Call For Papers
Gitanjali and Beyond Issue 13
Tagore and a Pluralist Epistemology of Religiosity
(To be published in September 2026)
Concept note:
It has been observed time and again by the scholars of Religious Studies that “religion” is a concept that cannot be easily defined, and it is all the more difficult to find a cross-culturally valid definition of the term (Oppy 2022, 21-33; Olson 2011, 1). However, when we, rather than trying to define “religion” per se, seek to weave a garland of religious experiences from different cultures and continents, we find that there are certain discourses, narratives and philosophies of religious experience that can be shared between individuals and communities from different locations. That is what makes the diverse epistemologies of religiosity cross-culturally communicable. Such epistemologies can be respectfully appreciated only from a perspective of religious and cultural pluralism, when the human mind is open to the imaginative alterities driving plural orientations to the ontologies of the human subject, the Divine and the physical universe. It is in this context that Rabindranath Tagore’s vast corpus of works becomes impressively meaningful in a world that, wounded by interreligious misunderstandings, strives to find out a way towards sustainable interfaith dialogues. Tagore’s unique approach to religion and religiosity is marked by what might be called a pluralism that informs both a poetics of religion and a religion of poiesis. As a poet, he sees religion and religiosity in terms of creative freedom; on the other hand, as a “modern” intellectual who is also a homo religiosus, he sees creativity in “sacredsecular” (Mani 2009; Panikkar 2010, 350) rather than “secular” terms. Like Lata Mani (2009, 116-124), he too would have liked to see a dewdrop as sacredsecular, rather than as either exclusively sacred or exclusively secular. Bimalkrishna Matilal reminds us that Tagore’s religion is primarily a “poet’s religion”, which is the driving force behind his religious and spiritual thinking (2021, 22). According to Matilal (2021, 30-31), Tagore’s religious thought has at its centre not a trans-human spiritual ideal but an abstract and yet humanly graspable ideal that encapsulates the greatness of being human. The Upanishadic Absolute here is not detached from but accessible through the humanness of human life (Matilal 2021, 31). Debiprasad Chattopadhyay (2024, 7-24) insists that, for Tagore, the human condition, even in its palpable and corporeal aspects, is important, and no less meaningful than any abstract spiritual principle such as foregrounded by other-worldly metaphysical doctrines that devalue the material aspect of human life. However, while Matilal sees in Tagore a human-centred approach to religiosity, one may come to realize that, rather than presenting the simplistic anthropocentrism of a “religion of man” [emphasis added], Tagore actually delineates a religious epistemology that underpins what Raimon Panikkar (1993, 60) would call the “cosmotheandric experience”, involving an integration of divinity, humanity and cosmic nature.
Tagore’s exciting inner dialogues with the Brahmo modes of religiosity and his imaginative reworking of the Brahmo God through a syncretistic conversation with the Sahajiya and Baul epistemologies of spirituality have often been documented by scholars (Sil 2009, 35-36; Chatterjee 2022, 26-27; Lewisohn 2017; Dimock 1959). The intellectual and religious atmosphere in which Tagore was brought up encouraged the dualism of the divine and the devotee but that devotional sensibility was distanced from the ritualistic universe of the worshipful lay Hindus (Bandyopadhyay 2024, 16-21, 46-60; Dasgupta 2003, 47-58, 88-100). As Bashabi Fraser points out, “His life proved a search for and a connection with his Jiban Debata, the Lord of his Life, one he sought and felt through anubhuti, an inexplicable experience and feeling born of the creative impulse and an acute sensitivity” (2016, xi). The Upanishadic Brahman becomes, in his vision, both the jiban debata and the manab-brahma, the universal humanity (Ray 2021, 26-27). Since this manab-brahma is not an abstract spiritual entity but is rather rooted in the experience of being (creatively) human, Tagore’s religiosity can accommodate and celebrate, simultaneously, the human greatness of the Buddha whose religious approach was a-theological and the humanism propelled by the Upanishadic ontotheology (Ray 2021, 28-32). Narendra Dev (2020, 39-43) observes in Tagore’s works a capacious space for including the various affective streams in popular Hindu devotionalism, centring round the divine figures of Shiva, Vishnu and Devi. While Matilal thinks that Tagore could not have approved of a religious sensibility centring round various Hindu gods and goddesses (2021, 21-22), it appears from Tagore’s approach to religiosity that he was not an exclusivist Brahmo who would see such devotional orientations as totally illegitimate (Mukhopadhyay 2023, 89, 98-99). In other words, in terms of the affective dimension of religiosity, Tagore could accommodate the lay Hindu sensibilities, Buddhist humanism, the folk epistemology of a humanistic religiosity propounded by the Sahajiyas and Bauls, and the abstract philosophical ideas and spiritual sensibilities centring round the Upanishadic Brahman. This accommodativeness is the hallmark of his pluralist epistemology of religiosity, a poetic pluralism that can speak meaningfully to our contemporary world which is still inadequately equipped to promote respect for and creative engagement with religious alterities.
Debiprasad Chattopadhyay (2024, 18-22) rightly points out that it is difficult to find in Tagore’s creative universe any unified philosophical or religious doctrine – Tagore’s religious thought remains multifaceted and fluid. As Sankha Ghosh and Ranajit Guha observe, one can even ponder over Tagore’s “spiritual” poetry without reference to “God”, through a poetic lens that upholds the rendezvous of two pronouns, I and You (Ghosh 2002, 74-76; Mukhopadhyay 2017; Guha 2010, 9, 220-232). In a way, it is this creative negotiation between “I” and “You” which also becomes imperative in the field of interfaith dialogue, so as to facilitate a dialogue between my God and your God, my theism and your atheism (one may here refer to Sudipta Kaviraj’s insightful observations on the appeal of Tagore’s theistic poetry to an atheist [Kaviraj 2022, 165-185]), my religiosity and your religiosity (or even irreligiosity). While the first issue of Gitanjali and Beyond thematized Tagore’s vision of spirituality, this issue seeks to deal with the unique, pluralist epistemology of religiosity that can be built up with resources from Tagore’s poetic universe of diverse religious sensibilities. This issue would explore the potential of the Tagorean universe for ushering in a sacredsecular mode of thinking that can establish religious pluralism on a firmer basis, thereby providing unique paradigms for doing Religious Studies in radically new and fruitful ways. Within a pluralist world facilitated in this way, human subjects can be religious (or even non-religious) in differing but negotiable ways.
References:
- Bandyopadhyay, Asitkumar. 2024. Unish Shataker Bangla Sahitye Dharmachetana. Kolkata: Sutradhar.
- Chatterjee, Choi. 2022. Russia in World History: A Transnational Approach. London: Bloomsbury.
- Chattopadhyay, Debiprasad. 2024. Rabindranath o Bharater Darshanik Aitijhya. Kolkata: Sutradhar.
- Dasgupta, R. K. 2003. Vedanta in Bengal. Kolkata: Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture.
- Dev, Narendra. 2020. Bhagavad-premik Rabindranath. Kolkata: Sutradhar.
- Dimock, Edward C. 1959. “Rabindranath Tagore – “The Greatest of the Bāuls of Bengal””. The Journal of Asian Studies 19.1 (November): 33-51. JSTOR. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2943448. Accessed on January 21, 2025.
- Fraser, Bashabi. 2016. Foreword. Gitanjali and Beyond 1: vii-xi. Gitanjali and Beyond. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://gitanjaliandbeyond.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/11_x_GB-COMPLETE-ISSUE-1-GNB-pc1_compressed2.pdf. Accessed on January 21, 2025.
- Ghosh, Sankha. 2002. Nihshabder Tarjani. Sankha Ghosher Gadyasangraha, by Sankha Ghosh, Vol. 3: Kabitakatha, 11-122. Kolkata: Dey’s.
- Guha, Ranajit. 2010. Kabir Nam o Sarbanam. Kolkata: Talpata.
- Kaviraj, Sudipta. 2022. “Can Nastikas Taste Astika Poetry? Tagore’s Poetry and the Critique of Secularity.” Living without God: A
- Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism [Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, volume 37], edited by
- Sanjit Chakraborty and Anway Mukhopadhyay, 165-185. Singapore: Springer.
- Lewisohn, Leonard. 2017. “Rabindranath Tagore’s Syncretistic Philosophy and the Persian Sufi Tradition.” International Journal of Persian Literature 2.1:2-41. JSTOR. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5325/intejperslite.2.1.0002. Accessed on January 21, 2025.
- Mani, Lata. 2009. SacredSecular: Contemplative Cultural Critique. New Delhi: Routledge.
- Matilal, Bimalkrishna. 2021. Rabindranather Dharma o Adhyatmikata. Kolkata: Sutradhar.
- Mukhopadhyay, Anway. 2017. “Integrating the Home and the Path: Sankha Ghosh’s Tagore Criticism.” Muse India 76 (November-December) [special issue edited by Angshuman Kar on Sankha Ghosh].
—. 2023. Atheism and the Goddess: Cross-Cultural Approaches with a Focus on South Asia. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. - Olson, Carl. 2011. Religious Studies: The Key Concepts. Oxon and New York: Routledge.
- Oppy, Graham. 2022. “Defining ‘Religion’ and ‘Atheism’.” Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism [Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, volume 37], edited by Sanjit Chakraborty and Anwa Mukhopadhyay, 21-33. Singapore: Springer.
- Panikkar, Raimon. 1993. The Cosmotheandric Experience. Edited by Scott Eastham. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.
- Panikkar, Raimundo [Raimon]. 2010. The Rhythm of Being: The Gifford Lectures. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.
- Ray, Krishna. 2021. Rabindranather Darshanchinta. Kolkata: Sutradhar.
- Sil, Narasingha P. 2009. ““Amar man majechhe sei gabhirer gopan bhalobasay”: Rabindranath the Aesthetic Erotic.” Celebrating
- Tagore: A Collection of Essays, edited by Rama Datta and Clinton Seely, 221-247. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.
Contributions are welcome from scholars on the following themes (and also other relevant topics):
- How can Tagore’s religious thought facilitate interfaith dialogue?
- Reading Tagore from the disciplinary perspective of Religious Studies
- What can Tagore’s thought contribute to Religious Studies as a discipline?
- Tagore’s vision of the divine and its connection with Hinduism, Brahmoism and the Sahajiya religions of Eastern India
- Tagore’s religious thought and “sacredsecularity” (a la Lat Mani and Raimon Panikkar)
- Tagore and atheism
- The gender of Tagore’s jiban debata
- Tagore’s view of Buddhism
- The female divinity/divinities and Tagore’s poetic universe
- Tagore and dialogues between Hinduism and Islam
- Tagore and Christianity
- Tagore’s adherence to the Indic traditions of humanism and the role of the divine in this tradition
- Tagore’s relevance as a religious thinker in South Asia today
- Comparative studies of Tagore and his contemporary religious thinkers from Europe, USA, Africa, the Middle East and India
- Guest Editor of the special issue: Dr Anway Mukhopadhyay, Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India
Tentative timeline:
Submission of the first draft of the paper: 1st December 2025
Sending the reviews to the contributors: 15th February 2026
Submission of the revised draft: 31st March 2026
Final round of review: 5th May 2026
Final revisions to be made to the papers and the final submission: 30th June 2026
Preparation of the final typescript: 31st July 2026
Bio-note of Dr Anway Mukhopadhyay:
Dr Anway Mukhopadhyay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and at The University of Burdwan. He was educated at Jadavpur University, Kolkata (where he received University Medals for standing First Class First in both BA Hons and MA in English) and BHU, Varanasi (wherefrom he obtained his PhD), and successfully completed the course on Hinduism: Ritual, Caste and Gender (HS 108, Trinity 2016), offered by Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, a recognized independent centre of the University of Oxford, in August 2016, and was placed in the First Class, securing 84% marks. Mukhopadhyay’s publications include, among others, Finding Philosophers in Global Fiction: Redefining the Philosopher in Multicultural Contexts, edited by Anway Mukhopadhyay, Saptarshi Mallick, Debashree Dattaray ( New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), Atheism and the Goddess: Cross-Cultural Approaches with a Focus on South Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) [monograph], Thematizations of the Goddess in South Asian Cinema, edited by Anway Mukhopadhyay and Shouvik Narayan Hore (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, hardback 2022; paperback 2024), Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, volume 37), edited by Sanjit Chakraborty and Anway Mukhopadhyay (Springer Singapore, 2022), The Authority of Female Speech in Indian Goddess Traditions: Devi and Womansplaining (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) [monograph], The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions: Devi as Corpse (London and New York: Routledge, 2018; paperback 2020) [monograph], Literary and Cultural Readings of Goddess Spirituality: The Red Shadow of the Mother (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017) [monograph] and Why Fiction Matters, co-edited with Vanashree (Delhi: Pencraft International, 2017). With Sanjit Chakraborty, he guest-edited a special issue (September 2021) of the celebrated journal of philosophy and traditions, Sophia, published by Springer (one of the top 100 journals in the world, in the field of religious studies), on the theme of “Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism”. This issue has also been published as an edited volume by Springer (mentioned above). His critical and creative writings have been published in noted national and international journals and his works have been cited and discussed by reputed scholars in celebrated international journals published by Sage, Taylor and Francis and Cambridge University Press. He has presented papers and chaired academic sessions in national and international conferences in and outside India, and has contributed chapters to several edited volumes. He is a member of the International Editorial Board of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, a Scopus indexed journal published by Springer Nature. His documentary film Saarasvati: The Daughters of Sarasvati, on women’s Sanskritic education in an Ashram in Varanasi, made with the start-up grant awarded by BHU, was screened at the Centre for Women’s Studies, BHU and is available on YouTube. He was an Associate Faculty at the Center for Advanced Studies in South Asia, Lalitpur, Nepal.
On January 25, 2020, he was honoured with the Yuva Rattan Award by the NRI Welfare Society of India, Delhi at Pravasi Bharatiya Kendra, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi.
His project titled “Archiving the Heritage of Hindu Spiritual Congregations in Varanasi (along Both Synchronic and Diachronic Axes)” [ISIRD Project sponsored by SRIC, IIT Kharagpur] has been completed at IIT Kharagpur. It has resulted in the construction of the website titled Adhyatmika Parampara in Varanasi: A Digital Archive (https://kashiadhyatmikaparampara.in/).
