Buenos, si son como nosotros; malos, si son distintos

The third movement which started about this time in my country was national. It was not fully political, but began to express our people who were trying to assert their own personality. It was a voice of indignation at the humiliation heaped upon us by those who were not oriental, and who had, especialy at that time, the habit of sharply dividing people into good and bad according to what was similar to their life and what was different.

This contemptuous spirit of separateness was perpetually hurting us and causing great damage to our own world of culture. It generated in the young men of our country distrust of all things that had come to them as an inheritance from their past. Our students, imitating the laughter of their European school masters, laughed at the old Indian pictures and other works of art.

My life in my words. Rabindranath Tagore, editado por Uma Das Gupta (2006). Publicado en España como Palabra por palabra en 2010.