Rabindranath Tagore on Education

Over the past few decades, Tagore scholarship has attempted to go beyond the usual presentation of Rabindranath as a mystic poet steeped in Indian spiritual traditions.1 Recent discursive analyses as well as translations into English have been a major conduit to disseminate his thoughts available in the rest of his oeuvre.2 The present volume on the educational ideas of Rabindranath Tagore (in English translation) is a humble attempt to contribute to this trend. Despite the rich scholarly output already available, we strongly feel there is further scope of communicating his ideas to a wider readership through translation. At the same time, because the vast corpus of his works tends to frustrate any propagation of a ‘representative’ Rabindranath within a single volume, we have concentrated on his specific role as an educationist. It may be recalled that apart from his creative achievements in literature, visual arts and performative arts, he also initiated paradigmatic shifts in the fields of education and rural reform. Predicated on a distrust of didactic pedagogy, he envisaged an alternative system of education to propel learning towards enlightenment for all sections of society, thereby ensuring the much-needed socio-economic-cultural upliftment for the emergent nation. His educational formulations, then, were an integral part of his engagement with nation-building.

Having selected Rabindranath’s educational programme as our thematic focus, we decided to translate his prose writings on education. Even as he sought to concretize his educational philosophy through his institutions at Santiniketan/Sriniketan, he kept articulating his ideas through several modes of expression – chiefly his essays and public addresses, but no less his letters and private correspondences. Therefore, we decided to render into English a modest selection of his Bangla essays, public lectures and letters as samples of his educational engagements, straddling both philosophical and practical concerns. If the essays and public lectures voice some of his foundational concepts on education, the letters and personal correspondences present the image of a more pragmatic Rabindranath dedicated to the hands-on functioning of his institutions to give tangible shape to his vision. The essays and letters, between them, engage with the conceptual poetics and the actual praxis of his educational thoughts. Moreover, to show how his educational philosophy becomes inscribed even in his fiction apart from his discursive writings, we have included here a handful of short stories that address some of his pivotal educational concerns. With this cross-generic selection of his writings, we hope to acquaint the readers (familiar or not so familiar with the Bangla language and culture) with the inclusive and expansive range of Rabindranath Tagore’s educational paradigm, which germinated at the historical juncture of the emergence of a new nation.

Because this is a volume on translation, certain editorial policies had to be adopted to ensure easy reading across languages and cultures. Since the translations are from Bangla to English, the term Bangla has been deployed to refer to the language and literature, while for the place and its people, the terms Bengal and Bengali(s) have been used. Also, when the place of publication concerned was Calcutta (renamed as Kolkata in 2001), a uniform choice of name seemed preferable on several counts. Rabindranath himself would have known the city as Calcutta; his own works, as well as a substantial number of scholarly works on him, predate 2001; yet, not only have other critical works appeared after 2001, but some, originally published before 2001, have been reprinted after that date. To avoid confusion and maintain consistency, we have decided to retain the spelling “Calcutta” throughout, even for titles published after 2001.

For proper names, because multiple variations are possible in Bangla, a standard practice has been adopted to avoid anomalies. The usual Bangla convention of combining the first name and middle name has been followed (so, Rabindranath, not Rabindra Nath; similarly, Jagadishchandra, not Jagadish Chandra). For the surname, the Anglicized version (used by the person) has generally been retained instead of the Bangla original (so, Tagore, not Thakur; Bose, not Basu or Bosu), though exceptions have been made for Bandyopadhyay, Mukhopadhyay, Chattopadhyay (to avoid the varying use in English of Banerjee/Banerji/Banerjea, Mukherjee/Mukherji/Mukherjea, or Chatterjee/Chatterji/Chatterjea).

For Visva-Bharati, Rabindranath himself increasingly used the English version “Visva-Bharati”, though in Bangla he spelt it without the hyphen as “Visvabharati”. Though in early official records, all three spellings – “Visva-Bharati”, “Visva-bharati” and “Visvabharati” – may be found, here we have preferred to use the spelling “Visva-Bharati” in English. However, where the Bangla name has figured specifically (as in the name of a Bangla compilation), the spelling has been kept as Visvabharati to indicate that this refers to the Bangla work.

To familiarize readers with concepts, ideas, issues, as well as other relevant details, annotations and explications have been provided in the footnotes, with terms alien to the English language generally italicized (asram, dharma, sadhana, tapasya, yajna, etc.).

In the Appendices, two pieces have been included that were considered important for the concerns of this volume.

This volume would not have been possible without the help and assistance received from various quarters. We acknowledge our gratitude to the administration and staff of Rabindra Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, for access to archival and library holdings at Rabindra Bhavana.

We are grateful to Mr Samiran Nandy, formerly of Rabindra Bhavana, for lending special assistance in designing the cover as well as helping with the reprographic material used here.

We thank Birutjatio Sahitya Sammiloni, Bolpur, for kindly permitting us to reprint four translations of Professor Sukla Basu that had originally been published by them.3 These have been edited, where necessary, for the purposes of the present volume.

Our sincere thanks to all those who have come forward with information and resources that have gone a long way in shaping this volume.

Finally, we are grateful to Peter Lang International Academic Publishers for agreeing to publish the volume from their prestigious publishing house. Our special thanks to Ms Indrani Dutta, Acquisition Editor, as well as the entire production team of Peter Lang, who have been most supportive with their advice and assistance at every stage.