A genius of unequalled fertility was born with a silver spoon in his mouth on the 7th of May 1861 in the city of Calcutta. He was the youngest of a family of fourteen siblings. He, who was called Rabi in his childhood, came to be known to the world as Rabindranath Tagore and later on Gurudev, a term of respect accorded to him by none other than Rashtrapita Mahatma Gandhi. And, interestingly, it was Gurudev who bestowed the epithet of Mahatma upon the Father of the Nation. For the first time in a long while, today we shall be celebrating his 161st birth anniversary indoors, without any public or private addresses due to one of the worst outbreaks of the coronavirus that has ravaged the whole world with heart-wrenching cruelty.
When we celebrate the birthday of an enlightened statesman like Gurudev, whose works have come down to us in the form of knowledge, wisdom, truth and beauty, it is entirely in the fitness of things to reflect on his thoughts on education and their relevance in the present context.
Somehow Gurudev did not like formal schooling since he found it mediocre and uninspiring. He developed such an aversion to formal schooling that after spending sometime in a couple of schools, he refused to go to school. He was once even enrolled at a public school in England, but when he evinced the least interest in formal schooling, he was called back from there. He began to develop his literary and artistic skills at a very early age. Even though he had very little formal education, he was a self-taught thinker and artist and a voracious reader with varied intellectual interests. He had great interest in studying Sanskrit, history, astronomy, modern science, literature and biographies. He was a scholar of incredible talent with no certificates and degrees. The only degrees he ever received were honorary ones bestowed later in life.
As an artistic genius, Gurudev composed his first poem at the age of eight, and by the end of his life he had written over 25 volumes of poetry, 15 plays, 90 short stories, 11 novels, 13 volumes of essays, started and edited many journals, written numerous Bengali text books, and composed over 2,000 songs. It is believed that after the age of 70, he created more than 2,000 pictures and sketches. His compositions were chosen by two nations as their national anthems—India’s “Jana Gana Mana” and Bangladesh’s “Amar Shonar Bangla”.
Gurudev was a Bengali polymath who reformed Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1913, Gurudev became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. As the author of Gitanjali and its profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verses, Gurudev came to be known for his poetry which is viewed as spiritual and having qualities of eloquence and ingenuity. His legacy endures in Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, the institution that he founded in 1921. He dedicated the rest of his life to this institution, which became a fountainhead of Gurudev’s philosophy on education.
The establishment of Visva-Bharati and Sriniketan by Gurudev led to groundbreaking efforts in many ways, including unique models for Indian education, rural reconstruction, mass education as well as pan-Asian and global cultural exchange. In creating the eco-friendly campus of this institution, Gurudev sowed the seeds of environmental awareness with an all-encompassing altruistic, humanitarian, educational philosophy for the world, firmly rooted in the philosophy of naturalism, of which he was an ardent advocate.
Since Gurudev did not write a central educational treatise, his thoughts must be gleaned from his various writings and educational experiments that he had carried out at Shantiniketan. His vision for education was very pragmatic. He believed that education on the one hand must be deeply rooted in one’s immediate surroundings but on the other hand also be connected to the culture and ethos of the wider world.
According to him, the highest education is that which does not merely give us information but keeps our life in harmony with all existence. In Gurudev’s philosophy of education, artistic and affective development of the senses was as important as its cognitive development. It was for this reason that he attached equal significance to the development of the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. This was evident from his love and passion for music, literature, art, dance and drama, as according to him, these are very essential to enrich the soul.
Gurudev’s educational model has a unique sensitivity and aptness for education within multi-racial, multilingual and multicultural situations. He was a staunch supporter of the unity of the East and West. He believed in inner peace, awareness of natural ecology and a better sense of human togetherness. He was an ardent supporter of natural growth in a natural environment, a total disbeliever in book-centered education, an advocate of the freedom of heart, freedom of intellect and freedom of will. He had a very progressive outlook and that is what he wanted to be inculcated through education across the globe. He believed that spiritualism embraces a vast array of highly diversified philosophical views and therefore the outlook of different thinkers, regardless of their backgrounds, should be acknowledged and taken in the right spirit.
According to Gurudev, self-realization is an important aim of education. Manifestation of the personality depends upon self-realization and spiritual knowledge of the individual, as Gurudev believed that spiritualism is the quintessence of humanism. His concept of intellectual development meant open-mindedness, freethinking, inquisitiveness, originality, novelty and alertness of the mind. He believed that the child should be free to adopt his/her own way of learning which alone would lead to all-round development of his/her personality. He gave importance to a sound and healthy physique. Gurudev held that the entire universe is one family and education has the potential to teach people to realize the oneness of the globe.
Gurudev realized it well that education was the only means for the empowerment of the rural masses and the reconstruction of villages. He recognized the power of education as a vehicle for appreciating the finest aspects of different cultures while maintaining one’s own cultural specificity. His first experiments in adult education were born out of his awareness and understanding of acute material and cultural poverty that permeated across uneducated masses. In order to uplift the downtrodden and rural masses, he involved students and teachers with literacy training and social work and the promotion of cooperative schemes.
In keeping with his theory of subconscious learning, Gurudev rarely wrote down anything for the students but rather involved them in whatever he was composing. He has written about how well the students were able to enter into the spirit of the drama and perform their roles, which required subtle understanding and sympathy without special training. Without music and fine arts, Gurudev believed that a nation lacks its highest means of self-expression and consequently the people remain inarticulate. In his curriculum, Gurudev promoted a different approach. Instead of teaching cultural dominance and about wars won, he advocated a system wherein emphasis should be laid on the analysis of history, culture, economy and social progress that have been made against all odds.
Gurudev’s vision of culture was not static. He believed in the process of acculturation which facilitates newcomers and minorities to acculturate into the dominant culture and maintain all aspects of their minority culture, and similarly the dominant culture also allows the fusion of minority culture into itself. He wanted the world to be a place where multiple voices could be encouraged to interact with each other and to reconcile their differences with an overriding commitment to peace and harmony. He tried to establish this kind of an institutional ethos at Visva-Bharati where conflicting interests were minimized and individuals worked together in a common pursuit of truth.
It is pertinent to recognize that Gurudev, by his efforts and achievements, got into the league of pioneering educators such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori and Dewey – and in the contemporary context, Malcolm Shepherd Knowles – who have striven to create non-authoritarian learning systems that promote learners’ engagement happily with their social milieu as well as the outside world side by side.
Gurudev’s vision of Shantiniketan, in the true sense, may be difficult to replicate as that was nurtured by the soul of a great artist, humanist and philosopher. But the inclusion of Gurudev’s thoughts into the current curriculum of school education followed by his basic philosophy of learning in the domain of higher education are worth a try. The philosophy of education enunciated by Gurudev has great potential for the transformation of the education process in our national rejuvenation. Although something is being practised, a lot still needs to be incorporated from the principles of education propounded by him especially the ones like naturalism, cultural assimilation, a harmonious balance of mind, body and spirit, and peaceful coexistence. There is a crying need for that to happen.
The nation holds Gurudev in the highest respect and affection. In difficult times such as these, when the coronavirus has imprisoned all of us, depriving us of any public meetings to pay tribute to Gurudev for the magnificent qualities of his head and heart, we need to remind ourselves of the great message of his poemL “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free….. into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake”. The poem not only reflects Gurudev’s inspiring soul and great vision for the country of his dreams but is also an exhortation to attain that vision, which can be realized only by revamping education as envisioned by him.
The author is former Chairman, UGC.