Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

170 I Ramnath
of Western thought fo rms or institutions, not even the
fo rms of resistance and liberation. Tagore proclaimed
in many an address that colonial subjects need not look
outside fo r models, need not "imagine ourselves to be
dream-made Mazzinis, Garibaldis and Washingtons:' nor
in economic life need they be "caught in the labyrinth of
imaginary Bolshevism, Syndicalism or Socialism."9 All
that was required could be discovered within their own
cultural inheritance. For Tagore, decolonization would
not occur through the construction of divisions between
parties and nations but rather in the integration of new
inputs with any traditions conducive to maximizing
freedom, equality, and holistic social, psychological, and
ecological health.
After spending his later years as a universal celebrity,
lecturing and meeting notables, intellectuals, and artists
throughout the world, Tagore died at the age of eighty
in 1941. He himself would never have claimed a connection
to anarchism. His own use of the term equates it to
pure individualism: "Then look at those who call themselves
anarchists, who resent the imposition of power, in
any form whatever, upon the individual. The only reason
for this is that power has become too abstract-it is a
scientific product made in the political laboratory of the
Nation, through the dissolution of the personal humanity."lo
Ye t there were plain affinities in his analysis, and
those attitudes toward modern society recognizable as
typical of the Romantic impulse, that is one component
of the anarchist tradition.