Better known as a poet, novelist, composer and playwright, Tagore was also a writer of essays, travelogues, and polemics. And, as I have discovered, while his poems and stories and songs may perhaps speak more directly to his fellow Bengalis, in his non-fiction he speaks to, and for, the world.
In this column I have strung together some of my favourite Tagore quotes, with the hope that this will encourage readers to go to the originals, to get from them the same kind of education and pleasure that I have myself obtained. Here, first, is Tagore on the perils of an excessive love of one’s country. As he wrote in a letter to a friend on 19 November 1908.
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