Rabindranath Tagore never brought himself to fall in line with Congress’ view of nationalism, something, he thought, negates India’s quintessential emancipatory global role in terms of its timeless spiritual ethos. He made no bones about his strong disapproval of the hide-bound nationalism, out to insulate itself into a cocoon, decrying things alien, burning foreign clothes and boycotting foreign goods as part of anti-colonial struggle.
He withdrew himself from the Swadeshi Movement that began in 1905 against the British Government’s decision to partition Bengal on communal lines, a disenchanted man who found in these things an anti-thesis of what India in her deeper soul personifies - embracing all and rejecting none. He stressed on moral regeneration of India’s society from the roots instead of the leaders of nationalist India indulging in sheer negativities, for he was invincibly convinced that freedom would come when the renascent nation, aroused fully from age-old hibernation, would make the world recognize her inherent spiritual wealth.
later, he articulated his opposition to Gandhian mode of non-cooperation movement meant to attain the much-awaited freedom for India. He told Gandhi straight in his face when the two giants met at Jorasanko, Tagore’s ancestral house, in September 1921 that it was immoral to take recourse to untruths to sustain the movement, citing the instance of the protagonists of Swadeshi asking the people to shun Western textiles on the belief that they were impure.
Touched to the quick with the poet venting his antipathy, Gandhi stated: "…a drowning man cannot save others. We must try to save ourselves. Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. It is health-giving, religious and thus humanitarian. India must learn to live before she can aspire to die for humanity. The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cat’s teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice." However, the path Tagore was advocating could not naturally strike chords in the psyche of nationalist India, for it was not as exciting and flamboyant as swaying the people at large with rhetorical hyperboles and impulse-driven actions.
Tagore was for the focus being trained on re-building the country from within, from the grass roots, restructuring villages, revitalizing rural life through promotion of village cooperatives, working in silence, away from the glitz, collectively and patiently without looking up to the State and the government to give the push. In his view, this was what the real struggle against colonial rule signified, the most effective way to ready the country for freedom.
Tagore was dubbed as an impractical, ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain as he was dabbling in the rough and tumble of the political struggle that was immeasurably far from his secluded abode of contemplation and creativity. Tagore, however, stuck to his guns despite all this shrill criticism flung at him.
"One can hardly determine where the practical way lies by the yardstick of a short-lived excitement or largeness or smallness of the public gathering. We do not admit that the path that advocates work through silence and austerity is less practical than the one that prods people to excitement, to run headlong, without giving them space to breathe and think for themselves of what lies ahead," he said.
He was against Gandhi’s obsession with his spinning wheels, deified by him and his acolytes as the panacea for the nation to come out of the stultified flow of the British-induced slavery to gigantic machines, as something exemplifying India’s inherent strength. "Some people are telling me that cramping the mind of the nation in a narrow groove is a necessity till the country is free. Why things should be so even for a few yearsIJ Their argument is that we would attain Swaraj through these means. But can such an argument stand reasonIJ Does Swaraj mean mere weaving one’s own clothesIJ" he asked.
Embarrassed by Tagore continuously tearing into him for exalting his spinning-wheel axiom to heavenly heights, dubbing it as a flight of sheer irrationalism, Gandhi wrote in his inimitable way: "…the poet lives in a magnificent world of his own creation - his world of ideas. I am a slave of somebody else’s creation -the spinning wheel. The poet makes his gopis dance to the tune of his flute. I wander after my beloved Sita-the charka, and seek to deliver her from the ten-headed monster from Japan, Manchester, Paris etc. The poet is an inventor, he creates, destroys, recreates. I am an explorer and having discovered a thing I must cling to it. The poet presents the world with new and attractive things for day to day. I can merely show the hidden possibilities of old and even worn-out things. The world easily finds an honourable place for the magician who produces new and dazzling things. I have to struggle laboriously to find a corner of my own worn-out things…I may say in all humility that we complement each other’s activity."