Chapter 7 - An “Indian Hermes” between Paris and the Pacific: Kalidas Nag, Greater India, and the Quest for a Global Humanism

Summary

Abstract This chapter explores the networks and internationalism of Greater India Society co-founder Kalidas Nag (1892-1966). Nag's interwar trajectory and travels bring into focus a range of networks and geographies that are rarely studied in relation to interwar Indian internationalism. Steering clear of the currents of left-wing internationalism and Wilsonianism, Nag aligned his internationalist agenda for a global humanism with the Asianist visions of Rabindranath Tagore and the pacifism of the French writer Romain Rolland. Nag's schemes were fully invested in interwar civilizational discourse and were inspired by the ancient cultural geography of Greater India. The chapter maps the various influences that shaped Nag's internationalist outlook and zooms in on his role as a pioneer in Indo-Pacific studies in the 1940s.

Key words: Greater India, Kalidas Nag, interwar internationalism, Indo-Pacific studies, global humanism

This chapter explores the networks and internationalism of Tagore-associate and Greater India Society (GIS) co-founder Kalidas Nag (1892-1966). In the historiography on Indian interwar internationalism, Nag remains a side-character operating in the shadow of Tagore and has elicited considerably less attention than his more famous contemporaries, such as Subhas Chandra Bose and M.N. Roy, who each have inspired a voluminous literature. Yet Nag was arguably one of the most widely travelled and well-connected Indian intellectuals of his generation. Moving with equal poise in international scholarly, Orientalist, and literary circles, Nag was, unlike Roy and Bose, not a political activist engaged in an all-out assault against the British Raj. Instead, he was a “university personality” and tireless institution builder who subtly attacked the Raj in the realm of knowledge by establishing rapport with scholars and writers across the globe. His dazzling and ever-expanding itinerary was, quite literally, “unbound” and covered all continents. Steering clear of extreme political positions that would jeopardize his freedom of movement, Nag acted as a savvy “go-between” and used his considerable domestic and global network to organize the Greater India movement. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the GIS radically and lastingly reconfigured the narration of India's ancient past by spreading a popular awareness of its historical role as Asia's cultural and spiritual fount.

Nag's interwar trajectory and travels bring into focus a range of networks and geographies that are rarely studied in relation to Indian internationalism.