Tagore's Abode Of Peace

SHATINIKETAN, The Abode of Peace


The system of education as it prevails today was introduced by the British Government sometime in 1835 with the sole purpose of producing Indian clerks to serve their British masters. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa had correctly described that type of education as ‘mere bread winning education’. Certainly there was no opportunity for the student either to learn or to expand his mind. In 1857 the Government of India founded three universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. This type of education, which killed the inherent talent of the student and his desire to inquire and explore, weighed heavily on the mind of Ravindranath Tagore for quite sometime, right from his younger days.

As a child Tagore hated going to school which he found suffocating and oppressive. The school appeared like a prison for him for he was totally restrained from doing what he wanted to do. It is this early experience of school going which shaped his idea of education when he grew up. His idea of a school was a place where the child is free to express himself completely and develop its own creative thinking. He felt that childhood should be a time for self-learning outside the rigid and restricted discipline of the schooling system evolved by the Britishers. He believed in a system where the teacher should first love the child and help him to develop his curiosity instinct. Tagore felt that the prevailing system killed the natural desire of the child to be creative and that could be developed only in the midst of natural surroundings. His idea of founding such a school was to locate it far away from the maddening crowd wherein peace prevailed and it would be an Abode of Peace—Shantiniketan. This seed-thought germinated and fructified when he founded his own school in 1901, Shantiniketan, near Bolpur in the District of Birbhum, West Bengal.

Tagore had a great fascination for our ancient Gurukula system of education wherein nature in all its pristine glory and splendour played a decisive role in moulding the child and develop its creative talent. He always remembered his early train journeys in the West in the rural side which left an indelible impression of inward joy and peace when he was in the midst of Nature. This type of environment, he felt, was possible only when the school was founded in the midst of nature in the form of a Gurukula. He always held the firm view that education is a universal subject for promotion and whatever new ways are explored to promote education in its correct perspective, it should be open to one and all without any geographic boundary. He said “Our forefathers did spread a single white carpet where the entire world was cordially invited to take its seat in amity and good fellowship. This should be the spirit with which we should welcome the whole world to join us in our new venture in education”. This was the spirit with which he founded the Shantinikethan which eventually blossomed into the Vishwabharathi University in 1921. He aptly chose the mantra from the Rigveda -- “Yatra Vishwam Bhavati Eka Needam” as the motto of the University which means ‘Where the world becomes one single nest’.




Tagore started his novel experiment about 110 years back, sometime in 1890, in a building called ‘Shanthinikethan’ built in 1864 by his father Sri Devendranath Tagore. The school was started in this building on a modest scale and the school was named ‘Brahmachryashram’. At the entrance to the building are prominently displayed
Four lines in Bengali which convey the essence of the Upanishadic message
‘Anandam Brahma’. The convocation of the University is held even now in the mango grove attached to the campus –a University to establish which Tagore dedicated his entire life including the money he received as Nobel Prize in 1913.

The Brahmacharyashramam was started with only five students at Shantinikethan. It was the result of Tagore’s reaction to the then prevailing joyless and mechanical system of education, that too enclosed in the four walls of the building. For Tagore, the most important limbs of education were Sympathy and Symphony. By Sympathy, he meant a perfect understanding among human beings leading to community living, universal peace and harmony. By Symphony, he meant living in communion with nature so that nature’s beauty without being ravaged could be unlocked. Tagore felt that that the then existing system of education flowing out of Western culture was not creative but only competitive. It provided only nice looking buildings, well equipped books and rigid curriculum which suffocated the student.

Tagore wanted the University to become an international meeting place of minds and invited scholars from both the East and the West to come and enrich its life. Under his patronage, the Shantinikethan campus became a significant centre for Buddhist studies and a haven for artists and musicians. It was here that the art of Batik painting, brought over from its Indonesian homeland, was naturalized in India. Our own oriental art, The Rangoli, received tremendous impetus at the University and the art of Rangoli was made a subject of special study. His experiment in founding Shantinikethan attracted many Western scholars like C.F Andrews, W.W.Pearson, and Leonard Emhirst. Even Gandhiji was all praise for the new venture when he visited Shantinikethan with a set of students from South Africa. When it became a University, several institutions like Kala Bhavan, Sangitha Bhavan, Shipa Bhavan etc came up and got merged with the Vishwabharathi University.

Today Vishwabharathi is a world university, a preparatory ground for the student to reach a distant goal where the world makes a home in a single nest-
‘Yatra Vishwam Bhavati Eka Needam’. Tagore was a world citizen, a Vishwa Manava


B.M.N.Murthy

ARTICLE NO. 560---SHANTI NIKETHAN
Created: Sunday, April 4, 2010 8:17 AM