialism. A new type of cosmopolitanism would not have been possible without the increased interaction between metropolis and periphery facilitated by the expansion of the British Empire. But this cosmopolitanism, in turn, was a way of thinking that challenged imperialism more fundamentally than any other nationalist ideology.

As a number of critics have made clear, most anticolonial nationalists did not really counter imperialism effectively, but instead copied its underlying ideology. This is one of the key features of what Partha Chatterjee has called "the post-colonial predicament."¹⁸ For example, most nationalists adopted the Orientalism so famously defined by Edward Said, but merely reversed or inverted it. They agreed with Westerners that the people of the East had a spiritual "essence," which was fundamentally different from the rationality and materialism of the West. They denied, however, that this made them inferior and unchanging, but argued instead that it gave them the potential to exceed the achievements of their conquerors.¹⁹ Underlying this theory, according to scholars such as Gyan Prakash, Ranajit Guha, and Prasenjit Duara, was a view of history that replicated the progressive assumptions about the past that were used to justify the imperialist "civilizing mission." The ultimate result of this imitation of Western Orientalist and historical discourse was that the postcolonial states, which nationalists helped create, were not fundamentally different from the states of their colonial masters, and thus were equally as Eurocentric and oppressive.²⁰

Yeats's and Tagore's cosmopolitan nationalism was formulated as a response to their awareness of potential problems such as these, and in direct opposition to them. Tagore explicitly warned his countrymen in 1931 about the "contagion of mimicry" he noticed among many nationalists who copied Western actions and ideology.²¹ Both Tagore and Yeats consciously tried to avoid this imitation and, as a result, formulated a very different type of nationalism. They were able to do this in part because they escaped "the hegemony of linear time" and Western historical assumptions through nonprogressive theories of the past.²² Yeats, like most early-twentieth-century literary modernists, formulated a complex cyclic theory of history. Tagore had similar historical assumptions, probably inspired by traditional Indian writings about the past. These nonprogressive views of history helped both authors become cosmopolitan nationalists by enabling them to transcend Western antithetical thinking and anticolonial nationalism. Rather than assume that a dichotomy existed between hemispheres, races, or nations and advocate the triumph of a superior one, Tagore and Yeats insisted on the balance or harmony of opposites in all areas of thought and life.

Far from being traitors to the causes of India and Ireland, Tagore and Yeats were sincere nationalists who tried to formulate an alternative version of nationalism that avoided the problems to which so many of their contemporaries succumbed. Ranajit Guha noticed this about Tagore, and claimed to be deeply saddened that Tagore's "is a loser's voice."²³ There is, therefore, a need to consider again the cosmopolitan losers of the early-twentieth-century nationalist debates, not just to gain a better understanding of Yeats and Tagore and the cosmopolitan moment to which they contributed, but also for suggestions about different forms of nationalism and modes of historical thinking that may be truly free of Eurocentric and imperialist discourse.

As poets and literary critics, Yeats and Tagore had many common interests and ideas, but they did not agree on everything.²⁴ On the subject of nationalism, however, their opinions were so similar as to be almost uncanny, especially given the fact that they formed those views independently of one another. Yeats did not know of Tagore before they were introduced in 1912. It is possible that Tagore read Yeats's poetry before their meeting, but it is unlikely that he was familiar with Yeats's theories of nationalism. The authors had the opportunity to exchange ideas in 1912 and 1913 when they worked together in London on translations of Tagore's poetry.²⁵ They immediately noticed the similarities in the nationalist situations in their countries, and in their own responses to them, and they shared these with the public in articles and lectures.²⁶ After 1913, Yeats and Tagore continued to correspond, but very sporadically. They did, however, openly express admiration for one another to the end of their lives.²⁷

In spite of their limited communication, the two authors were in remarkable agreement from the very start on issues relating to nationalism. This is not a coincidence. Many of the artists and art critics in their cosmopolitan circles of friends also had similar ideas. Tagore and Yeats, in fact, were the earliest and most eloquent exponents of a common artistic response to developments in nationalism in the early twentieth century. For example, there were writers in Ireland, such as J. M. Synge and Lady Gregory, whom Yeats admired and considered allies in his debates with other nationalists. In India, Tagore had the support of his nephew Abanindranath Tagore and his associates in the "Modern Bengal School," who put a cosmopolitan theory of national identity into practice in their visual art. There also were a number of art critics and artists who straddled both worlds, including E. B. Havell, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and James Cousins. They all expressed views of nationalism similar to Tagore's after meeting him and his circle in India, but they probably were influenced by an earlier awareness of Yeats's movement in Ireland.²⁸ The fact that Tagore's and Yeats's theories of nationalism were so alike, therefore, must be attributed to parallel developments taking place in Ireland and India to which they, and other artists, responded, and to their similar backgrounds, which made the two great poets especially aware of them.

Tagore and Yeats were born in 1861 and 1865, respectively. They grew up at a time of important changes in both their countries resulting from the increasing English presence that accompanied the expanding British Empire. Although the English had been involved in Ireland for centuries, it was only after the Great Famine of 1848 that the majority of Irish people were drawn fully into English culture. The same was true in India, which was directly controlled by the British Parliament only after the 1857 Mutiny/War of Independence. The growth of state-supported education (in English) and an expansion of government administration and services in both countries brought more Irish and Indians into closer contact with England than ever. These developments, plus improvements in communications and transportation, helped to more fully integrate India and Ireland into the wider world. While many citizens welcomed this opening up of horizons, others were concerned that traditional cultures were being lost to Anglicization.²⁹

Tagore and Yeats were well placed to feel these changes. Both were brought up among the elites of their countries: Yeats was from a well-off Protestant family, while Tagore was born to a family of Brahman Hindu landlords in Bengal. However, they had somewhat unconventional upbringings because of relatives with strong artistic tendencies and unorthodox religious beliefs. Yeats's father was a painter who was at odds with mainstream society because of his bohemian lifestyle and his religious agnosticism. Many of Tagore's relatives also were artists. Members of his immediate family, moreover, had founded a reformed branch of Hinduism that combined Western Christian and rationalist theories with traditional Indian religious doctrines. Tagore's and Yeats's childhoods also were quite cosmopolitan. They spent time in urban and rural environments. Yeats lived in London and Dublin, but spent holidays in the countryside of western Ireland. Tagore lived in Calcutta and in rural Bengal, but also visited England twice as a young man. Both authors consequently were introduced to high art as well as folk culture, to the ideas of the metropolis and periphery, and to people who were Anglicized as well as those who were not. They serve as good examples of the way in which the British Empire at its height facilitated an interaction between cultures that made cosmopolitanism possible.³⁰

That empire also engendered nationalist movements, and in the early 1880s, Tagore and Yeats became involved in them. While the movements developed separately, they had similarities that historians have not failed to note.³¹ Tagore was drawn into the "Bengal Renaissance," which was largely a movement of cultural nationalism in response to Anglicization. It began in the mid-1860s, partially through the efforts of Tagore's relatives who worked to protect traditional culture through yearly festivals featuring Indian songs and poems, wrestling matches, and exhibitions of local industry. Tagore joined the movement by writing poems inspired by ancient Indian forms, and by arguing for the use of modern Bengal as the subject matter of a classic art.³² In Ireland, Yeats took part in a similar "Irish Renaissance" that was initiated by the activities of the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Gaelic League in 1884 and 1893. It also attempted to revive traditional Irish sports, language, folklore, entertainment, and dress, often through cultural festivals. Yeats joined in by writing poems and plays inspired by ancient myths and legend cycles, and by founding the Irish National Theatre Society.³³

Coinciding with these cultural movements was a new political nationalism in both countries. In the late 1870s and 1880s, Charles Stuart Parnell and his Irish Party in the British Parliament organized a campaign to pressure the government to grant Home Rule. In 1885 the Indian National Congress was founded to convince the British to increase native participation in the government. Initially, most cultural nationalists supported these political movements as a complement to their efforts. Beginning in the 1890s, however, many nationalists, including Tagore and Yeats, began to question the ability of politicians to make any significant changes. In Ireland this was largely because of the fall of Parnell in 1891. The subsequent split in the Irish Party, and the victory of the Conservatives in the British parliamentary election of 1895 made the possibility of achieving Home Rule by political means very remote. In India, Congress did have some success with the Indian Councils Act of 1892, but the limited nature of the act, and British insistence that nothing further would follow, indicated the weakness of this approach. Journalists and politicians, including B. G. Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Aurobindo Ghose, formed the so-called "Extremist" Party in Congress, and became increasingly radical in their criticism of the passivity of Congress politicians.³⁴

Frustration with political nationalism grew even more intense in the years around 1905 in both India and Ireland. More extreme forms of nationalism, advocating complete political and cultural independence rather than just a share in the government, were proposed. In Ireland, for example, the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), which had been inactive since the rise of Parnell, began to plan again for a violent revolution to overthrow the British government. In addition, Arthur Griffith developed the idea of Sinn Féin ("Ourselves"), which suggested a boycott of all English goods, services, and offices in favor of Irish ones, as a means both to paralyze English rule and to display Irish independence. This idea was not put into practice widely in Ireland until after World War I, but a similar theory did have a great impact in India. In 1905, the proposed partition of the province of Bengal by the British government, aimed at reducing nationalist activity, led to the Swadeshi ("Our Country") movement, which has been called "a Bengali Sinn Féin."³⁵ It organized boycotts of British goods, education, and jobs, and their replacement by Indian ones. The Swadeshi movement, in turn, inspired the formation of a number of new revolutionary and even terrorist groups, such as the one led by Aurobindo Ghose and Sister Nivedita.³⁶

Both Yeats and Tagore initially were drawn to these new forms of nationalism. In the 1890s, Yeats wrote articles advocating the purchase of Irish goods, the wearing of Irish clothing, and the development of Irish industry, and he may have joined the IRB. Tagore was even more active as a leading figure in the Swadeshi movement; he participated in protests, wrote patriotic songs, supported the creation of Indian stores and industries, and started his own school entirely independent of the British system. There is even some suggestion that he was involved with revolutionary groups, because he described them so well in his novels.³⁷

Gradually, however, Yeats and Tagore grew uneasy with these new nationalist movements and criticized them openly. Both authors condemned the "blood-stained nationalism," as Tagore put it, or what Yeats described as "the violence of the mob" that often accompanied extreme nationalism in the form of riots in Ireland, or sectarian attacks, Swadeshi coercion, and even bombings and assassinations of British officials in India.³⁸ They also objected to the unsophisticated and religiously bigoted view of culture espoused by these nationalists, who were more interested in propaganda than great art. Lack of an appreciation of high culture and violence seemed to go hand in hand for Yeats when in 1907, riots accompanied his theater's production of J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World.³⁹ Tagore also associated nationalists who believed that "ideas make for weakness" with bloodshed in his novel The Home and the World.⁴⁰ This unsophisticated attitude toward culture made many nationalists argue that all English influence should be avoided. Both Yeats and Tagore not only criticized this position, but went so far as to compliment the English. According to Yeats, in opposition to the Irish, who have the "most utter indifference to art," the English artistic elite make "beautiful things and ... [add] a little to the world's store of memorable experiences," and the Irish would do well to learn from them.⁴¹ Tagore also publicly praised the "great poets born in England" and claimed that he knew "among the English many great-souled men."⁴²

It was because of attitudes such as these that Yeats and Tagore earned a reputation as pro-English elitists and cowards, as opposed to true nationalists. Sinn Féin founder Arthur Griffith, for example, described Yeats as "an 'imperialist' who had gone over to the enemy: 'a poseur in patriotism.'"⁴³ Tagore also was attacked for writing works that were "overly influenced by Western models," and "not springing from the national heart."⁴⁴ It is not surprising that both authors withdrew entirely from an active involvement in nationalism by 1907. Tagore's reputation fell even further when he published The Home and the World in 1915, which sharply criticized nationalists in the Swadeshi movement, and Nationalism in 1918, in which he argued that "the organized selfishness of Nationalism" is the "path of suicide."⁴⁵

Despite the fact that Tagore and Yeats openly objected to injustices of British rule during World War I and into the 1920s and 1930s, they both continued to be attacked for their betrayal of nationalism.⁴⁶ For example, after the violent Easter Rising of 1916, led by militant nationalist Patrick Pearse, and during the even more bloody War of Independence that began in 1919 and ultimately resulted in the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, Yeats openly condemned the excessive response of the English government in punishing suspected rebels.⁴⁷ Tagore was so disgusted with the British government after the killing of 379 innocent people in the Amritsar Massacre of 1919 that he renounced the knighthood he had received four years earlier.⁴⁸ But instead of appreciating these indications of anti-English sentiments, nationalists focused on the disagreements that Yeats had with the governments of the new Irish Free State under the leadership of W. T. Cosgrave and Éamon de Valera, and those that Tagore had with Mohandas K. Gandhi, even though Tagore was the first person to call Gandhi "Mahatma," or "great soul."⁴⁹ In fact, according to one historian, some nationalists of the 1920s "went so far as to say that Tagore's statements would have been, had India been independent, tantamount to treason."⁵⁰ But Tagore and Yeats had not given up on nationalism. A closer look at their criticisms of other nationalists, and their own ideas of cosmopolitan nationalism, tells a different story.

Skeptics about Tagore's nationalism have been remarkably consistent. As early as 1917, he was condemned for his "anti-nation" idea and his "nebulous conception of universal humanity."⁵¹ In other words, he was not considered a nationalist because, supposedly, he did not believe that a group of people who are united by a common geography, history, institutions, and traditions should maintain a unique culture and be granted political autonomy. Today this is still the most widely accepted definition of nationalism, and it may be why sympathetic scholars such as Ashis Nandy, Gauri Viswanathan, and Martha Nussbaum also do not consider Tagore a nationalist. They claim that he was a patriot and anti-imperialist because he loved his country and did not want the British to rule it, but he was a universalist rather than a nationalist because he advocated the creation of a culture common to all people, instead of separate national cultures, and because he did not want independence if that also meant adopting the form of a nation-state.⁵² Commentators on Yeats make similar arguments. They point to his condoning of the use of English in Irish creative writing, and to his admiration for eighteenth-century Ireland when Protestants dominated the country, as indications that he too did not support a unique culture independent of England.⁵³

These descriptions, however, ignore a great deal of the writings of Tagore and Yeats that make very different points.⁵⁴ Both authors were quite clear that they wanted their countries to be different and unique culturally, and independent and autonomous politically. As Tagore put it in 1919, "providence has fashioned each race on a different pattern, and to put one into the coat of another results in a misfit."⁵⁵ Moreover, it was their desire for real political, economic, and cultural independence from England that was at the heart of their criticisms of other nationalists. Like scholars, such as Partha Chatterjee, who describe the "derivative discourse" of many nationalists, Yeats and Tagore continually condemned nationalists for taking their ideas from English sources or copying English institutions or behaviors.⁵⁶

The first group Tagore and Yeats criticized was the politicians of the late nineteenth century. Not only was their begging "scraps of things" ineffective, to use Tagore's words, it also was English.⁵⁷ As Tagore put it, "politics in the West have dominated Western ideals, and we in India are trying to imitate you."⁵⁸ According to Yeats, Irish nationalists "borrowed mature English methods of utterance and used them to sing of Irish wrongs or preach of Irish purposes," and "had not a native style."⁵⁹ This was hardly a unique argument even for the time in which Yeats and Tagore were writing. Where they were more original was in pointing out the imitation of English imperialism in the ideas of most other nationalists as well.

While today scholars easily recognize that the "modernizing" nationalism of the late-nineteenth-century Japanese directly copied Western industrialism and militarism, at the time most Indian nationalists were not bothered by it. Rather, they were enthusiastic that modernizing had led to the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Tagore, on the other hand, very much disliked the fact that Japan had become "a mere reproduction of the West."⁶⁰ He warned his countrymen that "to imitate the British and try to save ourselves by adopting a disguise is mere self-deception"; it would not work in the long term because "it is nothing but mimicry."⁶¹

Tagore also objected to the Japanese use of violence. In fact, he and Yeats disliked violence in all types of nationalism, not only in its modernizing form. Some more "traditionalist" nationalists, including Aurobindo Ghose and Patrick Pearse, who advocated the elimination of English culture and a return to "authentic" values, also condoned violence.⁶² Tagore objected to this, not just because he found violence morally unacceptable, but because it copied the worst feature of English imperialism—the use of brutality to achieve dominance over others. As Tagore put it in 1917, to "return contempt for contempt and evil for evil" was to "imitate Europe in one of her worst features."⁶³

Yeats also argued that nationalists who "fought for causes worthy in themselves with the unworthy instruments of tyranny and violence" were no different from their oppressors.⁶⁴ In fact, any expression of anger at the English was rejected by both authors as an imitation of imperialist injustice.⁶⁵ Even nonviolent alternatives to political nationalism were criticized, because they often were motivated by hatred of foreigners. For example, the boycotts used by Swadeshists and later by Gandhi were flawed, in Tagore's opinion, because their emphasis on the English, on getting rid of their goods or creating native versions of them, was a form of flattery. Concentrating only on expelling the English also was too easy; it allowed nationalists to avoid finding indigenous solutions to serious internal problems. Finally, boycotts were counterproductive, according to both Tagore and Yeats, because they injured the native poor by denying them goods and ideas that could benefit them economically and intellectually.⁶⁶

Yeats and Tagore also found more subtle examples of mimicry. They realized that nationalist leaders needed to create unity among their followers, be they a small group of terrorists or a mass movement, in order to gain support and inspire enthusiasm. Nationalists often achieved this unity by relying on simplistic dichotomies, similar to those of the English, which have since been defined as Orientalist. Tagore, for example, objected to the English "habit of sharply dividing the human world into the good and the bad according to the hemispheres to which they belong" and of assigning inferiority to those they wished to dominate.⁶⁷ He warned Indians not to copy this. Yeats similarly rejected this type of dichotomous essentializing, because it was a "habit of mind" that "would compress a complex incalculable, indecipherable nation into the mould of theory invented by political journalists and forensic historians," and it, plus an equally one-dimensional view of England, was "twofold slander."⁶⁸

Yeats also disliked the simplistic notion of national identity resulting from the nationalist inversion of Orientalism. He especially objected to the vision of an "authentic" Ireland espoused by Éamon de Valera, who was named first president of the Irish Republic during the War of Independence, and elected prime minister of the Irish Free State in 1932. The Ireland that de Valera hoped to re-create was a "puritan and provincial" country inspired by Catholic values and a healthy peasant lifestyle.⁶⁹ It was, in de Valera's words,

a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths, the laughter of comely maidens; whose firesides would be forums of the wisdom of old age. It would, in a word, be the home of a people living the life that God desires men should live.⁷⁰

Tagore objected to a similar definition of national identity for India, especially as expressed by Gandhi. In Gandhi's ideal India, all people lived in the countryside and farmed the land with "the same kind of plough as existed thousands of years ago," inhabited "small villages" in "the same kind of cottages" as they had for centuries, and had no modern technology or medicine, no cities or industries, and no higher education. He practiced what he preached in his own simple lifestyle and in his suggestion that Indians take up spinning cloth on the traditional charka on a daily basis. Although Gandhi claimed that Indians of all religions would be included equally in his nation, people at the time and commentators since have noted his Hindu bias.⁷¹

Yeats and Tagore disliked these ideas of national identity for a number of reasons. First, they felt that such notions ignored the real complexity and diversity of their nations. Yeats claimed that the idea that Irish national culture "'must come from the Celtic people of the country ... and must not and cannot be divorced from the philosophy and influences of the Catholic religion'" was wrong because "Ireland is not wholly Celtic any more than England is wholly Saxon, or wholly Catholic any more than England is wholly Protestant."⁷² Tagore similarly argued that India had always been varied in religion and lifestyle because she accepted "alien races as factors in her civilization."⁷³ Because it denied diversity, both authors feared that such a unitary sense of national identity would lead to cultural homogenization, or as Tagore put it, to the "notion that the culmination of national unity is reached by pounding all differences into an undifferentiated mass."⁷⁴ This attempt to suppress differences was an imitation of Anglicization, and was "as wrong as murder."⁷⁵

National homogenization, in turn, would have devastating consequences. It would alienate minorities and encourage violence. Yeats particularly was upset by the Free State's attempt to enforce a Gaelic identity by making use of the language compulsory, and by insisting that "the Catholic conscience alone must dominate the public life of Ireland" with laws banning divorce, and censorship for religious content.⁷⁶ These were, in Yeats's opinion, impermissible "attempts upon the liberty of minorities."⁷⁷ Yeats also correctly predicted that this would prevent the country from being united; the Protestants in the north would never agree to become part of the Catholic south because they would "not suffer [the] injustice" of Catholic "fanaticism."⁷⁸ Tagore had a similar fear about Hindu revivalism, even in Gandhi's mild form, because it would ensure that Muslims were never fully accepted in the nation. He predicted that Hindu nationalists would make Muslims know their place as inferiors or even "suppress ... them altogether," and this eventually would contribute to sectarian violence.⁷⁹

Both authors were worried that the need to eradicate difference would require the suppression of freedom of speech, and artistic and intellectual creativity. This, in turn, would lead to a nation of stupid people with no initiative, capable only of obeying authorities. Tagore accused Gandhi of encouraging this by his minimization of the importance of art and intellectual endeavor. Gandhi's emphasis on spinning cloth was especially objectionable to Tagore, because it "does not require anyone to think: one simply turns the wheel of the antiquated invention endlessly, using the minimum of judgment and stamina."⁸⁰ Tagore and Yeats also believed that a lack of initiative and creativity would prevent their nations from joining the international community as respected equals. According to Tagore, nationalists who flaunted "parochialism as nationalism" were erecting "caste restrictions in human cultures" that would force nations to be "walled up into impassable compartments" and make India "segregated in our independence."⁸¹ Yeats also feared that an exclusively Gaelic national culture would "build a wall" to "keep out the European mind" solely out of fear that the Irish would think for themselves, rather than obey religious leaders.⁸²

In stressing obedience to a unitary national culture, nationalists such as de Valera and Gandhi, once again, were copying the dictatorial policies of the English government. According to Tagore, "alien government in India is a veritable chameleon. Today it comes in the guise of the Englishman; tomorrow perhaps as some other foreigner; the next day, without abating a jot of its virulence, it may take the shape of our own countrymen."⁸³ Or as Yeats put it more succinctly, "all those who have pulled down a tyrant ... put another in his place," and one who was a native instead of a foreigner.⁸⁴ Both authors noted this trend in the 1920s and 1930s. Yeats commented on the "threatenings and compellings" and "tyranny" among Irish nationalists.⁸⁵ He thought that the Irish "prefer to make men servile, rather than permit their opinions to differ from our own."⁸⁶ Tagore also wrote of the "compulsions," "despotism," and "a tyranny in the air" in Indian nationalism in the 1920s.⁸⁷ Nationalists were attempting to make "everyone talk in the same voice and make the same gestures" and insisted "that all questioning must stop; there should be nothing but blind obedience."⁸⁸

Once this obedience and uniformity had been achieved, Tagore and Yeats feared that Indian and Irish nationalists would copy English imperialism in fact. They would mimic English assertions of superiority, justifications of a civilizing mission, and willingness to go to war to conquer other nations. Because no dissent would be permitted, nationalists would have an inflated sense of the value of their nation. According to Tagore, "arrogance accompanies the awakening of a sense of power," and this, in turn, inclines a nation "to self-delusion rather than self-appraisal" and "causes us to forget that only by clearly defining what we lack, may we truly understand what we have."⁸⁹ Yeats also believed that "'Know thyself' is a true advice for nations as well as for individuals. We must know and feel our national faults and limitations no less than our national virtues."⁹⁰

Those nationalists unwilling to admit the faults of their nation might follow the path of Aurobindo Ghose in India, who justified terrorism with the claim that he was doing "God's work" because India was "His chosen nation," destined to conquer all other nations and "become the master of the world."⁹¹ Tagore and Yeats found this type of thinking very disturbing. Tagore warned Indians that they "must firmly remember that our country is not a god and therefore we cannot substitute it for God,"⁹² while Yeats concluded that that the Irish must "care for things Gaelic and Irish, not because we hold them better than things Saxon and English, but because they belong to us, and because our lives are to be spent among them, whether they be good or evil."⁹³

By 1918, Tagore was truly alarmed by nationalist movements throughout Asia. He realized that Western civilization "is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep the aliens at bay or to exterminate them."⁹⁴ Former colonials seemed to be doing the same thing. They were perpetuating the situation of the recent past, "when each race or nation was confined to itself and went on intensifying its individuality to an unconscionable extent till it grew into a menace for mankind," and as a result, "the whole world" would be overrun "with narrow patches of national preserves surrounded by thorny hedges of slavery, giving rise to mutual hatred, suspicion and lying diplomacy."⁹⁵

Yeats's concern about the direction in which Irish nationalism was heading was such that in 1933 he even told a friend that she was "right in comparing De Valera to Mussolini or Hitler" because "all three have exactly the same aim" of tyranny.⁹⁶ Rather, Yeats insisted, "we must become a modern, tolerant, liberal nation."⁹⁷ But how this would be done was not obvious. According to some scholars, liberalism is contrary to nationalism because "the universalism of liberalism and the particularism of nationalism" pull in "opposing directions."⁹⁸ Neither Tagore nor Yeats thought that was the case. And it was just such a balance between the universal and the particular that they hoped to achieve in their cosmopolitan nationalism.

Tagore and Yeats both believed that their countries would gain real independence as soon as they successfully adopted a national identity that transcended the limits of space and time by combining features of the modern and traditional world, and of the metropolis and periphery. One reason they thought such a hybrid identity was possible was their views of history. Like most nationalists, Tagore and Yeats initially turned to history to discover what was truly authentic about their nations, to return a sense of pride to a dominated people, and to help define their national identity.⁹⁹ But Yeats and Tagore came to very different conclusions about the past than did others.

As scholars have pointed out, anticolonial nationalists had assumptions about history not much different from those of Western imperialists. They adopted Western discourses of the Enlightenment period, especially "metanarratives or teleologies" of progress or evolution.¹⁰⁰ Imperialists used these theories to argue that the improvements Westerners had made in the material world of science, technology, politics, and economics proved that they had reached a higher stage of evolution, and gave them the right to rule and civilize inferior peoples. Anticolonial nationalists, on the other hand, took pains to deny the superiority of Westerners. They argued that while Western accomplishments in the material world were impressive, the spirituality and deeper sensitivity of non-Western people made them potentially better than crudely materialistic Westerners. If their spirituality could be added to the new material advances, an even higher stage of evolution might be reached, and Asian civilizations could surpass those of Europe.

Anticolonial nationalists, therefore, did not deny the reality of Western ideas of progress. But in order to explain how the West had conquered their nations, they had to modify linear theories of progress to propose a spiral pattern for history. They usually adopted a "triadic structure" that posited an initial "Golden Age" in the past of their nation, and a subsequent period of decline due to foreign interference. A return to the values of the past, especially of spiritualism, would ensure progress in the future to a third phase of unsurpassed greatness if the knowledge of the intervening period, of Western material achievements, were retained. According to Partha Chatterjee, in order to effect this synthesis of Western and non-Western essences, most nationalists assumed that Western materialism could be adopted in the public sphere of politics, economics, and technology, as long as traditional spiritualism still informed the private sphere of culture and the home. This, in turn, was one of the key causes of the "postcolonial predicament." Because nationalists accepted the idea of progress in the material realm, they copied Western political, economic, and scientific structures almost entirely upon gaining independence.¹⁰¹

At first glance, Tagore's and Yeats's theories of history seem similar to those of other nationalists. But there were some important divergences. Yeats developed a theory similar to those of the modernist literary figures he knew at the time in England, such as Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, D. H. Lawrence, and T. E. Hulme. Modernists' views of history marked a fundamental break with Enlightenment thinking in a way similar to their innovations in aesthetic practices. Just as modernist literature abandoned a linear narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, and instead used techniques juxtaposing apparently unrelated images and ideas, time shifts, and cyclic structures, modernist historical thought rejected the idea of progress, and instead focused on timelessness and analogies between widely separated ages, or posited a universal pattern of cycles. While Tagore is not considered one of the literary modernists, and there is no indication that he was influenced by them, his ideas of history were very similar to theirs. This may be because his views were inspired by traditional Indian philosophies, which also contributed to most literary modernists' cyclic theories, especially those of Yeats. In fact, modernist history shares much with non-Western senses of the past. According to scholars, traditional Asian and Indian writings on the past either use "a cyclic structure whereby time will reproduce, return to, or approximate a 'known certainty,'" or make "myth, history, and the contemporary ... part of the same chronological sequence; one is not distinguished from another; the passage from one to another, consequently, is entirely unproblematic."¹⁰² Both of these descriptions could serve just as well for modernist literature or history.

Yeats and Tagore initially rejected linear theories of historical progress because they disliked most features of modern Western culture and life, and did not view them as superior to the past. Yeats went on to claim that progress was a myth, and for much of his adult life he worked to outline a cyclic theory of history. This culminated in his 1937 book A Vision, in which he described in detail how the "Great Wheel" of history moved in cycles of approximately two thousand years, each of which had within it twenty-eight smaller cycles.¹⁰³ Tagore also believed that life revolves around "the great wheel of the world," because "everything in the universe is enclosed in a cycle of death and rebirth," and that "the unending procession of the world has gone on, through ups and downs, from the beginning of creation till today."¹⁰⁴ But because of the extent of poverty in India, Tagore was more ambivalent about the idea of progress in general than was Yeats; while he did not believe that progress had occurred in the modern West, he hoped that the lives of Indians could be improved in the future.¹⁰⁵

Yeats's and Tagore's theories of history were different from the views of other nationalists in a number of ways. Most important was the underlying structure they posited. Most nationalists assumed that history followed a pattern that historians of history have defined as "cycloid," while Tagore's and Yeats's theories were "sinusoidal." In cycloid theories, some civilizations traverse a simple cycle of rise into greatness, followed by decline and decay. This cycle may be repeated more than once, but it also can be overcome, and end in ultimate progress, if a civilization gains knowledge from previous periods of decline. In this case history becomes the spiral that most nationalists anticipated.¹⁰⁶

Sinusoidal theories of history are more complex and more strictly cyclic. They posit an endless series of cycles for all cultures, because they assume that rises and declines are caused by the continual alternation of two opposed traditions or sets of values, one superior and the other inferior. Modernist literary figures often used the terms "classic" and "romantic" to describe these different traditions. In sinusoidal histories, ages ascend to greatness when the superior tradition gains in popularity among the majority of the people and informs politics, society, art, and religion. Cultures decay when the inferior tradition is more widely preferred. Thus, one tradition is predominant for a number of centuries or years, and then it is replaced by the other tradition, and this alternation continues forever.¹⁰⁷

It is quite difficult to incorporate progress into an alternation view of history. Proponents of sinusoidal history believe that the fundamental values of each tradition remain constant throughout time and space, even if their expressions vary slightly in different places and historical periods. Thus, cycles in which one tradition is predominant are always essentially the same; they differ only from the cycles of the alternate tradition. And traditions always will return. As a result, changes in the condition of life are never permanent or cumulative, and thus there can be no real progress. History also cannot be teleological; there is no possibility that one tradition (or race or nation, for that matter) will triumph over the other and that history will end in an earthly paradise or utter decay. Finally, the place of something in time is not important in sinusoidal theories; those features or values that are more recent are not better than older ones, because there is no progress. Rather, all ages in the same tradition, regardless of when they occur chronologically, are analogous in value and meaning. Thus they are interchangeable, and there is no anachronism in comparing features of ages from the same tradition even if they are widely separated in time.¹⁰⁸ Sinusoidal theories of history, therefore, are far removed from the progressive and teleological civilizing mission of British imperialism. Rather, they are very much like the non-Western concepts of the past described by Ashis Nandy, in which time is reversible and there is "no real disjunction between the past and the present."¹⁰⁹

Both Tagore and Yeats had remarkably similar ideas about the characteristics of the two traditions. The best ages of the past embodied a superior tradition of thought and life that achieved a balance of opposing values. For example, Yeats's "Great Wheel" of history is propelled by the cyclic alternation of two contrary principles, which are the basis of all of life and thought, called Discord and Concord, the tearing apart and conflict of Subjectivity and the bringing together and unity of Objectivity. The best ages had a perfect balance or unity of values, and in the worst the principles were divided and carried to their extremes.¹¹⁰ Tagore had a similar view that "the world in its essence is a reconciliation of pairs of opposing forces," and when that reconciliation does not take place, decline ensues.¹¹¹ Both authors also plotted the cyclic alternation of periods of unity and discord throughout the history of the world. Their assessments were very much alike, especially in the assumption that archaic and medieval civilizations in most nations were more unified than those inspired by the Hellenism of the classical Greeks, for example in the period of the Renaissance in Europe and after, and the age of the Gandharan sculptures in India.¹¹²

It was because the unity of culture was broken that both Tagore and Yeats believed the present age to be one of decline. The West had destroyed that unity by taking materialism and rationality to an extreme.¹¹³ In fact, most of Tagore's book Nationalism was directed not against Asian nationalism, but against Western "greed of material prosperity," which caused "the upset of man's moral balance" and led to the mass destruction of the First World War.¹¹⁴ But Tagore was equally critical of Asians, such as Gandhi, who went too far to the other extreme and were removed from material concerns. Tagore summed up the problem of modern disunity and imbalance: "The East in the modern time has been beaten in the race of life, because it has neglected to cultivate the science of the finite, and the West is being driven into conflict of passions and unmeasuring multiplication of things because it has lost its respect for the cult of the infinite. The salvation of humanity lies in the meeting of the East and West in a perfect harmony of truth."¹¹⁵

Tagore's distinction between the scientific West and spiritual East was similar to Yeats's assumption of the difference between material England and spiritual Ireland.¹¹⁶ While this appears to be a form of Orientalist essentializing, something very different is going on here. First, this dichotomy describes only the present. Because of their cyclic views of history, both Tagore and Yeats believed that this modern imbalance was not an essential feature of either Asian or Western life. In fact, there had been a past in the West, especially in the Middle Ages, and in the East and Ireland for most of their histories, when the superior tradition was at its height and materialism was properly balanced by spiritualism.¹¹⁷ These periods of balance alternated in both places with periods of division. Thus, in the past, both West and East, England and Ireland, were varied, diverse, changing and changeable, good and bad. In other words, they were similar in being a collection of opposites. And during those periods when a better unified tradition predominated, people of the periphery and the metropolis were essentially the same.¹¹⁸ In addition, neither Tagore nor Yeats wanted to maintain the dichotomy between West and East, even in an inverted form; each hoped to harmonize them in order to make them similar in their diversity again, rather than widely different as they were in the present day because one was uniformly materialistic and the other uniformly spiritual.

Because of their interest in diversity, and their assumption that all ages expressing the values of a superior tradition were equivalent and interchangeable, Yeats and Tagore found much more in the pasts of their countries to admire than other nationalists who merely inverted Western Orientalism and continued to assume the essential and unchanging disparity between West and East. Those nationalists felt it necessary to privilege only the features of their nations' past that were different from the West.¹¹⁹ Tagore and Yeats, on the other hand, were free to describe a complex and diverse past for their nations because they appreciated ages that had similarities to some periods in English history as well as those that were different. For example, in opposition to Gandhi, who emphasized a vague golden age of pre-industrial Hindu peasants, Tagore wrote about all ages of the Indian past—Dravidian, Aryan, medieval, and Moghul. He featured kings, sages, saints, and artists; Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and Christians; and people who lived and worked in forest retreats, universities, royal courts, and cities, as well as rural Hindu peasants.¹²⁰ Yeats similarly wrote of chiefs of tribes, kings, aristocrats, scholars, warrior monks, bards and poets, pagans and Protestants, in Dublin as well as the countryside, from mythic times, through the Middle Ages, to the eighteenth century, in addition to the Catholic peasants so loved by de Valera.¹²¹

Thus, Yeats's and Tagore's modernist and traditional cyclic theories of history incorporated national diversity more effectively than Enlightenment progressive theories. They also helped both authors define their cosmopolitan nationalism. In their views of history, the key distinction was between superior and inferior traditions of values, rather than that which occurred earlier or later in time, or that which was from the West or the East. Because of this, and because history would not witness the triumph of one dichotomy over another, a nation did not have to exclude any part of its past, any group of people, or any features of other nations from its identity. Tagore and Yeats, therefore, did not need to follow other nationalists in choosing between traditionalism or modernity, peripheral or metropolitan culture, as the direction their nations should follow. In fact, they did not need to define their national identity in opposition to an "other" group of people at all. They did, however, have to find another principle to solve what Peter van der Veer describes as "the very subject of nationalist debate," which is "the decision about what is 'within' and what is 'outside'" the nation.¹²² Both authors found this in their theories of the harmony of opposites.

Tagore's definition of God was "the One in all diversities of creation."¹²³ This also is how he hoped that an independent India could be defined. Rather than force all citizens to conform to a single national ideal, Tagore wished that the people could be unified into one but be allowed to maintain their differences. As Tagore claimed in 1908, "the world-wide problem today is not how to unite by wiping out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact."¹²⁴ He thought that this had been achieved at certain great times in India's past when people did "not admit difference to be conflict, nor ... espy an enemy in every stranger," but instead tried "to find a place for all in a vast social order" and acknowledged "every path and recognize[d] greatness" wherever it could be found.¹²⁵ Yeats advocated something similar when he argued that it was essential to "cherish the thoughts which separate men from one another, and that are creators of distinguished life, instead of those thoughts that had made one man like another."¹²⁶ Tagore and Yeats were confident that this diversity would encourage harmony among the various people of the nation, rather than promote division or conflict, because the differences would neutralize one another.¹²⁷

An acceptance of diversity did not mean that either Tagore or Yeats was a cultural relativist. Neither author thought that all differences were acceptable, and they did suggest that there was a principle to guide the selection of what features should be part of a national culture. In other words, like most "new" cosmopolitans, they believed in minimum universal values.¹²⁸ As Tagore put it, sounding much like Matthew Arnold, nations should "accept the best teaching, whenever and whereever [sic] it may be found."¹²⁹ A cyclic view of history in which all ages were fundamentally equal when they were informed by the superior of the two traditions of life made this quite possible. Nationalists could choose any features of the past or present, in their own culture or that of any other nation, as long as they were informed by the ideals of the superior tradition.¹³⁰ While neither Tagore nor Yeats made it entirely clear what those ideals were, in general, once again, they balanced opposites.

This is apparent in their ideas about their own art and the best type of culture for their nations. Both authors believed it was possible to include foreign elements in a native culture. As Tagore put it, a culture could reflect "universal ideas," "without a loss of national identity."¹³¹ They also had similar opinions on how this could be done by creative artists. Yeats claimed that by using the natural settings, or "native scenery," the historical memories, myths, and images, as well as the unique rhythm of a nation, a national art also could incorporate foreign styles or symbols.¹³² Similarly, Tagore thought that if the "tradition and temperament" of the people were retained, artists also could depict was what universal to all people and borrow what was best from other cultures.¹³³ This type of culture, in Tagore's opinion, could "express both our national and our cosmopolitan consciousness," because "however cosmopolitan the several limbs may be, the heart will still be the heart of India."¹³⁴

The type of national art that Tagore and Yeats preferred also would balance other dichotomies. Like most modernist artists, both authors rejected European aesthetic naturalism because of its one-sided emphasis on the material world. They preferred an art that balanced realism and symbolism, matter and spirit, the natural world and the divine, emotion and reason, the inner and the outer.¹³⁵ They also wished to find a balance between high and popular art, rather than maintain the separation between them assumed in the modern West. Yeats especially liked the art of the European Middle Ages because it had achieved such an equilibrium. This also was why he was enthusiastic about Tagore's work. Yeats thought that Tagore's popularity among all types of Indians was proof that a similar art still was in existence; a great artist was able to produce a "work of a supreme culture" that also was "as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes."¹³⁶ Tagore also admired artworks such as the ancient epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, which were appreciated by both the elite and peasants, and were an intimate part of everyday existence for all Indians.¹³⁷

Both Tagore and Yeats had plans to effect a return to this type of art and connect it to a new nationalism through the revival of traditional fairs or festivals, as had existed in ancient Ireland, India, and the Middle Ages in Europe. These fairs, according to Tagore, would have the added advantage of bringing Hindus and Muslims together in India. Not surprisingly, Tagore and Yeats hoped that their new national culture could be shared by all the religions of their nations. Given that both authors' personal spiritual beliefs balanced ideas from a wide variety of religions from different countries and time periods, they saw no reason why this would not work.¹³⁸

Tagore and Yeats also commented on other features they hoped to see in a postcolonial nation that, again, would provide a harmony of opposites. For example, just as they liked a balance of past and present, both authors thought there was no reason not to combine modern Western science and technology with traditional culture. They did not suggest that a nation adopt all features of Western politics and economics in the public sphere and reserve the private sphere for traditional spiritualism, as did many other nationalists. Rather, they argued that only the best features of Western technology should be adopted, and then be combined with, and transformed by, higher indigenous values. Tagore especially thought that modern science was essential for India, not so that the nation could defeat others, but in order to liberate "human souls from the dark dungeon of matter" and allow people to pursue higher cultural goals.¹³⁹ This science, however, could be beneficial only if the negative features of Western economics—for example, the capitalism that benefited elites at the expense of the masses—were changed by the adoption of more traditional ideals. Both authors proposed a balance between rich and poor within a cooperative economic system that combined modern socialism with ancient feudalism, especially in the form of an aristocracy of talent who worked for the good, and with the cooperation, of the common people. Western science and industry applied selectively in such a system and under the direction of higher spiritual values would help, rather than harm, the nation.¹⁴⁰

Finally, in politics both authors hoped to achieve an equilibrium between the central state and local government, as they believed had been achieved in the best ages of their nations' pasts. Neither Yeats nor Tagore wanted a nation with a strong central state.¹⁴¹ Yeats, for example, disliked the over-powerful state that he thought had begun in Elizabethan England and was responsible for the British domination of Ireland. As he commented in 1921, "in many ways a great state kills all under its shadow like a horse chestnut."¹⁴² However, neither author accepted the nationalist idea, for example of Gandhi and de Valera, that their countries should be defined only by small, isolated villages. Rather, they hoped for a balance. As Tagore also put it, a central state may be necessary, but it should be part of a government system like that of ancient India, where "the state was only a part of the people. The mass of the population had its own self-government in the village community."¹⁴³

The cosmopolitan national culture envisioned by Tagore and Yeats, therefore, would incorporate many opposites. Because they saw no difference between the best ages of the past and present, East and West, there was no reason why a balance could not be achieved between the modern and traditional, foreign and native, religion and science, elites and masses, and local and national governments. Both authors realized that this was a very difficult ideal, what Yeats called an ideal of "an impossibly noble life" or Tagore a "supreme ideal," and that it would "take time to grow."¹⁴⁴ But they insisted that their ideal should take precedence over "immediate victory, immediate utility," as Yeats put it, and should be realized before any attempts were made to achieve independence, because there could be no "reformation of society ... without the regeneration of the hearts of men" occurring first.¹⁴⁵ In other words, without the acceptance of true cosmopolitan values, real independence could never be achieved. But if those values were adopted, both authors were confident that their nations not only would be great, but also could "come to the rescue of humanity," as Tagore put it, or, in the words of Yeats, "become a chosen race, one of the pillars that uphold the world."¹⁴⁶ At that point, independence would be an easy task. According to Tagore, when India, by the achievement of a great ideal, could "prove that she is morally superior to the people who rule her by their right of conquest," independence would come naturally because Indians could meet the English as their equals, and "all reason for antagonism, and with it all conflict [would] disappear."¹⁴⁷ Real freedom, thus, would be achieved by periphery and metropolis alike.

Unfortunately for Tagore and Yeats, few nationalists in India or Ireland were willing to wait for the kind of nation they wanted before achieving independence. Yeats died in 1939, and Tagore died two years later, in 1941. Neither lived to see his hopes become reality or the extent to which his predictions came true. And neither gained any widespread popularity for his ideas of nationalism. This is hardly surprising. A nationalism that does not contain a "message of collective salvation," because it is not progressive and teleological, can be of little interest to people who are desperate to be saved.¹⁴⁸ In short, a nationalism as idealistic as that of Yeats and Tagore can hardly inspire heroic action for immediate independence; nor did they want it to do so.

This does not mean that their nationalism should be dismissed as the fantasy of two early-twentieth-century poets. It was shared by other artists and critics at the time, and it may be returning as an important cultural ideal among postcolonial artists today, many of whom practice the sort of hybridity and cultural critique that Yeats and Tagore advocated.¹⁴⁹ Yet another cosmopolitan moment, brought on by a process of globalization that bears some striking resemblances to early-twentieth-century imperialism, may be on the horizon. In addition, postcolonial scholars and theorists of cosmopolitanism may wish to consider Tagore and Yeats more carefully, because their nationalism was far less imitative of modern Western discourse than other nationalisms; they avoided Orientalist dichotomizing, imperial historical meta-narratives, and the valorization of modernization and statism. This, in turn, may mean that it is not necessary to abandon the practice of history entirely, as some scholars have suggested must be done because of its complicity with imperialism.¹⁵⁰ Rather, different ways of approaching history, more like those of Tagore and Yeats, could be explored. Finally, Tagore's and Yeats's theories indicate that it is not entirely unrealistic to hope for a new cosmopolitanism, which respects cultural difference while insisting on some fundamental universal values. This may provide the key to the construction of the "different modernity" for which Partha Chatterjee is looking, by suggesting a better way to negotiate between the modern and traditional, West and East, than either adopting one side or the other, or restricting one to the public and the other to the private sphere.¹⁵¹ Rather, a cosmopolitanism like that of Tagore and Yeats could do what Sheldon Pollock argues is essential for the future—adopt a philosophy "of And rather than Either/Or."¹⁵² If this is the case, then not only was Tagore correct when he declared, "the poet is the best historian," it also may be true that poets make the best cosmopolitan theorists as well.¹⁵³

This article originated in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers, "Rediscovering the British Empire," directed by Wm. Roger Louis. An earlier draft was presented at the Middle Atlantic Conference on British Studies. The author would like to thank the anonymous readers and editors of the AHR for their extensive comments and helpful advice.

Louise Blakeney Williams is Associate Professor of British and Intellectual History at Central Connecticut State University. She is author of Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past (Cambridge, 2002). Currently she is working on a book, tentatively titled "Meeting Our Own Image" and Discovering "Our True Selves": The Cosmopolitan Art World of the British Empire, 1880–1920, which explores the collaboration between a wide variety of artists and art critics in Britain and Asia at the turn of the twentieth century, and its consequences for art and nationalism.

Notes

¹ Rabindranath Tagore, "Poet Yeats" (1912), in Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore: An Anthology, ed. Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (New York, 1997), 217.

² W. B. Yeats, "Preface to Gitanjali" (1912), in Yeats, Essays and Introductions (New York, 1968), 387.

³ Tagore, "Poet Yeats," 218; Yeats, quoted in Bikash Chakravarty, ed., Poets to a Poet, 1912–1940: Letters from Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, W. B. Yeats, Thomas Sturge Moore, R. C. Trevelyan, and Ezra Pound (Calcutta, 1998), 165.

⁴ See Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, Rabindranath Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man (London, 1995), 161; Richard Ellman, Yeats: The Man and the Masks (New York, 1979), 240.

⁵ Ashis Nandy, The Illegitimacy of Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore and the Politics of Self (New Delhi, 1994), 80; Stephen Regan, "Poetry and Nation: W. B. Yeats," in Richard Allen and Harish Trivedi, eds., Literature and Nation: Britain and India, 1800–1990 (London, 2000), 92.

⁶ Whether Ireland actually was a colony or instead "an outlying territory gradually absorbed into an expanding European monarchy," and whether Ireland today should be considered a postcolonial nation or a modern Western European state, is the subject of a debate that it is not necessary to discuss here, because Yeats and Tagore believed Ireland to be a colony. David Lloyd, "Irish New Histories and the 'Subalternity Effect,'" in Subaltern Studies IX (Oxford, 1996), 262. For examples of arguments on both sides, see Stephen Howe, Ireland and Empire: Colonial Legacies in Irish History and Culture (Oxford, 2000); Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture (Notre Dame, Ind., 1996).

⁷ Ulrich Beck, "The Cosmopolitan Society and Its Enemies," Theory, Culture & Society 19, no. 1–2 (2002): 17. Studies of cosmopolitanism are most popular in the fields of political science, sociology, anthropology, geography, philosophy, and cultural studies. See David A. Hollinger, "Not Universalists, Not Pluralists: The New Cosmopolitans Find Their Own Way," in Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen, eds., Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, Practice (Oxford, 2002), 228–239.

⁸ David Hollinger expands on this list of adjectives used to describe cosmopolitanism and argues convincingly that they "do not denote different schools, but different attempts to say pretty much the same thing." Hollinger, "Not Universalists," 228. For more definitions of this "new" cosmopolitanism, see, for example, Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, eds., Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation (Minneapolis, 1998); Ulrich Beck, "The Truth of Others: A Cosmopolitan Approach," Common Knowledge 10, no. 3 (2004): 430–449; Sheldon Pollock, "Cosmopolitan and Vernacular in History," Public Culture 12, no. 3 (2000): 591–625; Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Cosmopolitan Patriots," Critical Inquiry 23, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 617–639; Ulf Hannerz, "Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture," Theory, Culture & Society 7 (1990): 237–251.

⁹ Pratap Bhanu Mehta, "Cosmopolitanism and the Circle of Reason," Political Theory 28, no. 5 (October 2000): 620.

¹⁰ Ibid., 623.

¹¹ Ibid., 624; Nicholas Buttle, "Critical Nationalism: A Liberal Prescription?" Nations and Nationalism 6, no. 1 (2000): 123. See also Bryan S. Turner, "Cosmopolitan Virtue, Globalization and Patriotism," Theory, Culture & Society 19, nos. 1–2 (2002): 56; Simon Gikandi, "Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality," South Atlantic Quarterly 100, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 644; Bruce Robbins, "Comparative Cosmopolitanism," Social Text 31/32 (1992): 171.

¹² Lloyd Kramer discusses "the dichotomizing structure" of the twentieth-century historiography of nationalism. Kramer, "Historical Narratives and the Meaning of Nationalism," Journal of the History of Ideas 58, no. 3 (1997): 525–545. For discussions of the various types of nationalism, see, for example, Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990); Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (Cambridge, 2000); Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge, 1995); David Brown, "Are There Good and Bad Nationalisms?" Nations and Nationalism 5, no. 2 (1999): 281–302.

¹³ Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism (London, 1918), 5.

¹⁴ Tagore claimed that "Vaishnava literature and the Upanishads have mingled to form my mental climate," but he also greatly admired British Romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth. Yeats was primarily influenced by Shelley and Blake, but also loved traditional Irish folk stories and beliefs, and his interest in alternative religions, especially theosophy, led him to study and appreciate the "Vedas and the Upanishads." Tagore, letter to (Sir) Brajendranath Seal [October 31, 1921], in Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson (Cambridge, 1997), 283; Yeats, "The Poetry of A. E." (1898), in Yeats, Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, vol. 1: First Reviews and Articles, 1886–1896, ed. John P. Frayne (New York, 1970), 121. Like most literary modernists, Yeats integrated themes and literary forms from many different cultures and time periods into his own work. For example, beginning in 1914, he wrote plays on Irish subjects in the form of the Japanese Noh. On the influence of other cultures on Yeats and the modernists in his circle, see, for example, Louise Blakeney Williams, Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past (Cambridge, 2002), 114–205. The adjective "modernist" used in this essay refers to the early-twentieth-century literary movement. For definitions of literary modernism, see Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, eds., Modernism, 1890–1930 (Harmondsworth, 1983); Alistair Davies, An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Modernism (Totowa, N.J., 1982); Michael H. Levenson, A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine, 1908–1922 (Cambridge, 1984). On Yeats's artistic circle, see Williams, Modernism. On Tagore's circle, see Tapati Guha-Thakurta, The Making of New "Indian" Art: Arts, bbbbsthetics, and Nationalism in Bengal, c. 1850–1920 (Cambridge, 1992); Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922 (Cambridge, 1994).

¹⁵ Robert Speaight, William Rothenstein: The Portrait of an Artist in His Time (London, 1962), 249.

¹⁶ Robert Fine and Robin Cohen, "Four Cosmopolitan Moments," in Vertovec and Cohen, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism, 137. The term "cosmopolitan moment" had been adopted from this article. See also Pollock, "Cosmopolitan and Vernacular."

¹⁷ While this essay focuses only on Tagore and Yeats, it is part of a larger work that explores in detail the cosmopolitan moment of early-twentieth-century artists and art critics in England, Ireland, and India. For other studies emphasizing the mutual impact and hybridity of the British Empire, see, for example, Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton, N.J., 2001); Elleke Boehmer, Empire: The National and the Postcolonial, 1890–1920 (Oxford, 2002); Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Harlow, 2005).

¹⁸ Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds., Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament (Philadelphia, Pa., 1993).

¹⁹ On Orientalism, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978). On nationalism as an "inversion of orientalist epistemology," see Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton, N.J., 1999), 60; Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford, 1990); David Ludden, "Orientalist Empiricism," in Breckenridge and van der Veer, Orientalism, 250–278; Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Oxford, 1983), 72–74; Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London, 1986); Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 32. This retention of Western Orientalist discourse is why nationalism has been called "the avatar of orientalism." Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, "Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament," in Breckenridge and van der Veer, Orientalism, 12.

²⁰ See, for example, Gyan Prakash, "Postcolonial Criticism and Indian Historiography," Social Text 31/32 (1992): 8–19; Prakash, "Writing Post-Orientalist Histories in the Third World: Perspectives from Indian Historiography," Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2 (April 1990): 383–408; Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, Mass., 1997); Guha, History at the Limit of World-History (New York, 2002); Prasenjit Duara, "Postcolonial History," in Lloyd Kramer and Sarah C. Maza, A Companion to Western Historical Thought (Oxford, 2002), 417–431; Ashis Nandy, "History's Forgotten Doubles," History and Theory 34, no. 2 (May 1995): 44–66; Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, N.J., 1993), 76–112.

²¹ Tagore, letter to Nitindranath Gangulee, July 31, 1931, in Tagore, Selected Letters, 403.

²² Prasenjit Duara, "The Regime of Authenticity: Timelessness, Gender, and National History in Modern China," History and Theory 37, no. 3 (October 1998): 301.

²³ Guha, History at the Limit, 72, 73. Guha claims that Tagore's ideas about history are "an original vision" very different from "the colonialist historiography propagated by the Raj and the ideologues of imperialism." Ibid., 75.

²⁴ For more on their interactions see, R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life (Oxford, 1997), 469–473; Harold M. Hurwitz, "Yeats and Tagore," Comparative Literature 16, no. 1 (Winter 1964): 55–64; Ganesh N. Devy, "The Indian Yeats," in Toshi Furomoto et al., eds., International Aspects of Irish Literature (Gerrards Cross, 1996), 93–106. As these sources note, Yeats was not entirely uncritical of Tagore, but this was largely about his creative writing. Yeats disliked the fact that Tagore was so concerned with his positive reception in England that he did not challenge his reputation as a religious thinker rather than a poet, or the poor quality of some of the English translations of his writing. Yeats also thought that Tagore's work sometimes could be overly sentimental. Nevertheless, Yeats continued to admire and praise Tagore throughout his life.

²⁵ Yeats's writings on nationalism appeared mostly in Irish newspapers, which Tagore is unlikely to have had access to before their meeting. In 1912 and 1913, Tagore and Yeats worked together on English translations of Tagore's poems, which were published under the title Gitanjali, and for which Yeats wrote an introduction. It was largely because of this translation that Tagore won the Nobel Prize. In the years before 1915, Yeats also hosted readings of Tagore's poetry, lectured on him, and arranged for his Irish National Theatre to stage Tagore's play The Post Office in both Dublin and London. Tagore, in turn, wrote an article about Yeats and arranged for a report of one of Yeats's lectures to be published in India by the Modern Review. See especially Chakravarty, Poets to a Poet, 145–178, 190, 191.

²⁶ For example, in 1912, Tagore wrote that the nationalist situation in Ireland was "reminiscent of our own country," and in a 1913 lecture in Dublin, Yeats noted "a curious resemblance between the condition of India today and the condition of Ireland," and he suggested that the Irish could learn from the Indian movement of which Tagore was a part. Tagore, "Poet Yeats," 219; Yeats, quoted in Chakravarty, Poets to a Poet, 165.

²⁷ In 1914, Yeats planned to travel to India to gain a better understanding of Tagore's poetry "and to study the world out of which" it was made, but the two authors never met again face to face. Yeats, letter to Tagore, September 12 [1914], in Chakravarty, Poets to a Poet, 152. Nevertheless, in 1931, Yeats still admired Tagore enough to tell him he was his "most loyal student and admirer." Yeats, letter to Tagore, September 7, 1931, ibid., 155. On Yeats's death in 1939, Tagore declared, "I shall cherish the fact to the end of my days that my life has been linked with the memory of one of the greatest poets of modern Europe." Ibid., 178.

²⁸ On Irish writers with opinions similar to Yeats's, see Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 155–188, 268–304. On Abanindranath Tagore and his school of art, see Guha-Thakurta, The Making of New "Indian" Art, 143–212. On James Cousins, see Gauri Viswanathan, "Ireland, India, and the Poetics of Internationalism," Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (March 2004): 7–30. On returning to England from India, Havell and Coomaraswamy also helped found the India Society of London, which introduced Yeats and Tagore in 1912. Their key works include E. B. Havell, Indian Sculpture and Painting (London, 1908); Havell, The Basis for Artistic and Industrial Revival in India (Adyar, 1912); Havell, "The New Indian School of Painting," Studio 44 (July 1908): 107–117; Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Deeper Meaning of the Struggle (Broad Campden, 1907); Coomaraswamy, Essays in National Idealism (Madras, 1911); Coomaraswamy, Art and Swadeshi (Madras, 1912).

²⁹ See, for example, Judith M. Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy (Oxford, 1994), 95–167; R. V. Comerford, "Ireland, 1850–1870: Post-Famine and Mid-Victorian," in W. E. Vaughan, ed., A New History of Ireland, vol. 5: Ireland under the Union, I: 1801–1870 (Oxford, 1990), 372–395.

³⁰ For more on Tagore's and Yeats's backgrounds, see Dutta and Robinson, Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man; Ellmann, Yeats; Foster, W. B. Yeats; David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (Princeton, N.J., 1979).

³¹ On the similarities between Indian and Irish nationalism, see T. G. Fraser, "Ireland and India," in Keith Jeffrey, ed., An Irish Empire? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester, 1996), 84–90; Howard Brasted, "Indian Nationalist Development and the Influence of Irish Home Rule, 1870–1880," Modern Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (1980): 37–63; Richard P. Davis, "India in Irish Revolutionary Propaganda, 1905–1922," Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh 22, no. 1 (April 1977): 66–68; Boehmer, Empire, 25–124.

³² On the Bengal Renaissance and the Tagores, see Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj, 184–186; David Kopf and Safiuddin Joarder, eds., Reflections on the Bengal Renaissance (Rajsahah, Bangladesh, 1977). On Tagore's contributions to it, see Tagore, Tagore: An Anthology, 177; Guha-Thakurta, The Making of New "Indian" Art, 128–145, 188, 259. Later in his life, Tagore was very proud that he was "the first to introduce the land of Bengal to Bengalis as a subject fit for literature." Tagore, letter to Prashanta Chandra Mahalanobis, September(?) 1921, in Tagore, Tagore: An Anthology, 177. For a concise definition of cultural nationalism that includes examples from both India and Ireland, see John Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (London, 1987), 1–45.

³³ On the Irish Renaissance, see Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 114–195; Robert Kee, The Bold Fenian Men (London, 1972), 130–141. On Yeats's contributions to it, see Elizabeth Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism (New York, 1981), 61; Foster, W. B. Yeats, 98, 114–134. For Yeats's and Tagore's theories about why culture was important for nationalism, see, for example, Yeats, Uncollected Prose, 1: 82, 84, 104, 213, 223, 250, 273; W. B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, vol. 2: Reviews, Articles and Other Miscellaneous Prose, 1897–1939, ed. John P. Frayne and Colton Johnson (New York, 1976), 70, 73, 326; Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 206; Tagore, "India's Epic," The Modern Review 9, no. 3 (March 1912): 237; Tagore, "Literary Criticism" (1907), in Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Writings on Literature and Language, ed. Sisir Kumar Das and Sukanta Chaudhuri (New Delhi, 2001), 157.

³⁴ On Irish political nationalism, see Kee, The Bold Fenian Men; Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism; F. S. L. Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 1890–1939 (Oxford, 1979), 38–47. On Indian political nationalism, see Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (Madras, 1983), 65–100; Jim Masselos, Indian Nationalism: A History (New Delhi, 1991), 78–92; Rajat Kanta Ray, Social Conflict and Political Unrest in Bengal, 1875–1927 (Delhi, 1984); Sanjay Seth, "Rewriting Histories of Nationalism: The Politics of 'Moderate Nationalism' in India, 1870–1905," AHR 104, no. 1 (February 1999): 95–116.

³⁵ Dutta and Robinson, Tagore: The Myriad-Minded Man, 141. Dutta and Robinson translate Swadeshi as "Our Country," but there are other translations, for example, the use of things "of one's country." Masselos, Indian Nationalism, 112. Davis claims that "it was agreed on both sides that the words Sinn Fein [sic] and Swadeshi were interchangeable." Davis, "India in Irish Revolutionary Propaganda," 70. For example, in September 1905, Arthur Griffith called Swadeshi "the Sinn Féin policy in India." Griffith, quoted in Boehmer, Empire, 31. However, Boehmer argues that "Bengal evolved its concept of swadeshi in the awareness of Sinn Féin's emphasis on self-help and self-reliance, yet not in direct emulation of it," drawing also on indigenous ideas. Ibid., 10.

³⁶ On violent nationalism in India in the early twentieth century, see Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India, 1900–1910 (Oxford, 1993).

³⁷ On Irish nationalism at this time, see Kee, The Bold Fenian Men, 142–162; Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 43–47, 168–180; Lyons, Culture and Anarchy, 57–62; R. V. Comerford, "Nation, Nationalism and the Irish Language," in Thomas E. Hachey and Lawrence J. McCaffrey, eds., Perspectives on Irish Nationalism (Lexington, Ky., 1989), 20–41; Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life, 1891–1918 (New York, 1999). On Indian nationalism at this time, see Sarkar, Modern India, 96–123; Masselos, Indian Nationalism, 92–118; Ray, Social Conflict, 136–185; Peter Heehs, Nationalism, Te