What is a Nation ? It is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power. This organization incessantly keeps up the insistence of the population on becoming strong and efficient. But this strenuous effort after strength and efficiency drains man’s energy from his higher nature where he is self-sacrificing and creative. For thereby man’s power of sacrifice is diverted from his ultimate object , which is moral, to the maintenance of this organisation, which is mechanical. Thus, nation ‘controls the life of the individual insofar as the needs of the State or Nation make it necessary’.
— A most powerful critique of nationalism came from Rabindranath Tagore. ( Cited from Fenn Jr. 1929: 321)
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