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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The Santiniketan ashram as Rabindranath Tagore’s politics Banerjee, Ankita Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 24. Sep. 2021 THE SANTINIKETAN ashram As Rabindranath Tagore’s PoliTics Ankita Banerjee King’s College London 2020 This thesis is submitted to King’s College London for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy List of Illustrations Table 1: No of Essays written per year between 1892 and 1936. ................................................. 23 Table 1.1: No of essays published in each of the journals named on the right. ............................ 24 Image 1: Facsimile of the Rakhi song composed by Tagore. Source: The Calcutta Municipal Gazette (September 13, 1941). ...................................................................................................... 76 Image 2: Rabindranath Tagore, (Second from Right) sharing stage with his students, for the play; Dakghar at the Vichitra House, 1917. Source: On the Edges of Time (1958) ........................... 133 Table 2: The daily routine of the staff and students at Santiniketan in 1929 (RBA)…………...139 Image 3: Open-air classes at the Santiniketan ashram, circa (1904) (Rabindra Bhavan Reprography Section, reproduced with permission). .................................................................. 139 Image 4: Bharat Mata painted by Abanindranath Tagore in 1905. Source: The Outlook Magazine online edition (February 2019). .................................................................................................. 166 1 Table of Contents List of Illustrations ........................................................................................................................ 1 Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 7 Situating the study........................................................................................................................... 9 The Problems ................................................................................................................................ 11 a) Of treating Tagore as an educationist: ................................................................................... 11 b) Of addressing the ‘political’: ................................................................................................. 13 c) Of bringing Visva Bharati within the ambit of analysis: ....................................................... 17 Sources .......................................................................................................................................... 19 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 25 A note on concepts as discussed in the chapters ........................................................................... 27 a) Swadeshbhakti through dharmashiksha ................................................................................ 30 b) Mukti for humanity ................................................................................................................ 32 c) ‘Universal person’ versus identity ......................................................................................... 34 Chapter I: Tagore’s ideas on education: The Santiniketan ashram in comparison with the Kanya Mahavidyalay and The Dawn Society .......................................................................... 37 Discontent with education in India ............................................................................................... 37 Education as a socio-political category ......................................................................................... 40 Movements to reform education in India ...................................................................................... 42 The importance of the ashram in alternative education initiatives ............................................... 46 Locating ‘the ashram’ within the debate of the ‘social’ versus the ‘political’ .............................. 50 The Kanya Mahavidyalaya (KMV) and The Dawn Society in comparison with Santiniketan .... 57 Tagore’s ideas on education.......................................................................................................... 63 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 68 Chapter II: Santiniketan ashram’s political context: Swadeshi Bengal of the early twentieth century ......................................................................................................................................... 70 Tagore’s political context ............................................................................................................. 70 a) Bankim’s influence on the Swadeshi movement vis-à-vis Tagore’s distance from him....... 71 b) Tagore and the Brahmo Samaj: Links and disagreements .................................................... 79 2 c) Tagore and the national movement: association and withdrawal .......................................... 81 The Nation versus the village: Tagorean Samaj ........................................................................... 84 Tagore and Boycott: Education’s association with politics .......................................................... 87 Swaraj for the nation and Mukti for humanity: Tagore’s views ................................................... 90 The Santiniketan ashram and Swadeshi Bengal ........................................................................... 95 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 98 Chapter III: Dharmashiksha and swadeshbhakti at the Santiniketan ashram .................... 100 ‘Dharma’, ‘Jivan Devata’ and the ‘guru’ at Santiniketan .......................................................... 102 The practice of ‘spirituality’ in the ashram as distinguished from religious instruction ............ 107 Dharmashiksha and Tapovan ..................................................................................................... 110 Swadeshbhakti as Tagore’s alternative to nationalism ............................................................... 114 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 123 Chapter IV: Mukti versus swaraj: Freedom at the Santiniketan ashram ............................ 125 Mukti as Tagore’s ideal ............................................................................................................... 126 Education and freedom ............................................................................................................... 130 Freedom through the pedagogical practices of the ashram ......................................................... 134 Chhatraswaraj versus Chhatrashashantantra: Freedom versus obedience to discipline .......... 144 Compromises on freedom ........................................................................................................... 147 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 154 Chapter V: From ‘identities’ to ‘persons’: Tagore’s notion of unique individuals at the Santiniketan ashram ................................................................................................................. 155 Tagore’s notion of ‘supreme person(s)’ ...................................................................................... 156 Tagore’s opposition to ‘identity’ ................................................................................................ 158 Tagore’s distance from his ‘bhadralok’ background .................................................................