Rabindranath Tagore in South-East Asia: Culture, Connectivity and Bridge Making

Rabindranath Tagore in South-East Asia: Culture, Connectivity and Bridge Making focuses on Rabindranath Tagore’s relations with the many mainland and maritime countries of South-East Asia he visited in the early twentieth century. This collection of essays probes the intellectual bases of Tagore’s theory of civilization, his ideas of East and West, his theory of cultural encounter in the context of South-East Asia, and also provides an in-depth analysis of his philosophy, i.e. his concepts of nationalism, internationalism anduniversalism. Opening up fresh and contextual perspectives on Tagore’s relations with and perceptions of South-East Asian cultures, this book shows how his visits to South-East Asian countries led to the establishment of cultural ties between India and South-EastAsia over the years and finally resulted in a kind of permanent civilizational and cultural bond between them. Fittingly, many of the contributors to this volume are from the South-East Asian countries that Tagore had visited.