Problem Formulation Objectives of the Study

Kaylan K. Chatterjee reviewed on the ideology and literary criticism on George Lukacs, a Marxist writer from Germany. In Lukacs on Tagore: Ideology and Literary Criticism, he quoted Lucas criticism as below “Tagores enormous popularity among Germanys intellectual elite is one of the cultural scandals occurring with ever greater intensity again and again —a typical sign of the cultural dissolution facing this intellectual elite —so wrote George Lukacs in a review of Tagores The Home and the World Ghare-Baire in 1922 1988: 153. In his review, Chatterjee concluded that Lukacs drove his Marxist critical apparatus over Tagore with a vengeance 1988: 160. It is because Lukacs saw Tagore such a bootlicker to the Western country so that Tagore won some Nobel. But, the political stigma Lucas attached to Tagore now is removed because Tagore did not accept the marques or nobility from British in accordance to British army cruelty that operated massacre in Amnistar 1988: 160. Besides , Chatterjee quoted Lukacs criticism in his writing, “the characters are stereotyped, the novel is tedious, propagandistic and demagogically one- sided, the hero idealise and whitewashed, the opponent blackened and caricatured.” 1988: 157. In short, Lukacs said that Tagore’s novel is more like a pamphlet than a work of art. Chatterjee commented on the quotation that Lukacs’ Marxist criticism is inconsistent because he did not pay attention to Indian historical perspective 1988: 157. So, it is irrelevant to compare The Home and the World with EuropeanRussian literatures which talk about independence movement. It is important to declare that the writer sees that Tagore’s perspective in the novel is very modern indeed. In the novel, Tagore shows the conflicts of traditional Sandip and modern Nikhil perspectives in Swadeshi. Tagore seems on the side of the modern o r western perspective. Not as a ‘bootlicker’ as Lukacs said, but the writer sees that Tagore has an ambivalence character in his writing due to the history of British imperialism in India. Thus the writer uses different perspective to see the conflicting v alues in Bimala’s attitudes and thoughts as she is presented as both traditional and modern Indian woman. The second study was written by Chi P. Pham, which concerns on the nationalist projects in India during the Swadeshi Movement. As Pham stated on his writing, he focused on the modernism and nationalism issues as one of the causes of the nationalist project’s failure presented in the novel. This paper attempts to compare the novel with early twentieth century Vietnamese novels. The Home and the World is a novel that reads like an allegory on the failure of the Indian nationalist projects, circling around the issues of “Home” versus “World,” tradition versus modernity, created by the active involvement of the colonisers in the cultural, economic and administrative life of the colonised. It could be read as an allegory on the failure of Indian nationalism to accept tradition and modernity, home and the world, concurrently 2013: 299. In terms of character, Pham analysed Bimala as the woman main character in the novel. In this part, Pham analysed women as one of the big causes of nationalist mov ement’s failure because women are represented as the core of the ‘home’ or a group that strictly hold to tradition of local custom. Concurrently, the project of carrying women to the World – the outside – becomes unrealistic, romantic and emotional, excluded from knowledge and wisdom. Women’s thoughts and activities remain stuck in the shadow of tradition, also in the new nationalist projects 2013: 307. Indirectly, in Pham’s writing, Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World: Story of the Failure of the Nationalist Project, he showed criticism on