Issue 10 of Gitanjali and Beyond on ‘Rabindranath Tagore and Rural Reconstruction’ comes with the publication of Dikshit Sinha’s valuable article, ‘Nation State and Welfare: Tagore’s Conceptual Journey and Rural Reconstruction Work’, which traces Rabindranath Tagore’s initial work in the Tagore family estates in and around Shelidah and then at hisinstitution, Sriniketan (Abode of Wellbeing) at Surul, which is the sister institution of his institution at Santiniketan. As a preamble to this issue, we will consider how the Sriniketan project evolved.
In 1889, when Maharshi Debendranath entrusted the management of the Tagore family’s estates in Shelidah, Patisar, Kaligram and Shahjadpur (in present-day Bangladesh) to his youngest son, Rabindranath Tagore, it was a preceptive move as the father had rightly assessed the capability of his sensitive poet offspring to act responsibly in this role. Rabindranath was a family man by this time, having married Bhabatarini (renamed Mrinalini) in 1883 and was the father of a daughter, Madhurilata (Bela) and a son, Rathindranath. Between 1889 and 1895, he would leave his family at the Tagore family home in Calcutta in Jorasanko, and travel through his estates in his grandfather’s budgerow (which he named the Padma), encountering the stark reality of rural India while inspecting the villages and observing village life in riverine Bengal. This experience would prove to be a wakeup call for the poet, who so far, had been largely an urbanite, making only occasional trips from Calcutta to Chandernagore.
It was during this period as a zamindar (landlord) that Rabindranath witnessed the inertia and despondency of his ryots (tenant farmers). In his essay, ‘City and Village’ he recalls his anxiety, ’How to kindle a spark of life in them – that was my problem. It was so difficult to help them because they did not have much respect for themselves’.1 And this is what he set out to do, to encourage self-dependence and instil self-respect – atmasakti which he advocated for his countrymen. He mentions the need for atmasakti in an impassioned speech delivered in July 1904 on Swadeshi Samaj, delivered at the Minerva Theatre in Calcutta. In India, as Tagore affirmed, society/samaj, or the community has been at the core of the social fabric, with decisionmaking and action lying not with the state, but with the people…
Issue 10 – Spring 2025
