Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore opposed British rule and returned his knighthood after the 1919 Amritsar massacre, yet he distrusted the nationalism rising against it. His lectures Nationalism (1917) called the nation state a machine for organised selfishness that India should not imitate, and he argued publicly with Gandhi over burning foreign cloth and the spinning wheel. His school and university at Santiniketan were his alternative: cultural exchange rather than closed borders.