Rabindranath Tagore The Home and the World (1916)

To be modern … is to experience personal and social life as a maelstrom, to find one’s world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be part of a universe in which all that is solid melts into air. To be a modernist is to make oneself somehow at home in the maelstrom, to make its rhythms one’s own, to move within its currents in search of the forms of reality, of beauty, of freedom, of justice, that its fervid and perilous flow allows. (Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York: Verso, 345)

“[Modernism is] any attempt by modern men and women to become subjects as well as objects of modernization, to get a grip on the modern world and make themselves at home in it.” (Berman)

Ghare Baire [The Home and the World] – first published in book form in 1916 William Radice: ‘It was seen to be – and indeed it was – avant-garde’ (‘Preface’, x) calit bhasha or Chôlitôbhasha vs. sadhu bhasha ‘Transitions in plot and character development are abrupt, descriptions are compressed into minimalist dimensions, the terse language flashes suddenly into image and epigram.’ (Kaiser Haq)

1903-08: the era of Swadeshi in Bengal ‘home-made’ or ‘indigenous’: Swadeshi as a form of economic nationalism movement triggered in 1903 by the proposed partition of the province of Bengal by the British Bengali intelligentsia were a key driving force behind the movement

Home Nikhil Family, paternalistic relations between landlords (zamindars) and retainers Gradualist, reformist political action Gradual synthesis of tradition and modernity World Sandip Intruder / bourgeois ‘new man’ with no family ties Violent, insurrectionary action Abrupt break with the status quo

“I shall simply make Bimala one with my country “I shall simply make Bimala one with my country. The turbulent west wind which has swept away the country’s veil of conscience, will sweep away the veil of wife from Bimala’s face, and in that uncovering will be no shame. . . . Bimala will see such a majestic vision of deliverance, that her bonds will slip about her, without shame, without her even being aware of it. . . . If only women could be set free from the artificial fetters put round them by men, we could see on earth the living image of Kali, the shameless, pitiless goddess.”

Partha Chatterjee: “The world is the external, the domain of the material; the home represents our inner spiritual self, our true identity. The world is a treacherous terrain of the pursuit of material interests, where practical considerations reign supreme. It is also typically the domain of the male. The home in its essence must remain unaffected by the profane activities of the material world-and woman is its representation.” (“The Nationalist Resolution of the Woman Question”)

Tanika Sarkar: “The woman’s body was the ultimate site of virtue, of stability, the last refuge of freedom. . . . Through a steady process of regression, this independent self-hood had been folded back from the public domain to the interior space of the household, and then further pushed back into the hidden depths of an inviolate, chaste, pure female body.” (“Nationalist Iconography: Images of Women in Nineteenth-Century Bengali Literature.”)

“The highly troubled question that the novel seems to confront is not how Bimala can be liberated, but if she can be liberated without dismantling the fundamental structures of society.” (Indrani Mitra, “‘I Will Make Bimala One With My Country’: Gender and Nationalism in Tagore's The Home and the World.”