Nussbaum on Tagore's cosmoplitanism

Moh Tzu's philosophy was 'cosmopolitan'. He went around gifting Defensive technology to every City in China so it could defend itself. He rejected 'kin selective altruism' in favor of pure Utilitarianism based on Universal Love.

To the best of my knowledge, Moh Tzu was the first and last genuine cosmopolitan. Why? He actually had useful knowledge to share. He was doing first order good of the sort his second order theory itself approved. No other cosmopolitanism has had this quality. There is anti-nationalism, certainly. There is the suspicion that patriots are vulgar or foolish or are scoundrels of some description. But then, 'woke' people are cynical of every type of virtue. A respectable house-wife must be a hooker. At the very least, she must secretly want to be a hooker.

For many, this is a convenient doctrine. If you are a worthless tosser, it is sensible for you to insinuate that those who aren't worthless tossers are actually Nazis. The alternative is to qualify as a Socioproctologist- which you can easily do by transferring $9.99 to my Pay Pal account. Only by so doing can you relieve yourself of the obligation to tell stupid lies.

Amartya Sen, being Bengali, may be forgiven for telling stupid lies about Tagore and the Shantiniketan where he was born so as to magnify his own antecedents. But why does Martha Nussbaum do so? She knows very well that Bengalis were a subject race ruled by the British. Tagore was one such slave- though, a cousin of his had the right to hold an umbrella over the Governor General's head on some ceremonial occasion. This may sound a very grand thing. But it was a badge of servitude. The Tagores had unjustly enriched themselves as compradors to the British, but Rabindranath took no pride in this ill gotten wealth. Nussbaum, however, thinks he was a 'cosmopolitan' rather than a patriot who felt his people to be too weak and unworthy to throw off their chains- at least, as yet.

In 1994 Nussbaum wrote in the Boston Review-

In Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, The Home and the World, the young wife Bimala, entranced by the patriotic rhetoric of her husband’s friend Sandip, becomes an eager devotee of the Swadeshi movement, which has organized a boycott of foreign goods.

An American patriot may boycott foreign goods because he wants to help American workers. But Sandip and Bimala were subjects of an Imperial Race, not citizens of a Nation State. 'Golden Bengal' had been impoverished. Even its wealthiest 'Kulin' bluebloods had to humiliate themselves before any and every European.  Sandip and Bimala wanted freedom. They were protesting against an action of the Viceroy which they believed would hinder their cause and delay a widespread rebellion. We don't call a slave who rebels against his master a patriot. We say he is a man who refuses to be a slave. He wants to be free.

The slogan of the movement is Bande Mataram, “Hail Motherland.” Bimala complains that her husband, the cosmopolitan Hindu landlord Nikhil, is cool in his devotion to the cause:

How did he get to be a landlord? The answer is that, like the Tagores, he was descended from a comprador- a collaborator- with the British. Nikhil is 'cool in his devotion' because he wants to keep his ill-gotten wealth. Tagore himself foresaw that the 'swadesi' movement would result in Hindu landlords like himself losing profitable estates in East Bengal, which is Muslim majority. As a matter of fact, Hindus were ethnically cleansed from there. Thus Tagore, for entirely rational, prudential, reasons kept 'patriotism' at a distance. But he was no cosmopolitan either. He remained an aristocratic Bengali who arranged 'suitable' marriages for his daughters.

He also inherited the leadership of a Unitarian Hindu sect, which is why he had to swan around in robes with a great big bushy beard, and this meant he spent a lot of time writing about the enmity that existed between orthodox Hindus and his own stupid sect.

Nussbaum pretends that this guy was a 'cosmopolitan' of the Stoic type. Thus she quotes the following from Tagore's novel-

And yet it was not that my husband refused to support Swadeshi, or was in any way against the Cause. Only he had not been able whole-heartedly to accept the spirit of Bande Mataram.
‘I am willing,’ he said, ‘to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.’

So, all the guy is doing is saying 'I'm Brahmo- i.e. a monist. I can't refer to the Motherland as a Deity because according to my Religion, that is rank idolatry. There is only one formless and transcendent God.' Of course, the fellow wasn't really 'serving his country' because that would entail not robbing his tenants in his role as a tax-farmer for the British. Furthermore, he would be using his wealth for some patriotic purpose.

Americans have frequently supported the principle of Bande Mataram,

No they haven't. Americans are generally either Christians or Jews or Muslims. They affirm monotheism. They don't say their Nation is a Goddess or that such and such ex-President has become a God. Mount Rushmore is not the scene of pagan sacrifices to apotheosized heroes.

giving the fact of being American a special salience in moral and political deliberation, and pride in a specifically American identity and a specifically American citizenship a special power among the motivations to political action.

American exceptionalism is a real thing. But Tagore affirmed Indian exceptionalism on the basis of India's supposed greater Spirituality as expressed by his own Brahmo Samaj. This was in line with Imperial Britain's division of labor. The English were the natural governors of the world. The Scots were canny businessmen and intellectuals. The Welsh were poetic. Ulstermen were great soldiers. The Irish were funny but crazy and thus unfit to rule themselves. The Indians were spiritual and even more unfit to rule themselves. Tagore endorsed this view- though there were moments when he flirted with the Revolutionaries and, later on, a stretch of time when he was financially dependent on Gandhian plutocrats.

I believe, with Tagore and his character Nikhil, that this emphasis on patriotic pride is both morally dangerous and, ultimately, subversive of some of the worthy goals patriotism sets out to serve—for example, the goal of national unity in devotion to worthy moral ideals of justice and equality.

Then Nussbaum should be perfectly happy as a subject of a German or Japanese or Russian or Chinese Empire. She should renounce Judaism, because the Jews rejected Greek cosmopolitanism- though Maccabbes 2 was composed in Greek- and rebelled against the Romans and put up a stiff necked opposition to conversion to the creed of their subsequent overlords. Furthermore, Nussbaum should denounce Washington for rebelling against George the Third. She should hate Lincoln for imposing national unity at the cost of much bloodshed.

Tagore did not think 'patriotic pride' a bad thing. Indeed, he sought to instil it in his fellow Bengalis. He warned, with a degree of prescience, that opposing the partition of Bengal was foolish. Antagonising the poorer class of Muslims was bound to lead to the destruction of his own class of people.

These goals, I shall argue, would be better served by an ideal that is in any case more adequate to our situation in the contemporary world, namely the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world.

This very old ideal gained salience as City-States and tribal Republics were replaced by vast bureaucratic Empires based on slavery or the subjugation of indigenous people.

My articulation of these issues is motivated, in part, by my experience working on international quality-of-life issues in an institute for development economics connected with the United Nations.

But that work was utterly worthless as is almost everything associated with the U.N

It is motivated, as well, by the renewal of appeals to the nation, and national pride, in some recent discussions of American character and American education. In a by now well-known op-ed piece in The New York Times (13 February 1994), philosopher Richard Rorty urges Americans, especially the American left, not to disdain patriotism as a value, and indeed to give central importance to “the emotion of national pride” and “a sense of shared national identity.” Rorty argues that we cannot even criticize ourselves well unless we also “rejoice” in our American identity and define ourselves fundamentally in terms of that identity. Rorty seems to hold that the primary alternative to a politics based on patriotism and national identity is what he calls a “politics of difference,” one based on internal divisions among America’s ethnic, racial, religious, and other sub-groups. He nowhere considers the possibility of a more international basis for political emotion and concern.

Nussbaum has now changed her views. Rorty died before Trump's MAGA triumphed over the Democrat's 'circular firing squad'

One might wonder, however, how far the politics of nationalism really is from the “politics of difference.”

There is little need to wonder. 'The politics of difference' involves the airing of Grievances and demanding compensation on the one hand and a 'backlash' by 'the silent majority' on the other. By contrast, Nationalism can bring everyone together- save for some antagonomic cretins who, in consequence, can be relegated to the lunatic fringe.

The Home and the World (better known, perhaps, in Satyajit Ray’s haunting film of the same title) is a tragic story of the defeat of a reasonable and principled cosmopolitanism by the forces of nationalism and ethnocentrism.

 No. Tagore's audience knew very well that Sandip was a revolutionary but one of bad character. Police Commissioner Tegart would capture him. He'd turn approver. Nikhil would be accused of having supplied him with funds. Even if Bimala confesses she stole it, the guy would still go to jail. The family would be ruined. The peasants would not pay their rent. Thus the Estate would be auctioned. Bimala would have to return to her own very poor family.

Like 'Gora', this novel is easily understood in context. The Hindu revolutionaries were slitting their own collective throats. The Muslims would take their wealth, help themselves to their women, and kill or chase them away. The better course was to let the Partition of Bengal stand and slowly sell property in the East so as to establish oneself on the right side of the border.

Tagore is believed to have been in contact with 'Red' Revolutionaries but it is also said that the Ghaddar patriots in America planned to assassinate him. Anyway, Tagore accepted a Knighthood in 1916 (when this book was published) though he had the grace to return it after Jallianwallah Bagh.

I believe that Tagore sees deeply when he sees that at bottom nationalism and ethnocentric particularism are not alien to one another, but akin—that to give support to nationalist sentiments subverts, ultimately, even the values that hold a nation together,

Who held India, or Bengal at that time, together? Tagore knew it was the British. His family would lose a lot of their wealth if the Revolutionaries drove the Brits out of the country. 'Ethnocentric particularism' meant Muslims would try to re-establish their rule over Hindus like Tagore. Indeed his grandfather had urged the Brits to send more White people to grab land in India because he said this would save the timid Hindu from the rapacious and virile Muslim. Niradh Chaudhri ends the first volume of his autobiography by pleading with the White Man to please, please, come back and rule over at least the Hindu portion of Bengal. Chaudhri emigrated to England a few years before Sen joined him there. But Chaudhri held 'Social Choice theorists' in low esteem probably because a lot of them were Bengalis and Chaudhri firmly believed Bengalis were utterly shite.

because it substitutes a colorful idol for the substantive universal values of justice and right.

Sen might say something like that. He hadn't Chaudhri's guts.

Once one has said, “I am an Indian first, a citizen of the world second,” once one has made that morally questionable move of self-definition by a morally irrelevant characteristic, then what, indeed, will stop one from saying, as Tagore’s characters so quickly learn to say, “I am a Hindu first, and an Indian second,” or “I am an upper-caste landlord first, and a Hindu second”?

Once one has said 'I am citizen of the Universe first, a citizen of the world second' one can ignore global warming or all out Nuclear War. But saying 'I'm a citizen of the world first' is no great advance. Why should you pay taxes or enlist in the Army simply to defend your own country? How is it morally justifiable to prioritize protecting oneself from conquest, or rape, or enslavement, rather than first helping those who have been longest conquered, or most frequently raped, or more pitiably enslaved? Indeed, what right have you to wipe your own bum when, for all you know, my bum may be in an unwiped condition?

Only the cosmopolitan stance of the landlord Nikhil

Nikhil is not 'cosmopolitan'. He is a subject of the King Emperor to whom he pays a lot in tax. If Britain goes to war with Germany, he is expected to stump up more money for Imperial Defence. Because he is Bengali, the Army doesn't want him. Had he been Punjabi, the D.C would have dropped a hint that he'd better present himself, along with the better built of his tenants, at the Army recruitment center.

—so boringly flat in the eyes of his young wife Bimala and his passionate nationalist friend Sandip—

The Bengali Revolutionaries deeply resented the prevalent prejudice against Bengalis as a meek and submissive race. Their hero was Bagha Jatin who killed a tiger which attacked him and who received a medal for this show of courage. A British Judge refused to prosecute him for beating up some White soldiers who had been misbehaving with Indian women. Police Chief Tegart paid an eloquent tribute to his courage- emphasizing that it was his own gallantry which led to his death.

It may be that if Tagore had not been the head of a boring Religious sect, he'd have deployed his own strong physique in the manner of Bagha Jatin.

Gandhi may have believed that 'Ahimsa' had magical powers. Tagore did not. There is only one God but God does not provide magical remedies.

has the promise of transcending these divisions,

Tagore knew this was a false promise. The thing was superstitious. There may have been some Brahmos who thought that if only the Hindus abandoned idolatry their station would rise but over the next seventy years they saw this was wishful thinking. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda had revitalized 'traditional' Hinduism. The Brahmos had lost salience. This is why Tagore's 'Gora'- which has a similar plot twist to Kipling's 'Kim'- is unreadable. The thing was anachronistic even at the time when it was published. Nobody gave a toss about Brahmos. They were perfectly respectable but as boring as shit.

because only this stance asks us to give our first allegiance to what is morally good—and that which, being good, I can commend as such to all human beings. Or so I shall argue.

Allegiances don't matter if you are a useless wanker. If you aren't and you decide to lexically preference 'what is morally good', then you will die immediately because it is morally wrong to breathe air when other people may be suffocating. You should first perform the kiss of life on all and sundry before selfishly oxygenating your own blood. Anyway, that's why I am not guilty of trying to kiss Beyonce- except it wasn't Beyonce but Wesley Snipes- not the Hollywood star Wesley Snipes, but a dude who was maybe 300 pound heavier which was lucky for me coz I could run away before he had a chance to thump me. Dunno why I just told you this. Sometimes I embarrass myself.

Proponents of nationalism in politics and in education frequently make a thin concession to cosmopolitanism.

So what? People who go in for pi-jaw make all sorts of concessions. Tell them you are homeless and need to borrow some money and they give you a wide berth.

They may argue, for example, that although nations should in general base education and political deliberation on shared national values, a commitment to basic human rights should be part of any national educational system, and that this commitment will in a sense serve to hold many nations together.

Rights are meaningless save under a bond of law linking them to incentive compatible remedies. It is perfectly sensible to want the Rule of Law and highly advantageous to extend this across borders.

This seems to be a fair comment on practical reality; and the emphasis on human rights is certainly necessary for a world in which nations interact all the time on terms, let us hope, of justice and mutual respect.
But is it sufficient?

It is not sufficient, it is useless. You can educate kids to demand, as an indefeasible moral and spiritual right, a fully functioned Disneyland in the backyard of every infant under the Sun. But this will have no practical effect. 

As students here grow up, is it sufficient for them to learn that they are above all citizens of the United States, but that they ought to respect the basic human rights of citizens of India, Bolivia, Nigeria, and Norway?

How stupid does Nussbaum think American students actually are? Do they really need to be taught that foreigners too are human beings? 

Or should they—as I think—in addition to giving special attention to the history and current situation of their own nation, learn a good deal more than is frequently the case about the rest of the world in which they live, about India and Bolivia and Nigeria and Norway and their histories, problems, and comparative successes?

Nussbaum believes she has learned about India. Yet, it is clear that she is completely ignorant of Tagore's background. If even an American Professor is such a cretin, why force American kids to listen to even more ignorant teachers telling stupid lies about Nigerian or Norwegian history? The thing is a waste of time.

Should they learn only that citizens of India have equal basic human rights,

like what? The right to settle in any part of the United States? The right to be elected POTUS? Indians have no such right. 

or should they also learn about the problems of hunger and pollution in India, and the implications of these problems for larger problems of global hunger and global ecology?

Neither. Teach them a bit of Econ and Environmental Science by all means. But don't saddle kids with cretinous instructors of Nusbaum's ilk.

What causes 'problems of hunger' in India? Nussbaum doesn't know. Sen doesn't know. I do. The thing is ideographic and varies across the country. But this knowledge of mine isn't particularly useful because shitheads like Nussbaum can get NGOs to bark madly up the wrong tree. Sen's economics creates famines. That is why the fool has been wholly disintermediated by the relevant Agencies.

Look at Scotland. They thought they should adopt a Sen-tentious approach to Hunger. Why? So as to suggest that wicked Tories are starving wee Scottish bairns. What was the result? The UN food rapporteur recommended that women be given more access to arable land so as to grow vegetables to feed their children! Sooner or later the Scots will grow tired of this sort of play-acting. If they want to pretend they are a starving Third World Country, that is how they will be treated.

Nussbaum advocates 'cosmopolitan education'. This is because many Americans, on meeting a foreigner assume that they are some type of plant. Nussbaum says-

The American student must learn to recognize humanity wherever she encounters it and be eager to understand humanity in its ‘strange’ guises.

It is equally important that American students learn to recognize that plants are not human. Shouting at a tree to get out of your way won't actually cause it to pluck its roots out of the soil so as to make way for you. Thus you may crash into a tree when skateboarding down the sidewalk.

One should always behave so as to treat with equal respect the dignity of reason and moral choice in every human being. It is this conception, as well, that inspires Tagore’s novel, as the cosmopolitan landlord

who would have no money if he didn't squeeze it out of his tenants regardless of their dignity

struggles to stem the tide of nationalism

rebelling against servitude to Whitey

and factionalism by appeals to universal moral norms. Many of the speeches of the character Nikhil were drawn from Tagore’s own cosmopolitan political writings.

Tagore had won the Nobel prize and was making money giving lectures around the globe so a to finance Shantiniketan. Because of his own family's position, he had to be very circumspect in what he said.

Stoics who hold that good civic education is education for world citizenship recommend this attitude on three grounds. First, they hold that the study of humanity as it is realized in the whole world is valuable for self-knowledge:

But Stoics had little conception of 'the whole world'. The education they imparted was in only one or two languages. It had nothing in common with the 'civics' Americans studied. Why? There was Slavery- indeed some Stoics ended up as Roman slaves. Elite Paideia was one route to enfranchisement. Soon, there was an Emperor. Even the patrician class was in danger. The 'Cursus Honorum' would give way to Military usurpers. In one sense, Greek Paideia triumphed. The Eastern Empire abandoned Latin for Greek. Byzantium flourished for centuries- thanks to the martial qualities of Slavic peoples.

we see ourselves more clearly when we see our ways in relation to those of other reasonable people.

Like the ability to distinguish Humans from Plants, this faculty requires no special education.

Second, they argue, as does Tagore, that we will be better able to solve our problems if we face them in this way.

Tagore does not make this argument. Why? He knew Britain. Even if he spent all his time lecturing the Master Race about how deserving Bengalis were of Independence, they would still have laughed in his face. Why? Because of the antics of other Bengalis. The plain fact is that there were far more Bengalis than there were British people. If Bengalis were capable of ruling themselves they were more than capable of seizing the means to do so. If they hadn't yet done any such thing then it was because, as Tagore's grandfather had argued from the 1820s onward, the Hindu Bengali was a coward and a poltroon who preferred British rule to Muslim rule because he could more easily rise by his cunning, or at least preserve his life and his religion by his supinity.

Stoicism had a mystical side. Stoics believed the truly Wise became, in some mysterious way, citizens of a 'cosmic city'. This could be linked to reincarnation- like the Indian notion that adherence to 'Ahimsa' gets you reborn in a paradisal world- or it might have some 'theurgic' effect in this world.

Finally, they insist that the stance of the kosmou politês is intrinsically valuable.

Only if one actually became a Sage. Otherwise, there might be reputational or other practical reasons for doing good but one would still fall short of the ideal.

For it recognizes in persons what is especially fundamental about them, most worthy of respect and acknowledgment: their aspirations to justice and goodness and their capacities for reasoning in this connection.

Nonsense! Stoicism says more than aspiration or capacity is required. You have to actually do good and then acquire wisdom so that there is a qualitative change in the good actions you perform.

This aspect may be less colorful than local or national traditions and identities—it is on this basis that the young wife in Tagore’s novel spurns it in favor of qualities in the nationalist orator Sandip that she later comes to see as superficial—but they are, the Stoics argue, both lasting and deep.

Nussbaum has read the book and seen the movie. She doesn't seem to have noticed that Sandip and Nikhil speak Bengali and dress in the style of the bhadralok. There was, and had been for almost a century, a Bengali 'cosmopolitan class' which dressed and dined in the European fashion and who spoke in English and French suffused with Latin epigrams and references to Greek literature. Raja Ram Mohun Roy had learned Greek and Latin and Hebrew. Michael Madhusudhan Dutt constantly referenced Ariosto and Petrarch. Aurobindo wrote a poetic romance titled 'Ilion' in 1908 linking the Bengali Freedom Struggle to Ancient Greece. But his contact with the Revolutionaries caused him to put aside his Classical education. He wrote 'If [India] is to model herself on the Anglo-Saxon type she must first kill everything in her which is her own. If she is to be a province of the British Empire, part of its life, sharing its institutions, governed by its policy, the fate of Greece under Roman dominion will surely be hers.' In other words, Cosmopolitanism was fading. Aurobindo and Tagore and Gandhi would all end up as Indian Sages of a vernacular appearance.

In Tagore’s novel, the appeal to world citizenship fails—fails because patriotism is full of color and intensity and passion, whereas cosmopolitanism seems to have a hard time gripping the imagination.

No. Bimala realizes that it is sinful to steal even if she stealing from her own husband. This is an assertion, not of Cosmopolitanism, but the Rule of Law. Gandhi's importance lay in his repeated proclamation of the need to obey the law even if that law had been imposed by alien conquerors. After his death, the Indian Constitution declared all law, including the British sedition laws under which Gandhi and Aurobindo had been jailed, to be autochthonous. By a legal fiction, they were deemed to spring from Ind's immemorial soil.

And yet in its very failure, Tagore shows, it succeeds.

The Rule of Law prevails, the Brahmo doctrine prevails, because the stupid and ugly woman from a poor family realizes that it feels really really bad to steal. Those who encourage you to break the law are evil. Also, it's nice to know, hubby gets jealous. Maybe, he can be provoked into giving wifey a proper seeing to.

For the novel is a story of education for world citizenship,

No. It is a morality tale about how stealing is wrong, okay? Don't steal. Just say no. Also all those young Revolutionaries running around aren't nice, they are nasty boys. Stay away from them.
Tagore drives this lesson home by causing Sandip to have a change of heart. He too expresses horror at the crime of theft. But he says he hasn't become a good man. He is running away because the Muslims will kill him. ”The Mussulmans, I am told, have taken me for an invaluable gem, and are conspiring to loot me and hide me away in their graveyard. But I feel that it is necessary that I should live. I have just twenty-five minutes to catch the North-bound train. So, for the present, I must be gone.' Nikhil is made of sterner stuff. He gallops off to save a Hindu neighbor from Muslim marauders. That's a noble death- protecting a co-religionist's treasury and harem from the greedy or lustful hands of those of a different faith. Nussbaum, cretin that she is, thinks this is about 'world citizenship'.

since the entire tragic story is told by the widowed Bimala, who understands, if too late, that Nikhil’s morality was vastly superior to Sandip’s empty symbol-mongering, that what looked like passion in Sandip was egocentric self-exaltation, and that what looked like lack of passion in Nikhil contained a truly loving perception of her as a person.

Sandip ran away from the Muslims. Nikhil fought them- or at least tried to. Then Independence came and Hindus ran away from the Muslim majority. A group of such refugees demanded a meeting with Nehru. Their Estates had been over-run and their Women were in danger. Nehru asked why they had run away leaving their wives and daughters in danger. He would not help them. Unlike the refugees from the Punjab who were prepared to kill Muslims to grab their land and thus compensate themselves, the Bengali Hindus got precious little compensation. They were regarded as cowards and poltroons. Their influence in India declined. The Bengali academic became a figure of fun. Like Mother Theresa, they advertised the worthlessness of their part of the world.

If one goes today to Santiniketan, a town several hours by train from Calcutta, the town where Tagore founded his cosmopolitan university Vishvabharati—whose name means “all the world”—one feels the tragedy once more.

Hilarious! I suppose Nussbaum thinks the Vishva Hindu Parishad is a organization for cosmopolitan Hindus to get together to dine on kobe beef! Bharati is both a reference to India as well as to the Hindu Goddess of learning. There is a Vedic allusion- Yatra Visvam Bhavatyekanidam- where the world makes its nest- which gives the name its pleasing poetic effect.

For all-the-world university has not achieved the anticipated influence or distinction within India,

Because it is a Government institution which has been captured by local yokels.

and the ideals of the cosmopolitan community of Santiniketan are increasingly under siege from militant forces of ethnocentric particularism and Hindu-fundamentalist nationalism.

This stupid woman wrote this in 1994! Shantineketan, as a Central Government University, was the preserve of the Congress party. But, it was the Left Front which ruled the State. Hindu fundamentalists were thin on the ground because they would have been beaten with vim and vigor. If anything, Shantiniketan is now even worse than it was. Out of 8500 students almost 8000 are local. There are about 800 on the faculty. God alone knows what they do.

And yet, in the very decline of Tagore’s ideal—which now threatens the very existence of the secular and tolerant Indian state—the observer sees its worth.

The then VC was later sent to jail for forgery. Such was the worth of the education there.

To worship one’s country as a god is indeed to bring a curse upon it.

Is a reasonable sentiment if you belong to a Monotheistic Religion and believe God will smite you for idolatry if you accord divine honors to anything but Him.

Recent electoral reactions against Hindu nationalism give some grounds for optimism that this recognition of worth is widespread and may prove efficacious, averting a tragic ending of the sort that Tagore describes.

Yet, it was around this time that the Communists cleared the way for the BJP to become the default National party because they wouldn't let Jyoti Basu become P.M. for some silly ideological reason. What was the result? Communist corruption and brutality caused the peasants to desert the party. Mamta Bannerjee then defeated the Left Front at the polls and her cadres beat the Commies with vim and vigor. Now, ex-Commies vote for the BJP because they don't want to keep getting beaten. In any case, they are waking up to the fact that Muslims are becoming a majority. Islam has never had a soft spot for Atheists. Thus their lives are more secure under Hindutva.

And since I am in fact optimistic that Tagore’s ideal can be successfully realized in schools and universities in democracies around the world, and in the formation of public policy, let me conclude with a story of cosmopolitanism that has a happy ending.

She has now changed her views. As for Shantiniketan, the place is so putrid it has become a UNESCO heritage site. 

It is told by Diogenes Laertius about the courtship and marriage of the Cynic cosmopolitan philosophers Crates and Hipparchia (one of the most eminent female philosophers of antiquity)—in order, presumably, to show that casting off the symbols of status and nation can sometimes be a way to succeed in love. 

Crates and Hipparchia copulated in the streets. Go thou and do likewise. That's what 'cosmopolitanism' is all about. According to newspaper reports, Shantiniketan's campus is littered with used condoms. Tagore must be so proud.