What did Tagore articulate in his last testament ?

2017

What did Tagore articulate in his last testament ?

Answer: B. Exposed the humane pretensions of the Western World.Concept: A directly-stated-detail question in reading comprehension is settled by attribution, not by recall: find the sentence in which the passage names the…

  1. A.

    Offered support to Subhas Bose.

  2. B.

    Exposed the humane pretensions of the Western World.

  3. C.

    Expressed loyalty to England.

  4. D.

    Encouraged the liberation of countries.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: B

Concept: A directly-stated-detail question in reading comprehension is settled by attribution, not by recall: find the sentence in which the passage names the source you are asked about, and take the idea the passage says was voiced there. Material that the passage attaches to a different actor, place or period does not become that source's statement merely by standing in the same passage.

A note on the wording: The ‘humane pretensions’ of the Western World are the claims to humanity that the West professed but did not live up to; the passage uses the phrase in exactly that sense, and the disillusionment it describes is disillusionment with those professed claims. ‘His last testament’ likewise means the final statement in which Tagore set down his considered parting view of the world — the work Crisis in Civilisation — and not merely the last long book he happened to write.

Application: The passage first records what the last great war did to Indian literature: it aggravated the popular revulsion against violence and added to the growing disillusionment with the ‘humane pretensions’ of the Western World. The very next sentence supplies the attribution — ‘This was eloquently voiced in Tagore’s later poems and his last testament, Crisis in Civilisation.’ The demonstrative ‘This’ points back to that disillusionment, so the idea the passage places in the last testament is the unmasking of the West’s professed humanity, its ‘humane pretensions’.

Cross-check — where the other statements belong in the passage:

  • Support for Subhas Bose: the passage puts Bose at the head of an Indian army trying from the opposite camp to liberate the country, and presents that as one horn of the intelligentsia’s confusion of loyalties.

  • Loyalty to England: the passage records sympathy for England’s dogged courage in the hour of peril as a feeling of the Indian intelligentsia during the war, set beside its sympathy for the Russians and for China.

  • Encouragement of the liberation of countries: liberation enters the passage through the army’s attempt to free India and through the collapse of colonialism in the neighbouring countries of South-East Asia after 1947.

Result: In his last testament, Crisis in Civilisation, Tagore articulated the exposure of the Western World’s ‘humane pretensions’ — the claims to humanity it professed but did not live up to.

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