Crossing Boundaries of Culture and Thought

Abstract

In her essay “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” Martha Nussbaum analyzes Rabindranath Tagore’s novel The Home and the World as a dramatization of what can be wrong with the idea of patriotism. The novel shifts among three third-person-limited narratives, which belong to Nikhil, a wealthy Hindu landowner; his wife, Bimala; and his school friend Sandip, a fervent Hindu nationalist who promotes the cause of Swadeshi (Hindi for “self-sufficiency”), an independence movement during the early decades of the twentieth century. The goal of Swadeshi was to use economic pressure to promote Indian independence from Britain through the boycotting of foreign (non-Indian) products in favor of domestically produced goods. One problem with this strategy is that foreign goods are cheaper and better produced than Indian goods, so Sandip’s demand that Nikhil’s tenants refuse to deal with foreign goods threatens to deprive them of their livelihood.