Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- CHAPTER 1 Reinterpreting Tagore's Politics in Modern Postcolonial Contexts
- CHAPTER 2 From ‘Śoksabhā’ to ‘Societalism’: Tagore's Search for Civil Society in India and the Problem of Colonialism
- CHAPTER 3 Alternation or Search for the Nationness in and of Bhāratavarşīya Samāj
- CHAPTER 4 In the Voice of Cassandra: Tagore on Hindus and Muslims in India and their Relations
- CHAPTER 5 Touching Gender: Feminist Contexts of Tagore's Fiction
- CHAPTER 6 Tinsangī. Tagore, Art and the Industrial Revolution
- CHAPTER 7 Between ‘The Shallow and the Deep’: Tagore's ‘Green Fuse’
- Index
CHAPTER 7 - Between ‘The Shallow and the Deep’: Tagore's ‘Green Fuse’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- CHAPTER 1 Reinterpreting Tagore's Politics in Modern Postcolonial Contexts
- CHAPTER 2 From ‘Śoksabhā’ to ‘Societalism’: Tagore's Search for Civil Society in India and the Problem of Colonialism
- CHAPTER 3 Alternation or Search for the Nationness in and of Bhāratavarşīya Samāj
- CHAPTER 4 In the Voice of Cassandra: Tagore on Hindus and Muslims in India and their Relations
- CHAPTER 5 Touching Gender: Feminist Contexts of Tagore's Fiction
- CHAPTER 6 Tinsangī. Tagore, Art and the Industrial Revolution
- CHAPTER 7 Between ‘The Shallow and the Deep’: Tagore's ‘Green Fuse’
- Index
Summary
The present pervasiveness of ecological perceptions and environmentalist anxieties all over the world is characterized by an attendant belief in the popular mind that the newly acquired sensitiveness is Western-inspired, with little or no roots or antecedents in non-Western cultures and societies. The belief is strengthened by the fact that most of the concerns and fears, hopes and anxieties, and agonies and ecstasies regarding the conditions of Earth have come from the West. The problems that exercise the minds of the environmentalists and ecologists – like ozone depletion, global warming, acid rain, desertification, deforestation, smog, air pollution etc. – are modern problems, directly traceable to the pernicious effects of – mainly twentieth century – industrialism and its accompanying tendencies of ‘atomistic’, ‘ethical’ and ‘possessive’ individualism. And the standard repertoire of their perceptions, anxieties and solutions are typically Western. No wonder that the non-Western countries, being late entrants in the process of industrialism, urbanism and their harmful models of development would perceive and worry about them, and couch their own anxieties and dilemmas in Western terms. We should remember that even the word ‘ecology’ is of relatively current and Western coinage. But the contemporaneousness of the familiar preoccupations should not lead us to believe that green thought is something wholly novel. For, a genuine concern for the environment and the ecological dimensions of the ‘human condition’ has characterized much older Western and non-Western thought. While saying this we are taking a cue from Russell.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Politics, Society and ColonialismAn Alternative Understanding of Tagore's Responses, pp. 339 - 391Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2009