Rabindranath Tagore's Global Vision

This ‘Introduction’ to a special issue on Rabindranath Tagore affirms his position as an Indian Renaissance man and assesses his stature as a leading world writer, philosopher, educationist, environmentalist, rural reconstructionist, activist and pragmatist who embodies India's ‘modern consciousness’ (Nandy, [Nandy, Ashis, 1994]). Tagore's international impact was phenomenal in his lifetime and his global vision continues to have universal resonance today. This project seeks to move beyond the initial response to Tagore as an ‘Eastern Sage’ on the world stage to Tagore as the knowledgeable intellectual (Bhattacharya, [Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi, 2011]) who challenges the binarism of the East and the West and seeks to facilitate a dialogue between disparate nations and peoples. Tagore's implicit belief in humankind's creative principle is a confirmation of his vision of the ‘universal man’ prevailing in spite of the conflict of his times. A state‐of‐the field account is offered as the continuing interest amongst scholars, researchers and translators of Tagore is documented and the compilation of articles illustrates an impetus to Tagore Studies that is bound to endure beyond ‘a hundred years from now’ (Tagore, 1896).