Book Excerpt: ‘A History of Santiniketan’ by Uma Das Gupta: How Tagore’s ideals found expression in Santiniketan

‘Let us have at least one little spot in India,’ Rabindranath Tagore wrote in a letter in 1920, ‘which will break down false geographical barriers, a place where the whole world will find its home. Let that place be Santiniketan. For us, there will be only one country and that will comprise the whole world. We shall know of only one nation and that will comprise the whole human race. Throw open the doors of Santiniketan, the doors of your hearts as well, so that whoever comes will have a feeling of homecoming.’

Though Rabindranath is scarcely remembered for his lifelong experiment with education, this experiment that began at the turn of the twentieth century in a remote corner of rural Bengal was the cornerstone of his ideals of non-parochial nationalism and an instinctive cosmopolitanism. Every effort was made to apply those ideals in the growth of Santiniketan.

There were two issues that Rabindranath addressed interdependently through this work. One issue was for an appreciation of his country’s history of diverse peoples and cultures though weakened by caste and creed and the failure to resolve the problem of racial conflict. The other issue was a growing concern over the self-destructive tendency of the modern nation-state which he associated with the West.

His response was in instituting an education for a cultural understanding at two levels, between the country’s alienated urban and rural populations on the one hand, and between India and the West on the other. To Rabindranath, that was the only self-respecting way of encountering the humiliation of colonial rule and overcoming the isolation imposed by colonisation.

But his deep thinking about how to reform his country’s predicament was different from the Indian National Congress. He consistently made it clear that the problem of social injustice was more urgent than the country’s political freedom.

He was unforgiving that the nationalist movement had not given due attention to the country’s inherent problem of social injustice. Rabindranath’s repeated question was to ourselves: how can we claim freedom when we ourselves have denied it for ages to large sections of our own people?

Rabindranath warned that the city and the village were becoming even more divided because the new Indian intelligentsia were relocating themselves in the cities. The villages were being left behind in a rut. Rabindranath forcefully argued that mere political freedom would not unite our people when there was so obvious an alienation.

This was why he pressed for an education to first understand this basic weakness in our society and then endeavour to bridge the gap by building self-reliance, atmashakti, and a humane society. That was why he made it a goal to combine traditional knowledge with modern scientific knowledge from which both the sections of our society could learn and make progress.

He argued that ‘national unity’ could never become a reality till the masses get a gut feeling about it, and that could happen only if the educated classes and the nonliterate masses could be brought close through an alternative education and by taking up a common programme of work. Such was the ‘sacrifice’ needed, Rabindranath wrote, to make the country ‘our own’.

His hope was to bring the West on terms of equality to an India of multiple cultures, an India where the impoverished village was given education and dignity of life. He knew that the only way his humiliated people could become respected equals among the world’s fellow races was by creative and constructive work in breaking down sectarian barriers and segregation.

Rabindranath’s educational work and his own nationalism were rooted in an original vision of India’s history amounting to a deviation from both the colonialist historiography and the nationalist ideology of those times. He made a most eloquent distinction between the nation with a small ‘n’ to mean a society of people, and the Nation with a capital ‘N’ to mean a nation-state or the ‘Nation of the West’.

— Excerpted with permission from Niyogi Books