Thought for the Week: Progress and civilisation

Ian Kirk-Smith explores the words of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore

by Ian Kirk-Smith 12th October 2018

In early 1930, the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian writer, was in Birmingham, staying at the Woodbrooke Settlement at Selly Oak, where he gave an address entitled ‘Civilisation and Progress’. At this event, he said: ‘We in India have for more than a century been dragged by the prosperous West behind its chariot, choked by the dust, deafened by the noise, humbled by our own helplessness and overwhelmed by the speed. We agreed to acknowledge that this chariot ride was progress, and that progress is civilisation. If ever we ventured to ask: “Progress for what? Progress for whom?” it was considered to be peculiarly and ridiculously Oriental.’