Cosmopolitan Modernity in Early 20th-Century India

Viewing through the multiple lenses of spirituality, mysticism, travel, friendship, art, and political revolution, this book presents an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism and cultural citizenship as reflected in the lives of Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, James and Margaret Cousins, Paul Richard, Dilip Kumar Roy, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and Taraknath Das.

---

This book presents an alternative view of cosmopolitanism, citizenship and modernity in early 20th-century India through the multiple lenses of mysticism, travel, friendship, art, and politics.It makes a key intervention in the understanding of cosmopolitan modernity based on the lives and experiences of Rabindranath Tagore, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Sri Aurobindo, Mirra Alfassa, James Cousins, Paul Richard, Dilip Kumar Roy, and Taraknath Das. Using archival texts and photographs, Mohanty interrogates the ideas of tradition and modernity, the local and the global, and Self and the world as integral to the conception of a cosmopolitan world order.

The volume will interest scholars and students of modern Indian history, comparative literature, cultural studies, Indian philosophy, and South Asian studies and the general reader.