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The Visit of Rabindranath Tagore and Dynamics of Nationalism in Colonial Vietnam

  • SUVANNABHUMI
  • Abbr : SVN
  • 2023, 15(1), pp.7-33
  • DOI : 10.22801/svn.2023.15.1.7
  • Publisher : Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies
  • Research Area : Social Science > Area Studies > Southeast Asia
  • Received : November 19, 2020
  • Accepted : January 12, 2023
  • Published : January 31, 2023

Chi P. Pham 1

1The Institute of Literature in the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Numerous journalistic and literary writings about the Indian writer Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian awardee of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913), appeared in newspapers of colonial Vietnam. His stop-over in Saigon (Cochin China) in 1929 created political discussions in contemporary journalism and other publications. Tagore and his visit to Saigon inspired Vietnamese intellectuals and stirred diverse anti-colonial thought. This paper examines writings and images about Tagore in colonial Vietnamese journals and newspapers, reconstructing how intellectuals recalled and imagined him as they also engaged with anti-colonial thought, particularly anti-colonial modernity and anti-capitalism. Contextualizing the reception of Tagore in colonial projects of modernizing the Vietnamese colony, the paper argues that discussions inspired by Tagore’s visit embody contemporary nationalist ideology.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.