Tag Archives: Santiniketan

Wish I could write like them

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It has been only about two months since I started this blog. So, I am only two months old as a writer here. Not a writer of fame. Not even a writer with published books. Just a guy that wrote a blog or two.
Yes, some of these blogs are musings, like a diary. This is one such. Then there are some postings that attempt to write about writing a novel. Still others seem to be part of a novel. Some are my perspective of the world around me.
I am essentially trying out my hand, playing a few practice games as it were. These trial runs may help make me a better writer in the eyes of the readers. Or perhaps I shall decide to write as a creative outlet, and not necessarily to please others.
But what should I write about? This is the sixty four thousand dollar question.
I have thought of writing a novel. I have actually done more than that. I have dabbled with it for a few months, going as far as two hundred pages, before tossing half of it out, and finally putting it in temporary cold storage.
The thing is – one could write a novel covering issues far removed from one’s own life. For example, I could write a science fiction, or a satirical comic book.
But then, I could also write a novel that borrows from my own life experience about the world as I see it. This choice is attractive to me because I already have certain lifetime exposures an developed an opinion about things. I am an opinionated person, did I mention that before?
But hang on – is my own life experience interesting enough to the reader? I have no blooming idea, but would guess in the negative. A reader would likely find my outrageous views and endless rambling quite a bellyful.
So, back to square one. Do I write for others, or do I write for myself? Most folks write or paint or create music such that others will not only enjoy it, but also hopefully pay for it. So, there is an economic prime mover hiding behind some of the creative outlets.
But, there must be exceptions. Vincent Van Gogh, I am told, never sold a painting in his lifetime, and died a poor man. In fact, the world is littered by painters, writers and musicians that died poor, but whose creations became famous after their death, enriching a group of middleman in the process. This probably goes to show that, if the meek fail to  inherit the earth, the middlemen might.
So, if I wished, I could write on whatever took my fancy. I could write about my worries about the future of the planet through climate change and human encroachment into every niche and ecosystem. There are many that have already written on this. Perhaps I would merely add some noise in an already noisy field.
But then there is this habit of pundits of selectively focussing on only certain sections of the problem, while avoiding mention of the others. Very few in fact address the whole package.
Few, for example, blame it our on our perception of ourselves. Man has not evolved enough to question man’s own core belief about being a superior species who enjoys the right to let other species live of die, at whim. The mainstream thinking supports the  notion that destroying a tiger, a whale, a forest, or even an entire species, is alright if it can save just a single human. Life of a single human is more sacrosanct than an entire species, or even a family of creatures. Our faith and our system dictates that we are the chosen people, by no less than God himself.
This, to me, is a laughable humbug and at the root of most injustices perpetrated by man – against another man, another creature or against nature. Religious leaders, Ethnic groups, Racial groups, Cultural groups, Economic groups, Politician, Social reformer, Writers and especially the foreign college educated smart Alec of the world lose their tongue and shy away from addressing this main question – why should man be more valuable than the rest of the planet?

Creation of Adam - Michelangelo

So, with all due respect, the writers of this world have perhaps not done enough in this field either.
Sure, there are a few that did question this conventional wisdom. But the subject is basically under the radar for the masses – masses that are still intoxicated about God having created man after his own image, or about the importance of having a so called modern civilization, even if it destroys everybody’s habitat.
On websites dedicated to the environment, one can these days find new information, or “revised” assessment, of effect of an increasing human population on ecology. Folks are tiptoeing around the topic – too scared to call a spade a spade.
My thoughts would often stand at the edge of these dark and ominous issues that just would not go away. The state of the planet, the state of our society, the degenerating state of Santiniketan and the mindlessness of the Tagore chanting diaspora, the apathy of fellow humans, especially the selfish class that come to take advantage of the trappings of an advanced society, but refuse to give anything in return – these were depressing turns of events. They depress me. Yet I find myself unable to shut them out completely from my thinking. Thus, writing about it too provides an outlet.
I remember, three years ago, I was in Santiniketan during the annual fair in December, called Poush Mela. Originally this was conceptualized by Devendranath Tagore as a fair to let folks of different faith systems to exchange views and understand each other. This was later modified by his son Rabindranath Tagore to play a key role in  revitalization of Bengal’s degenerating rural environment. This village fair was fine tuned to bring village goods, both material and cultural, to the urban clientele, and to raise awareness and appreciation of rural products, thus creating a market for it. This was supposed to provide a source of income for the craftsmen and artisans, and help sustain the lifestyle and creative vitality of the village, which would not just feed the cities with agricultural products, but also provide the source of its spiritual and artistic refinement.
Today’s December fair of Santiniketan, the so called Poush mela, is such a grotesque caricature that it may deserve a blog of its own – or rather, a book of its own. Urban products and services take precedence over rural products. Products from far off lands gets preference over local products. Rural craftsmanship and its support gets nothing more than lip service. Urbanized folks prepare “ethnic” looking goods, to sell to a new breed of ethno-conscious buying class. Babus come from afar, have a lot of fun, song and dance, take pictures, clap hands and cause a media blitz. The villager and his welfare, the original goal of the mela, is all but forgotten.
And the middle class Bengali crowd as well as the ex-student body, cannot get enough of this hideous caricature. There is no one, either in Santiniketan or outside it, to even think about the reason these events were designed. The decay of the original ideal is complete.
Anyhow, three years ago I was there. I remember being rather involved with a handful of friends in opening and running a stall at the Mela grounds, but one that did not sell anything. The stall provided quiet space ambience, free of charge, to help older generation ex-students to get to know the younger generation, as well as the locals of the area, both urban and rural. It broke from tradition and tried to do something different to facilitate human to human contact, hopefully removing cultural, generational and class barriers based on ignorance. That was to be our small contribution. We did not beg for donation and bore the cost ourselves.
But as it happened – there was another stall, in another location in the fair, that was promoted by ex-students. It presented attractive cultural items, music, speech and sold some books, paintings and such.
I was asked to take the microphone and speak something for ten minutes to the listening crowd. I started out, talking about our efforts to do something worthwhile and addressing some of the problems facing Santiniketan.
I was stopped in mid sentence, and was advised not to talk of any controversial issue. Either speak good and positive, or do not speak at all.
I stopped and stepped back.
I have never again gone to speak at that venue, and likely never shall. If self-criticism is undesirable in a society, that society is for sure going down the tube. That is how I see it.
So, on a personal level, it has been rather frustrating and disheartening for me to face the fact that my own kind almost never stands up for anything worthwhile. I got several painful lessons on this. There were effort to do something on the ground in and around Santiniketan, just to pay back for what it gave us, which was more than just education. It gave me my humanity and my world view. The effort required support and volunteers, to start a few good measures that were taken for granted in the times of Tagore, and were all but forgotten today. There were a few that were willing to spearhead the effort. But, such efforts thing fail, repeatedly, due to lack of sufficient conviction among those that benefitted from Santiniketan.
Back in Vancouver, I was once heavily involved in garnering support for a gathering in front of the library and a March to Indian Consul, protesting the imprisonment of Binayak Sen in Raipur India on framed up charges of sedition. We wanted to create pressure on the Government of India through a coordinated work in several cities across north America and Europe. I tried to energize my known friends to participate in that protest.
On both occasions, I was highly disappointed and frustrated by the apathy of most of the people I approached. Some even ridiculed us for our wasted efforts. A few Canadians, and even Americans that did not know much about Binayak Sen, still came forward and joined in the protest once told about the situation. But our fat brothers and sisters stayed home with their crackers and chai, and perhaps watched hindi soap opera or stayed at couch potato with a can of beer.
My disappointment in people around me has been long standing, steady, and by now, quite predictable.
But there are always exceptions – thank goodness for that.  It is those exceptions that makes life worth living. Through that protest in Vancouver, I came to know folks I might not otherwise meet, and these have enriched my life. Through efforts in Santiniketan I have come to appreciate a handful for their dedication and integrity, and that too has been a source of nourishment for our psyche.
So, going back to those whose writings I admired,  I could name a few.
One is Gwynne Dyer.

Gwynne Dyer

He is a Canadian born journalist and author. As far as I know, he had moved to UK and lives there. I came across one of his books, named Future Tense. It talked about the changing scene in the pecking order of the world of humans, and liked it. That prompted me to seek out and read another book – The Mess They Made. The second book dealt with the war in Iraq and the mess it created. Dyer influenced me in his journalism.
At the back of my consciousness, I suspect the influence of Rabindranath Tagore still remained rather strong. Tagore, born a century and half ago and who wrote mostly in a different language and followed a different linguistic style of the time, did write a lot and they influenced me – not just by the content of the writing, but because I could step past the writings and try to enter his own mind, and try to imagine what made him feel the way he did, so that he could write the way he wrote.
I am not talking about the music he created, or the dance drama he composed, or the novels he wrote. I am talking about the essays he wrote and speeches he prepared, and discussions he had, covering socio cultural issues, issues of race, culture, class, caste, race and religious differences, issues of poverty, and issue of  social and economic exploitation and the role of creativity in opening up of the mind.
I could see that he was a thinking man and did not stop at conventional wisdom. Challenging conventional doctrine and orthodoxy was as innate to Tagore in his time as it is to me in mine.

Rabindranath Tagore

He had observed how Indian urban class exploited the rural landscape in the new westernized model of economy. He recognized how rural humanity had historically been the lifeblood of India and the source of all of India’s creative excellence, the fountainhead of its spirituality, music, literature, philosophy, and world view. He noted how this urban exploitation of villages follows an economic model that was counter-productive for India and also unsustainable. These realization was, in my book, very profound for a person that was known merely as a poet and a mystic.
He realized India would lose her unique power of independent thought and creativity unless the rural landscape reached an equitable and complimentary economic relationship with the consumer class of the cities. As long as the village was exploited by the city, like a babu and his servant, the general degradation of Indian society would continue, even if it appeared to be doing well superficially in the cities.
I find observations like this to be exceptionally profound for that time and place. This indicates a penetrating and contemplative sharp mind that was, compared to what he was surrounded by, mind boggling and generations ahead his time. Till date I am yet to find another person speak of it quite as penetratingly or eloquently, especially among the politicians of India or any other land anywhere.
He did not just rest on his laurels having written about all that observation. He made real effort, without Government backing and without him being rich any more, in the villages around Santiniketan. He tried to attract brilliant socially conscious people from around the world, to join him and study the details of the rural lifestyle and find ways to improve it – socially, economically, culturally, and find a formula, a software, that india could use in the future, to lay the foundation of a just society and an equitable human race at peace with itself and in harmony with its surroundings. India was to be a pathfinder for the rest of the world. This had been India’s historical contribution in the past, and was also India’s destiny in the future, Tagore felt. In this vision and his efforts at this field, he stood alone. Very few others could see thing this penetratingly. He was also among the very few, even today, to rate humanism higher than even nationalism.
His efforts  to find means to redress the economic imbalance between the village and the city was, in my book, among his most profound gift to mankind. He created cultural functions, to influence the babu class of Bengali bhadraloks to open its eyes and to learn to recognize the villager as his equal, and as one that provides him with food and sustenance. He tried to teach the middle class that folk culture was source of all finer and world beating philosophies and arts of India. He tried to make the city dwelling babus to develop a degree of respect for the village, and to rally in its revival. He tried to get the urban self absorbed class to learn to value the produce of the rural artisans instead of hankering for goods made in European factories. He tried to have the so called educated class realize the weak foundation of their society and endeavor to address them at their root, and not just make symbolic gestures like denouncing the Union Jack. He tried to point out that exploitation by the British was only possible because India was exploited by Indians to start with.
He promoted an internationalism that allowed for free thoughts and cultural exchanges to percolate through and enrich mankind without having to deal with national barriers. His efforts were not restricted to India alone – but covered the east and the west. He did not condone either a hardcore nationalistic view that everything of India was great and foreign goods and ideas should be rejected outright, nor did he support a blind faith in western civilization to be the answer to everything, or that the east had no skeletons in the cupboard of its own.
Its unfortunate that these realizations, thoughts, views and efforts of Tagore are mostly forgotten by the chanting masses of Tagore worshippers as well as the media and the punditry. These were not properly understood even by folks that lived around him while he was alive. Today the Tagorean banyan tree provides shade for all. Hordes of pundits enjoy the shade and are making a career living off it and are still as blind as a bat.
So, there are original thinkers that wrote like Tagore did in his time and a few others that do so today. Then there are people that dirty their hands with real social work like Tagore, Gandhi and others did in their day, and others are doing  today.
I wish I could be a little like them.

Reflections on an old Alumni meeting of my school

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Originally posted on Thurseday, February 12th, 2009

I decided to bring over some of my old posts sprinkled over the net here and there. One source is the iWeb blog site with Apple’s software and web space called শান্তিনিকেতনের খাতা (Santiniketaner Khata), which means diary from Santiniketan. Santiniketan, is my birth place. That is were I went to school. But the place is more than just that. It was where Rabindranath Tagore tried to make his dream come true, and leave his creative software. It was software that was designed to help future mankind – not just in and around Santiniketan, but around the world, along a path that would have been more creative, congenial, and harmonious for the people and the planet. Tagore had created a lot of poetry and literature, for which he was recognized. But the software was his best creation, and his best gift to mankind.

Unfortunately, the software today is virus afflicted and dying.

Some of my writings on Santiniketan, my birth place where I had five generations of exchange, starting with Tagore himself bringing one of my ancestors to the place to help in its inception and construction.

Its a sad story.

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Bubla has an expressive face, I came to the conclusion, after having seen a number of his pictures in my collection from the last Poush Mela. Faces float across our screen as I flip through my photo folder labelled “Santiniketan 08-12”.

I sometimes go back to a handful of these pictures and look at them again. They bring a smile. That expression of Uma di, intently listening to Somenda speak at the Asramik Sangha, or Baka da, with his sun glasses, that remind me of the movie “of all the President’s men”.

Then there is Bubla with his wiinter cap, and the wild haired Benuda. They all represent faces, and bring back the flavor, of Santiniketan. Benuda, at certain angles, remind me of his father, Bodo Daktar babu. I remember running about on our bed at Ratan Palli, and bodo Daktar babu trying to catch me. The issue was some vaccination, which I was unwilling to take, and he was determined to administer.

It was mid morning in Amra Kunja. The sun filtered through the canopy and struck the ground at a slant, coming from the north east. There were gigantic looking box shape speakers erected all around us.

They looked odd and intrusive, loud and somehow faintly offensive. They tried to pull me away from the Amra Kunja, back into the mechanical and noisy world that I had hoped to leave behind, to attend the Asramik Sabha. as the congregation was small, and every one was close to each other,

I wondered if there was a need for those massive speakers.

I remember Alo di and a few others mention that some of the seniors had a hearing problem, and wondered if some

kind of speaker system could also be used during the general discussion. It did occur to me that, instead of speakers, one might consider providing some of the new generation hearing aid devices, where the microphone is a small hand held piece of plastic the size of a box of matches, with matching radio operated speakers that fit the ears of individual listeners that need them.

This would make them unobtrusive, and same time spare the others from feeling an oppressive presence of huge speakers and the corresponding noise. In the adjacent ground, more loud speakers boomed, and we were forced to hear the preparations for the Alumni Association meeting. Somehow, I could not bring myself to appreciate the loud speakers.

Well, I should write up some more in the next few days… even include some of the topics of discussion. But then, I already put all that up, from the recording, on a Podcast. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

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Well, that was what I had written in Fab 2009 about a meeting in December 2008. But, in this case neither a picture is worth a thousand words, not any number of words is worth anything.
The slow decline of Tagore’s influence can be seen from observing the effectiveness of meetings such as these.
The Alumni of the University, that are alive today, should perhaps go over a hundred thousand individuals. But the number of people that attended were barely thirty. Even the number of ex-students living or present in Santiniketan would have been several times larger than the attendees.
So, first of all – the group hardly represents the ex-students. More importantly, it does not seem to hold much of an attraction in the minds of the ex-students. It might be here that its greatest failure lies.
But that is not all. This meeting is supposed to be serious, to chalk out discuss what the alumni did in the previous year and what it might do in the year ahead. NO serious analysis was made of what was to be the original purpose of this Alumni association, and if that purpose was being fulfilled. There was no serious discussion of what should now be the real charter of the group. The name of the group was Asramik Sangha, or an association of people that are Asramiks, meaning people who had spent time in the Asram – i.e. exstudents. It could, in essence also include teachers and others that spent time in the Asram – but I shall not get into such finer points.
There were discussions of parallel association, called in fact the Alumni Association – an English name for basically the same thing. This was required by the Government of India where it funded any University. The University was to have this association and it was to elect members annually. And the executive board of the University, should have two elected members from this Alumni Association. The original “Asramik Sangha” created by Tagore himself at a time when the country was ruled by the British and there was no funding by any Government. The new “Alumni Association” was a requirement by the Government when it decided to fund the University, a few years after India got independence and a decade after Tagore’s death.
The two parallel bodies where to be merged into one. That did not happen.
Its a long story.
But, the main thing is – whatever was discussed in this miniature meeting of the Asramik Sangha, nothing much came out of it. Most of the participants were old folks. Some have passed away. The rest mostly do not remember what was discussed. There is no follow up of any kind. We do not receive any notice or a request or any other kind of information regarding any kind of follow up.
These meetings are self contained cocoons that, like fossilized bones, exist only as a reminder of a past existence, but otherwise having no influence on the present or the future.
Asramik Sangha has become an annual get together place for a few old folks reminiscing about the good old days that are fast vanishing.
It already behaves like a fossil.

Whose fault is it – (Tagore’s fading influence)

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(Moved from an older blog of the past)

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2009

Whose fault is it ?

No one in sane mind would dispute the fact that Visva-Bharati has fallen from grace and is not living upto expectation of any kind, past or future.

There are long stories, doing back fifty or more years, on who did what and when, and how this or that factor contributed to the future malady of the University. Looking through all that, it is not difficult to get mired in it and end up with a headache, and a feeling of disillusionment, a defeatist view that nothing can really turn the clock, or bring a change for the better.

While most of the pessimism might be placed on some ground reality, it still might be worth thinking outside the box, and trying to see whose fault it might be. This is not necessarily for the purpose of pointing fingers, but rather, to see if change can be brought, for the better, even at this late stage.

First, who are, or should have been, the stake holders? We know a few – those that are inside Visva-Bharati. The list starts with the VC. But his is a temporary job – lasts for five years. Then there are the Students – who might stay for 2 or three years, and in some cases, if we include the school, as much as ten or fifteen, depending on where one starts and ends. Then comes the workers and their multiple unions, albeit politicized.

Next comes the Government, which is the custodian, and the financier, of the University.

Lastly, there is the vast diaspora of Alumni, literally spread around the Globe.

There is a sixth party – the citizens of India, whose tax money the Govt doles out so generously to the University. But I shall for now discount the 6th group – they have many items on their plate, and the University might be virtually invisible in their list, when they go to vote.

So, taking the five groups : VC, Students, Workers, Govt, and Alumni, it is this last group, the Alumni that shows up as the oddest one. This is one entity that is wholly divorced from the affairs of the University – and yet, it is this group that Rabindranath liked to most depend on, in order to protect the University. There is a reason – this is the only group that does not, or should not, have any vested, selfish, interest.

And, this is the group, in my eyes, that has failed Rabindranath, and the University, most spectacularly.

Mind it, it is not that the Alumni are all insignificant people, barely eking out an existence, too busy keeping body and soul together, and in no position to think of grander issues like their alma mater. Quite the contrary. A vast number of them are highly educated and professionally successful. They are spread around India and around the world. Many have acquired foreign passports, as citizens of nations in Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, etc. Some are well known locally and even globally.

And yet, this is the most disorganized, disunited and disinterested group among the five stake holders of the University.

Why is it so ?

 Frankly, I do not know. A lot of them maintain a cursory interest in Santiniketan, and the University. Many of them attend to cultural functions here and there, listen to renditions of Tagore songs and dance drama. Some make a career out of it. And in spite of that, in the last fifty odd years, there has never been a ground swell, a movement, to get the Alumni diaspora under a single umbrella, with a specific agenda, to try to give something back to their Alma Mater, to repay a part of their debt, and, most importantly, be a serious stake holder for Visva-Bharati.

So, today, among thousands of news reports, analysis, and endless rounds of discussions on what is the matter with Visva Bharati, and how and why it has become what it is today – the Alumni shows solidarity with the Union leaders of the University in one critical sphere – its refusal to analyze itself, before judging others.

Its not that effort has not been made a few times to appeal to the Alumni to join hands, and decide what we can do, or give, instead of passing judgment and comment on others. But, typically, while such appeals might stir an unconnected third party – the diaspora of Alumni, 99 out of 100, would shun such appeals.

Why ?

It is high time when this critical group that has thus escapes scrutiny, be placed under the microscope.

This group is the biggest failure, the biggest shame, in the history of the University. And it happily remains invisible – while willingly passing high judgments on all others.

It is perhaps just as well that Tagore was cremated and not buried. He would have had a restless stay, having to turn in his grave so often, for the misguided faith he had placed on the ex-students of the University.

For the last 25 years, being involved as I have been with ISO 9000 Quality Assurance system, and with developing tools for self-analysis systems based on searching for the root-causes of problems in order that a firm might be able to self-regulate itself for perpetual and incremental improvement in its function and its operating process, so that the ultimate product can stand the competition and be counted as a quality product – I have tried to think things through for the past two years, about Visva-Bharati. And hundred times out of hundred, I come back to the same issue in the root-cause analysis, and in thinking through a road map for the betterment of the University, from the stand point of us, those that are not working for the University. Every time, without fail, the ball ends up in our court – and the Alumni are identified as the first and most critical group that should have, from our perspective, been engaged, been unified, and been proactive. And we have not.

The first step in all this would have been to get the Alumni together under one umbrella, and instill the first lesson in the process of self-assessment – learning what this group as a stake holder could potentially do, and what is has so far done.

One does not need to be certified as a lead auditor for ISO 9000, or for that matter, to have high level of experience in root-cause analysis. After all, these systems were thought through by ordinary people, using nothing more than a bit of common sense, and unbiased analytical thought. It was astute of Rabindranath, that he had come to the same conclusion, long before ISO 9000 was born, that the most important stake holder for the Asram should be the ex-students.

And we failed him. And we continue to fail him. And we continue to waste time, judging others.

Sure, we engage in some token activity, in a path of continuously diminishing returns, where more and more effort produces less and less significant return, and bring no appreciable change for the better. We all know, that the path so far pursued is a slippery slope going downhill.

 And still – the ex-students continue to fail, and continue to feel good about themselves.

Sorry, Gurudev – I am truly, genuinely, sorry.

Tonu

Cult of Tagore

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Lately, I have been changing my interface with social networking sites on internet – by reducing my presence in Facebook and increasing it in google plus.
Facebook was getting to be a bit addictive and I decided to cut the addiction. It was also taking more of my shrinking slice of personal time. I concluded that the time spent on Facebook was more wasteful than productive. And after having quit smoking, I felt confident of kicking any bad habit.
We are creatures of habit, and develop attachments through our lives. Our growing years have a lot of influence over our thinking and world view. It is without a doubt, that Rabindranath Tagore played a very big role in my world view, even more than Gandhi or anybody else did, barring my own parents.

Tagore Bust at UBC, Vancouver

But – I grew up. I matured. I acquired the ability to attempt to think independently and to step outside the proverbial box in order to do so. And as I matured, rather late in my life, I realized the need to divorce myself from some preconceived wrong notions. These included keeping Tagore welded to junk heaps of of sentimental dead matter.
Tagore needed to be freed from Santiniketan. He needed to be set free from Bengal. He needed to be unshackled from the cult of Tagore.
Tagore was many things, but not a cult figure whose mantra needed to be chanted mindlessly by the masses in the hope of achieving some fictitious nirvana. But, the masses will do what it will. I needed to set myself free from that grotesque caricature.
Tagore had written “Tasher Desh”, the land of cards. It was a great social parody with a serious underlying message. The land of cards needed to rid itself from millennial accumulation of dead habits and debris. Fresh air needed to course through their land and their lives. A prince charming came from a far off land and set them free. Rules that no more served a purpose other than mindless copying of meaningless tradition, needed to be broken. Habits that were locked in stone and unable to evolve needed to be changed so creative freedom could again express itself.
Ironically, Santiniketan had turned itself into another Tasher Desh – a land of cards. It had become moribund, devoid of new ideas or creativity. The cult had barricaded itself with mindless copy of Tagore’s words, like the parrot in Tagore’s own  satire – “Tota Kahini” the Story of the parrot. Santiniketan took to repeating ceremonially repeating Tagore’s words without understanding or believing in them. They did not promote Tagore’s vision by application of it in their actions and endeavors. Instead, they killed Tagore by parroting him incessantly, by turning him into a framed picture on the wall, a figurine to sell in Poush Mela. They ended up reducing his legacy to a mere creator of some music and dance for the weekend amusement of a group of hapless Bengali babus.
The cult represented a slow degeneration of ideals and values. Tagore the universal man was unrecognizable if one limits himself to watching Santiniketan, and the hordes of Tagore lovers sprinting all across the globe busy promoting themselves.
Santiniketan became a den for misfit leftists, dimwit academics, useless nincompoops that had no love for either the land or the people, and were merely there to fatten their pockets and live a lazy life without working. They ensured more and more useless folks accumulated there, supporting each other – so that the place was thence unsuitable and hostile for anyone with a wish to break the deadlock and inject some life into the comatose patient.
Outside of Santiniketan, the greater Bengal, in its own path of slow decay, provided a suitable backdrop. The culture and the cult has now gone virtually underground. It is not underground in a legal sense. It is not hiding from law. Its only crime is uselessness and failing to to display sign of life, energy, honesty or vitality. Thus, it has sunk below the radar of the living world.

Santiniketan does not exist for the rest of the world, and for good reason. It is hardly a place for bright, honest, free thinking, progressive hard working representative of humankind whose vision goes further than the tip of his nose. Shyamali Khastgir might have been the last free spirit to percolate through the dead leaves heaped at the bottom of that decaying forest.
It took me a lifetime to realize I was getting  supersaturated in this foul broth. My parents provided a buffer. They carried with them a breath of the past long vanished on the ground, but still surviving in the minds of the older generation – of simple living and high thinking.

But my parents are no more.
Today, we have a lifestyle of high living, dishonestly at the taxpayers expense, giving nothing in return. And instead of high thinking – there is no thinking. Cognitive activity is too taxing for the brain. It has been sleeping for two generations. It has lost the will to wake up and get to work. ঘুমে জাগরণে মিশি একাকার নিশিদিবসে।

With my parents passing, I was, late in my life, forced to peer outside the cocoon and look at the Tagorean world as it exists now. My extended childhood was over. I had to now confront the legacy of Tagore from my own perspective and look at it through clear glass of reality. I had to confront the unenviable influence of the cult of Tagore in denigrating the image of one of the greatest social thinkers and universal philosopher that the world had seen.
I could see I was soaked with this unhealthy odor emanating from the gathering mass of pseudo devotees of this new cult of Tagore. I was surrounded by mindless cult followers, stifling my air and blotting my sky. Half of these devotees wanted only to further their own little careers while using what was left of Tagore’s carcass as a stepping stone, while the other half lacked cognitive ability to think through anything, let alone analyze the intricacies of life, real value of Tagore’s visions or how these could be applied to an ever changing humanity and planet.
My social networking environment had been filling up a this slow stench of decay and a large crowd of nonplussed groupies under a Tagorean banner, that did not really share any of my views on anything. I was surrounded by people in denial.
This is not an uncommon state. Americans are in a state of denial about their decline. Western economic model is in a state of denial about its un-sustainability. The petrochemical industry and the governments they support are in denial about the end of cheap oil, religious nuts and the public in general are in denial about the threat of overpopulation. Everybody is in denial about the great mass extinction of species going on right now. Bengalis are in denial of the existential threat to their language and culture and the steady decline of Bengali thinking. So I guess Tagore cultists are no exception. My mistake was in expecting them to be any different.
Soon after the death of my parents, I started getting increasingly skeptical about the intention and the ability of hordes of ladder climbing Tagore worshipers sprinkled around the world. I needed to synchronize my views to match reality. In reality, Tagore and Santiniketan had already divorced each other a long time ago. It was therefore unfair to continue to keep Tagore’s coffin buried in the desert sands of Santiniketan. Santiniketan has to either stand on its own, or be buried by the sands of time. It had been conceived and nurtured by Tagore in its infancy. But that was a long time ago. Santiniketan had long since grown up as an adult, and has been charting its own course for a few generations. It needed to face the world on its own terms and on its own two feet, without support. If it was top heavy with weak legs, unable to support itself, it would need exercise. Giving it a pair of crutches bearing Tagore’s name would only lengthen its misery.
It took me a while to realize that in this new scenario, I needed neither Santiniketan’s residents, nor its ex-students to expand my understanding of Tagore. There was nobody left there that could add anything other than their own little agenda. Remembering the life and times of Leonard Elmhirst, I recalled how he, later in his life and much after Tagore’s death, appeared to be thoroughly disenchanted with Santiniketan. Was there a common link in all this ? I know my uncle Salil Ghosh had a long association and correspondence with Elmhirst, but the content is unknown to me. Unfortunately, I did not think of all this while Salil Ghosh was still alive.
Anyhow, looking around for a hangout, I concluded that there was no need for me to even contemplate a hangout on Tagore. The kind of folks that might drop in are the very group Tagore needed distance from.
There was of course another reason for tilting towards Google plus. It had its advantages. My first impression of the place was, I was able to find more folks that followed my line of thinking.
Say – wild life watching. There were not many that shared my hobby and interest within Facebook. Perhaps that could be amended. But here in Google, I found it easy.
Then – archaeology, anthropology, geology, sustainability, climate change, nature and wildlife preservation, globalization, financial crisis, plight of the aboriginal people, over-mechanization of industry and exploitation of the rural environment. I could hang out in specific hangouts, or create my own.
Are these things related to Tagore? Well, ask a Santiniketanite that is busy singing ‘Amader Santiniketan’ noon and night, and he might not find any relation. That’s because the cult of Tagore only learn to chant mindlessly and without comprehension, but not the application of the formulae in real life – which was the primary goal of Tagore for creating those verses, music, function and events in the first place.

In Tagore’s own mind, there was more life that needed living outside of sanctified temple-altars than inside. Of course there is elements of the Tagore’s vision in Universalism, in climate conservation, in activism to protect our forests and the lands, watching and appreciation of nature, sustainability, tribal life or the exploitation of our villages. These are the issues with which a younger Tagore would have loved to get his hands dirty, and an older Tagore would have pushed and cajoled the younger generation to get their hands dirty. Tagore’s visions were to be fulfilled in the outside world through appropriate karma yoga, and for a continuous re-thinking and striving for betterment of an equitable society in harmony with its natural environment. His vision was not to be fulfilled in walled zoos packed with robotic people programmed to parrot out Tagore music and functions periodically for paying tourists.
As I think through the life of Tagore and his efforts with humankind, both in India, and in the easter civilizations as well as the west, I can conclude with some hope, that Tagore would survive because he represented a path that was universal culturally, ecologically, economically, sustainably and equitably. It was vision that never claimed to be perfect, but always encouraged questioning minds to forever strive to tweak and fine tune. It was a vision and a blueprint that is as relevant today as was in his time. Santiniketan, meanwhile, stopped representing Tagore, or sustainability, sociocultural creativity, or universalism or anything at all that could be worthwhile for humanity. In Tagore’s original blueprint, the place and the institution, along with its ever increasing number of ex-students were to spearhead in a lot of directions to find creative and unique solutions to new challenges that faced humanity – solutions that were not a mindless copy of either the west or the eastern past. Solutions that promoted an equitable relationship between the city and the village, between the affluent and the not so affluent, and between people of different race, cast, religion and cultures.

Today, Santiniketan is so far behind on all the sociocultural issues of today, that nobody looks up to the place to provide any answer to anything anymore. Santiniketan therefore, needs to engage in fresh soul searching to identify a reason for its existence.

Rabindranath Tagore meanwhile deserves to survive outside of Santiniketan, outside of tepid academic debates, and power-point presentations on the screen in quiet auditoriums. He needs sunshine. He needs freedom from the clutches the Tagorean cultists. He deserves to be among the people of this planet, and not sterilized, myopic pundits and blind groupies.

And so – be well, Cult of Tagore.  It was nice knowing you.