History, identity and nation in Tagore’s fiction

Abstract

Beginning with how Tagore’s views on the partly given, partly constructed nature of social identity are pertinent to understanding the ideas of selfhood and community, this chapter focuses on the paradoxes of identity in his novels Gora and Ghare Baire. The chapter examines the construction of fictional identities in relation to questions of history, nationhood and the self and relates them with some of the views expressed in the essay ‘Atmaparichay’ (1912), arguing that Rabindranath attempted to understand identity as a form of difference.