Abstract
This essay explores the role of education for human flourishing in a pluralistic society. It illustrates how local projects with global vision, when founded on reason and common interests and put into practice for promoting creative self-expression, can enhance the human experience across cultures and respond well to broader human needs and rights. I will focus on the innovative educational experiment initiated by the great educational reformer Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) at his school for girls and boys in rural Bengal, India, at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The essay is based on an international conference on Tagore’s Philosophy of Education that I co-directed with Martha Nussbaum on March 29–30, 2006 (https://app.box.com/s/ya70siyift07nm00rdde).
Amartya Sen and Kathleen O’Connell were two of the participants. In the essay I draw on Sen’s, O’Connell’s, and Nussbaum’s writings on issues that were featured in the conference. I thank Uma Das Gupta, also a participant in the conference, for her help with historical and biographical references.
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Notes
- 1.
Sen (2005), pp. 90–91.
- 2.
Nussbaum (2013), p. 99.
- 3.
Often during rain, students would join their teachers to hike in the countryside. Far from being viewed as disruptions, these breaks gave the students yet another outlet for a joyous celebration of their presence in nature.
- 4.
- 5.
O’Connell notes: “In fact, these are the same essentials that are being emphasized by some of today’s most innovative thinkers.” O’Connell (2003), p. 81.
- 6.
Professor Alistair MacLeod highlighted this point in commenting on an earlier draft of my essay.
- 7.
Tagore (1927), p. 202.
- 8.
For more on this, see Das Gupta (2021).
- 9.
Tagore’s school is often heralded as one of the early experiments in decolonization. For that to succeed, as Tagore saw it, students needed to decolonize their own thinking first.
- 10.
Nussbaum (2013), p. 87.
- 11.
For more on this, see Chatterjee (2012).
- 12.
Sen (2005), pp. 119–120.
- 13.
- 14.
Here is an example of how a leading liberal democracy can still find it a challenge to pursue this balancing act. In 2011, the then British Prime Minister David Cameron announced in a speech to the annual Munich Security Conference of world leaders that multiculturalism had failed in his country. “Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.” (The Times, London, February 5, 2011, p. 15) Tagore’s advice to Cameron would have been that we need to go beyond both the “passive tolerance” of benign neglect and the “muscular liberalism” of confronting the illiberal other. A viable project of multiculturalism must adequately articulate its professed claims of pluralism and inclusion.
- 15.
Tagore (1922), pp. v–vi.
- 16.
The university also drew a steady stream of distinguished foreign dignitaries. For instance, the famed Chinese Studies Institute at the university attracted General Chiang Kai-sheck and Premier Chou En-lai. Tagore’s ideals of human dignity and shared humanity brought Eleanor Roosevelt to the university soon after her leadership role in the adoption of the landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations in 1948.
- 17.
For more on this, see Chatterjee (2013).
- 18.
Nussbaum (2009), p. 58.
- 19.
In his 2021 book Home in the World: A Memoir, Sen has aptly called Tagore’s school “School Without Walls,” which indicates not only that the classes were held outdoors, but that the school stood for transcending divides and boundaries (Sen 2021).
- 20.
Nussbaum (2013), p. 87.
- 21.
- 22.
Sen (2006).
- 23.
For more on the idea of nested multiple loyalties and how it relates to various strands of nationalism, see Oldenquist (2008).
- 24.
- 25.
Despite their differences on issues such as tradition and modernity, faith and reason, Gandhi was deeply reverential toward Tagore and held his school in high esteem. He visited Tagore at the school several times, often referring to these visits as a “pilgrimage.”
- 26.
- 27.
Nussbaum (2013), p. 109.
- 28.
Nussbaum (2009), p. 58. Ken Robinson, who preached creativity in teaching and who died recently, echoed Tagore’s vision when he said that dance is just as important as math. Robinson was a dynamic and influential proponent of stimulating the creativity of students that he thought is too often squelched by schools in the service of conformity. See Robinson (2001).
- 29.
I thank Abhijit Chatterjee, a former student at the school, for drawing my attention to this point.
- 30.
The other commendable example was Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia in 1978 to remove Pol Pot.
- 31.
The Sikh religious communities in India and abroad are known for their long history of exemplary community services, including supporting victims of natural disasters and, during the coronavirus pandemic, organizing food drives and grocery delivery for older people.
- 32.
Ana Jelnikar notes: “[Tagore] stressed the need to understand local problems in a global perspective and seek solutions in worldwide cooperation.” Jelnikar (2011), pp. 1051–1052.
- 33.
Amita Sen, a notable alumna of Tagore’s school, puts all this well in her biography titled Joy in All Work (1999).
- 34.
Tagore (1931b), p. 162.
- 35.
Tagore (1918), p. 39.
- 36.
- 37.
Tagore (1916), pp. 20–21.
- 38.
Tagore (1918), p. 44.
- 39.
Tagore (1918), p. 43. Stefan Zweig writes in The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European (Viking Press, 1943): “I have seen the great mass ideologies grow and spread before my eyes — Fascism in Italy, National Socialism in Germany, Bolshevism in Russia, and above all else that pestilence of pestilences, nationalism, which has poisoned the flower of our European culture.” On November 11, 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron marked the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I by delivering a forceful rebuke against rising nationalism, calling it a “betrayal of patriotism” and warning against “old demons coming back to wreak chaos and death.” (New York Times, November 11, 2018).
- 40.
Tagore (1918), p. 29.
- 41.
Tagore (1918), p. 22.
- 42.
Martha Nussbaum uses this term for the “circle that defines our humanity.” Nussbaum (1996), p. 9.
- 43.
Gitanjali—a collection of 103 original poems translated to English by Tagore himself and reprinted ten times within a few months after its publication in London in 1912—was a small part of Tagore’s 200-plus books of poetry, dramas, operas, short stories, novels, essays, diaries, and letters, along with more than 2000 songs and 3000 paintings and drawings.
- 44.
- 45.
Burke (2005), p. 86.
- 46.
Tagore (1999), p. 726.
- 47.
- 48.
Sadly, this is one of the reasons why Tagore’s university is routinely passed over today in favor of other universities in India. In addition, since Tagore’s passing, the university has gradually become a conformist hub where Tagore’s ideals are being touted routinely but not vigorously debated or effectively put into practice in meeting the challenges of today’s changing world.
- 49.
The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations (SDG 16) are indicative of a global appetite for an alternate approach to human wellbeing that reflects Tagore’s ideals of a more equitable and sustainable future for all. This approach embodies Tagore’s vision of what we know today as positive peace, which is more than just a simple end of warfare. Positive peace is peace with justice—it is active and transformative. (For more on the prospect of positive peace in today’s troubled world, see Chatterjee 2016).
- 50.
Tagore (1932).
- 51.
Translated by Tagore. Published in Bengali in Tagore (1905).
- 52.
Tagore (1999), p. 726.
- 53.
Tagore (1931a), pp. 19–21 (stanzas ix–x).
- 54.
Tagore (1931b), p. 51.
- 55.
Tagore (1931b), p. 61.
- 56.
Radhakrishnan (1918), p. 174.
- 57.
Schweitzer (1936), pp. 239 and 249.
- 58.
Tagore (1918), p. 5.
- 59.
Translated by Rajib Roy. Published in Bengali in Tagore (1961), p. 253.
- 60.
Bok (1996), p. 43.
- 61.
- 62.
Tagore (1921).
- 63.
“Einstein and Tagore Plumb the Truth,” The New York Times Magazine, August 10, 1930. See also Tagore (1931b), Appendix II, pp. 222–225, for a transcript of the Tagore-Einstein conversation. Einstein, along with Mahatma Gandhi, Romain Rolland, and Kostes Palama, was a co-sponsor of The Golden Book of Tagore, which was a homage to Tagore on his 70th birthday in 1931.
- 64.
Tagore (1913), p. xiii.
- 65.
Some of them, especially Yeats and Pound, were more subdued later on when they realized that their adulation of Tagore as a mystic sage was their own fanciful and one-sided portrayal of a complex and multi-faceted creative genius. For this side of Tagore, they had a limited interest.
- 66.
For more on this, see O’Connell (2003), pp. 74–78.
- 67.
Portions of the essay draw on Chatterjee (2022).
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Chatterjee, D. (2022). Education, Inclusion, and Identity. In: McGregor, J., Navin, M.C. (eds) Education, Inclusion, and Justice. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04013-9_2
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