CHAPTER 8

TAGORE ON THE RIGHT EDUCATION FOR INDIA

Rabindranath Tagore is one of the foremost thinkers of the world who had deeply contemplated on what education should be in general and what kind of an education system India should have for its people – both for children and adults and for both the sexes. He was born in the middle of the nineteenth century in the colonial period (1861), when Macaulay’s dictum about Indians who would be Indian only in appea- rance but English in education, culture and temperament was prevalent. Tagore refused to be moulded in this philosophy. He also offered a very Indian alternative not only in theory but also in practice. Tagore was born in a family whose fortunes emerged from trading with British merchants. But the Tagores quickly developed into one of the most enlightened and educated families of colonial India. Rabindranath never suffered from any inferiority complex vis-à-vis English education. His grandfather, Dwarakanath Tagore was the greatest Indian entrepreneur of his time who mastered not only the English language but also English law. He was felicitated by Queen Victoria herself during his tour of England. Max Muller was astonished at his command over western and Indian music. He was the most able lieutenant of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj and the harbinger of the Bengal Renaissance. Rabindranath’s father, Debendranath Tagore, a polar opposite personality, revived the Brahmo Samaj after Roy’s death and gave a new life and meaning to Brahmo congregations. He was given the title ‘Maharshi’ (meaning great saint) by his countrymen for his selfless service for good causes and for a saintly disposition. A great lover of Indian literature, religion and tradition, his home was the place of discussions and experimentations on new Indian literature, drama, poetry, etc. The house was a meeting place of the ablest and the best of Indian personalities. In this discussion on Tagore’s thought on the right education for India, we shall place before the readers Tagore’s views on education for the people, the role of the mother-tongue in education, women’s education in India, his experiments in the field of education at Santiniketan, his concept of university, with Visva-Bharati as a model, etc. We shall try to find out how over the time Tagore’s thoughts evolved and matured.

MOTHER-TONGUE AND EDUCATION FOR THE PEOPLE When he was only sixteen, Tagore wrote that the kind of education in vogue in Bengal had given the so-called educated people some rudimentary ideas of science and philosophy and a kind of knowledge in history which taught them only the names of some kings and some dates. This knowledge could not improve their culture or the faculty of thinking independently.1

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In 1883, some leaders in Bengal were contemplating to organise a ‘national fund’ for uplift of the people. Rabindranath made a scathing attack on these people. He asked, ‘Who are the organisers and how are they going about it? Those who neglect their mother-tongue, who do not know their mother-tongue properly, who want to show off their knowledge of English are now organisers of this fund. The name itself is in English - national fund. Its objectives have been propagated in English…yet they claimed “the people are our allies, we are doing it for the people, we have faith in the people!”’. He added, ‘The people do not understand your language, your fulmination in English make them dumbfounded. If you really love them, you should learn their language first.’2 In the same essay, he wrote that the British Government was offering some self- governance in some spheres like giving alms… ‘But if we can prepare ourselves for this, then we can accept it without any reservation and the Government has to grant it freely. But how can we prepare ourselves?’ ‘The only answer’, he wrote, ‘would be through propagation of education. If what was known to two or three per cent of the people were propagated among the masses, and the educated were pressed into service for such propagation, then the education net could be broadened. What you have learnt in English, express that into Bengali, let Bengali literature flourish, let Bengali schools spread out all over. Education in English cannot spread all over the country. You, a handful of people, are asking for something with fear ...let the whole nation demand it... this is possible only by establishing schools and not by political agitation.’3 On his second voyage to Europe (1890), Tagore was highly impressed with the education of women in England and in the Continent and wrote that with the advent of the new times, joint families were disintegrating in India ; this called for a change in the status of women. They could no longer be soft domestic beings with broadness of heart, they would have to stand upright and be enthusiastic companions to their husbands.4 He further wrote that if women’s education was not introduced, the relation between husband and wife in the educated families would get jeopardised5. It is to be remembered that the idea of women’s education had not yet then gained ground in India. Iswarchandra Vidyasagar had initiated such education in 1858 but the idea was still almost at a nascent stage.6 In 1892, Tagore was invited by the Rajshahi District Bengali Association to speak on education. It was his first detailed essay on education and is considered as a landmark observation on the dichotomy of the then existing educational practice in India. This is an essay on people’s education as well as an argument for education in the mother-tongue. His proposition was that Indian children, while their imagination should be aroused, were forced to learn a foreign language which was very different from their mother-tongue. It killed their inquisitiveness. And when they had somewhat learnt the language, they could not think as independent beings. They became more dependent on rote learning. If it had been the other way round, they could have developed their imagination in their childhood and when they had reached a certain maturity, they could have easily mastered the foreign language which, of course, was English. Tagore further said ‘if education through

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