Language, Nationalism and Rabindranath Tagore

Name of Author : Dr R Prabhakar

Abstract: Language unifies people. Language is one of the forces that promotes unity among people that speak the same language. A language spoken by a group of people promotes a specific culture. Such cultural unity leads to the evolution of civilizational practices among its speakers. Such civilizational practices in turn lead to the development of sub national and gradually national feelings and sentiments. With time, these sentiments and feelings lead to the formation of nations. And a nation spontaneously assumes nationalism. Thus, it can be asserted that language can be one of the epicentres of nationalism. But, the influence of language in keeping people to come together and stay together is not absolute but relative only. People speaking the same language are not immune from internal conflicts and centrifugal tendencies. When other factors influencing the group, interests come into the picture, people forget the homogeneity of the language and the interests of different groups influence the behaviour of the groups. Contrary to this, Rabindranath Tagore uses the language for the unification of the nations of the world.

Keywords : Language, Culture, Civilization, Nationalism And Internationalism.

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