Was Tagore well-versed with the prevailing situations in the countries he had visited between 1978 and 1932?
And is Tagore's rejection of aggressive nationalism within confines of geography and ideals of internationalism and humanism, which had inspired India's foreign policy for a long time after independence still relevant and not out of sync with hard realities of international politics?
These and many other searching questions came up for a threadbare debate at a two-day international conference organised by premiere think-tank Indian Council for World Affairs here recently for a relatively less explored area of Tagore's life - his contribution to relevance to India's foreign policy.
Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty, Secretary (Economic Relations) in the External Affairs Ministry, said, "We have much to learn from his powerful message of having a world without barriers. In many ways, Tagore foresaw many facets of a globalising world that we inhabit today".
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Discussants at the conference said it was the visionary in Tagore that had predicted the emergence of a resurgent Asia, particularly China (the world's second largest economy at present after the United States), nearly a century ago and warned of the threat of Japan's nationalism turning into imperialism.
"There is a need, therefore, to analyse Tagore's ideas on how India should engage with the world and the degree to which these influenced the makers of India's foreign policy from Jawaharlal Nehru to Indira Gandhi and later and how they were translated into foreign policy initiatives by India.