An Article by Sanjukta Dasgupta

“Books in the Running Brooks”: Tagore’s Endorsement of Experiential

Learning

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Quite remarkably, in the 21 st century, the publication of two books on global and local educational policies, strongly advocating the need for liberal arts and humanities studies as essential curriculum in university courses, was not just a caveat but a crusading call for introspection and change. Significantly, both the internationally acclaimed thinkers, writers and public intellectuals, Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak and Martha Nussbaum, referred frequently to the relevance of the educational transformations that Tagore introduced. Both Nussbaum and Spivak referred to Tagore’s fictional narratives, as illustrative texts.In her book, Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Nussbaum stated that a silent crisis was steadily enveloping the institutionalized knowledge systems of the world. Describing this silent crisis as carcinogenic, she explains that there is an increasing systemic policy swing away from the humanities and social science courses at universities. Job-oriented education, universities and industries being clubbed together as joint ventures primarily discourages critical thinking and freedom of configuring ideas leading to enhancement of creative imagination. So in unequivocal terms Nussbaum observes,
Thirsty for national profit, nations and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens, who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. (12) 1
Nussbaum’s caveat about fragmented education with the objective of economic gain, is what more than a century ago, the Indian thinker and poet Rabindranath Tagore had repeatedly warned about in his numerous essays on the subject. However, the Indian poet did not just sensitize the people about the destructive objectives of fixed syllabi that encouraged rote learning. Tagore painstakingly raised funds for his dream project, setting up a unique model school and a university system that attracted attention of intellectuals and creative thinkers of the world. Tagore’s school system Patha Bhavan and eventually the founding of Visva Bharati University, was a unique paradigm shift, unprecedented in colonial Bengal, in British India. Perhaps unprecedented too in mainland Britain.
The question therefore arises, is education producing nuts and bolts to keep the wheels of profit turning, or can education have a holistic objective that recognizes the multiple intersections of race, class, colour, caste, creed, religion, gender and sexuality that can construct a complete human being rather than an automaton. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 had clearly outlined the targets of holistic education by stating,
“Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups.” 2
Tagore’s educational goals for school students and university students were a phenomenal game changer. Sadly, however, despite such progressive formulations about 1 Nussbaum Martha C Nor For Profit Why Democracy Needs the Humanities Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2012 p2
2 Ibid 14

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generating an education free from indoctrination and the physical claustrophobia created  by classroom, tables, benches, blackboards, chalks and dusters, Tagore’s roadmap, so  clearly outlined , was considered impractical by government funded educational institutions both in colonial India and post-independence India. Tagore’s path-breaking emphases on “critical thinking and empathetic imagining” 3 were ignored and instead of an  interdisciplinary liberal arts model the traditional European model of single-subject specialization was preferred. So Nussbaum comments categorically, “Socratic active learning and exploration through the arts have been rejected in favour of pedagogy of force-feeding for standardized national education.” 4
In a more direct awareness campaign regarding the absolute necessity of literature studies as an essential component of education, Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak refers to Gramsci’s essay “University without Conditions”, and thereafter refers to the therapeutic benefits of education, the comparatist’s skills of critiquing perspectives and contexts, She refers to the concepts of world literature configured by both Goethe and Marx, though their horizons
were limited to Europe, rather than the epistemological and empirical representations in literature, beyond Europe. Tagore too joined this discourse in his own deductive manner. In the concluding paragraph of his lecture on
”World Literature” delivered in 1907, he stated that World Literature could be considered as synonymous with Comparative Literature”. Defining his opinion, Tagore had observed, “Do not expect me to be your guide in the domain of world literature. We have to pave our own path according to our individual abilities.

My only purpose for saying this is that the world is not about your, mine and their separate farmlands, to know the world in this way suggests a region-centric myopia, similarly literature is not about your, mine or theirs. Ordinarily we however regard literature through this region-centric (Garmyo) myopic lens. We need to liberate ourselves from this regional conservatism in order to discover the world citizen in world literature, we should endeavour to discover in every writer a sense of wholeness, and within that inclusive wholeness we must discover collective human expression, the time has come for us to take such a pledge.” 5
In her Introduction to An Aesthetic Education In the Era of Globalization Spivak stated characteristically, “A disinterested episteme can allow and withstand the interruption of the ethical. Study, humanism said Gramsci, in  somewhat the same spirit as some of us say deep language learning and literary textuality train the ethical reflex.” 6 Spivak further elaborates the essential need for rootedness in ethics and aesthetics represented in literary texts that span the elite and the subalterns, the multiple divides that separate human civilizations, cultures and people. She observes, “in our dwindling isolation cells, we must plumb the forgotten and mandatorily ignored bi-polarity of the social of the social productivity and the social destructiveness of capital and capitalism by affecting the world’s subalterns, in places where s/he speaks, unheard, by way of deep language learning, qualitative social sciences, philosophizing into unconditional ethics.” 7

3 Ibid 19
4 Ibid 19
5 Tagore, Rabindranath Rabindra Rachanabali vol 13 Visva Bharati West Bengal govt 1961 p773
(Translation mine)
6 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty An Aesthetic Education In The Era of Globalization Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2012.p27
7 Ibid 27

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From the excerpts above, the emphasis of Nussbaum and Spivak regarding the crucial need for incorporating humanities and social sciences courses, as complementary texts and contexts would immediately link themselves to well-known educationists such as Rousseau, Nunn, Pestalozzi, John Dewey, Maria Montessori and their much discussed and sometimes implemented discourse on the objectives of chainless education. The relationship between the texts and their recipients should not be coercive, but should entice a willing suspension of disbelief, thereby activating a complete state of meditative immersion in the style and content of the literary text.
11.
In this essay I shall endeavour to focus on Tagore’s numerous treatises that elucidate his views regarding formal and informal education in theory and practice, apart from references to relevant literary texts that clearly enunciate that for Tagore, education implied liberation of the spirit.
Rabindranath Tagore regarded the traditional institutionalized formal education of his times as ensuring the dissemination of fragmented knowledge. Tagore steadfastly believed that rote  learning had a destructive impact on the intellectual curiosity and creative imagination of a young receptive mind. In his many essays on education and culture Tagore repeatedly lamented that young learners were being strait-jacketed within a fixed curriculum that dulled the inquisitiveness of the students who learnt to memorize texts without comprehending their specific nuances.
Tagore argued that if such initiatives were not taken, the horrifying end result of rote learning would destroy creative freedom, creative imagination and leadership in the world of ideas. Tagore describes in graphic detail the tragic consequence as the end result of such myopic education in his well-known fable, “The Parrot’s Training” (Tota Kahini). The narrative states that the parrot which flew around and sang all day was suddenly thrust into a golden cage and encapsulated platitudes of the past were thrust into its throat and its wings clipped. The narrative reads like a Spielberg movie script, grotesque and sarcastic, animated further by Tagore’s signature poetic insight and irony -
The nephew said, ``Your Majesty, the bird's education is now complete.;
The King asked, ``Does it still jump?;
The nephew said, ``God forbid.

``Does it still fly?;
``No.
``Does it sing anymore?

``No.
``Does it scream if it doesn't get food?
``No.;
The King said, ``Bring the bird in. I would like to see it

The bird was brought in. With it came the administrator, the guards, the horsemen.

The King felt the bird. It didn't open its mouth and didn't utter a word. Only the pages of books, stuffed inside its stomach, raised a ruffling sound.
Outside, where the gentle south wind and the blossoming woods were heralding spring, the young green leaves filled the sky with a deep and heavy sigh.

 “The Parrot’s Tale”) 8

8 The Parrot’s Tale translation by Palash Baran Paul Parabas2004)

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III
As stated earlier, Tagore’s institutions in Bolpur, West Bengal, Patha Bhavan, Visva Bharati and Sri Niketan focussed on imparting education that was holistic, recognizing the intersectionality that defined varied cultures and the thrust was on configuring inclusive education and performance studies. Moreover, introduction of performing arts in his institutions underscored the uniqueness of Tagore’s theory of education and its path-breaking effectiveness in praxis. Tagore’s concepts of education spanned the trajectory of the parrot’s tragic traditional training as a scholar to the exhilarating freedom of experiential learning at Santiniketan.
In Tagore’s oft-cited and widely discussed essay on education in Bengal during the colonial times, titled Shikshar Herpher ( Modifications of Education) Tagore stated, ‘From childhood, instead of focussing on the power of memory, equal weightage must be accorded to independent application of the power of thinking and the power of the imagination.” 9
Elaborating further on this argument, Tagore observed, “We enter from childhood to adolescence, from  adolescence to youth just carrying the burden of some statements. In the regime of Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning, we spend our days like labourers; our backbones get bent and the full blossoming of the human spirit is thwarted” 10
In fact in this essay, Tagore expresses his annoyance with the ready reception of English literature and English culture by the natives, whose mimicking of the colonizer’s culture displays both sycophancy and a cultural cringe. He emphasises that the need of the hour was to internalize the linguistic and emotive excellence of one’s own native language.
He admits that English is an essential language for communication, trade and official transactions. But he repeatedly stresses that the native culture could be represented with complete success in the native language. So Tagore writes, “From early childhood along with language training if training in affect is done, and along with the affective, if the lifestyle is in sync, only then can there can be interconnectedness, we can be natural human beings, and we are able to assess all subjects in a balanced manner.” 11
In the 27 essays written in Bengali on the subject of education, in volume eleven of Rabindra Rachanabali, we find Tagore not merely playing the role of a mentor but as a cultural activist he makes an unambiguous bid to create awareness about the need to sustain and enhance indigenous literature and culture. He seems to anticipate Franz Fanon’s arguments in The Wretched of the Earth regarding the need to reject cultural colonization and emerge as independent thinkers, extolling the merits of native arts, fine arts and craft.Interestingly, in another essay titled, “Shikshasamskar” (The Reform of Education)
Tagore refers to the miserable plight of Ireland, after it was occupied by the English. The English, according to Tagore, burnt down all the native schools where the medium of instruction was Irish, the native tongue of the people of Ireland. The Irish were known throughout Europe for their intellectual and cultural excellence and their language of communication had been invariably Irish.
Describing how Irish schools and Irish education curriculum were totally destroyed by the English invaders Tagore comments, “Their own language was branded as a language of the lowliest society and was totally ignored. Then in the 19 th century the “National School” policy was
file:///C:/Users/HP/Desktop/Tagore%20EDUCATION%20Nationalism/The%20Parrot's%20Tale_%20T
ranslation%20of%20A%20Short%20Story%20By%20Rabindranath%20Tagore%20[Parabaas%20Translation].html
9 Tagore, Rabindranatn “Shikshar Herpher” ( Manipulations of Education) Vol 11,
Kolkata: Visva Bharati Publications, 1961 540-541
10 Ibid 541
11 542

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implemented…. Forcing the Irish people into the mould of the Saxons and conditioning them to become totally English was the prime motive of the National school policy.” 12 . It is obvious that
Tagore was greatly outraged by this cultural oppression of the Irish people by the English. He further commented, “Not only the native Irish language. The schools stopped teaching Irish history. Even Irish geography was cursorily taught. The students learnt about the history and geography of foreign countries but remained innocent about their own country’s history and geography.” 13
Tagore’s unequivocal critique of the British education system implemented for the Indians, not unlike the Irish, is reminiscent of the agenda of Lord Macaulay and his audacious game changing Minute on Education of 1835, that categorically stated, “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, --a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population” 14
Once again, comparing the plight of the Irish students with the students in India, Tagore writes, “Britain’s  educational policy in Ireland may not exactly resemble her policy in India.
But there is at least one vital point of similarity in regard to the result- our mind is not in our studies” (Uma Dasgupta 157). 15 Tagore therefore deduced that such motivated engineering of educational curriculum resulted in a psychological and social disaster. He wrote, “The result was as expected. Psychological paralysis affected the entire nation. The Irish children entered the schools with great intellectual curiosity, but they emerged with disabled minds and great repugnance towards knowledge.” 16
Tagore’s scathing statements about the Irish education system, doctored by the English, seem to anticipate the arguments and remarks of the Irish teacher, nationalist,Republican political activist Patrick Pearse (1879-1916) whose active participation in the Irish Easter Rising in 1916, led to his arrest and execution. In his widely known
posthumously published essay, “The Murder Machine” Pearse wrote, Modem education systems are elaborate pieces of machinery devised by highly-salaried officials for the purpose of turning out citizens according to certain
aproved patterns. The modern school is a State controlled institution designed to produce workers for the State, and is in the same category which a dockyard, or any other State-controlled institution which produces articles necessary to the progress, well-being, and defence of the State. We speak of the ‘efficiency’, the ‘cheapness’ and the ‘up-to-dateness' of an education system just as we speak of the ‘efficiency’, the ‘cheapness’ and the ‘up-to-dateness' of a system of manufacturing coal-gas. (6) 17
12 Tagore “Shikshasangskar” ( Reforms in Education ) Ibid 555.
13 Ibid 556
14 Macaulay, Thomas Babington “Minute on Education” February 1835
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.htm
l
15 Dasgupta, Uma et al 157
16 Tagore, Rabindranath Rabindrarachanavali Vol 11 556
17 Pearse, Patrick Pearse, P. (1924) “The Murder Machine” in Political Writings and Speeches. Phoenix Publishing Co. Ltd., Dublin, pp 5–50. P 6

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Earlier versions of “The Murder Machine” were published at around 1912-1914. But Tagore’s own essay in Bengali, addressing the brutal British domination of Ireland’s native education system, was published in 1906. This is indeed a remarkable evidence of intertextuality. As far as I know Tagore’s essays written in Bengali were not available in English translation when Pearse further defined the invidious agenda of the education system
imposed on the Irish people in “The Murder Machine”. Pearse wrote, Philosophy was not crammed out of text-books, but was learned at the knee of some great philosopher: art was learned in the studio of some master-artist, a craft in the workshop of some master-craftsman. Always it was the personality of the master that made the school, never the State that built it of bricks and mortar, drew up a code of rules to govern it, and sent hirelings into it to carry out its decrees.” 18 I would like to consider the affinity between Tagore’s formulations of the need for native language  and native literature to nurture the minds of the young students between the 1890s and 1906, with that of Patrick Pearse almost echoing Tagore in many instances, as intellectual and empathetic bonding of minds, irrespective of the known intersections of obvious cultural differences. I think it is important to include the following excerpt in full, as readers will be able to locate remarkable affinities between Tagore’s views about ideal education based on freedom in 1906 and that of Patrick Pearse in 1916. Pearse observed, I dwell on the importance of the personal element in education. I would have every child not merely a unit in a school attendance, but in some intimate personal way the pupil of a teacher, or, to use more expressive words, the disciple of a master. And here I nowise contradict another position of mine: that the main object in education
is to help the child to be his own true and best self. What the teacher should bring to his pupil is not a set of ready-made opinions or a stock of cut-and-dried information, but an inspiration and an example; and his main qualification should be, not such an overmastering will as shall impose itself at all hazards upon all weaker wills that come under its influence, but rather so infectious an enthusiasm as shall kindle new enthusiasm. The Montessori system, so admirable in many ways, would seem at first sight to attach insufficient importance to the function of the teacher in the schoolroom. But this is not really so. True. it would make the spontaneous efforts of
the children the main motive power, as against the dominating will of the teacher which is the main motive power in the ordinary schoolroom. But the teacher must be there always to inspire, to foster.” 19

1V
I have translated from the Bengali originals, certain comments by Tagore about his mapping of education policy as the means to the ultimate goal, the nurturing of complete human beings, who are able to comprehend the differences between equity and equality, in a world  where democratic ideals are threatened by exclusionary ideologies of profit and power. In the following excerpts however from the English writings of Tagore, we notice that Tagore urged the Western world to support his dream of establishing an International University, in the spirit of the first ancient International university that was founded in India- Nalanda University. The response from the progressive West was lukewarm, though distinguished thinkers like Elmhirst, Rothenstein, Montessori and others supported his ideals of holistic education enthusiastically.
18 Ibid 7
19 Ibid Pearse 7

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Tagore’s disdain for the British system of education imposed on native students in India, is clearly stated as he comments in his essay, “The Problem of Education”, once again anticipating Pearse’s arguments in “The Murder
 machine”. Tagore wrote, The courses they teach are dull and dry, painful to learn, and useless when learnt. There is nothing in common between the lessons the pupils cram up from ten to four o’clock and the country where they live, no agreement, but many disagreements, between what they learn at school and what their parents and
relatives talk about at home. The schools are little better than factories for turning out robots” 20
Almost radicalizing the prevalent practices of day-school education Tagore suggests further, referring to the ancient Indian practices of Gurukul, Brahmacharya and Tapovan by stating with conviction that, My view is that we should follow the ancient Indian principles of education. Students and teachers should live together and in natural surroundings, and the students should complete their education by practising brahmacharya. Founded on the eternal truths of  human nature, these principles have lost nothing of their significance, however much our
circumstances might have altered through the ages.” 21
In order to emphasise the need to establish a rapport between the natural universe and the young students,
Tagore quotes an ancient Indian mantra and explains that in ancient times there thrived a respectful  bonding between Nature and the human people, “To the god who resides in fire and water, in trees and plants, Immanent in the world and the universe, we bow , we bow” 22 . Elaborating on this particular argument further Tagore writes, “The four elements of earth, water, air, and fire form a whole and are instinct with the universal soul-this knowledge cannot be gained at a school in town. A school in town is a factory which can only teach us to regard the world as a machine.” 23 . In fact, when the educationist Maria Montessori advocates the need for sense perceptions as a pre-condition for formal education, we notice the closeness of Tagore to Montessori and her school system, which till now is a prevalent method of disseminating primary school education.Montessori had observed, “ Education of the senses is the foundation of the entire intellectual organism and might be called the intellectual raw material…” 24 .

She further added, “Expectedly, such a mechanical system of education will not only reduce the students to robots, but will impact the teachers as being wage-earners, rather than playing the roles of bfriend, philosopher and guide to the inquisitive students. On his part, Tagore had observed, ‘The teacher is now a tradesman, a vendor of education in search of customers, and no one expects to find affection, regard, devotion or any other feeling in the list of goods he has for sale.” 25
Tagore therefore outlines the blueprint of his international university where education will be holistic, without any racial, religious, caste and class discrimination. He stated, “We are building up our institution upon the ideal of the spiritual unity of all races. I hope it is going to be a great meeting place for individuals from all countries who believe in the divine humanity, and who wish to make atonement for the cruel disloyalty displayed against her by
men.” 26 Expectedly, the much-acclaimed Tagore scholar Mohammed Quayum in his essay ‘Education for Tomorrow: The Vision of Rabindranath Tagore commented, “Tagore wanted 20 Dasgupta, Uma ed. Tagore Selected writings on Education and Nationalism New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2009 113
21 Ibid 118
22 Ibid 117
23 Ibid 117
24 MARIA MONTESSORI'S MORAL-SENSE THEORY Author(s): Patrick R. Frierson Source: History of Philosophy
Quarterly , JULY 2015, Vol. 32, No. 3 (JULY 2015) 273 , pp. 271-292
25 Ibid 121
26 Ibid 128-129 in the essay “The Educational Mission of the Visva Bharati”

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Visva-Bharati to be a meeting place of all the great religions of theworld – Buddhism, Vedic and Puranic Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Christianity, Taoism and Zoroastrianism – so that the students could learn from each and enrich their minds through a synthesis of all the religions,and thus develop a global consciousness or a world centric and cosmopolitan outlook” 27
Also, the success of the poet’s venture in re-inventing educational instruction methods is recorded with precision by historian Uma Dasgupta, who stated, “For a while, Tagore was witness to his Visva-Bharati offering hospitality to the world. In the 1920s and the 1930s
scholars, painters, musicians, economists, agriculturists, and medical experts from different parts of the world gathered on the soil of Santiniketan and Sriniketan to join hands with the local populace in their common goal of learning and creating and serving without national barriers.” 28
Not just formal education for the privileged, Tagore had executed brilliant plans of education and employment for the disadvantaged rural people of Birbhum. So just outside the village of Surul in a farm that the poet had purchased, he founded the Visva Bharati Institute of Rural Reconstruction. It was named Sriniketan. The poet had structured plans for his Sriniketan project. He wrote, “The object of Sriniketan is to bring back life in its 
completeness into the villages making them self-reliant and self-respectful, acquainted with the cultural tradition of their own country, and competent to make an efficient use of the modern resources for the improvement of their physical, intellectual and economic condition.” 29
Rabindranath Tagore invited artists and scholars from other parts of India and the world, to join Visva Bharati as visiting faculty. This would enable the students to have direct contact with scholars and teachers from all part of the world. This would enable the foreign scholars to share their cultures with the the students and teachers of Visva Bharati university, thereby activating multifarious global and local networks. The Constitution of the Visva-Bharati University designated Visva-Bharati as an Indian, Eastern and Global cultural centre whose goals were:
1. To study the mind of Man in its realisation of different aspects of truth from diverse
points of view.
2. To bring into more intimate relation with one another through patient study and research, the different cultures of the East on the basis of their underlying unity. 3. To approach the West from the standpoint of such a unity of the life and thought of Asia.
4. To seek to realise in a common fellowship of study the meeting of East and West and thus ultimately to strengthen the fundamental conditions of world peace through the  free communication 5. And with such ideals in view to provide at Santiniketan a centre of culture where research into the study of the religion, literature, history, science and art of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Zoroastrian, Islamic, Sikh, Christian and other civilizations may be pursued along with the culture of the West, with that simplicity of externals which is necessary for true spiritual realisation, in amity, good-fellowship and co-operation between the thinkers and scholars of both Eastern and Western countries, free from all antagonisms of race, nationality, creed or caste and in the name of the One Supreme Being who is Shantam, Shivam, Advaitam.

27 Qyayum Mohamed “Education for Tomorrow: Vision of Rabindranath Tagore Asian Studies Review 2016 Vol
40 No 1, 1-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2015.1125441© 2016 Asian Studies
Association of Australia
28 Dasgupta, Uma ibid xxxiii
29 Ibid 135

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6. The objectives of the University shall also include harmonizing the cultures of India, the East and the West by, among other things, the admission of students and appointment of adhyapakas from various regions of India and various countries of the world and by providing incentive thereof. 30
As stated earlier, Tagore was always skeptical about the fragmented education churned out by the British administered Indian universities. In his essay “the Centre of Indian Culture” Tagore outlined his understanding of what he considered to be a complete education-“…our education should be in full touch with our complete life, economical, intellectual, aesthetic, social and spiritual; connected with it by the living bonds of varied co-perations. For true
education is to realize at every step how our training and knowledge have an organic connection with our surroundings.” 31
Therefore, for Tagore complete education would be possible when there was a need to bring together all cultures, races, gender irrespective of geographical locations. Visva Bharati university would be able to provide this sort of inclusive education according to Tagore. He stated without ambiguity, “So, in our centre of learning, we must provide for the coordinated study of all these cultures-the Vedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh and the Zoroastrian. And side by side with them the European- for only then shall we be able
to assimilate the last.” 32
If intellectual and cultural freedom were the overt agenda of Tagore’s formulation of an alternative system of education free of pedagogic shibboleth and intellectual myopia, as defined repeatedly in his many essays on education practices, his literary texts too made a bid to push against the boundaries by reaching towards cultural and intellectual de- territorialization. So referring to Tagore’s novel Gora, Gayatri Spivak states that when Gora
decides to drink water brought in by the Dalit woman Lachmiya, he truly breaks free, not through a shift in epistemic self-positioning but empirical assertiveness. The conclusion of Gora, therefore, illustrates how humanities and social sciences, traditionally clubbed together as “arts” are interlocked in their intertextuality and critical diversity paradigm that are integral to intersectionality studies. So after the protagonist Gora learns that he was an Irish orphan, nurtured in a Hindu home, addressing Anandamoyee, his surrogate mother as his only mother he states, “You have no caste, no-caste-judgement, no contempt-you are nothing but the image of our good! You are my Bharatvasha, indeed…” 33
Conclusion
William Radice, widely known as a Tagore studies scholar and translator had been rather dismissive about Tagore’s education policies and their implementation in Santiniketan and Sriniketan. Referring to numerous adjustments , modifications and complete abandonment of many projects that Tagore accepted, as he understood that running an establishment on the ground could involve issues that could not have been anticipated at the conceptual level. So Radice commented, 
Rational self-awareness of this kind enabled Tagore to make the constantadjustments and compromises that were needed to stop Santiniketan and Sriniketan from becoming, in practice, either mad or dangerous. But those compromises – which have continued relentlessly right up to the present day – are precisely what has undermined the Santiniketan ideal. Both he and (after his death) Visva-Bharati itself were caught in a jam: the ideal itself,
resting as it did on the charisma of one great man, had inherent dangers; the compromise of  30 30 http://www.visvabharati.ac.in/file/VBProspectus2019.pdf
31 Das Sisir The English Writings of Tagore Delhi: Sahitya Akademi vol 2 1996 469
32 Dasgupta, Chakravarty, Mathew Radical Rabindranath Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan 2013 487
33 Spivak 2013 303

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the ideal defeated the institution’s original purpose. Will Visva-Bharati prosper this century?
Worries about its future have certainly not gone away. The greatest educational institutions are the most enduring ones, and those that endure do so because they have an institutional structure and a physical location that are sufficiently flexible and adaptable to ensure their survival. If in fifty years’ time. Visva-Bharati has still found it difficult to achieve this, we may have to conclude that the fundamental problem lay in the Poet’s dream itself. 34
Radice’s negative assessment may well be countered through the projection worldwide of experiential learning, as the ideal method of instruction, spanning both primary education and higher education, now accepted as the feasible model of instruction, globally and locally.
Tagore’s contribution to educational concepts and policies and their implementation in the early part of the twentieth century, affirms the fact that the poet was an outstanding educationist and visionary. He was one of the first intellectuals in colonial India who not only harshly criticized and deconstructed the British system of education followed in Indian schools, but was successful in establishing an alternative system of education, prioritizing the use of native language and literatures, without any governmental financial support. This perhaps suggests that only a poet and visionary could have had the confidence and courage to break free from traditional learning systems, and also battle with tremendous financial liabilities, in order to sustain Visva-Bharati University.
Rabindranath Tagore’s contribution to the Indian education system that brought into focus an alternative inclusive learning system by fusing the epistemic and the empirical in a fine balance, will remain a benchmark in the history of world education policies for all times.

Sanjukta Dasgupta
January 3, 2021

REFERENCES
Das Sisir The English Writings of Tagore Delhi: Sahitya Akademi vol 2 1996
Dasgupta, Uma ed. Tagore Selected writings on Education and Nationalism New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2009
34 WILLIAM RADICE ASIATIC, VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1, JUNE 2010
Asiatic, Vol. 4, No. 1, June 2010 41
Never Not an Educator: Tagore as a Poet-Teacher1
William Radice2
SOAS, University of London, UK P 12.

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Dasgupta Sanjukta, Chakravarty Sudeshna, , Mathew Mary, Radical Rabindranath
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