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Rabindranath TagoreMemorial Lecture

2009 Second

BY Swapan Majumdar

1861-1941

NCERT "The fact that the world stirs our imagination in sympathy tells us that this creative imagination is a common truth both in us and in the heart of existence."

"THE POET'S RELIGION" IN CREATIVE UNITY

"The modern age has brought the geography of the earth near to us, but made it difficult for us to come into touch with man.”

"EAST AND WEST" IN CREATIVE UNITY

ISBN 978-81-7450-928-4

1876

"What India has been, the whole world is now. The whole world is becoming one country through scientific facility. And the moment is arriving when you must also find a basis of unity which is not political. If India can offer to the world her solution, it will be a contribution to humanity.”

“NATIONALISM IN INDIA" IN NATIONALISM

"Today we witness the perils which attend on the insolence of might; one day shall be borne out the full truth of what the sages have proclaimed: 'By unrighteousness man prospers, gains what appears desirable, conquers enemies, but perishes at the root'."

"CRISIS IN CIVILISATION" IN CRISIS IN CIVILISATION AND OTHER ESSAYS

“In India, the history of humanity is seeking to elaborate a specific ideal, to give to general perfection a special form which shall be for the gain of all humanity; — nothing less than this is its end and aim.”

"EAST AND WEST IN GREATER INDIA" IN GREATER INDIA

"Science being mind's honesty in its relation to the physical universe never fails to bring us the best profit for our living. And mischief finds its entry through this backdoor of utility, and Satan has had his ample chance of making use of the divine fruit of knowledge for bringing shame upon humanity. Science as the best policy is tempting the primitive in man bringing out his evil passions through the respectable cover that it has supplied him. And this why it is all the more needed today that we should have faith in ideals that have matured in the spiritual field through ages of human endeavour after perfection, the golden crops that have developed in different forms and in different soils but whose food value for man's spirit has the same composition. These are not for the local markets but for the universal hospitality, for sharing life's treasure with each other and realising that human civilisation is a spiritual feast the invitation to which is open to all, it is never for the ravenous orgies of carriage where the food and the feeders are being torn to pieces."

"IDEALS OF EDUCATION" IN CRISIS IN CIVILISATION AND OTHER ESSAYS

NCERT

MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES

Rabindranath Tagore Second Memorial Lecture

Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar

AT

Regional Institute of Education, Bhopal

14 January 2009

SWAPAN MAJUMDAR

First Edition ISBN 978-81-7450-928-4

January 2009 Pausa 1930

PD 1T IJ

© National Council of Educational Research and Training, 2009

Rs 10.00

Published at the Publication Department by the Secretary, NationalCouncil of Educational Research and Training, Sri Aurobindo Marg, NewDelhi 110 016 and printed at .......

�With the unchecked growth ofNationalism the moral foundation ofman's civilisation is unconsciously

undergoing a change. The ideal of thesocial man is unselfishness, but theideal of the Nation, like that of the

professional man, is, selfishness. This iswhy selfishness in the individual iscondemned while in the nation it is

extolled, which leads to hopeless moralblindness, confusing the religion of thepeople with the religion of the nation."

"The Nation" in Creative Unity

OUR OBJECTIVES

The National Council of Educational Research and Training(NCERT) is an apex organisation, assisting and advisingthe Central and State Governments by undertakingresearch, survey, development, training and extensionactivities for all stages of school and teacher education.

One of the objectives of the Council is to act as a clearinghouse and disseminator of ideas relating to school andteacher education. We have initiated the current MemorialLecture Series in order to fulfil this role and tocommemorate the life and work of great educationalthinkers. Our aim is to strive to raise the level of publicawareness about the seminal contributions made in thefield of education by eminent men and women of India. Weexpect that such awareness will set off a chain of discourseand discussion. This, we hope, will make education a livelysubject of inquiry while simultaneously encouraging asustained public engagement with this important domainof national life.

The memorial lecture series covers public lecturescommemorating the life and work of nine eminent Indianeducational thinkers and practitioners.

Title Venue

Gijubhai Badheka Memorial Madras Institute of DevelopmentLecture Studies, Chennai

RabindranathTagore Memorial Regional Institute of Education,Lecture Bhubaneswar

Zakir Hussain Memorial Regional Institute of Education,Lecture Mysore

Mahadevi Verma Memorial Regional Institute of Education,Lecture Bhopal

B.M. Pugh Memorial North East Regional Institute ofLecture Education, Shillong

Savitribai Phule Memorial SNDT , Women�s College, MumbaiLecture

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Marjorie Sykes Memorial Regional Institute of Education,Lecture Ajmer

Sri Aurobindo Memorial Presidency College, KolkataLecture

Mahatma Gandhi Memorial India International Centre (IIC),Lecture New Delhi

We invite men and women of eminence from academiaand public life to deliver these lectures in English or anyother Indian language. Our intention is to reach to largeaudiences consisting in particular of teachers, students,parents, writers, artists, NGOs, government servants andmembers of local communities.

The Annexrure �A� (Memorial Lectures Series 2007-08)provides a summary of the nine lectures being organisedunder this Series of Lectures during the year 2007-2008.

In due course the lectures will be made available onCompact Discs (CDs) and in the form of printed bookletsin languages other than English or Hindi in which it isoriginally delivered for wider dissemination.

Each booklet consists of two sections : Section onehighlights the purpose of the memorial lectures andproviding a brief sketch of the life and work of theconcerned educational thinker and Section two gives thelectures in full, along with a brief background ofthe speaker.

Section 1 in this booklet has been contributed byDr Pratyusa K. Mandal, Reader in History, Department ofSocial Sciences and Humanities at the NCERT. In this thewriter Dr. Mandal illustrates the life and works ofRabindranath Tagore in context of his time and drawsupon his seminal ideas on education which were intricatelyintertwined with his own experiences as a child and lateras a public figure of eminence. Much has been said andwritten comparing Rabindranath's educational ideas withthat of other makers of modern India. Avoiding any suchcomparison as odius and unnecessary, Dr. Mandal hasinstead focused on bringing out the unique features of

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Rabindranath�s ideas that is quite in fitting with the avowedobjectives of this memorial lecture.

Professor Swapan Majumdar is delivering the secondRabindranath Tagore Memorial Lecture on 14 January2009 at the Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar.The theme of his lecture is �Education as Empowerment:Twins in search of an Alternative Education.

In his lecture Professor Swapan Majumdar discusseshow Rabindranath Tagore was an ardent activist for thecause of education. He discusses how he was throughoutinvolved in experimenting and improving the existingsystem and pedagogical practices, thereby impactingpostively on the quality of education. In the words of thespeaker �for Tagore education did not consist ofachievement alone. His ideal was to help create a completeman by making open choices and opportunites before thestudents and thereby letting them develop their latenttalents.� The second half of his talk dwells on the theme ofempowerment as approached by two great minds of ourtimes � Tagore and Gandhi, their search of the innermosttruth and the amity of their visions.

We hope these lecture series will be of use to ouraudience as well as the public in and outside the countryin general.

ANUPAM AHUJA

Convenor

Rabindranath Tagore is one of those few iconicpersonalities whom the people of India hold very close totheir heart. A literary genius and a humanist, he did notleave any facet of life untouched until it bloomed into anunforgettable creation of supreme beauty and charm. Apeople's bard, his heart never stopped wrenching at thesight of human misery. For this he would compose andstage drama and stretch out a helping hand to bringsuccour to the needy. A thorough nationalist, he wouldnot brook any narrow sentimentalism coming in the wayof universal human values. An uncompromising lover offreedom, he would be resolute in raising his voice evenagainst trifle attempts at its stifling. He was the muse whocould transfix the garrulous currents of river Padma in anotebook sitting on its bank. He remains as yet a gem of aman to be surpassed in whatever he did. Not surprisingly,the greatest tribute to him came from none else than theMahatma in his own lifetime, who called him 'Gurudev'.

THE TIME BEACONS

Born on 7 May 1861 to noble parents Rabi, asRabindranath Tagore used to be affectionately called bymembers of his family and friends had exhibitedastonishing signs of creative talents from his verychildhood. Perhaps, the extraordinary circumstances ofhis birth were not least responsible for that initialgermination and subsequent f ru i t i on of suchcreative potential.

Beginning with Raja Ram Mohan Roy's path breakingendeavours at socio-religious reforms from about 1828,

SECTION 1

ON RABINDRANATH TAGORE

THE MAN AND HIS MIND

PRATYUSA K. MANDAL

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when he established the Brahmo Sabha and in anorganised way set out on a course of relentless campaignto rid the country of pernicious social customs like Satiand awakening his fellow men and women "from theirdreams of error" through rightful acquaintance with thevirtues of their scriptures. Bengal at the centre of a strongrenaissance wave that was sweeping across the countryhad already galloped a long way to take the fervour on toits next higher plane by the time Rabindranath arrived onthe scene.

That Ram Mohan had left a lasting imprint in the mindof Rabindranath is borne out by his own estimation of thattowering prophet of modernism, a veritable bridge betweenthe East and the West. In his resounding words, "RamMohan was the only person in his time, in the whole worldof man, to realise completely the significance of the ModernAge. He knew that the ideal of human civilisation does notlie in the isolation of independence, but in the brotherhoodof interdependence of individuals as well as nations in allspheres of thought and activity". This singular thought ofessential "human unity" never took leave of Rabindranath'sconsciousness until he breathed his last in 7 August 1941.In the domain of educational thinking, likewise, he heldon to the essence of Ram Mohan's earnest arguments for"a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction."

But unlike Ram Mohan, who had no precursor to lookup to, Rabindranath in many ways represented the zenithof the nineteenth century renaissance spirit. Whereas incase of the former life began in Bengal and ended in Bristol,the latter journeyed throughout the world several timesover and yet passed into eternity in the soils of his birth, inthe present day city of Kolkata. At a philosophical levelsuch truisms of life bear testimony to the missions ofindividual births.

SPROUTING OF THE SEED

Even as Rabindranath was about twelve years old, heaccompanied his father, the illustrious Maharshi

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Debendranath Tagore for a Himalayan sojourn atDalhousie. It was the kind of magical place, where hisnatural contemplative mind would soak itself not only inthe profundity of the Upanishadic philosophy and thehighly aesthetic works of Kalidasa, but also in thewondrous world of phenomenal subjects like history,astronomy and modern science. Away from the "grind ofthe school mill", it was here that he forever understoodconcretely what true freedom holds for the efflorescence ofthe human personality. Despite being a stern disciplinarianthat his father was, he would never stand in the way ofany of his progeny's natural expression of being.Rabindranath would later reminisce: "Many a time have Isaid or done things repugnant alike to his taste and hisjudgement; with a word he could stop me; but he preferredto wait till the prompting to refrain came from within. Apassive acceptance by us of the correct and the proper didnot satisfy him; he wanted us to love truth with our wholehearts; he knew that mere acquiescence without love isempty. He also knew that truth, if strayed from, can befound again, but a forced or blind acceptance of it fromthe outside effectually bars the way in." And so, with amountaineer's spike in hand, he would wander about "frompeak to peak" bemused at the resonance he had with thespectacle of nature.

Back at home, he could still conjure up those exaltingexperiences when put to task by his Bengali tutor andrendered into lilting verse scene after scene from Macbethin his mother tongue. Further, fatigued by the "dismal classhours" in school, he composed his first ever solo poem,Abhilash (Yearning) with the footnote in the family journalTattvabodhini Patrika merely describing the author as atwelve year old boy. In any case, the compositionheralded the coming to an end of his formal schoolingtwo years later.

Freed from what he subsequently described as a"combination of hospital and gaol," that is the school,Rabindranath found ample time and opportunity to delve

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deeper into the realm of creativity. There already was acertain nip in the air of Bengal and in the family homeexisted a perfect setting for his creative impulse to ascendto its full glory. When he was all of fourteen, he recited hisfirst patriotic poem in the Hindu Mela, then organisedannually in Calcutta with liberal patronage from theTagores. Being an event with political overtones, anythinguttered from its platform was bound to make ripples inthe public domain. So, his poem was published for thefirst time under his own name in the then widely subscribedAnglo-Bengali weekly, the Anand Bazar Patrika. Ithappened at a time, when the novels of Bankim ChandraChatterji, then being serialised in the literary journalBangadarshan, were already "taking the Bengali heartby storm."

This public attention was to further usher him on thepath of creativity far more intensely than he could havepreviously thought of. And in his doing so his brotherJyotirindranath and sister-in-law Kadambari Devi did notplay a less significant role. What was most encouragingfor the budding poet was the "stimulating companionship,"which the duo offered him, shorn of any big brotherlystance, in gay abundance.

This is a theme, which Rabindranath would come backto again and again in his reminiscences. "But for suchsnapping of my shackles, I might have become crippledfor life. Those in authority are never tired of holding forththe possibility of the abuse of freedom as a reason forwithholding it, but without that possibility freedom wouldnot be really free. And the only way of learning how to useproperly a thing is through its misuse." ThusRabindranath's first long narrative poem Banaphul (TheWild Flower) came out during this time describing the tragictale of a young girl Kamala, who sought refuse in deathbeing denied the love by the conformist society that she sosincerely longed for.

The nationalist stirring of the period coupled withJyotirindranath's romantic idea of regaining the country's

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lost freedom through secret society parleys also rousedhim to dabble with satirical writing. The new Viceroy, LordLytton's pompous Durbar held in Delhi in 1877 coincidingwith the tragic occurrence of a heart-rending famine inrural Bengal provided him with the perfect material for hisfirst such satirical composition, which he read out to alarge gathering of people again on the occasion of the HinduMela in that year.

His next spell of creative expressions came in the formof his first short story Bhikarini (The Beggar Maid), ahistorical drama in blank verse Rudrachanda, anotherlong narrative poem Kavi Kahini and several other articlesand translations all of which were published in the newliterary monthly Bharati started by his brotherJyotirindranath. These effusive creations, in the words ofhis biographer Krishna Kripalini, spoke eloquently "notonly of his genius but of that literary period in Bengal whenthe old forms and values were dead or dying and the newones had yet to take shape with this new star." As a matterof fact, within the horizon of Bengal's literary world nothingat this stage captured better a mystical understanding ofnature harmonised as it were by an amazing degree ofscientific temperament than his Kavi Kahini, which onlymatched his quintessential love for beauty. Subsequentlythis triune would stand him always in good stead. Butsuch was his love for the allegorical Vaishnava poetry ofmedieval Bengal that he could not resist the urge to pourout "his own vague yearnings in the same mould." Hencethe work that was produced under the name BhanusimhaThakurer Padavali, created such a genuine excitementamong orientalist scholars of the time that the author'sname in the poem semantically alluded to an imaginaryfifteenth century poet, was taken to be true.

THE SEED TAKES ROOT

Despite the renaissance fervour of those days, it wasinconceivable for any one, and least of all the familypatriarch, to expect that a career could be made out of

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literary pursuits and still fit into the family tapestry.Rabindranath's grandfather Dwarkanath Tagore was aman of fabulous resources, who "lived lavishly andentertained regally." His father Debendranath Tagore "waseven more remarkable" being known popularly as theMaharshi. Of his 13 elder siblings the eldest,Dwijendranath was "a man of gigantic intellect;" the secondone, Satyendranath was "the first Indian to break into thestronghold of the Indian Civil Service," from the third,Hemendranath he learned his first lesson which remainedfirmly etched in his mind; the fifth, Jyotirindranath "a geniusof uncommon versatility" was the source of his inspiration,his sisters, both Saudamini and Sarala excelled in arts andletters. And, he was the fourteenth child. Naturally, theMaharshi was concerned about his future and thereforereadily agreed to his elder son Satyendranath's suggestionthat Rabindra should accompany him to England, wherehe could harness his "impetuous talents" to become eithera civil servant like his brother or, if not that, at least abarrister.

It was on his way to England, at his brother's officialresidence at Ahmedabad that on the banks of riverSabarmati "the lonely boy read voraciously of Englishliterature and through English of European literature."From this intellectual engagement a stream of critical essaysand free translations from European authors ensued, whichwere all published in Bharati. Besides, works of celebratedEuropean poets like Goethe and Dante also prompted himto ponder over the way people in the West looked upon life.Some of these witty observations found place in his writingsof this time. On the issue of love, on which the medievalbhakti lore had always had a major influence on him, heobserved: "They say, love is blind. Does that mean that tosee more is to be blind? For love sharpens the eye andenlarges the understanding." Likewise, on a certainperception of beauty, he observed: "Our ancients said thatmodesty is woman's best ornament. But women put on somany ornaments that there is little room left for this one."

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At a more technical level, these writings formed whatcan be supposedly stated as the first nucleus of his prosecompositions invariably though these compositionsremained always "overshadowed by his reputation as apoet." One more notable creation from this genius duringthis period came in the domain of music, which "lasted tillthe end of his life" and in due course came to be popularisedas Rabindra Sangeet all over Bengal.

In September 1878, he finally sailed off to England withbrother Satyendra, leaving far behind the roots of all hisinspiration. Sea voyage for him was sickening. And, onarrival in London, sadly, what he found was a "dismal city",the like of which he had never seen before � "smoky, foggyand wet, and everyone jostling and in a hurry." Thisominous observation coming from Tagore might have sentshock waves among many youth of his age aspiring to goto England in search of a better future. However, his YuropPravasir Patra, which he wrote from there for publicationin Bharati captured a young Indian's candid observationson English life and manners of late nineteenth century andoffer historically significant early specimens of literary prosein colloquial Bengali. Be that as it may, no sooner did hestart appreciating the strength of English social life afterstaying there for a few months and particularly viewed fromthe perspective of a woman's role and status in it, he wascalled back home, mercifully for him to "the light of mycountry, the sky of my country." Thus that incessantlonely feeling of pravas came to an end.

THE BLOSSOM

Back at home in February 1880 Rabindranath pouredhimself out "in a cascade of songs" named SandhyaSangeet (Evening Songs) and wrote his first musical playsKal Mrigaya (The Fateful Hunt) and Valmiki Pratibha (TheGenius of Valmiki) breaking down the longstanding barrierbetween the classical and folk idioms. Whereas the eveningsongs definitively bore "the unmistakable stamp of hisgenius," he did not shirk from even experimenting with a

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few strands of western music in his two musical plays. Aswith every other experience of his life in this context too,he would later reminisce, "as the stream does not flowstraight on but winds about as it lists, so did my verse �Freedom first breaks the law and then makes laws whichbrings it under true self-rule."

Public adulation followed this creative flow as beforeand so followed his desire to come out more emphaticallyinto the public domain. In a public lecture on 'Music andFeeling' in Calcutta he successfully defended his thesisthat "the function of music was to express what the wordsfail to express." That apart, Rabindranath's humanconcern also began touching those burning issues of thetime that caused noticeable distress around the world.Thus in a scathing treatise he laid bare the monstrosity ofBritain's opium trade in the then China. His first completenovel Bou-Thakuranir Hat (The Young Queen's Market) ofthis time too harboured a similar thought process.

A natural inheritor of prodigious spirituality both athome and outside, Rabindranath also had his first brushwith a luminous experience of the self around this time.Later in life The Religion of Man became a naturaloutgrowth of this intense experience. Besides, withspiritual awakening there also flowed literary creations ofa different kind. Those were at once replete with a certainsense of exultation and "a rediscovery of the wonder ofthis world and the joy of living." Nirjharer Swapnabhanga(The Fountain Awakes) and Prabhat Sangeet (MorningSongs) bore the surer imprint of that new mood. It was, asit were, the obsession with rational explanation ofphenomena that was a characteristic fixation with his age,which no longer troubled his creative impulse. At any rate,the enterprise to search for meaning in nature had alwaysappeared to him as meaningless. As he would later put it:"If someone smells a flower and says he does notunderstand, the reply to him is: there is nothing tounderstand, it is only a scent � That words have meaningis just the difficulty."

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In the summer of 1883, at Karwar on the westernseaboard, Rabindranath played out this contest between"spirit and life," between "truth and beauty," and "betweenreason and love" in his first ever poetic drama, PrakritirPratishodh (Nature's Revenge). Thus, when he picturisedin songs the myriad trysts of folk life in his Chhabi O Gaan(Pictures and Songs), glimpses of this metaphysical insightpoured into his poetic narration. His outpourings inversatile prose also touched a vast array of issuesranging from the social to political and from the literaryto philosophical.

Then there came Balak, another monthly magazinefrom the family stable, the pages of which were filled byhis pen. This was a magazine for children. Not long beforehe had faced two most potent and yet opposing faces oflife's truism � one was his marriage with Bhavatarini(renamed Mrinalini), and the other, his sister-in-lawKadambari's death under tragic circumstances. As he hadearlier mused in his two most stirring poems, Endless Lifeand Endless Death, these two contrary events providedhim with far deeper philosophical insight into the meaningsof life and death � the process of embodiment anddissolution. Thereafter, as secretary of the Brahmo Samajhe wrote several essays dwelling on the theme 'Religionand Spirituality.' In those essays he could find the rightspace and context to objectively asses those myriad viewsand counter views, which surrounded the questions ofwhether western education augured well for the countryor holding fast to the country's age-old heritage served itbetter. But in the end, as his biographer puts it: "Hisimaginative sympathy and understanding of humannature enabled him to appreciate the passionate partialityof both the outlooks and he himself entered the list onlywhen he felt that justice and humanity were at stake."However, despite engagement with such disquisitoryexercises, his sense of muse did not become torpid. Ratherhis poetic heart throbbed through many a sonnets andsome translations of English and Japanese poems all of

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which were published in a compilation named, KariO Kamal.

His successive works came of his wider travels bothwithin and beyond the shores of India and hence from afar larger canvas of human concern and civilisationalenterprise. During this course he made his second visit toLondon in 1890 and in a letter to niece Indira wrote back:"Is man a mere machine made of metal that he shouldfunction in strict accordance with rules? So vast and variedis the mind of man, so many its hunger and so diverse itsclaims that it must now and again swerve and reel andtoss. This indeed is what makes man human, the proofthat he lives, the refutation that he is not a mere bundle ofmatter �One who has never known the turbulence of life,in whom the petals of the mysterious flower within havenot opened, such a one may seem happy, may seem asaint, his single track mind may impress the multitudewith its power � but he is ill-equipped for the life's trueadventure into the infinite." Undoubtedly he was aghastat the way humanism was being trampled down by theso-called civilisation. And, thus "tired of the place" andeven "tired of the beautiful faces" there, he decided to return.

Upon his return was published his famous collectionof poems, Manasi (Of the Mind). If in one of these poemshe captured the fateful capsizing of a boat going to SriJagannath at Puri and taking with it the lives of 800pilgrims, in another he lashed out at the �Banga Bir�, thenew-age heroes of Bengal who read all about the valiantacts of Cromwell and Mazzini but often chose at ease torest at home with the deceptive thought that they "were asgood as the best."

THE GRASS BENEATH

Rabindranath's acquaintance with the grist and grind ofpeople's life and the social and economic ills which hadthe country in its grip grew far more intimate as he wasentrusted with the task of looking after the vast familyestates in north Bengal and Orissa. His dissections of these

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ills were later published under the title, Chhinna Patra andwere translated into English as Glimpses of Bengal.Naturally, his writings from here on were to carry a muchmore rigorous "impress of maturity" notwithstandingtentalisingly creative outpourings like the beautiful dramaChitrangada, which he composed in 1891. This dominantmood was also exhibited upfront in his actions on theground and pretty much dismissed the over-bearingpublic perception of him as only a romantic litterateur.

Being true to the people he loved so much,Rabindranath began experimenting with communitydevelopment in right urnest. And then there was nolooking back. He was acutely aware of the erraticnature of Indian seasons, and particularly, that of themonsoon. He was also aware of the unpredictablenature of Indian agriculture and arising out of it, theswings in the hopes and despair of the Indian peasantcommunity. He was certainly not unaware of the basicexploitative nature of the colonial administration. Heknew that for the drudgeries of life to be lifted, age-olddependence on nature couldn't be converted into anotherkind of deprecating dependence � that is to look up to theState for succour. So the fundamental premise on whichhe based his community development programme cameto be "self-help and enlightenment."

While the first had to do with the economicreinvigoration of the life of an ordinary peasant, the secondassumed far greater significance in his scheme of things. Itoccupied "his lifelong passionate interest," an interest thatled him to "working out his educational experiments inShantiniketan." In the words of his biographer, Kripalini:"He strove to build up, through social participation andservice, a living communication between the students ofhis school, the budding intelligentsia who might becomethe active leaders of tomorrow, and the peasants rooted inthe soil, the solid core of Indian economy and society. Solong as the core remained unchanged India would remainstatic, whatever the seeming progress among theintelligentsia in a few big cities like Calcutta or Bombay."

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Thus for half a century, from the day his fatherentrusted him the duty of looking after their family estatestill he breathed his last, Rabindranath remainedpreoccupied with these twin tasks of uplifting rural lifethrough the agency of Sri Niketan and bringingenlightenment to his people through the agency of creativeeducation at Shantiniketan. Both these institutions weredeservingly invested with not only what he received asNobel Prize for his effervescent work Gitanjali in 1913, butalso his unrestrained personal service and care as long ashe lived.

It was not as if his passionate engagement with the lifeof Indian peasantry was all a mirage and there was nothingfor the latter to offer him in return. On the contrary, in hisengagement with them he found a form of literaryexpression that was as yet unavailable in the country. Andit was the short story. As his biographer writes, "thoughthe short story is now very popular with Indian writers, noone can be said to have equalled him in his art, much lesssurpassed him." In all fairness, from The Post Master toThe Kabuliwallah, his stories portrayed so many oft-ignored though very fascinating characters from differentplanes of life that one wonders if these were real characters.Besides, in the dross of peasant life also Rabindranathfound ample material to immortalise them in canvas.

However, for him the "joy of writing one poem farexceed(ed) that of writing sheaves and sheaves of prose."No wonder, the weight of experience in between brought acertain mystical sensibility to suffuse his poetry of this time.Sonar Tari (The Golden Boat), Chaitali (The Late Harvest)and Nadi (River) bear testimony to it.

These were also the days of surging nationalism. Butevery patriotic rumbling in India used to be mercilesslycrushed by the ever-so-suspicious foreign regime. In 1898a Bill against Sedition was brought in the Council to gagthe rising chorus of nationalism. But forever a championof personal freedom and political liberty, Rabindranathcould not have reconciled to the idea of this Bill becoming

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an Act. Therefore, with a deep sense of outrage, he calledfor its immediate withdrawal in a public lecture entitled,Kantharodh (The Throttle) at Calcutta. Besides, he alsohelped raising funds for the defence of Lokmanya Tilak ina case that accused him of sedition. Then his naturalinstinct for the humanitarian cause too led him to assistSister Nivedita in organising relief for the plague affectedpeople of Calcutta.

However, these were smaller renderings at the serviceof his motherland in comparison to what he did duringthis period of crisis in terms of his contribution to the causeof national resurgence through his Kathas (Ballads) andKahanis (Tales). In the years to come this engagement withthe cause of national freedom was only to grow, be it onthe issue of the Partition of Bengal in 1905 or the tragicmassacre of innocent men, women and children atJalianwalabagh in 1919 or for that matter during the Non-cooperation and Civil Disobedience Movements of the1920s and the 1930s. But what he essentially championedwas not of a variety that can be confused with any self-serving or jingoistic sentiment, as he was a living witnessto all those horrendous sins that had been perpetrated bynation states across the world in the name of self-love. Hissense of India, to quote a few lines from a hymn he sangthrough his principal protagonist in Gora, was of a moreinclusive, exulted kind.

It read:�Awake my mind, gently awakeIn this holy land of pilgrimageOn the shore of this vast sea of humanitythat is India.Here I stand with arms outstretchedto hail man � divine in his own image �and sing to his glory in notes glad and free.No one knows whence and at whose callcame pouring endless inundations of menrushing madly along � to lose themselves inthe sea:

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Aryans and non-Aryans, Dravidians and Chinese,Scythians, Huns, Pathans and Moghuls �all are mixed, merged and lost in one body.Now the door has opened to the Westand gifts in hand they beacon and they come �they will give and take, meet and bring together,none shall be turned awayfrom the shore of this vast sea of humanitythat is India.�

THE MIND THAT MATTERS

As a child Rabindranath's natural curiosity to know theworld in which he lived had suffered immeasurably at thehands of those who tried to educate him. In a householdthat was humming with all kinds of activities, it was butnatural for the fourteenth child of a generously expandingjoint family to be relegated to the sidelines of its attention.He had thus been left almost to the care of what he latertermed as "servocracy." The one who was appointed to feedhim would be happy if he ate less and the other in chargeof keeping him engaged would in the first opportunitymake good while leaving him alone in a room. It was notthat he grudged the lack of family attention. For him itwas indeed a blessing in disguise. He could then revel atthe marvels of the nature's ways "through the venetianshutters of the window he would gaze below" and playwith his own imaginations. The only problems he had toput up with were however the tyrannical elementarylessons, which the tutor at home was ever so eager to imparthim. Going to school like other children from the familythus appeared to him as a possible option that could bringoutings from home. But the first school, Oriental Seminary,where he went to as a toddler, left him with only bittermemories of physical disciplining and how not to study.All that he would remember of this early experience laterwas about �how much easier it is to acquire the mannerthan the matter�.

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The second school, which he went to, likewise turnedout to be abysmally abnormal in its treatment of children,though ironically it was named Normal School. Whereasthe first school excelled in various "ingenious methods ofpunishment", this one specialised in a routine that hadlittle to cheer about. There was no respite even at homefrom megalomaniac tutors. They came one after anotherlike scheming characters in a play as it were to change hisworld of consciousness. The only joyous experiencethrough all these miseries was his initiation into the actualworld of learning by his elder brother Hemendranath, whoinsisted on grooming the children's inherent potentialthrough their mother tongue. The net result of it all wasnot only that he realised how fruitful this approach was asa child, but also that how worthwhile it was socially andculturally after he had advanced well into his life and hadbegun experimenting with children's education atShantiniketan. As he wrote later in his remarkably candidstyle: "Learning should as far as possible follow the processof eating. When the taste begins from the first bite, thestomach is awakened to its function before it is loaded, sothat its digestive juices get full play. Nothing like thishappens, however, when the Bengali boy is taught inEnglish � While one is choking and spluttering over thespelling and grammar, the inside remains starved, andwhen at length the taste is felt, the appetite has vanished."

Then there came the most exciting experience of hischildhood while accompanying his father to the highHimalayas, particularly those first few days, which theyspent at Shantiniketan on their way. Left largely to his own,there grew in him the natural instinct to compose versesand join the Maharshi in reading "select pieces fromSanskrit, Bengali and English literatures" during the dayand reciting hymns in the evening. Such was the keennessin adhering to this routine even at Dalhousie that uponhis return he could sing extempore the whole of the ValmikiRamayana in Sanskrit at the request of his mother at her"open-air gatherings on the roof-terrace in the evening."

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The long term effect of it was such that despite the insistenceof the elders at home to tie him down to the school regimen,he dropped out of it altogether. In the words of hisbiographer: "The tutors soon found to their cost that whileit was easy to take the horse to the water's edge, it was noteasy to make it drink."

Rabindranath's childhood experiences in the companyof his father had a very soothing and lasting impact on hismind. It had welled up in him the visions of young discipleschanting Vedic hymns in the presence of inspired rishis inthose ancient hermitages, which nestled quietly in the midstof nature. With five children and in the prime of his lifenow, he thus resolved to realise that vision in his father'sretreat at Shantiniketan. In this attempt, to use hisbiographer's words again, he sought to "replace the soullessand mechanical system of education which the Britishrulers had imported from their Victorian slums by a newand creative one in which both teaching and learning wouldbe pleasurable."

Very receptive to the creative impulses from hischildhood, he was quite eager from the very beginning toencourage his pupils in the school to develop naturalabilities in an ambience of tender felicity and learn by doingthings themselves rather than relying on teachers, who inturn must not indulge in hurling lessons at them fromhigh platforms "like hailstorms on flowers."

Rabindranath always knew nature to be the bestteacher. Therefore, moving away from the contemporarypractice of erecting walls both metaphorically as well aspractically around children, he earnestly began the practiceof holding classes in the open with trees to provide theshade and the distant horizon to provide the ingredientsof learning for children. In an environment so surchargedwith the raw elements of nature, education could take placeboth in arts and sciences naturally.

Education for Rabindranath had to be rooted in thesoil where it germinates and hence a symbiotic relationshiphad to be nurtured between what is being learnt in the

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school and what is there to be learnt from outside it. Ruingthe fact that contemporary educational institutions in thecountry in their keenness to imitate the West had beenencouraging a culture of "foolish display" of borrowedetiquettes and knowledge, he passionately emphasised onthe utility of extension activities and community service.This for him formed the basis of all education � a creativecontinuum between life and learning. And therefore hisclarion call to the people was to prepare for a system ofeducation that "should be in full touch with our completelife, economical, intellectual, aesthetic, social and spiritual,"and in which institutions should be located "in the veryheart of society, connected with it by the living bonds ofvaried cooperations." He did not have the slightest doubtthat "the best and the noblest gifts of humanity cannot bethe monopoly of a particular race or country." Therefore,he would urge everyone to "give up for ever the habit ofswearing by Europe," and find out "what ideal has longbeen admired and cherished by our countrymen and whatmeans should be adopted to inspire the heart of ourpeople."

REFERENCES

• Biswas and J.G. Aggarwal, Seven IndianEducationists, New Delhi: Arya Book Depot, 1968.

• Haridas and Uma Mukherjee, The Origins of theNational Education Movement (1905-1910), Calcutta:Jadavpur University, 1957.

• Himanshu Bhusan Mukherjee, Education for Fullness:A Study of the educational Thought and Experimentof Rabindranath Tagore, Calcutta: Asia PublishingHouse, 1962.

• Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, RabindranathTagore � The Myriad-Minded Man, New Delhi: Rupaand Co, (3rd Imp.) 2006.

• Krishna Kripalini, Tagore � A Life, New Delhi: NationalBook Trust (3rd edn.) 1986.

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• Martha Nussbaum, �Liberal education and globalcommunity� in Liberal Education, winter 2004.

• Narmadeshwar Jha, �Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)� in The Quarterly Review of Education,vol. XXIV 3/4, 1994, Paris (UNESCO: InternationalBureau of Education).

• Poromesh Acharya, �Educational ideals of Tagore andGandhi � A comparative study� in The Economic andPolitical Weekly, March 22, 1997.

• Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Essays, New Delhi:Rupa and Co, (3rd Imp.) 2007.

SECTION 2

RABINDRANATH TAGORE MEMORIAL

LECTURE

EDUCATION AS EMPOWERMENT : TWINS INSEARCH OF AN ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION

SWAPAN MAJUMDAR

ABSTRACT

Of the multi-faceted activities of Rabindranath Tagore,education had been the corner-stone. He was not only avisionary and philosopher of education, he was at the sametime an ardent activist for the cause of education. Hestands unique also as a writer on education which extendsfrom creative to critical constructive writings on the subject.On the other hand, he even sacrificed personal familyproperty to give his ideas a tangible form.

Tagore�s first effort in setting up a family school startedat Sialadh in 1898. In the same year, in keeping with thestipulation of the Trust Deed willed by his fatherDevendranath Tagore. Tagore�s nephew Balendranathstarted a Brahmacharyasrama in Santiniketan. It was avery short-lived enterprise. In 1901, Tagore moved toSantiniketan and revived the school which passing througha process of reforms was made into an eastern university,Visva-Bharati, in 1921. In 1924, he added a new school,Siksha-Satra for the depraved section at Sriniketan, amongthe cluster of faculties.

Tagore was constantly engaged in experimenting andimproving the pedagogic quality and system practised inhis institution. His other worry was to collect adequatefinance to sustain it. Many fellow travellers throughoutthe world came forward to help him in different ways. Itwas truly an essay negotiating with western modernismon the one hand, and colonial education system, on theother.

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For Tagore, education did not consist in achievementsalone. His ideal was to help create a complete man bymaking open choices and opportunities before the studentsand thereby letting them develop their latent talents.Generation of Atmasakti or self-reliance for him was notconditioned by anti-colonial excitement, it was the resultof all out self-disciplining in life.

Through Visva-Bharati Tagore was also trying tonegotiate the East-West relations seen from the vantage ofthe East. That too was aimed at a reconciliation of the bestfeatures of the two cultures. In the process Tagore hadalso been trying to create alternative spaces for cultures ofcreativity � the ultimate ideal of education for Tagore.

The second half of the paper deals with the theme ofempowerment as approached by two great minds of ourtimes � Tagore and Gandhi. Their approach routes maybe apparently different, they might also have differencesin opinions and positions, yet the innermost truth theyhad been seeking in their educational enterprisesunderlines the amity of visions.

EDUCATION AS EMPOWERMENT :TWINS IN SEARCH OF AN ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION

We all know, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) wasessentially a poet. We usually think, poets are driven moreby emotion rather than by reason and consequently areweak in essaying discourses. Tagore was an exception onall counts to this common belief. His writings on education:its pedagogic philosophy and applied apparatus inparticular have been providing food for thought no lessfor the present day education scientists. For example, nopoet of Tagore�s eminence from Aeschylus to Eliot has evercared to compile primers for the tiny taughts � and thattoo in three languages, namely, Bengali, English andSanskrit as Tagore did. It proves beyond doubt his anxietiesand concerns for the cause of education. It may seem ironicthat the fled-school student had set up a school itself thatorganically grew into an international university. Yet it also

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explains the compulsions he realised for changing � or atleast make an effort to do so � the then prevalent colonialeducation system in our country.

The long line of illustrious thinkers on education thatincludes Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori,Grundtvig and Dewey in the West and Vidyasagar in hisown country tried in their own inimitable ways to modifythe system, but none like Tagore endeavoured to questionthe basic premises that lie at the back of the system itself.He wrote number of articles on education almost spanninghis whole creative life besides publishing several books,addresses, monographs, pamphlets and very many letterscontaining gems of thoughts on the subject. Even heventured to write a scathing sarcastic story on the themeof tyranny of forced education, a classic of its kind, �TheParrot�s Tale�. And above all, by the time he barely crossedtwo scores of his life, he was busy setting up a residentialschool at then a remote suburb away from Calcutta. Forthe sake of nurturing a faith, he spared not selling his wife�sornaments and attending to all sorts of teething problemsof the new found institution.

The Poet�s father, Devendranath Tagore stipulated inthe Trust Deed of the Santiniketan Asrama to set up aschool on the traditional lines of Gurukul Parampara.Accordingly, Balendranath, Tagore�s nephew, brought intoexistence the Brahmachary asrama, the precursor ofPatha-Bhavana, the school modelled after the Tapovanastyle of education of ancient India. After a brief life, it wasreborn as it were in 1901 under Tagore�s supervision. Therevival of the ideals of the Brahminic past was soon to befound too restrictive for his own ideas. The rechristenedBrahma Vidyalaya also could not satisfy him until hearrived at a non-connotative name, that is, the SantiniketanSchool. In between, the primary and the secondary sectionswere also called the Purva-Vibhaga and the Uttara-Vibhagas respectively. When other Bhavanas came upwithin the fold of Vishva-Bharati (1921), it was given afaculty status and was renamed as Patha-Bhavana.

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Vishva-Bharati which Tagore himself dubbed as an�Eastern University�, chose �Yatra visvam bhavatyekanidam� (�Where the world meets in one nest�) as theinstitution�s motto. Twenty-three years� experience inschool education made him realise the urgent need forpragmatic education and its dissemination among therural masses and led Tagore once again to venture inestablishing a new school, with a new vision altogether,one for the destitute and the weaker sections of the society,Siksha-Satra in 1924.

Tagore�s initiation in educational institution buildinghad begun in 1898 at Sialdah. It was not indeed a schoolin the formal sense but a coaching home organised for thetuition of his son and a few more from among the poorsubjects� children of the estate. The mission continued tillhis death. In spite of some common and constant featuresrunning through the phases, the venue shifted along withthe group of teachers to Santiniketan in 1901. Thoughthere had been no temporal discontinuity, a close observermay not fail to notice the inherent changes it had passedthrough under the leadership of BrahmabandhabUpadhyaya to Manoranjan Bandyopadhyaya, down toRamananda Chattopadhyaya. The name of the school alsochanged from Brahmacaryasrama or Brahmavidyalayato Purva-Vibhaga and Uttara-Vibhaga and thereto Patha-Bhavana, suggesting significant shifts in ideology as well:the quasi-religious overtones being removed gradually.

Tagore was simultaneously praised and derided forthe absence of a well-defined structural system in hisinstitution. It was in fact a cantilever pattern of educationcomprising the School i.e., the Sisu-Vibhaga and the thenVidya-Bhavana or the Research Division. Now if werecollect the very lay out of the school compound duringTagore�s lifetime, we would find the research library locatedat the very centre with two sprawling playgrounds adjacentto it. Classes were held all around in the open air. Theseats of teachers were fixed and students were given fiveminutes time to move from one class to another, thus

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having an opportunity to break the monotony ofcontinuous classes as well as to refresh their spirit. Theidea was that the little boys would observe the seniorscholars spending the whole day at the library, which willbe an implicit instance to emulate for them. Nor wouldthe scholars feel distracted by the fun and frolics of theboys; their juvenile enthusiasm would help them relatetheir study to life and reality � an existing reality Tagorewould never lose sight of, particularly in the rural Bengalsuburb. He knew full well the uneven standard of thestudents. As a possible remedy he improvised a system ofmobility among them depending on their merit in a givensubject. One who was advanced than the rest was allowedto attend the higher class; another who was just the reversewas asked to take lessons in the lower class and make upthe deficiency. Apart from the regular curricular study, itwas obligatory for every student to take lessons in finearts � be that music or painting or craft. The range ofoptions in elective subjects had no compartmentalisation:arts and science subjects could be opted forsimultaneously. It was designed to bring out the latentpotentiality of a student as also to let him find for himselfthe area of his interest. It resulted not only in a reductionin number of total drop-outs on the one hand, on the otherit also served as a process of talent search. The mostimportant feature, however, was his decision to do awaywith the practice of examinations that bred according tohim an undesirable tension arising out of a break neckcompetition.

The basic philosophy underlying the removal of examswas to create a space for the students which would be freefrom torture of a suffocating process of accumulation andreproduction. Study for the students, he thought, mustbe as much an enjoyment as the games are for them. Asand when they would learn how to derive pleasure fromstudies or practices of any other arts up to their taste, theirlearning would turn creative. For Tagore, creativity didnot mean earning an authority in any field of expression.

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It was essentially an awakening of the mind � an awakeningnot merely of the hunger for knowledge, but of an awarenessof belonging to a social setting � micro and macro at thesame time. Even in a text like Santiniketan, which manyeducated readers think to be a compilation of religioussermons, we come across an article entitled Jagaran(Awakening). This awareness of mind can neither beattained nor created by gathering or disseminatinginformation. It can grow only through human contacts.The realisation of the ideal of education rests on this spiritof togetherness, another recurrent theme in the cosmologyof Tagorean thought.

If we analyse the motivations that may have driven anartist in life to become an activist in education, we shallfind that something more profound than merephilanthropy, a vision or a philosophy must have beenworking deep in him. That the classes were � or even arestill � held at these schools in the open air in a mangoorchard or a Bakula grove in the natural ambience are,but their external features though learning in the nearestproximity of Nature must have had something far moredeeply interfused in such a notion which may seemanachronistic to many today. That it is not so, may beexemplified if we try to re-live the ideas and ideals of itsfounder closely.

In his celebrated essay A Poet�s School, Tagore tellsus: �The highest education is that which does not merelygive us information but makes our life in harmony with allexistence.� The pronouncement needs elaboration.�Information� is most certainly a part of education. But itremains to be collected rather than to be created. Collectionis not a faculty of the mind or intellection; it is a matter ofhabit, of cramming, of collation, of putting things together.The so-called good students excel in the exams becausethey have a knack for gathering information and of coursedisplaying it coherently. This tendency leads toshowmanship and competitiveness. And competitivenesswhen turns out to be intense and aggressive, takes

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recourse to make everything subservient to itself, ceasingit�s bond with all extant living organisms around oneself.The fundamental object of education then, according toTagore, would be to substitute competition bycollaboration between Man and Man, Man and Nature,between Man and every other object, animate or inanimate.This generates Love which lies at the root of all creativity.Education for Tagore hones this culture of creativity.

Such realisation often tends to be abstract. Tagorewould also have run the risk of being too elusive and non-ethereal had he not tried to translate his ideas in concreteterms and to give these a form and shape through thediscipline and process of practical training. He was explicitin incorporating these aims and objects while formulatingthe Memorandum for Vishva-Bharati:

To study the Mind of Man in its realisation of differentaspects of truth from diverse points of view. To bringinto more intimate relation with one another, throughpatient study and research, the different cultures of theEast on the basis of their underlying unity. To seek torealise in common fellowship of study the meeting ofthe East and the West, and thus ultimately to strengthenthe fundamental conditions of world peace.

The idea and institution of Vishva-Bharati, what Tagoreconsidered the greatest achievement of his life, was virtuallya culmination of that ideal imprinted on his mind at anearly age. He obtained a first-hand experience of westernculture since the late 70s of the 19th century and studiedthe western society not as an outsider tourist would do,but as an insider to whom both the naïveté and thecomplexities, merits and demerits of it were far moreexposed. He was certainly averse to the modish modernismof western poetry of the early 20th century, but thequintessence of modernity never disenchanted him. Andfor Tagore modernity did not consist in the deployment ofa mere device or style, a technology of language and form,on the contrary it guaranteed a freedom of choice indetermining one�s course of action or shaping a view of

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life. Political freedom was not unimportant to him, butfreedom of mind was of much greater import. Assertion ofone�s individual identity was a matter of value for him, butof greater consequence was how that individuality was tobe related to the society at large. The most seminal premiseof this idea was contained in his concept of Atmasaktiformulated as early as 1901. I consider this concept asthe driving force of all that Tagore did in his efforts totranslate such ideas into practice.

The other point that deserves to be remembered is that,it will be nothing short of foolishness on our part to believethat Tagore�s thoughts were like a monolith ever since heengaged himself in the process of opinion formation. Quitelate in life � in a different context though � he franklyadmitted, �I have changed my opinion; I have beenchanging them constantly.� This, I don�t think had been aVoltairesque ploy for Tagore to find an excuse to escape.In fact, in him was a restless mind that yearned for ceaselessmove towards perfection. He never took his views asimpeccable, nor did he think himself free from errors oreven misjudgements. And that is why he kept on correcting,honing and developing them again and again. I would evenventure to say that the ideal too was not immutable forhim; an effort to reformulate them from time to time hadcaused many misgivings among his associates, yet he nevergave up. His entire life is an explicit example of such proteanchanges on both the planes.

Tagore�s experiments in education may perhaps be bestanalysed in respect of his other constructive and creativeactivities � not counting the literary for the time being �namely in experiments with rural reconstruction, creatingenvironmental awareness or innovative festivities � someapparently diverse and disjointed projects � projects, ofcourse, not in the management sense of the term � underthe megalith of education. And all these were experimentedin the hothouses of Santiniketan and Sriniketan. Tagore�ssearch for alternative models of cultures of creativityobviously began with his literary and musical

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compositions. To begin with, it was primarily a matter ofestablishing one�s distinctive features of identity clearlydistinguishable from his predecessors and contemporaries.Gradually, it turned out to be his sole self: spontaneousand uncontrived.

The idea of institution-building was but an extensionof the same urge. The urge, again, was compounded bythe necessities arising out of the compulsions of the colonialsituation. Tagore�s early association with the Congressended rather prematurely with the exposure to theModerate and the Extremist divisions within the party.Curzon�s partition of Bengal got him intensely involved inthe anti-partition movement only to be disillusioned bythe militancy of bomb, burning and boycott in theaftermath. These also made him feel the exigency withgreater gravity to build up an alternative model ofeducation distinct from that of the colonizers almost as ameans to qualify to stand in equal terms with them. Ofcourse Tagore had started his Santiniketan experimentbefore all these events, but I believe, the impact of theseexperiences completely changed his approach toeducation. The gradual shift from a mode of educationmodelled after the Upanishadic Brahmoism to a secular,self-reliant and at the same time artistic and comprehensiveeducation was conditioned simultaneously by the forcesof this nation-wide crisis and his very personal shatteringexperiences of a series of bereavements that stood him asa solitary man left to justify his ways and means only tohimself.

For Tagore, the ostensible alternative to the westerneducation was not to jump for indigenous education as amatter of reaction. He was certainly not a nationalist ofthat breed. All he wanted was to pay back the masters intheir own coins. But he would hasten to insist that it mustreach the masses and find the roots in our own soil. In�Saphalatar Sadupay� [Atmasakti; Bangadarsan, Caitra1311BS (March-April 1905)] his call was simple thoughcovered with a somewhat sentimental metaphor:

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Hopeless laments won�t do. We shall have to strive forwhat we ourselves can do. � Necessity impels us to takeupon ourselves the responsibilities of our education. Iknow well that it will not be a stone replica of the hugeOxbridge model to be enshrined in our educationalestablishments; their infrastructure will be befitting thatof the poor. � But the living Goddess Sarasvati seated onthe hundred-petal lotus of our reverence, would dispenselike a Mother the nectar to the children unlike the wealth-proud merchant-wife giving away alms to the beggars fromthe high balcony.

It would inevitably be an alternative education for thepoor yet without any trace of poverty in thought. Suchalternative education would obviously desist from creatinga class of subalterns in the colonizers� employmenthierarchy, but would do all it could to generate anambience of righteousness which would ensure thestructuring of a civil society and that again as an alternativeto the nation/state build up after the western pattern andsuperimposed on us.

Tagore was not satisfied with creating alternative spacestheoretically, he immediately wanted to have theseimplemented in practice. It was out of this anxiety thatTagore after running the school at Santiniketan for morethan two decades decided to set up another school atSriniketan at a distance of only three kilometers. Couldthe distance be the only reason for such a move? Perhapsnot. He knew from experience that the middle or uppermiddle class boarder students of Santiniketan almostrefused to mix up with the day scholars from Sriniketan,Surul and the adjoining villages. This was symptomatic oftemperamental differences between the city and the village,affluence and poverty. Tagore wanted his second schoolto cater to the needs of the surrounding villages. They weretrained in vocational arts: from carpentry to weaving,husbandry to harvesting. The community now comprisedof students drawn virtually from the same class � botheconomically and socially. They were asked to extend

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camp services to the villages on school holidays, instructthe villagers in the rudiments of health and hygiene andthe like. The Sriniketan experiment so impressed even thesenior members of the community that Tagore introducedwithout late an adult education programme where theschool students served as prime reciters or SardarPaduyas. The success was greeted with the enthusiasm ofthe rural people. It also helped them initially to earn a fewrupees during the harvesting and later on by selling theirartifacts at the Silpa Mela also introduced by Tagore andexclusively organised by the Sriniketan students. Itdeveloped an organisational skill among them as well.Sriniketan realised what Tagore envisaged as completeeducation. But the apathy of the Vishva-Bharati authoritiesrelegated the set up to the second fiddle soon after Tagore�sdeath.

A cry has been raised in our country: We shall havenothing to do with Western Science � it is Satanic. Thiswe, of Sriniketan, must refuse to say. Because its poweris killing us, we shall not say that we preferpowerlessness. We must know that power in order tocombat power, power is needed; without destructioncannot be staved off, but will come all the faster. Truthkills us only when we refuse to accept it.

Tagore might not have accepted the superficialities ofmodernity, but would have never denied the truth ofmodernity.

As late in his life as in 1925, Tagore was almostobsessed with the idea of Mass Education. Men and womenof the country who were depraved of basic education intheir childhood either for economic reasons or for belongingto remote areas were planned to be brought under aneducation scheme under the aegis of the New EducationFellowship. As early as in 1917, Tagore contemplated ofbringing out a series of books on basic areas of knowledgewith a target readership of non-Matriculates of those days.The idea of educational extension programme also inspiredhim to set up the Lokasiksha Samsad which was designedto expand the network of literacy and basic education in

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the country. The Samsad in this way simultaneouslybecame a council for adult education, mass education aswell as distance education through correspondence. Inorder to make the project complete in all respects, he alsoinitiated a series of books called Lokasiksha Granthamalaand himself contributed the first book on physical sciencesto it. The basic intention of the scheme was to reach out towould be students in their own home environment ratherthan forcing them to reach the school. Introduction of examand study centres throughout the country was also one ofthe innovative aspects of the system conducted by Vishva-Bharati.

For Tagore, education was most certainly a means ofempowerment and yet much more. His vision of a completeman was not a philosophical idea. For him, completenessconsists in one�s readiness to face any situation with equalpoise and weather it. The modern man in the western sensemight have some faculties more developed than the others,thus causing an imbalance that could seriously upset himand his actions. Modernity is circumscribed in terms oftemporal frames. Tagore�s alternatives are not chained intime and space. In spite of a more logically plausibleformulation of a principle of education conducive to thegrowth of a mind that would make a man complete, manyof Tagore�s experiments in alterity have failed � or betterbe said, we have made him fail � the full potentials of hisideas still remain to be fully explored.

Tagore, like his other illustrious fellow traveller Gandhi,may have failed apparently � or better to say, as we havespared no pains to make them fail � the potentials of theirexperiments are still not exhausted. The unfinished resultsare no testimony to the fallibility of their visions.

IIBoth are called Asramas. As originally conceived, one wasplanned to be a meeting place of religious believers ofdifferent orders, the other to be a centre of social serviceamong the untouchables living around the place. Today

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they represent the rudiments of basic education asenvisioned by two almost contemporary personalities livingin the same country. In one, the library holds the centrestage, in the other, it is the prayer square. The playgroundis laid out adjacent to the library in one, in the other it isbeyond the cluster of huts composing the establishment.Apparently both look like traditional Asramas, butcertainly are not rehashes of the heritage Vidyapiths. Boththe institutions include a combination of the Kala-Bhavanaand the Sangit-Bhavana. I am talking about Tagore�sSantiniketan and Gandhi�s Sevagram.

Tagore�s Santiniketan school was started in 1901,Gandhi�s Sevagram in 1937. But their preparations startedearlier� Tagore�s at Sialdah and Gandhi�s in South Africa.It must be accepted without much hair-splitting that thetwo savants� primary reputation did not rest on theirphilosophies of education, nor did they ever strive forformulating a regular philosophy either. It grew from theirhands on enterprises in devising a workable model forthemselves. Yet if both the poet and the activist shared onecommon anxiety, it was most certainly for education. Livingas they did in a colonial situation, the alterity of theirideologies are often attributed to their anti-colonialist,hence anti-British, attitude. It is commonly believed thatthese tenets are etched out to experiment on possiblealternatives to the model provided by western educationsystem. I believe, both were in search of a new dispensationin education � not buckled by the state aid, neither westernin toto, nor oriental in and out. It aimed at a happy andsimultaneously judicious combination of the two. The mostinteresting points, however, were the proportion betweenthe western and oriental elements in their thoughts andactions on the one hand and the third factor of their originalcontribution on the other. But such bare simplificationsblur the complexities as well as the originality of theirpositions.

Let us accept at the outset that both Tagore and Gandhiwere exposed to the best possible western education

35

available at their times. Because of his family background,Tagore perhaps had a deeper involvement with the heritageof our culture than Gandhi�s. At the same time, we mustnot lose sight of the fact that Gandhi perhaps had a greaterunderstanding of the ground realities prevailing in thecountry at that point of time. No poet of Tagore�s eminencefrom Aeschylus to Eliot ever cared to compile primers forthe tiny taughts � and that too in three languages, namely,Bengali, English and Sanskrit; Tagore did. No activist ofGandhi�s standing from Plato to Russell would ever careto set up basic primary schools as Gandhi did. The schoolsystem in the scheme of both the thinkers, again, waserected on a theistic foundation. Both had in their ownindividualistic ways drawn up schemes for extension ofit�s field of operation among the rural and down-troddenpeople as well.

Education � the highest and the noblest form of it � didnot consist in the scale of preferences of Tagore and Gandhiin acquisition of information alone; according to them, itwould succeed only if it could make our life harmonisewith all possible situations of life, with multiforms ofmeaningful living. Most certainly would they admitinformation as an essential part of education, but wouldhasten to add that it is more a faculty of collection ratherthan of creation. Any act of gathering � be that material orabstract � does not enrich the power of the mind, it is morea matter of habit. It brings about a proclivity towardscompetitiveness, putting up a resistance, as it were, againstthe fundamental object of education, that is, cooperationbetween man and man, man and nature, between manand every other phenomenal object, animate or inanimate.Such a realisation often tends to be abstract and elusive.Almost parallely, they had involved the students in whatwe call today social welfare schemes. The concept of PalliPunargathana or Rural Reconstruction in Tagore andGramodyoga in Gandhi were based by and large on similarsocial values. But the volunteer corps or Vrati Balakas inthe former system were also required to document the basic

36

statistics on the living conditions of the people in theadjoining villages they covered. Tagore and Gandhi didnot stop short at theoretical formulations; they did theirbest in translating their ideas into practice � refining theirpositions time and again, but never completely driftingaway from the quintessence of their respective visions ofideal education.

Knowledge, says the proverb, is power. Education � aTagore or a Gandhi would argue � does of courseultimately lead to knowledge and hence to power. But theattainment of the ultimate is not obtainable for all. Thereare at least three stages to reach this state: Patha (Learning),Siksha (Education) and finally Vidya (Knowledge). Bodhi(Wisdom) or Jnana (Enlightenment) is beyond yetdependent on these previous stages. Tagore and Gandhiwould rather think of empowerment through educationin two different ways. For Tagore, true empowerment liesin the awakening of the self, aware enough to decide foroneself the oughts of life: the duty, the desirability and thegood. We shall have to accept that Tagore does not seem tobe concerned with the basic problems of opportunity toeducation. A confirmed pragmatist as he was, for Gandhicreating a truly congenial ambience of and an open avenueto education was the foremost of the problems to negotiatewith.

Historical evidences force us to admit that Tagore�s andGandhi�s intended students come from two differentcultural and economic strata altogether. This also partlyexplains the debate between them regarding the need andjustification for introducing possibilities to earn during thestudents� years of learning. Gandhi�s Nai Taaliim createda space for earning by simple investment of one�s labourand thus decide for one�s possible future means oflivelihood. He knew full well that academic merit couldnot be expected among the majority of the students. As aresult of his experiences at Santiniketan, Tagore alsoperhaps realised the necessity of imparting honest labourbut not linked with direct personal earning. Interestingly

37

enough, Seva or cashless service to the less fortunatepeople around occupies perhaps more an important placein Tagore�s second school, Siksha Satra at Sriniketan thanin his first, Patha-Bhavana at Santiniketan, and inGandhi�s second school at Sevagram than in his first atSabarmati.

Tagore and Gandhi believed in disciplining the mind.But the concept of discipline had different connotationsfor them. In Tagore�s Patha-Bhavana and Siksha Satraand Gandhi�s Sabarmati and Sevagram, the entireresponsibility of self-governance was delegated to thestudents. They were to devise means to deal with anysituation that would come their way � be that misbehaviourof a fellow student or the maintenance of health andhygiene in the Asrama and its vicinity. Teachers werearound watching the team work, but would hardlyinterfere ever. Yet, if asked to underline the differencebetween Tagore�s and Gandhi�s conditions of nursing thebudding minds of the students, I would dare say, it wasthe emphasis on the values of Beauty and Duty,respectively, in their order of priorities. I would never sayso in absolute terms but relatively. In other words,aesthetics and ethics divided their domains. But are thetwo really so opposed to each other? Ethics when properlypracticed in life developes on aesthetics of its own, similarlyas aesthetics when freed from individualistic confines,produces almost an ethical value. When Tagore wanted tohave his students trained in such a way that one couldappreciate the play of colours and notes of music anddistinguish between one medium or scale and another,the aesthetics of appreciation would structure anautonomous hierarchy of its preferences and values which,in turn, would be no less ethical. Gandhi would advise hisdisciples to turn their back to every evil of life, to abstainfrom saying, seeing or hearing anything ill. If honestlypursued, it would produce an equilibrium of aestheticenjoyment of comparable distributions of emotions.Gandhi, on the other hand, would endeavour to elevate

38

human beings from their baser instincts. Tagore, on theother hand, was firm in his belief that the number of thegood always exceeds that of the bad. These not onlyindicate differences in their visions of life, but also reflecttheir very own individual personality types thatcomplement one another mutually and vindicate twoprocesses of edification of the mind.

Empowerment, according to Tagore and Gandhi, thenwould follow two different tracks: one through humaneand aesthetic empathy and the other through economicand moral rearmament. For Tagore, the end of educationconsists of a wholesome blossoming of the faculties of themind and the body through learning, work and service, inobtaining what he terms as Atmasakti, in achieving �arhythm of life�. It is evident that such an optimum studentwill participate in the greater arena of social life, both as arole model as well as through one�s services to the cause ofthe society. In other words, Tagore emphasises on the inneror the mental empowerment of the student. Not that inGandhi�s scheme of things the mental aspects are relegated,but for him the social responsibility of the student, one�sreadiness to sacrifice self-interest for the sake of it alongwith the achieving economic self-sustenance perhaps areof greater consequence.

Students� activities in their schools includedindeterminable creative energy, quantifiable productivepursuits as well as social service and self-governanceprogrammes. Learning and work, they would argue, mustgo hand in hand and necessarily be related to theprevailing social system. It is often glibly remarked aboutTagore that a poet as he had been, he lacked pragmaticattitude to various systems of life, education in particular.In repudiation of such a position, I take the liberty to quotea letter of Tagore in extenso written to his friend C.F.Andrews from Agra as early as 05 December 1914:

I was surprised to read in the Modern Review that ourBolpur boys are going without their sugar and ghee inorder to open a relief fund. Do you think this is right?In the first place, it is an imitation of your English

39

school-boys and not their original idea. In the secondplace, so long as the boys live in our institution theyare not free to give up any portion of their diet which isabsolutely necessary for their health. For any Englishboy, who takes meat and an amount of fat with it, givingup sugar is not injurious. But for our boys inSantiniketan, who can get milk only in small quantities,and whose vegetable meals contain very little fatingredients, it is mischievous.Our boys have no right to choose this form of sacrifice �just as they are not free to give up buying books fortheir studies. The best form of sacrifice for them wouldbe to do some hard work in order to earn money; letthem take up menial work in our school � wash dishes,draw water, dig wells, fill up the tank which is a menaceto their health, to the building work. This would begood in both ways. What is more, it would be a realtest of their sincerity. Let the boys think out forthemselves what particular works they are willing totake up without trying to imitate others.A number points ensue from the observation: (1) any

sort of imitation is to be discarded; (2) sacrifice is good butnot at the cost of health; (3) to serve, earn and sacrifice theearning for a greater cause; and (4) let the students devisetheir own original modes of social service.

Gandhi, on the other hand, is primarily concerned withthe Buniyadi that is primary and secondary schooleducation, collegiate or higher education does not comewithin his immediate purview. His basic inclination is mostcertainly directed towards vocational education that beginswith the Takli and leads upto the gospel of the Charkha.Obviously, the community of students, Gandhi had inmind, turned up from a section economically weaker thanthe one Tagore was to deal with in his school. The former�sidea of Svaavalamban (Self-reliance) was basically a meansto meet the expenses of education of oneself, at the sametime he did not consider imparting a kind of training indoing one�s own work as much as of nurturing the softersentiments through music lessons in any way an inferiorassignment.

40

Main is baat ke liye bahut hi utsuk hoon ki dastkarike jariye vidyaarthi jo kuch paidaa kare, uski kimatse sikshaa ka kharch nikal aaye, kyonki mujhe yakinhai ki des ke kadoron bacchon ko taalim dene ke liyesivaa iske dusraa koi raasta nahin hai|� Aap log yahbhi samajh lijiye ki prathmik sikshaa ki is yojanaame saphaai, aarogya aur aahaarsastra ke prarambhiksiddhaanton ka samaaves bhi ho jaata hai| Ismebacchon ki vah sikshaa bhi saamil samjhiye, jise veapnaa kaam khud karnaa sikhenge aur ghar par apnemaan-baap ke kaam me bhi madad pahunchaayenge|Main chahungaa ki unke liye sangit ke saath lazimitaur par aisi kavaayad aur kasrat bagairaa ka intzaamho jaaye, isse unki tandurusti sudhre aur jivantaalbaddh vane| (�Gandhiji kaa udghaatan bhashan�,Devi Prasaad sa., Nai Taalim ka sandes, Nai Dilli:Gandhi Shanti Pratishthaan, 1988, p 9).Jivan taalbaddh in Gandhi is unmistakably

reminiscent of Tagore�s Jivaner Chanda (p.133). It is alsointeresting to note that Sabarmati school did not haveSangit or Kala-Bhavanas, but in Sevagram these two wereintegral parts of the Asrama. Gandhi was most certainlyinspired by Tagore�s Vishva-Bharati.

Following this inaugural declaration of Gandhi�sWardha Scheme or the Nai Taalim (Harijan, 11 December1937), Tagore admitting of Gandhi�s practical geniusquipped in strongest words:

As the scheme stands on paper, it seems to assumethat material utility, rather than development ofpersonality, is the end of education in the true sense ofthe word may be still available for a chosen few whocan afford to pay for it, the utmost the masses can haveis to be trained to view the world they live in theperspective of the particular craft they are to employfor their livelihood. It is true that as things are, eventhat is much more than what the masses are actuallygetting but it is nevertheless unfortunate that even inour ideal scheme, education should be doled out ininsufficient rations to the poor, while the feast remains

41

reserved for the poor. I cannot congratulate a society ora nation that calmly excludes play from the curriculumof the majority of it�s children�s education and gives inits stead a vested interest to the teachers in the marketvalue of the pupil�s labour.

(Vishva-Bharati News, Jan. 1938, p 53. New EducationFellowship Conference, Calcutta).

If Tagore assessed the question of students� earningdepriving themselves of their play-time and paying for theteachers� honoraria, Gandhi was no less pained to negotiatethe wider question of being declassed as an upshot ofacademic attainment.

Tagore, we shall have to admit, was not much aware ofsuch evilsome social backlash of a philanthropic enterprise!

Tagore and Gandhi even though did not demeanlearning English as it was the language of the colonisersthrusted down our throat, both of them felt that educationthrough mother-tongue was most certainly better suitedfor creating a confidence in articulation as much as ingenerating conviction of thought. And building self-assurance is an unfailing key for empowerment. Both ofthem realised that creating an ambience of self-reliance isnot confined to the extent of the school-going childrenalone, even the adults require to be administered boosterdoses to bring back their self-possession. The Lokasikshaor Mass education programme organised by Tagore andthe Uttar-Buniyadi projects of Gandhi had almostpolygenetic growth, though the Aryanayakams � Ashaand William � were most certainly the connecting linksbetween the two establishments of Wardha and Bolpur,one basic difference in attitude distinguished the both, inturn. While Gandhi relied more on imparting lessons incertain particularities of applied social sciences, Tagorewanted to initiate the masses in elementary sciences notmerely for the sake of their contents so much as for thevery fact that such exposures would make the mind alertand intelligence free from illusions.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Swapan Majumdar

Professor Swapan Majumdar is currently, Director, Cultureand Cultural Relations and Adhyaksha, Rabindra-Bhavana,Vishva-Bharati. He is an Honorary Director,Eastern Regional Translation Centre, of the SahityaAkademi, in Calcutta and Vice-President: ComparativeLiterature Association of India, at New Delhi and Founder-Trustee, Kolkata International Foundation.

Professor Majumdar was earlier a Professor of Indianand Comparative Literature, at Jadhavpur University. Hewas awarded the Kalidas Nag Memorial medal for culturestudies. In 1968 he completed his masters in ComparativeLiterature and was a rank holder, standing first in his batch.He has written extensively and some of his well knownpublications include Rabindra-Granthasuchi, Calcutta,National Library, Comparative Literature; IndianDimensions, Calcutta: Papyrus; Sat Dasaker Theater,Calcutta, Dey�s Publishing. As a researcher, ProfessorMajumdar has to his credit a number of published worksincluding �Reception to & Impact of Shakespeare inBengal�, �Annotated Tagore Bibliography�, and �Nehruand Indian Literatutre�. He has edited more than a dozentexts of literary excellence and is editor Books and LiteraryPages, Aaj Kaal, Calcutta, India News, Embassy of IndiaFiji, Jadhavpur Journal of Comparative Literature,Jadavpur University. Vishva-Bharati Quarterly, Vishva-Bharati. Professor Majumdar has worked with ProfessorAbu Sayeed Ayyub, Editor, Quest and with JyotirmayDatta, Editor, Kolkata. He is an academic Consultant,National Library, Calcutta. Professor Majumdar also hasthe distinction of serving the Ministry of External Affairs,Government of India as a First Secretary (Culture) andDirector, Indian Cultural Centre, Embassy of India in Fiji.

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