A Poet's Ashram

The remarkably creative life Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) lived has long been an area of scholarly enquiry. Yet, surprisingly, his role as the founder of an experimental ashram community remains unexplored. A Poet's Ashram retrieves his idea of his ashram through an exploration of his writings on the institutions he built. The ashram community Tagore endeavoured to create in Santiniketan during the period 1901-1941 was his response to the question of modernity. Through his effort to reinvent the ancient Indian ideal of the ashram, he articulated his idea of a mode of collective living that was meant to be grounded in a set of ethical values derived from India's civilizational inheritance. This book traces the history of how his ashram school evolved into a community that practised egalitarianism, inclusiveness and creativity through its daily existence. It explores a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses and Tagore's engagement with them in order to situate that idea within its historical context, a critical juncture in the history of modern India and the world. This book's reading of his project unravels its anti-colonial underpinnings and the commonalities it shared with some of the other similar experimental communities that challenged illiberal ideologies and power relations during the early twentieth century. Meticulously researched and perceptively written, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of history, political science, culture studies and postcolonial studies. It will also be of interest to educationists, educators and those interested in colonial modernity, modern Indian history, philosophy of education, institution building, peace, inclusivity and sustainability.

Sukalyan Chanda is Assistant Professor of English at Gushkara Mahavidyalaya, Gushkara, West Bengal, India. He has been a recipient of the Inlaks Research Travel Grant (2011) awarded by Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation. He grew up and still lives in Santiniketan where Rabindranath Tagore had founded his ashram community.

1. Re-inventing the Idea of Ashram: Cultural Contexts 2. In Search of a 'Spiritual Culture': Rabindranath's Ashram and the Politics of Self-respect 3. "The Message of the Forest": Santiniketan and the Idea of Tapovana 4. Beyond National Boundaries: Visva-Bharati and the Question of Selfhood 5. Towards Swaraj: Ideals of Freedom at Rabindranath's Ashram Epilogue