By the time of Tagore’s 1920 visit to the Netherlands, his favourite play Dakghar had been translated into English and Dutch as The Post Office 1 and De brief van den koning, in 1912 and 1916 respectively.2 This play won international acclaim and was soon staged in other countries and different languages. Its theme became even more relevant in the context of peaceful resistance in the face of despotism:
Dakghar is one of many works, including several plays, wherein “Tagore uses the notion of freedom to decry narrow nationalistic boundaries, governed by myopic ambition and greed […] which bring out different facets of his broader abstraction of freedom.”3
In 1920 the very purpose of his lecture tour was to promote education on an ever more ambitious scale, one unheard of in modern history as regards any private citizen’s initiative: to build an institution called “Viswa Bharati”. Unlike any institution Tagore knew first hand – including London University College in his youth, and later Oxford University as guest speaker – its mandate was (and remains) this: to foster a free exchange of knowledge systems that, in his view, belong to all of mankind. Similar ideas have since evolved in many places, be they inspired by Tagore as in Dartington Hall4 or otherwise (think of the Wikipedia foundation and demands by scientists, that they be allowed to freely share their research findings rather than seeing them subject to profit oriented patent laws).
So the very name “Viswa Bharati denotes Tagore’s hopes for the success of his most ambitious project, namely to find supporters that would guide its evolution into nothing short of a World University; and at the same time adhere to its uniquely poetic motto: “Where the world makes a home in a single nest”.5
More specifically, the university’s mission statement reiterates Tagore’s vision: “Visva-Bharati represents India where she has her wealth of mind which is for all. Visva-Bharati acknowledges India’s obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India’s right to accept from others their best.”6
This context for the 1920 lecture-cum-fundraising tour poses the question what Tagore may have regarded as “best” for the institutions he built and inspired, in terms of knowledge, experience and ethical standards worth sharing and defending, while questioning any assumption in the critical spirit required by academic institutions.
The answer cannot be found without considering his conviction that good education integrates many disciplines and domains; informally for young children, then with proper instruction by trained teachers7 – all this without losing sight of that we now associate with “lifelong education”:
“A most important truth, which we are apt to forget, is that a teacher can never truly teach unless he is still learning himself. A lamp can never light another lamp unless it continues to burn its own flame.”8
While dealing with practical and funding issues he never tired to remind his listeners and readers of shared values that needed to be inculcated from an early age even in the face of class-based peer pressure: as part of a learning process that does sideline scientific nor overlook personal differences. Beyond the struggle to end injustice, he saw the need for constructive, persistent and peaceful struggles to establish and protect civil liberties and human rights for all world citizens, locally just as internationally:
“When our self is illuminated with the light of love, then the negative aspect of its separateness with others loses its finality, and then our relationship with others is no longer that of competition and conflict, but of sympathy and co-operation.”9
A Dutch press report highlights Tagore’s “silver voice” that conveyed his profound admiration for the songs of Bengal’s village mystics, besides the deep and lasting impression his personality left on listeners who attended his lectures in large numbers.10
He spoke as a private citizen among peers, not as delegate on behalf of any institution or group, and that in a large venue built as meeting ground for a “Free Congregation” (Vrije Gemeente). Like many of us today he had reasons to be alarmed by the policies adopted by the growing trend of nation states to “legitimize” the oppression of large sections of their own populations – not merely “minorities” or “immigrants” – more often than not as to justify self-interested aggression against other states. Then as now this has caused famines, disease and mutual suspicion among populations of different faiths that previously coexisted peacefully be it as states with shared interests like natural resources, trade, or as neighbours whose mutual reliance prevailed over the ideological and theological considerations now used to “divide and rule”.
In Tagore’s younger days this had already resulted in violent confrontations, so for him these were major issues long before and after his 1920 lecture tour. His unwillingness to be coopted by the elite – and thereby to remain a mere onlooker, even beneficiary – when something needed to be done to prevent even greater suffering – is evident from writings that include the lectures first published in 1916 under the title Nationalism.
Given the challenges to human rights even to the world’s largest democracies – in the very year when we should celebrate the foundation of the United Nations 75 years ago, on the ruins of World War II – Tagore’s warnings are worth pondering again:
“And the idea of the Nation is one of the most powerful anaesthetics that man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion – in fact it can feel dangerously resentful if it is pointed out.11
Similar sentiments fuel demands by concerned citizens, to remove monuments of former “national heroes”.12
Going by the difficult choices he faced both in the public and private spheres, “freedom” was more than an ideal or abstract concept for Rabindranath Tagore. As member of the land owning zamindar class he had reminded his son that their privilege was inherited and depended on the exploitation and further marginalization of rural communities under their control. This sounds all too familiar in the context of current debates on “meritocracy” vs. “inherent wealth”. We should hardly be surprised given the frank admission by global trading agencies that profitability for many follows the assumption that there may be “no trade without war, no war without trade.”13
Tagore’s irrepressible sense of freedom in the personal sphere is evident from many of the poems he hand collected and translated for the benefit of foreign friends (whose enthusiasm led to his nomination for the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature), soon published under the title Gitanjali; and even more explicitly in a letter written a few years later, addressed to his friend, the poetess Victoria Ocampo whom he had sought to honour by using her name in the Sanskrit equivalent “Vijaya”:
“Whenever there is the least sign of the nest becoming a jealous rival of the sky [,] my mind, like a migrant bird, tries to take … flight to a distant shore.” 14
Seen in the light of the above, like the successful Dutch staging and illustrated publication of his favourite play “The Post Office”, it hardly surprises that his passionate appeals for greater cooperation caused a sensation. This shows the value ascribed to the range of topics he covered during the 1920 lecture tour. Yet Tagore chose to inaugurate this tour with a talk titled “Some village mystics of Bengal”, on 23 September 1920 in the monumental “free congregation” hall into the prime venue for popular music when the City of Amsterdam bought it in the 1960s, since then known all over the world by its new name Paradiso. This choice can hardly be understood without taking the sister institution for Viswa Bharati into account, the centre for rural reconstruction named “Sriniketan” which is yet to acquire the status he hoped for, and reflected in songs wherein he expresses gratitude for everything he received and learned from local people.
“Tagores bezoek maakte diepe indruk en bracht in Nederland een ware rage teweeg.”15
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- For its continuing relevance and a synopsis see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post_Office_(play) [↩]
- The six colour plates displayed here are sized 10 by 10 cm in the Utrecht edition. The were created by Rie Cramer (1887-1977), a Dutch writer and prolific illustrator of children’s literature. To help fugitives she joined the resistance against nazi occupation in the 1940s and published anti-German verses in Het Parool, “the largest underground resistance newspaper in the Netherlands”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rie_Cramer [↩] - Bhaswati Ghosh in “Freedom in Tagore’s Plays — an essay”, Parabaas Rabindranath Section:
https://www.parabaas.com/rabindranath/articles/pBhaswati.html [↩] - Schumacher College, the International Centre for Ecological Studies regarded as “the legacy of the Elmhirts who travelled to India and were deeply influenced by the poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore. ‘In the 1920’s the Elmhirsts had the same concerns as we have today – quality of life, the purpose of existence and the values which transcend mere material prosperity.'” – David Nicholson-Lord in “An Earth Academy”
https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/learning-resources/an-earth-academy [↩] - English translation of Viswa Bharati University’s motto, Sanskrit Yatra Visvam Bhavatyekanidam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visva-Bharati_University [↩] - Official website http://visvabharati.ac.in/index.html [↩]
- The international headquarters of Montessori Education AMI has a letter addressed to Dr. Maria Montessori requesting her guidance prompted by their personal meeting in New York. [↩]
- Visva-Bharati and its institutions–Santiniketan 1961, p. 28 [↩]
- Tagore in his foreword to S. Radhakrishnan’s The Philosophy of Upanishads quoted by Bhaswati Ghosh
https://www.parabaas.com/rabindranath/articles/pBhaswati.html [↩] - “‘Met zilveren stemgeluid leest dr. Tagore de rede, die hij te voren op papier heeft gebracht. Hij vertelt van de dorpsmystici ginds in Bengalen, van mannen en vrouwen wier godsdienst het Hindoeïsme is en die in religieuze devotie het dagelijksche gebeuren rondom hen vertolken in liederen van zeldzame bekoring.’ Tagores bezoek maakte diepe indruk en bracht in Nederland een ware rage teweeg.
https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/stukken/immigranten/tagore-amsterdam/ [↩] - p. 63 in the 2010 paperback edition of Nationalism
https://www.worldcat.org/title/nationalism/oclc/1099200491 [↩] - Here in the Netherlands also those associated with the slave trade and genocide, e.g. in a recent article titled “Slavernij en wreedheid bezoedelen Hollandse helden” by Sander van Walsum (de Volkskrant, 16 June 2020)
https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/slavernij-en-wreedheid-bezoedelen-hollandse-helden~bfb02762/ [↩] - Careers in the Dutch VOC trading corporation were certainly not hindered by proclamations by its overseas representatives, as illustrated by the motto flaunted by a particularly notorious 17th century overseas administrator (and national “hero” until quite recently), Jan Pieterszoon Coen who regarded war and trade as inseparable: “No trade without war, no war without trade”; quoted in a book review of Koloniale oorlogen in Indonesië. Vijf eeuwen verzet tegen vreemde overheersing by Piet Hagen: “Jan Pieterszoon Coen vatte dat handzaam samen in zijn devies: ‘Geen handel zonder oorlog en geen oorlog zonder handel.’” (Co Welgraven in Trouw, 24 juni 2018)
https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/piet-hagen-schreef-een-indrukwekkend-boek-over-de-koloniale-geschiedenis-van-indonesie~ba1798b9/ [↩] - Rabindranath Tagore quoted by Amartya Sen in The Argumentative Indian (London 2005), p. 103 [↩]
- Website of the Amsterdam city archive, “the largest – and many say the most beautiful – city archive in the world.” (post updated 18 September 2020)
https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/stukken/immigranten/tagore-amsterdam [↩]