Four Chapters

The recent past has witnessed a global resurgence of aggressive nationalism, with each nation looking for a distinctive identity at the expense of broader ideals of universal humanism and cosmopolitanism. India, too, has experienced the rise of a narrow, exclusivist nationalism that Rabindranath Tagore, India’s first Nobel laureate, had warned us about in the early twentieth century, in his novella Char Adhyay. Four Chapters tells the tragic love story of Ela and Atin, both members of a revolutionary nationalist group fighting for independence from British rule. Their love for each other is tested against their love for the nation. Ela pledges herself in service to her country while Atin, drawn to revolutionary nationalism because of Ela, soon becomes disillusioned with the violent path that goes against the values of love and humanism. Through this intensely emotional personal drama set against 1930s’ Bengal, Tagore presents a trenchant and sobering critique of exclusivist hyper-nationalism that placed the nation above humanity, and senseless violence over compassion and love. A controversial book at the time of its publication in 1934, and a subsequent classic of Bengali literature, it has regained relevance in the current political climate. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay in his introduction contextualises this work through a discussion of nationalist politics in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century India, and Tagore’s engagement and disenchantment with it. He details Tagore’s ideas on nationalism and situates the story within the broader historical narrative of the nationalist movement in Bengal and India. This compelling and impeccable translation of a modern classic is a must-read for lovers of Tagore and all those reading him for the first time.…