Debating Nationalism: Aurobindo, Gandhi, Pal, Tagore and Savarkar

This book deals with how Nationalism was debated in the early decades of the twentieth century India. The book focuses on the five texts of five nationalist thinkers written during the period of 1905 to 1923 and chronologically, these are: Sri Aurobindo’s Bhawani Mandir (1905), Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909), Bipin Chandra Pal’s The Spirit of Indian Nationalism (1910); Rabindranath Tagore’s Nationalism (1917) and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s Essentials of Hindutva (1923).
The study shows that the themes that most prominently come up in these texts are: a particular essential nature of India in contrast to colonial Britain, notion of typical nature of Indian civilization, idea of nation as well as idea of India, and specific methods needed for solidarity among Indians. All these nationalist thinkers viewed these themes in their own fashion. Although, there were similarities among them on these issues, however underneath the treatment of these themes, there also exist serious differences in their thinking. These differences form multiple discourses. These discourses are not only the matter of past but they also provide substantial lessons for our present.