1. The Poet and His Axiology -- 2. Contours of Political Thought -- 3. Axiology of Justice and the Question of Rural Reconstruction -- 4. Axiology of Ecology -- 5. Axiology of Gender -- 6. Axiology of Nationalism -- 7. Nationalism in the Gandhi Age -- 8. Axiology of Internationalism.

This book revisits Rabindranath Tagore’s opinion and standpoints on constituent elements of politics from the stance of this marker––axiology, so that many well-known aspects of his thought may be seen in a different light. Among the Indian luminaries of the first half of the twentieth century, who were well-known both in the East and the West, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was arguably the most ‘gifted’ personality. Besides being the first non-European recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913) and the ‘ambassador’ of Indian culture to the West, he also wrote voluminous essays and letters on socio-political issues––engaged himself in various protests against the raj, as a pacifist in international arena and also as a polemical writer. Tagore is often described as the ‘conscience’ of the Indian nation. This book includes a long Tagore-Einstein conversation and a longish dialogue with H G Wells and his creative writings––poems, fictions, plays, and ‘personal’ letters––along with his direct political discourses to understand his Political Thought in a more comprehensive way. Sibaji Pratim Basu, the former Vice Chancellor of Vidyasagar University, presently working as a professor of Political Science at Vidyasagar University (West Bengal, India), is an eminent Political Scientist. He has earned his reputation as a prominent political commentator in West Bengal for many decades. Graduated from Presidency College with Honours in Political Science (1981), he obtained his Masters in Political Science and Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta. He has published 8 books in English and Bengali as author and editor; written over 70 academic articles in well-known international and national English and Bengali journals and edited books; and contributed more than 100 op-ed articles in very popular magazines.