The social reform movement in Bengal was being countered by a new revivalism, a nationalism based on Hindu values (Mukherjee ix). The liberal movement was led by the new monotheistic Brahmo sect, but it also had other followers, educated Bengalis who had not joined the sect formally (Chaudhuri 608-9). The conservative school was led by Bankimchandra Chatterjee and Swami Vivekananda, who created a revised version of Hinduism that Nirad C. Chaudhuri calls Bengali Neo-Hinduism, which had a larger following at the turn of the century (Chaudhuri 609). Its power was reinforced by Bengali nationalism, and during the agitation of 1905, conservatism dominated Bengali thinking. The popular Hindu conservatism was a ‘mixture of chauvinism with crude and often superstitious religious beliefs and cultural obscurantism. Hindu megalomania and xenophobia were their strongest passions. They were wholly impervious to any ideas not in agreement with the nationalist myths, and were also fiercely intolerant’ (Chaudhuri 609).

Nationalism forms an important aspect of the historical context of Gora, but instead of focusing solely on Indo-British relations, the text lends greater prominence to Hindu-Brahmo tensions. The novel dramatizes these internal conflicts within Bengal society, but without resorting to simple polarizations. Instead, the text presents a spectrum of possible positions within Hindu and Brahmo systems of thought. The elite Hindu group is not homogenized: from the rigid, unworldly orthodoxy of Krishnadayal to Abinash’s naïve celebration of ritual and Harimohini’s growing inflexibility about Sucharita’s habits, the narrative represents varying facets of religious conservatism. Within the domain of Brahmoism, too, the characters chart a range of attitudes, from Poreshbabu’s tolerant liberalism to Baradasundari’s shallow adherence to convention, Haranbabu’s extreme rejection of Gora and Binoy, and Sucharita’s spirit of intelligent enquiry. Poised between these two factions, unable to find a place in either party, is the figure of Anandamoyi, who in a single gesture of defiance gives up all claim to social acceptability when she adopts the orphaned Gora as her foster son. In a parallel gesture, Lalita too breaks away from societal straitjackets when she leaves on the steamer with Binoy. Through these acts of rebellion, the text gestures at the need to seek alternatives beyond the prevailing tensions of factionalism. Gora’s Irish birth is also no accident, for the context of Irish nationalism locates him beyond the simple opposition of British and Indian, colonizer and colonized.

Though ostensibly set in the 1880s, Gora is in many ways charged with the political consciousness of the Swadeshi movement of the early twentieth century. This movement, part of the Indian struggle for Independence, involved boycotting British goods in support of indigenous products, in an effort to promote economic self-sufficiency. Gora’s confrontation with the British magistrate, which results in his imprisonment on a flimsy pretext, reveals a spirit more in tune with the period in which the novel was actually written (Malini Bhattacharya 130). There are thus two contexts to the anti-colonialism of Gora and Lalita. As Michael Sprinker says: ‘the titular hero’s strict observance of traditional Hindu customs throughout the novel is directly linked to his patriotism. Extremism is not yet on the horizon in the novel itself, which is set in the late 1870s or early 1880s, but Tagore composed it after the demise of swadeshi during the moderate-extremist Congress split. Interpreting the narrative in the light of its contemporary context is surely justified’ (125n). Through the figure of Gora, the text expresses Tagore’s interrogation of the more extreme forms of nationalism.

The tensions in Gora are also the product of Tagore’s own inner conflicts, dramatized through the extensive use of dialogue, argument, discussion and disagreement. Despite his liberal leanings, Tagore also sympathized with certain conservative principles. The school at Shantiniketan for instance was based on ancient Hindu ideals of education such as the Guru-Griha described in Hindu sacred law. According to Nirad C. Chaudhuri, ‘Tagore also gave the most competent description of the nationalistic Neo-Hinduism in his novel Gora. Although in it he made Liberalism win, he also showed how strong the Hindu case was’ (Chaudhuri 609). Gora is a powerful dialogic novel. The text seeks to tackle its own creative tensions through its use of doubles or paired characters such as Gora and Binoy, Sucharita and Lalita.