Visva-Bharati

December 22, 1921: Inaugurating Visva-Bharati
The formal inauguration of Visva-Bharati took place on December 22, 1921, exactly twenty years after the founding of the Brahmacharyashram. The motto of the university reflected the global scope of the undertaking: yatra visvam bhavati ekanidam--- "Where the world meets in one nest." The imagery of the "nest" was one of Tagore's favourite symbols for a dwelling which was simple, open-ended, organic and harmonious with its environment, as contrasted with the "cage", which implied a technological civilization which was costly, complicated, narcissistic and cut off from its surroundings.
At the opening ceremony, Rabindranath turned over the land, buildings, library, copyright for his books and interest from the Nobel Prize money. He spoke of the radical changes in civilization and the need for new forms of education. Visva-Bharati was to be an experiment in which individuals of different civilizations and traditions learned to live together, not on the basis of nationalism but through a wider relationship of humanity. The constitution designated Visva-Bharati as an Indian, Eastern and Global cultural centre whose goals were:
a) To study the mind of Man in its realisation of different aspects of truth from diverse points of view.
b) 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.
c) To approach the West from the standpoint of such a unity of the life and thought of Asia.
d) 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 of ideas between the two hemispheres.
e) 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.
At an academic level, Rabindranath proposed the creation of an autonomous national centre which would connect the various streams of Indian culture. In aid of this he brought together scholars from various parts of India in a community setting to carry out their scholarship and act as resource persons for the Vidya Bhavan students. Though the components were predominately Bengali and Hindu, the number of scholarly works on a wide range of religious and cultural topics attests to the wide-ranging nature of the Vidya Bhavan program. By 1924, the academic curriculum included modern and classical languages, logic, philosophy, political economy, sociology and science. The Visva-Bharati staff and students came from different parts of India and the world.
The artistic facet of Visva-Bharati seems to have most fully achieved Tagore's ideals, and Visva-Bharati became nationally known as a centre for the arts. In developing a set of aesthetic standards, Rabindranath drew upon some of the most highly cultured minds in India: his own, and those of Abanindranath and Gaganendranath Tagore, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Nandalal Bose and others. A definite Santiniketan style developed, which was recognized throughout India and influenced the standards by which other works of art were evaluated.
At the height of the Non-Cooperation movement, Rabindranath stretched the Jorasanko extended-family model to its limit and invited creative individuals from around the world to seek those elements in each other's cultures, which would harmonize and afford maximum development of the human personality. The extended-family model represented a shift from European models whose chief goal was intellectual. Essential to Tagore’s model was the development of human sympathy through community life and friendship in the presence of nature.
In February of 1922, with the help of Leonard Elmhirst, a British agronomist and about twelve students, the Centre for Rural Reconstruction was opened in Sriniketan. The stated objectives were to make the villages "self-reliant and self-respectful, acquainted with the cultural traditions of their country and competent to make use of modern resources for improvement of their physical, intellectual and economic conditions." There was also the unstated goal of engaging bhadralok students in constructive nation-building--as opposed to political agitation, which Tagore considered a misdirected use of valuable energy--through the breaking down of upper-caste biases regarding manual labour, working closely with the lower castes and performing such tasks as emptying latrine buckets. .
During the next few years, numerous educational, cultural and developmental initiatives were undertaken through Elmhirst's pragmatic insistence upon increased crop production and Tagore's equally strong insistence that each village must be studied and treated as a whole if long-lasting results were to be gained.
In conclusion, the years between the inauguration of Tagore’s Brahma-charyashram in 1901and the founding of Visva-Bharati and Sriniketan in the early 1920s were years of interrelated personal and institutional transformation. As Tagore's "constitutional" letter reveals, his central concerns--in additional to spiritual ones--in the initial phases of the Brahmacharyashram were to train Bengali leaders and help develop a sense of national (at this time for him still largely Bengali) pride. This most political phase of the school reached its peak during the Swadeshi Movement, after which Tagore became disillusioned with political agitation organized along aggressive Hindu nationalist lines. Tagore's own broadening outlook was reflected in the 1907-12 initiatives at Santiniketan, which included a non-sectarian orientation to religion and culture, rural initiatives, coeducation and a democratic structure. Tagore's disillusioning participation in the Swadeshi Movement had conditioned his response to Gandhi's educational and political goals and means, which he perceived to be narrow, authoritarian and potentially violent. Thus, at the height of Non-Cooperation, Tagore rejected political solutions to fundamental problems in favour of social and educational ones.
With the inauguration of Visva-Bharati, an “Indian Centre of Culture”, Tagore stretched his imagination to its fullest in order to create a broad educational model that emphasized global interconnectedness and harmony. Aesthetic education, with training in music and fine arts, was given the highest priority as a vehicle for developing national self-expression. The academic side included co-ordinated study of many cultures: the Vedic, the Puranic, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Islamic, the Sikh, and the Zoroastrian, along with the folk cultures...all as a means of understanding the psychology of India and its underground currents. At an even broader level, Visva-Bharati extended its linguistic and cultural links with other parts of Asia to become an "Eastern University"; and its identity with all humanity in its activities as a "Global Learning Centre." Tagore's desire to overcome social and material poverty, and to break down the barriers between the urban elites and the uneducated rural population, were expressed through the rural reconstruction ventures at Sriniketan.
The growth and achievements that were accomplished at Santiniketan between 1901 and 1922 are especially impressive when other educational models are considered. In fact, is difficult to come up with other educators or schools that were envisioning pluralistic education in the manner that Tagore was. Tagore’s detractors would point to the gap between his educational vision and the way that it was worked out, and Tagore himself would have been the first to acknowledge the shortcomings and problems that existed at Santiniketan from its early days. Yet it is the achievements that stand out and deserve out consideration. As one of the world’s finest nature poets, Tagore one of the first to argue for a humane educational system, which was in touch with the environment and aimed at overall development of the personality. From its earliest years, Santiniketan became a model for vernacular instruction and the development of Bengali textbooks; as well, it offered one of the earliest coeducational programs in South Asia. The establishment of Visva-Bharati and Sriniketan led to pioneering efforts in many directions, including models for distinctively Indian higher education and mass education, as well as pan-Asian and global cultural exchange.
Looking at Tagore's educational model from today’s perspective, we find that it addresses so many of the concerns and dilemmas that we are presently concerned with. It continues to offer a creative and flexible model of education within multi-racial, multi-lingual and multi-cultural situations. It also takes into consideration the difficulties of education amidst conditions of acknowledged economic discrepancy and political imbalance. These qualities lend a special vitality and relevance to Tagore's approach to education today.