Introduction

Abstract

This special half-issue is inspired by a passage by Indian writer, educator, and utopian experimenter Rabindranath Tagore in his The Religion of Man (1931), which Tagore first delivered in 1930 as the Hibbert Lectures at the University of Oxford:Man, in his mission to create himself, tries to develop in his mind an image of his truth according to an idea which he believes to be universal, and is sure that any expression given to it will persist through all time . . . This ideal life dwells in the prospective memory of the future. (Tagore 1931, 55) The set of four articles in this issue is particularly focused on transcultural utopian imagination with nodal point in South Asia, with the transnational space of Bengal (spanning the present-day sovereign nations of India and Bangladesh) as a further major focus, irradiating out to the past and future, and to many utopian places, both rural and urban, extending, notably, to the United Kingdom, South Africa, Indonesia, and the United States.