Tagore's Views On Civilization And Its Repercussions In The East And The West

The Rabindranath Tagore's understanding of civilization relates to various aspects of the Eastern and Western civilizations . According to him, a civilization ought to focus on a universal co-operation among peoples and nations, concern much about the general principles and social norms (dharma) beneficial to the mankind as a whole. He argues that the East tends to pay more attention to social harmony, gods-worship and self-realization, which has, in part, resulted in its cultural plurality and socio-economic under-development. By contrast, the Western civilization shows a uniform cultural origin, more religion-oriented, science-minded, competitively aggressive, and progress-seeking. While Tagore praised the industrial civilization emerging in the West, he strongly criticized the selfishness and ruthlessness of chauvinistic nationalism upheld by the West and Japan. It seemed to him that, only through the integration of Eastern and Western civilizations could the mankind make the society an eternal progress. Also Tagore's Oriental complex made him concern about the eastern nations' crisis of survival due to under-development. He proposed that the East should learn from the West and that there should be a great alliance of eastern nations. However, Tagore's remarks on civilization are too idealistic to explain what actually happened then. Basically, his view of civilization is attributed to Indian cultural heritages,contemporary events, and his family and personal background.What Tagore stressed on civilization had caused great repercussions in both the East and the West. While some of Chinese intellectuals challenged his propositions of promoting eastern civilization and combining it with western one, the other in China were in favor of him. Tagore's criticism on westernization of Japan in nationalism and militarism met a cold response in the country. In India, M.Gandhi was against Tagore's advocacy of inter-civilizational co-operation and mixture, which even brought a hot national debate. Interestingly, Tagore's visits to the West were received warmly and some of western elite, including Roman Roland and Albert Einstein, profoundly accepted his propositions . Generally speaking, the different replies from the East and the West represented the tide of time and its regional variants during that days, especially with the West's rethinking their civilization after undergoing the holocaust of the WWI and hoping the Eastern thoughts substantially helpful for pulling the West out of the dilemma. In addition, the different responses toward Tagore's views on civilization, in fact, logically originated from the socio-economic disparity between the East and the West in the 1920s.Intentionally, there is a marked feature in the Tagore's concept of civilization: to remove the disequilibria of discourse due to different stages of development between the two worlds. In short, the Tagore's formula that western and eastern civilizations could advance jointly through interactions and complementarities will always be a great inspiration.