Using a Poet’s Archive to Write the History of a University: Rabindranath Tagore and Visva-Bharati

Abstract

The poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) was the founder of an institution that we know today as Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan in rural southern Bengal. The making of this institution was central to his concerns to the end of his life. He offered it as an alternative to the colonial system of education then prevailing in India. Starting it as an experimental school in 1901 he added an international university and an institute of rural reconstruction in 1921–1922. It was an education to bring city and village together by combining traditional knowledge with scientific experimentation. This endeavour is a relatively unexplored dimension of Tagore’s biography. In this presentation I shall examine how the making of this institution was a source of dialectical tension in Tagore’s life, and how he engaged with this tension in thought and action.