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Tagore’s University
Introduction
Chris Marsh, for Anarchist Reading Group, Exeter University, 27/1/11
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2011 is the 150 th anniversary of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore. I am one of three co-editors with the Tagore Centre in London of their forthcoming commemorative volume A Timeless Mind, which contains 29 articles on various aspects of Tagore written by scholars and admirers from 18 different countries. Tagore was a Bengali poet, a prolific writer in many genres, also a composer and painter. He came to the world’s attention in 1912 with a collection of song lyrics he had rendered into English, published as Gitanjali (Song Offerings). In one of the Timeless Mind articles, Viktors Ivbulis, Latvian Tagore scholar, writes of Tagore’s popularity with ordinary readers:
He seems to have brought to the West something missing there: the belief in ideals and high morality, and something like an historic optimism, the lack of which was felt even before World War I. After the carnage was over, people were eager to learn genuine internationalism and cooperation, and Tagore’s spiritual idealism, his religion free from dogmas and priesthood, was also well received.
What was less well received were Tagore’s polemical lectures, followed by a book, against nationalism. His literary reputation and his official acceptability declined, while he continued to engage with the international celebrity circuit.
At home in Bengal, Tagore was putting into practice the localism which complemented his internationalism, to research and demonstrate his commitment to progressive education and rural reconstruction. This was not well known abroad until translations and scholarly interest after his death, but from those writings Tagore was evidently an anarchist – although he would not have used the word. In 1918 he announced his intention of establishing an international university on the same site as his local work. In 1921 the university was officially inaugurated. (see ‘From the Vice-Chancellor’ of Visva-Bharati)
At our discussion on 27 January I shall explore the question ‘Why a university?’, why Tagore believed revealing the East to the West was essential. The answer goes back to the Upanisads, Hindu writings from 500 BC, and something which Tagore called ‘our oneness’:
[W]e must know that the great mind of man is one, working through the many differences which are needed to ensure the full result of its fundamental unity. When we understand this truth in a disinterested spirit, it teaches us to respect all the differences in man that are real, yet remain conscious of our oneness ; and to know that perfection of unity is not in uniformity, but in harmony.
Given that many of us are interested in re-localisation, in local economies and participative democracy, in some form of transition ‘back to the future’, do we need something like Tagore’s vision to make that possible? Or is this stuff too wacky for anarchists and libertarian socialists to take seriously?
Christine Marsh has had three careers, the first in information systems applied to business and the public sector, the second as an independent researcher and teacher on land degradation and alternative land use systems, and lastly as an academic and Tagore scholar. She obtained a BA with the Open University, then an MA in Literature, her dissertation being entitled: The Village and the World: A Political Reading of Rabindranath Tagore’s Prose Fiction, for which she carried out archival research on Tagore’s practical projects in rural reconstruction in the Elmhirst Papers at the Dartington Hall Trust Archive. She is currently part way through her doctoral research with the University of Exeter, on Tagore’s English essays, arguing that his humanistic monism, combined with his involvement with the sciences, informed his radical challenges to materialistic Western attitudes and systems.
Santiniketan and Sriniketan constituted an institution dedicated to the service of humanity and the enlightenment of young minds. Over three generations Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, Gurudeva Rabindranath Tagore, and Kabiputra Rathindranath Tagore built the place up according to a conscious and intelligent design, so that the buildings, the murals, the statues, the fences, the fields, the gardens, the flowers, the trees, the open spaces, the eroded lands (khoai), the water courses and the very skies have come to form one integrated whole. The place still retains its indescribable beauty and sanctity.
In this environment there sprang up over a century a remarkable educational institution named Visva-Bharati, or the universal place of learning. Situated in and around the Ashrama, the institution sombrely recalls the presence of the Maharshi and joyfully breathes the spirit of our Gurudeva. The large statues by Ramkinkar Baij and his students have also integrated the Buddha and the Mahatma as the presiding deities of the place. To the north lies the Rabindra-Bhavana, or the Uttarayana Complex, which commemorates the life and work of the founder of Visva-Bharati. And within the Ashrma lie the holy Chhatimtala, the original Santiniketan Griha, and the glass-made Brahma Mandir, all major places of pilgrimage.
The University named Visva-Bharati evolved in 1921 out of the Brahma Vidyalaya founded by Gurudeva in 1901. It has an important extension in Sriniketan which is dedicated to the uplift of the Indian village community and the tribals. As an educational institution, the place is unique and there are no parallels in the world. This is because of two features that Gurudeva built into complex. First of all, no other institution in the world offers a complete scheme of education starting from nursery and ending with doctoral research. Sometimes sarcastically referred to as ‘KG to PG’, this in fact is our pride. The other unique feature is the process of learning in the open air, under the mango trees of the Ashrama. Nowhere else in the world will you come across the same sight.
There are some other notable features. One is the emphasis on service to the poor, the downtrodden and the deprived. Another is the joyful integration of music, fine arts, festivals and fairs into the learning process. Along with all these, there are non-denominational religious services every morning at school, every week in Brahma Mandir, and the remarkable services on the days of the Bengali New Year, the Birthday of the Poet, the Day of Gurudeva’s Great Departure and above all the Initiation Day of the Maharshi which coincides with the Poush Mela, the largest cultural festival in the country. In addition, there is the inimitable Spring Festival, and the purely rural fair at Sriniketan in late winter (Magh Mela).
Gurudeva intended Santiniketan to be a place ‘where the world becomes one nest’. It was to be a meeting place of the languages and cultures of India, a repository of Eastern learning, and a dynamic centre of India’s understanding and absorption of the West’s sciences and culture. It is still very much an international place where students, scholars, intellectuals, pilgrims and tourists from East and West and from all over India gather and mingle amidst indescribable natural beauty and artistic excellence.
So it was in the past. So it shall be.
It is our sacred task to preserve, restore and augment this natural, cultural and intellectual heritage of humanity.
The mantra in our hearts is:
Satyātma
Prāṇārāmam
Mana Ānandam
That is:
Solace to the Soul
Verity of self
Thou art to me
The joy of my heart
Rajat Kanta Ray
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