4 ideas
Tagore argued in "The Call of Truth" (1921) that non-cooperation mobilized people through a spirit of rejection. A politics built on 'no' can pull down an existing order but cannot supply the constructive vision a free society needs. He held that India's liberation had to come through cooperation between East and West, not through closing the country off.
Gandhi's campaign publicly burned imported cloth as a ritual of purification. Tagore objected that the cloth could have clothed the poor, and that the burning turned an economic question into a moral taboo. He argued that it replaced reasoned choice with the emotional pull of a crowd. Gandhi replied that the cloth was a badge of slavery and that burning it cleansed the country of complicity.
Tagore charged in "The Cult of the Charkha" (1925) that telling every Indian to spin every day reduced people to repetitive mechanical labor. In his view this was a dogma that bypassed the mind instead of awakening it, whatever its economic merit. Under this lens, any mass program is judged by whether it enlarges each person's own thinking or asks them to obey a single prescribed act.
After the 1934 Bihar earthquake, Gandhi called it divine chastisement for the sin of untouchability. Tagore publicly objected that tying physical calamities to moral failings is superstition. He warned that such reasoning weakens a just cause, because it rests the case on fear instead of on reason and conscience. He added that the same logic could just as easily be turned to justify injustice.