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.
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Victory to Him, whose voice thunders forth Truth. Whose right arm smites the unrighteous, Whose guidance leads mortals across death! (chanted by the devotees to Bhairava [1])… The issue of Sustainability and Secularism was scheduled to be published in the summer of 2023 as we felt it was a crucial subject in today’s world which faces the devastating impact of the climate crisis and the rise of religious intolerance across the world.
In his essay, ‘Wealth and Welfare’, Rabindranath says, Property is [the] medium for the expression of our personality…. “Our highest social training is to make our property the richest expression of the best in us, of that which is universal, of our individuality whose greatest illumination is love. As individuals are the units that build the community, so property is the unit of wealth that makes for communal prosperity when it is alive to its function. Our wisdom lies not in destroying separateness of units, but in maintaining the spirit of unity in its full strength.’ [1]. 623- 624, 1930)
When Natasha van Bentum first wrote to me about her husband, Henri van Bentum’s 100 Mandalas which have been structured as reflections on Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali poems, I was intrigued. I asked Natasha to send me samples of this project, and she was willing to send me the entire opus of Organiverse and Gitanjali.
In February 2019 the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs) at Edinburgh Napier University collaborated with the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) and held an International Conference on ‘Samaj and Freedom(s): The relevance of Gandhi and Tagore’s Ideas Today’. We had thought provoking and insightful reflections on the subject from several established academics, educationists and social workers in the field, presenting on the subject.
We stand at the crossroads today at a critical point of time in human history, as scientists tell us that the pandemic which is having a devastating effect on human populations across the world, is the result of thoughtless planetary degradation which has accelerated climate change.
Rabindranath Tagore’s fourth novel, Ghare Baire (1916, The Home and the World, 1919, published the same year as Chaturanga), has had its centenary in 2016 and still continues to remain relevant and of scholarly interest.
Born in 1861, Rabindranath Tagore’s life spanned the Romantic and Modern periods. He saw the devastation of World War 1, responded with alarm to the growth of nationalism, militarisation and aggressive expansionism in the inter-War years and was pained to witness the outbreak of World War II.
When Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a little boy, he longed to step out into the wide world and experience nature, but his early memories are of confinement within Jorasanko,the sprawling Tagore family home in Calcutta.