It gives us great pleasure to publish "Rabindranath Tagore's Ideal of Internationalism" written by Dr. Rabindra Kumar DasGupta. The book comprises two lectures delivered by him as Rathindranath Tagore Memorial Lectures for 1996 at the Rabindra-B! Society on 26th and 27th August 1996. We are grateful to Dr. DasGupta for entrusting Tagore Research Institute with the task of bringing out this volume.
Dr. Das Gupta. former Tagore Professor of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature, University of Delhi and former Director of the National Library of Calcutta needs no introduction. He is one of that generation of erudite scholars whose type is rapidly vanishing these days. The present volume bears testimony to His academic height, his perception and insight. He brings out the distinctive features of Tagore's ideal of internationalism. He tells us that Tagore's ideal of internationalism was different from the concept of internationalism as it is under-stood in the West. It is not a mere agreement or understanding between two nations from economic, political or military considerations. In fact, Prof. Das Gupta asserts that "There was no ideal of internationalism in the Western political scene...I claim that this ideal is of Indian origin." So we get a new light on the ideal of internationalism. It is a concept which is more positive and comprehensive. It is something deeper and has a moral and spiritual fibre in it.
Dr. Das Gupta traces back the origin of Tagore's concept of internationalism to Raja Rammohun Roy who, he asserts, "is the first exponent of internationalism in our country. Both Rammohun and Rabindranath, he says, valued internationalism as an expression of "love of all life in all parts.
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