Nationalism

by Rabindranath Tagore

Its perfection is the perfection of an egg-shell, whose true value lies in the security it affords to the chick and its nourishment and not in the convenience it offers to the person at the breakfast table.

But we know that when we walk barefooted upon ground strewn with gravel, our feet come gradually to adjust themselves to the caprices of the inhospitable earth; while if the tiniest particle of gravel finds its lodgment inside our shoes we can never forget and forgive its intrusion.

my countrymen will truly gain their India by fighting against the education which teaches them that a country is greater than the ideals of humanity.

The crimson glow of light on the horizon is not the light of thy dawn of peace, my Motherland. It is the glimmer of the funeral pyre burning to ashes