Abstract
Swati Ganguly, Tagore’s University: A History of Visva-Bharati, 1921–1961 (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2022), xx + 488 pp.
This book provides an engaging account of the first four decades of the visionary university founded by Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan in Bolpur, now in the state of West Bengal in India. Although this is a well-traversed field of research, it is the first time that a monograph of this amplitude, academic precision and insightfulness has been produced on the subject in either English or Bengali. Besides, Ganguly at times deliberately steps beyond the protocols of institutional history to capture through anecdotes the lived experience of individuals associated with the university.
At the inauguration ceremony of the university in 1921 the philosopher Brajendranath Seal glossed the name Visva-Bharati as signifying the arrival of the world (visva) in India (Bharat), which would enable India to present her gift to the world. Phrased differently, the name suggests India’s self-realisation and enrichment through interaction with the rest of the world, on terms set by Indians. As envisaged by Tagore, the university would provide an alternative to the hegemonising tendency of the colonial education system and remedy its pro-city, pro-elite focus, while also counterpoising the restrictive forms of nationalism in India and abroad that Tagore had famously attacked. Ganguly clarifies that Tagore had primarily envisaged his university as a research centre that would bring about a confluence of cultures from all over the world. Ganguly also helpfully cites Tagore’s 1911 essay on the future Banaras Hindu University, his 1916 letter to his son Rathindranath and his opposition to the Non-Cooperation movement in order to demonstrate how the ideal of a harmonious exchange with the West, and other cultures, was integral to his vision of higher education.
Apart from an Introduction and an Epilogue, this book is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1 delineates the founding principles of Visva-Bharati, showing that the proposed university differed from Tagore’s pre-existing ashram school at Santiniketan in being ‘international and interfaith’ (p. 27) in its objective and discarding the exclusionary ideal of a glorious Hindu heritage. Chapter 2 deals with the crucial period from 1921 to 1941, tracing how Visva-Bharati moved towards regimented undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and the conferring of degrees, against Tagore’s initial vision. This chapter gives an account of the initial teachers and administrators, and further registers Tagore’s growing disillusionment with the institution in his last years.
Chapter 3 describes the financial and administrative challenges faced by the university during the period 1941–1950, also throwing light on its associations with Mahatma Gandhi and the reception it had from the new Indian state. Chapter 4 covers the establishment of academic departments and continuing administrative issues. It also notes the beginning of a process whereby Visva-Bharati is politically harnessed by the Indian state as a field of ‘diplomatic cosmopolitanism’ (p. 151). The next three chapters address respectively the original research conducted in the university, especially at the centres for Chinese and Hindi studies, the landmark achievements in the fields of the visual and performing arts, and the chequered fortunes of rural reconstruction work based in Sriniketan. The final chapter catalogues the clubs and annual festivities of the institution and also considers the profiling of Visva-Bharati in the broader Bengali or Indian culture. Ganguly spiritedly refutes the time-honoured allegation that Santiniketan inculcated effeminacy into young men (p. 409). The chapter further glances at the community that grew around the university and capitalised upon its aura. Ganguly’s prose is crisp and lucid throughout. The formidable research that goes into the monograph does not compromise its readability.
The numerous Bengali life writings dealing with Santiniketan and/or Visva-Bharati published over the decades routinely apotheosise the founder and evoke an idealised past of the sylvan retreat, with corresponding laments for its present degeneration. They offer a hagiographic gallery of luminaries formerly associated with the institution and catalogue the natural and architectural wonders of the place. Ganguly’s history admits of the peculiar attractions and utilities of all these tendencies, without succumbing to them or losing analytical clear-sightedness. The monograph, rather than forging a unilinear narrative of decline, shows that disenchantment and disaffection have been part of the university’s career in all its phases.
The monograph includes within the main body of the argument deft sketches of vibrant figures such as the English missionaries C.F. Andrews and William Pearson, the English agronomist Leonard Elmhirst, the French Indologist Sylvain Lévi, the American art historian Stella Kramrisch, the Oxford Sanskritist Moriz Winternitz and the Chinese scholar Tan-Yun Shan, to name only some of Tagore’s foreign collaborators, as relevant to the Visva-Bharati narrative, without impeding the flow of reading. Ganguly glosses culture-specific words such as tapoban, forest hermitage (p. 12) and alpona, designs made with rice paste (p. 122) succinctly within parentheses and keeps the substantive comments in the footnotes remarkably concise. She takes pains to make the monograph accessible to the non-academic and non-specialised reader. However, given its subject and bulk, the book is likely to be confined to researchers. It would be more helpful to such an audience if the book appended longer excerpts from the unpublished evidence it incorporates from the Rabindra Bhavana archives, the National Archives in New Delhi and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
The choice of the timeframe allows Ganguly to be reticent about the more sordid controversies surrounding the university in recent decades, but she shows remarkable forthrightness in her approach to discomfiting issues coming within her stated purview. For example, she gives judicious but incisive accounts of Tagore’s disagreement with Gandhi (pp. 4–6), the critique of Tagore’s vision of Visva-Bharati by the historian Jadunath Sircar (pp. 53–6), Rathindranath’s inglorious exit from the institution (pp. 156–62), and the decline of art and aesthetics owing to bureaucratic apathy (pp. 310–2). Ganguly records boldly the scandals about the private lives of Rathindranath, the painter Benodebehari Mukherjee, the sculptor Ramkinkar Baij and the philosopher Abu Sayeed Ayyub. Ganguly actually includes a brief section called ‘Eros in Santiniketan’ in the final chapter. This may not sit comfortably with the straitlaced codes of institutional history, but it bespeaks the book’s commitment to the greater cultural life of the institution. The place of Visva-Bharati and Santiniketan in popular imaginary is a subject worth taking up for a full-fledged project in the future.