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National Anthem row: Rabindranath Tagore is the biggest anti-national!

  • Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote Jana Gana Mana... was completely against the concept of nationalism
  • He had said that Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation
  • Would the people who beat up those who do not stand in the movie theatres spare Tagore?
Rabindranath Tagore Anti National against patriotism nationalism National Anthem

 

There cannot be any greater anti-national than Rabindranath Tagore, because he had shunned all ideas and principles of idealism, nationalism, being proud about the national, flag or the anthem.

 

In his letters, Tagore has out rightly criticised the patriotism factor. It is an irony that the poem written by a person who does not believe in the concept of patriotism or nationalism is being played in the theatres and people have been ‘ordered’ to stand up in ‘respect’. And that poem written by Tagore is called the ‘National’ Anthem!

 

Also Read: If you do not follow this, you are anti-national!

 

Those who do not stand up during the national anthem are beaten up by the moral police in the name of patriotism and respect to Jana Ganan Mana.

 

But in reality, this is what Rabindranath Tagore said: “Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation”

 “Clever lies become matters of self-congratulation. Solemn pledges become a farce—laughable for their very solemnity. The Nation, with all its paraphernalia of power and prosperity, its flags and pious hymns, its blasphemous prayers in the churches, and the literary mock thunders of its patriotic bragging, cannot hide the fact that the Nation is the greatest evil for the Nation, that all its precautions are against it, and any new birth of its fellow in the world is always followed in its mind by the dread of a new peril.” 

 

Also Read: Patriots, can you tell me who did Tagore write the national anthem for?

 

These are his other quotes, which

Trampling under its tread all the sweet flowers....

“Yes, this is the logic of the Nation. And it will never heed the voice of truth and goodness. It will go on in its ring-dance of moral corruption, linking steel unto steel, and machine unto machine; trampling under its tread all the sweet flowers of simple faith and the living ideals of man.” 

The Supreme Court giving a ruling in this effect really came as a surprise.

Also Read:  National Anthem: SC morality talk creating patriotic goondas?

 

None of it is the goal of human history

“Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.” 

 

Accepting mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride

“I have seen in Japan the voluntary submission of the whole people to the trimming of their minds and clipping of their freedom by their government, which through various educational agencies regulates their thoughts, manufactures their feelings, becomes suspiciously watchful when they show signs of inclining toward the spiritual, leading them through a narrow path not toward what is true but what is necessary for the complete welding of them into one uniform mass according to its own recipe. The people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power, called the Nation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness.” 

 

Humility is your crown not patriotism or pride!

“Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful With your white robe of simpleness. Let your crown be of humility, your freedom the freedom of the soul. Build God's throne daily upon the ample bareness of your poverty And know that what is huge is not great and pride is not everlasting.” 

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