The Santiniketan Ashram as Rabindranath Tagore's Politics

This thesis is an exploration of the politics of Rabindranath Tagore through a critical examination of his educational pedagogy at Santiniketan ashram, arguing that the latter was the workshop of his political ideas. I develop the argument in two ways. Firstly, I contextualize the Santiniketan ashram within the network of initiatives which arose in early twentieth-century India as a result of the discontent with the colonial system of education and aimed to reform it. The distinctiveness of the Santiniketan ashram, as occupying the middle ground between social change and political agitation, is demonstrated by comparing and contrasting it with educational institutes that were either tied exclusively to the project of social reform, like the Kanya Mahavidyalay at Jalandhar, or inextricably linked to institutional politics such as The Dawn Society in Calcutta. Secondly, using the post-partition politics of Bengal as a springboard, my study investigates Tagore's political lexicon conveyed through his deployment of the keywords: 'swadeshbhakti', 'mukti' and 'personality.' I undertake a close textual analysis of the relevant primary and secondary sources, written in Bangla and English, to determine Tagore's brand of politics. I argue that Tagore disagreed with the dominant strand of nationalist politics which placed the concerns of the nation-state, and its autonomy from colonial rule, at its core. Instead, Tagore used his fundamental opposition to the idea of a nation to chart out a societally engineered politics which placed the village at its heart. Tagore's alternative politics was rooted in the virtuous relationships that individuals shared with one another within the framework of a deeply personal and interactive 'samaj' (society). In contrast to the scholarship that views the Santiniketan ashram primarily as an educational endeavour which signalled Tagore's retreat from politics, I argue that the ashram which Tagore set up in 1901 was a platform for formulating and practising his political ideas.