Tag Archives: Visva-Bharati

বিশ্বভারতীর সংকট এবং আমার কর্তব্য

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মনে করি বিশ্বভারতী কালের মহাসংকটের সামনে আসছে – তার নানা কারণের মধ্যে তিনটি উল্লেখযোগ্য যুক্তি হলঃ

১) ভাজপা সরকার
২) বঙ্গসংস্কৃতির ভবিষ্যত এবং তাতে রবীন্দ্রপ্রভাবের সম্পর্ক
৩) দেশবিদেশের নানা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে বামপন্থী radical’দের প্রভাব ও তার ফল

তা নিয়ে আমার নিজের মতানুযাধী বিশ্বভারতীর কপালে আরও নানা দুর্যোগ আসছে মনে করি। পশ্চিম বঙ্গে ভাজপা সরকার গঠবে কিনা তার অনেকটা প্রতিফলন পড়বে ওখানে। এই বিষয়ে নতুন করে চিন্তা করে নতুন এক চিঠির কাঠামো তৈরি করেছি সরকারকে জানানোর। নির্বাচনের ফল কি হয় তার অপেক্ষায় আছি – এবং সেই নির্বাচনের পরিণাম দেখে চিঠিটা দরকার মত সংশোধন করে পাঠাবো – শেয়ার করব। বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়কে রক্ষা করতে গেলে একে পুরোপুরি বন্ধ করা উচিত কিছু বছরের জন্য – এই মতামতে পরিবর্তন আসেনি। বন্ধ করা ছাড়াও, নতুন সংবিধান লেখা ইত্যাদি নানা সংযুক্ত সমস্যার ওপর মনোযোগ দেওয়া হবে।

আমার নাগরিকের কর্তব্য আমি পালন করব – অন্যরা তাঁদের কর্তব্য পালন করবেন যদি চান।

এ নিয়ে কেউ যদি গুরুত্ব সহকারে আমার সঙ্গে কথা বলতে চান – tonu@mac.com’এ লিখুন। সাধারণের মন্তব্য সব সময় দেখার সময় পাই না।

ক্রমশঃ

Robbery of the soil

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Here is a lecture Rabindranath Tagore delivered at the Calcutta university back in 1922, followed by another one by Leonard Elmhirst, who had joined Tagore for rural reconstruction efforts in Eastern India in the 1920s. Elmhirst, the agriculturist, concentrated on how the city takes all and returns little or nothing of real value to the soil’. Tagore, the humanist, talked about the importance of replenishing what you take from society as well as what you take from the soil.

Tagore’s observations a century ago, appears eerily relevant even today.

The standard of living in modern civilization has been raised far higher than the average level of our necessity. The strain which this entails serves at the outset to increase our physical and mental alertness. The claim upon our energy accelerates growth. This in its turn produces activity that expresses itself by raising life’s standard still higher.

When this standard attains a degree that is a great deal above the normal it encourages the passion of greed. The temptation of an inordinately high level of living, which was once confined only to a small section of the community, becomes widespread. The burden is sure to prove fatal to the civilization which puts no restraint upon the emulation of self-indulgence.

In the geography of our economic world the ups and downs produced by inequalities of fortune are healthy only within a moderate range. In a country divided by the constant interruption of steep mountains no great civilization is possible because in such places the natural flow of communication is always difficult. Like mountains, large fortunes and the enjoyment of luxury are also high walls of segregation; they produce worse divisions in society than any physical barriers.

Where life’s simple wealth does not become too exclusive, owners of individual property find no great difficulty in acknowledging their communal responsibility.  In fact wealth can even become the best channel for social communication. In former days in India public opinion levied heavy taxes upon wealth and most of the public works of the country were voluntarily contributed by the rich. The water supply, medical help, education and amusement were naturally maintained by men of property through a spontaneous sense of mutual obligation. This was made possible because the limits set to individual right of self-indulgence were narrow and surplus wealth easily followed the channel of social responsibility. In such a society civilization was supported by strong pillars of property, and wealth gave opportunity to the fortunate for self-sacrifice.

But, with the rise of the standard of living, property changes its aspect. It shuts the gate of hospitality which is the best means of social communication. Its owners display their wealth in an extravagance which is self-centred. This creates envy and irreconcilable class division. In other words property becomes anti-social.

Because property itself, with what is called material progress, has become intensely individualistic, the method of gaining it has become a matter of science and not of social ethics. Property and its acquisition break social bonds and drain the life sap of the community. The unscrupulousness involved plays havoc the world over and generates a force that can coax or coerce peoples to deeds of injustice and wholesale horror.

The forest fire feeds upon the living world from which it springs till it exhausts itself completely along with its fuel. When a passion like greed breaks loose from the fence of social control it acts like that fire, feeding upon the life of society. The end is annihilation. It has ever been the object of the spiritual training of man to fight those passions that are anti-social and to keep them chained. But lately abnormal temptation has set them free and they are fiercely devouring all that is affording them fuel.

But there are always insects in our harvest field which, in spite of their robbery, tend to leave a sufficient surplus for the tillers of the soil, so that it does not pay us to try to exterminate them altogether. But when some pest, that has an enormous power of self multiplication, attacks our total food crop, we must consider this a great calamity. In human society, in normal circumstances, there are many causes that make for wastage, yet it does not cost us much to ignore them.

But today the blight that has fallen upon our social life and its resources is disastrous because it is not restricted within reasonable limits. This is an epidemic of voracity that has infected the total area of civilization. We all claim our right, and freedom, to be extravagant in our enjoyment if we can afford it. Not to be able to waste as much upon myself as my rich neighbour does merely proves a poverty in myself of which I am ashamed, and against which my women folk, and other dependents, naturally cherish their own grievance.

Ours is a society in which, through its tyrannical standard of respectability, all the members are goading each other to spoil themselves to the utmost limit of their capacity. There is a continual screwing up of the ideal level of convenience and comfort, the increase in which is proportionately less than the energy it consumes. The very shriek of advertisement itself, which  constantly accompanies the progress of unlimited production, involves the squandering of an immense quantity of material and of life force which merely helps to swell the sweepings of time.

Civilization today caters for a whole population of gluttons. An intemperance, which could safely have been tolerated in a few, has spread its contagion to the multitude. This universal greed, which now infects us all, is the cause of every kind of meanness, of cruelty and of lies in politics and commerce, and vitiates the whole human atmosphere. A civilization, which has attained such an unnatural appetite, must, for its continuing existence, depend upon numberless victims.

These are being sought in those parts of the world where human flesh is cheap. In Asia and Africa a bartering goes on through which the future hope and happiness of entire peoples is sold for the sake of providing some fastidious fashion with an endless supply of respectable rubbish.

The consequence of such a material and moral drain is made evident when one studies the condition manifested in the grossness of our cities and the physical and mental anaemia of the villages almost everywhere in the world. For cities inevitably have become important. The city represents energy and materials concentrated for the satisfaction of an exaggerated appetite, and this concentration is considered to be a symptom of civilization. The devouring process of such an abnormality cannot be carried on unless certain parts of the social body conspire and organize to feed upon the whole. This is suicidal; but, before a gradual degeneracy ends in death, the disproportionate enlargement of the particular portion looks formidably great. It conceals the starved pallor of the entire body. The illusion of wealth becomes evident because certain portions grow large on their robbery of the whole.

A living relationship, in a physical or in a social body, depends upon sympathetic collaboration and helpfulness between the various individual organs or members. When a perfect balance of interchange begins to operate, a consciousness of unity develops that is no longer easy to obstruct. The resulting health or wealth are both secondary to this sense of unity which is the ultimate end and aim, and a creation in its own right. Whenever some sectarian ambition for power establishes a dominating position in life’s republic, the sense of unity, which can only be generated and maintained by a perfect rhythm of reciprocity between the parts is bound to be disturbed.

In a society where the greed of an individual or of a group is allowed to grow uncontrolled, and is encouraged or even applauded by the populace, democracy, as it is termed in the West, cannot be truly realized. In such an atmosphere a constant struggle goes on among individuals to capture public organizations for the satisfaction of their own personal ambition.

Thus democracy becomes like an elephant whose one purpose in life is to give joy rides to the clever and to the rich. The organs of information and expression, through which opinions are manufactured, and the machinery of administration, are openly or secretly manipulated by the prosperous few, by those who have been compared to the camel which can never pass through the needles eye, that narrow gate that leads to the kingdom of ideals.

Such a society necessarily becomes inhospitable, suspicious, and callous towards those who preach their faith in ideals, in spiritual freedom. In such a society people become intoxicated by the constant stimulation of what they are told is progress, like the man for whom wine has a greater attraction than food.

Villages are like woman. In their keep is the cradle of the race. They are nearer to nature than the towns and are therefore in closer touch with the fountain of life. They have the atmosphere which possesses a natural power of healing. Like woman they provide people with their elemental needs, with food and joy, with the simple poetry of life and with those ceremonies of beauty which the village spontaneously produces and in which she finds delight. But when constant strain is put upon her through the extortionate claims of ambition, when her resources are exploited through the excessive stimulus of temptation, then she becomes poor in life. Her mind becomes dull and uncreative; and, from her time honoured position as the wedded partner of the city, she is degraded to that of maid servant. The city, in its intense egoism and pride, remains blissfully unconscious of the devastation it is continuously spreading within the village, the source and origin of its own life, health and joy.

True happiness is not at all expensive. It depends upon that natural spring of beauty and of life, harmony of relationship. Ambition pursues its own path of self-seeking by breaking this bond of harmony, digging gaps, creating dissension. Selfish ambition feels no hesitation in trampling under foot the whole harvest field, which is for all, in order to snatch away in haste that portion which it craves. Being wasteful it remans disruptive of social life and the greatest enemy of civilization.

In India we had a family system of our own, large and complex, each family a miniature society in itself. Ido not wish to discuss the question of its desirability, but its rapid decay in the present day clearly points out the nature and process of the principle of destruction which is at work in modern civilization. When life was simple, needs normal, when selfish passions were under control, such a domestic life was perfectly natural and truly productive of happiness. The family resources were sufficient for all. Claims from one or more individuals of that family were never excessive. But such a group can never survive if the personal ambition of a single member begins separately to clamour for a great deal more than is absolutely necessary for him. When the determination to augment private possession, and to enjoy exclusive advantage, runs ahead of the common good and of general happiness, the bond of harmony, which is the bond of creation, must give way and brothers must separate nay even become enemies.

This passion of greed that rages in the heart of our present civilization, like a volcanic flame of fire, is constantly struggling to erupt in individual bloatedness. Such eruptions must disturb mans creative mind. The flow of production which gushes from the cracks rent in society gives the impression of a hugely indefinite gain. We forget that the spirit of creation can only evolve out of our own inner abundance and so add to our true wealth. A sudden increase in the flow of production of things tends to consume our resources and requires us to build new storehouses.  Our needs,  therefore, which stimulate this increasing flow, must begin to observe the limitation of normal demand. If we go on stoking our demands into bigger and bigger flames the conflagration that results will no doubt, dazzle our sight, but its splendour will leave on the debit side only a black heap of charred remains.

When our wants are moderate, the rations we each claim do not exhaust the common store of nature and the pace of their restoration does not fall hopelessly behind that of our consumption. This moderation leaves us leisure to cultivate happiness, that happiness which is the artist soul of the human world, and which can create beauty of form and rhythm of life. But man today forgets that the divinity within him is revealed by the halo of this happiness.

The Germany of the period of Goethe was considered to be poverty stricken by the Germany of the period of Bismarck. Possibly the standard of civilization, illuminated by the mind of Plato or by the life of the Emperor Asoka, is underrated by the proud children of modern times who compare former days with the present age of progress, an age dominated by millionaires, diplomats and war lords.

Many things that are of common use today were absolutely lacking in those days. But are the people that lived then to be pitied by the young of our day who enjoy so much more from the printing press but so much less from the mind?

I often imagine that the moon, being smaller in size than the earth, produced the condition for life to be born on her soil earlier than was possible on the soil other companion. Once she too perhaps had her constant festival, of colour,  of music  and of movement;  her  store-house was perpetually replenished with food for her children. Then in course of time some race was born to her that was gifted with a furious energy of intelligence, and that began greedily to devour its own surroundings. It produced beings who, because of the excess of their animal spirit, coupled with intellect and imagination, failed to realize that the mere process of addition did not create fulfilment; that mere size of acquisition did not produce happiness; that greater velocity of movement did not necessarily constitute progress and that change could only have meaning in relation ,to some clear ideal of completeness.

Through machinery of tremendous power this race made such an addition to their natural capacity for gathering and holding, that their career of plunder entirely outstripped natures power for recuperation. Their profit makers dug big holes in the stored capital of the planet. They created wants which were unnatural and provision for these wants was forcibly extracted from nature.

When they had reduced the limited store of material in their immediate surroundings they proceeded to wage furious wars among their different sections, each wanting his own special allotment of the lions share. In their scramble for the right of self-indulgence they laughed at moral law and took it to be a sign of superiority to be ruthless in the satisfaction each of his own desire. They exhausted the water, cut down the trees, reduced the surface of the planet to a desert, riddled with enormous pits, and made its interior a roiled pocket, emptied of its valuables.

At last one day the moon, like a fruit whose pulp had been completely eaten by the insects which it had sheltered, became a hollow shell, a universal grave for the voracious creatures who insisted upon consuming the world into which they had been born. In other words, they behaved exactly in the way human beings of today are behaving upon this earth, fast exhausting their store of sustenance, not because they must live their normal life, but because they wish to live at a pitch of monstrous excess.

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Mother Earth has enough for the healthy appetite other children and something extra for rare cases of abnormality. But she has not nearly sufficient for the sudden growth of a whole world of spoiled and pampered children.

Man has been digging holes into the very foundations not only of his livelihood but of his life. He is now feeding upon his own body. The reckless waste of humanity which ambition produces is best seen in the villages where the light of life is gradually being dimmed, the joy of existence dulled, and the natural bonds of social communion are being snapped every day. It should be our mission to restore the full circulation of life’s blood into these martyred limbs of society; to bring to the villagers health and knowledge; a wealth of space in which to live, a wealth of time in which to work, to rest and enjoy mutual respect which will give them dignity; sympathy which will make them realize their kinship with the world of men and not merely their position of subservience.

Streams, lakes and oceans are there on this earth. They exist not for the hoarding of water exclusively each within its own area. They send up the  vapour which forms into clouds and helps in aside distribution of water. Cities have a special function in maintaining wealth and knowledge in concentrated forms of opulence, but this should not be for their own exclusive sake; they should not magnify themselves, but should enrich the entire society. They should be like the lamp post, for the light it supports must transcend its own limits. Such a relationship of mutual benefit between the city and the village remains strong only so long as the spirit of co-operation and self-sacrifice is a living ideal in society as awhile. When some universal temptation overcomes this ideal when some selfish passion finds ascendancy then a gap is formed and widened between them. The mutual relationship between city and village becomes that of exploiter and victim. This is a form of perversity in which the body becomes its own enemy. The termination is death.

We have started in India, in connection with Visva-Bharati, a kind of village work the mission of which is to retard this process of race suicide. If l try to give you details of the work the effort will look small. But we are not afraid of this appearance of smallness, for we have confidence in life. We know that if, as a seed, smallness represents the truth that is in us, it will overcome opposition and conquer space and time. According to us the poverty problem is not so important. It is the problem of unhappiness that is the great problem.

The search for wealth which is the synonym for the production and collection of things can make use of men ruthlessly can crush life out of the earth and for a time can flourish. Happiness may not compete with wealth in its list of needed materials, but it is final, it is creative therefore it has its own source of riches within itself. Our object is to try to flood the choked bed of village life with streams of happiness. For this the scholars, the poet, the musicians, the artists as well as the scientists have to collaborate, have to offer their contribution.

Otherwise they live like parasites, sucking life from the country people, and giving nothing back to them. Such exploitation gradually exhausts the soil of life, the soil which needs constant replenishing by the return of life to it through the completion of the cycle of receiving and giving back.

The writer of the following paper (Elmhirst), who was in charge of the rural work in Visva-Bharati, forcibly drew our attention to this subject and made it clear to us that the civilization which allows its one part to exploit the rest without making any return is merely cheating itself into bankruptcy. It is like the foolish young man, who suddenly inheriting his fathers business, steals his own capital and spends it in a magnificent display of extravagance. He dazzles the imagination of the onlookers, he gains applause from his associates in his dissipation, he becomes the most envied man in his neighbourhood till the morning when he wakes up, in surprise, to a state of complete indigence.

Most of us who try to deal with the poverty problem think of nothing else but of a greater intensive  effort of production, forgetting that this only means a greater exhaustion of materials as well as of humanity, and this means giving a still better opportunity for profit to the few at the cost of the many.  But it is food which nourishes and not money. It is fullness of life which makes us happy and not fullness of purse. Multiplying materials intensifies the inequality between those who have and those who have not. This is the worst wound from which the social body can suffer. It is a wound through which the body is bled to death!

1922

A request for a brainstorming

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Sotuda had made a request.

The request was for a brainstorming.

The invitees where, I suppose, the Alumni of Visva Bharati.

The subject is a bit vague, but is to do with some conflict that reportedly happened a few days ago, between the University and a nearby resident with multiple generational connection with Visva Bharati, on the issue of land use relating to access to resident quarters.

Lately, I have been staying away from the whole Santiniketan scene, through a serious sense of disillusionment, and a feeling that my interest is better served in worthier projects with worthier efforts involving worthier people. I learned to distinguish Tagore, from the Tagorians. I could live with Tagore, but not so much with the born again Tagorians.

But, old habits die hard, and once in a while, we get bitten by the Tagorian bug, and we end up responding to tug at our aging heart, on issues raised by the people I know from Santiniketan.
And so, I ended up responding to Sotuda on Pradeep Malhotra’s google Santiniketan board, where I saw the original request.

But, my views, while likely to be too caustic to be popular – are, in my view, hard truths, and hence perhaps deserve to be archived in one place, on a blog of an opinionated so and so.

And thus, I record it here – albeit proof reading it hurriedly, and editing the text a bit.

————————————–

Invitation to a brainstorming

Responding to your invitation for a brainstorming, – your second paragraph seems to identify the subject – which relates to the Ukil incidence.

A Facebook friendship that did not last

I do not know enough details of the Ukil case in itself. A few years ago Satyasree was a FB friend of mine. He at one time started tagging me or mentioning me incessantly in his posts which often related to  a conflict that appeared to be brewing with VB about access to his home. This barrage of too many of his posts where I was mentioned and therefore got notification from FB, was beginning to flood my personal space. I did not like being forced to read all his posts, and preferred not to be notified every time he posted something.

So I informed him not to tag or mention me constantly in his posts. My intention was not to hurt Satyasree’s feelings and neither to appear uncaring about his plight. I just did not want to be flooded with his posts, thats all.

However, I have a direct way to addressing issues and perhaps with less tact than others.  I might have inherited this part form my mother.

Anyhow Satyasree did not like my comment, and made a few counter comments that I did not appreciate. Subsequently we are no more friends in FB, an unfortunate development.

On the generic topic of encroachment

Having clarified that – I feel I might respond to your invitation to “brainstorming” on the generic topic, Sotuda, and not about the Ukil case.

I have vivid recollection of discussion by my parents, uncles and other elders relating to this very topic – of encroachment into Visva Bharati land as well as stealing of non-VB public land by prominent employees of Visva Bharati. I was a school boy then and heard all that by accident. But I could follow the topic and absorb it. I could see how both the Stalwarts as well as ordinary workers were all engaged in unethical encroachment of public land.

Legality is one thing – ethics is another. To me this distinction is very important – if we claim to wish help either VB or Rabindranath’s dream of a building a inclusive just society.

The Aban Palli Story

Then there was this case with my mother’s plot in Aban Palli.

A respected University employee built a house and promptly gobbled up a road that was to pass by his plot. He planted trees and constructed a well on that slice of land, so that it would now be difficult to undo the deed.

A proposal was then made to divert the missing section of the road to go along a nearby plot of land my mother owned, so that she would lose a slice of it, due no fault of hers, to compensate for the stolen road by another person. I was a school kid then.

My mother is made of a different material. She had a penchant for standing up for things she believed in.

She consulted with Ashoke Bijoy Raha, my uncles, and a lawyer and was ready to initiate a civil court case against the Gentleman responsible. But the advice she got was not to take that step right away, but rather, erect a four feet brick wall along the southern boundary of her plot which would be in the path of this “diverted road”. If any miscreant was to break that wall in order to construct a road, then she should use that evidence and initiate a much more serious court case.

I still remember the words used by Ashoke Bijoy Raha to describe what that kind of court case is called in Bengali. “Fouzedari Mamla”, he would thunder. I still do not know what exactly is Fouzdari mamla, but will never forget that term, and Ashoke Bijoy Raha, a generally mild mannered person – used a thundering voice to highlight its significance.

The wall was erected overnight and it stands to this date. No further encroachment happened into our land. The entire community suffers there because one part of a useful road is missing and people have to use circuitous ways to go about.

Years later, after the gentleman passed away, his wife apparently admitted to my mother of the “mistake” and implied that the land allocated for the road was consumed by mistake and not by intension. My mother told me about it. By then I was living far away from Santiniketan and only visited there on occasion.

Mistake or not – the family did not correct the mistake and did not give the land back. The missing section of the road remains missing till this date, even when most of their children are also getting old and dispersed around the world, and do not even live in that house.

Mistakes do not get corrected in Santiniketan

A mistake never gets corrected around Santiniketan. This is a lesson with multiple examples. We like to keep mistakes unrecognized, unaddressed and uncorrected. We do not like clarity to emerge from a complicated issue.

Correcting a mistake needs public admittance that a mistake has been made. Correcting such mistakes requires a mind set, an ethos, a humanity, a commitment to community building that the residents of Santiniketan never learned from Rabindranath, despite all of his efforts.

Unless we address such fundamental shortcomings within ourselves first – every other dialog remains useless. It may assume a gloss of pomp and ceremony, but remain hollow and without substance and ultimately useless and general waste of time.

We represent cumulative generations of people that live in denial and engage in obfuscation of truth.

You want to do brainstorming with all the root issues under the carpet ? What kind of a brain is needed for that and what kind of a storm are we to get? A storm in a tea cup?

For all these reasons, I have found it difficult to respect people from my heart when I find people circumvent hard truths and opt to tap dance for superficiality.

Santiniketan has no real community

The general community building ethos that Rabindranath tried so tried to inculcate into our minds – of sharing and working not only for one’s own needs but also for the common good – is almost totally missing from our dialogs these days. Shyamali Khastgir might have been the last champion – but she too got mostly superficial support and has posthumously turned into a symbol to show off, but not to follow.

This is the ethos that Gandhi, Tagore and others of their time tried to instill into the people. And they all failed.

If that ethos could be cemented as a foundation in a small community such as Santiniketan – further structures could be built regarding harmony. Issues such as access to residence could perhaps be resolved by community discussions and willingness to admit faults and make required sacrifice where needed for a common good. Solution could perhaps be found following the age old idiom – বিস্বাসে মিলায় বস্তু – তর্কে বহুদূর।

What community building ?

This ethos was to be a part of a huge nation building effort by Tagore around Santiniketan, which starts with changing of one’s own paradigm with regard to what is mine only, and what should be for everybody’s benefit.

Instead of understanding this ethos, let alone believing in it and engaging in it actively – we have created generations of pundits that like lecturing everyone else how great Rabindranath’s humanism was, and why Santiniketan should be a heritage site.

I used to feel sorry for my father, my mother, and many others that clearly did not like how the selfish gene had penetrated so deeply into people of Santiniketan. They had in their heart an idealistic image of a Santiniketan that they developed from the time of their youth when Rabindranath himself was alive. They lamented the loss of that Santiniketan.

They did not highlight the root causes in widely circulated platforms. They did not have a progressive platform where such subjects would be widely discussed. They had no access to wider news media. There was no internet those days. Community building was not a topic of discussion in my childhood around the circle of people I knew.

Rising above the selfish gene

How about standing up and admitting that mistakes have been committed, either legally, or morally, or even ethically, that leaves less for the community that was supposed to be Santiniketan, of which Visva Bharati was to be an integral part?

Once we can admit to such mistakes, and thus prove we have risen above the selfish gene – one can brainstorm on finding solutions.

How about a genuine effort to consider offering VB to buy back that house and plot, thus solving the issue for good, and allowing VB to use your property for the common good of the University, as they clearly need to expand.

As it is, most of us do not live in the house built by our parents. We have better quarters elsewhere. Why do we need to cling on to something that can better serve the University ?

I did try to give away my father’s Binoy Bhavan house to the University after he passed away, but found it hard to get anybody interested in VB. I, along with my brother, even visited Kala Bhavana to check if it was practical for Kala Bhavana to be gifted with the house. But it did not work out. Nobody seemed seriously interested in VB, primarily because my fathers house was far away from VB land and perhaps there was no mechanism or interest at the time for VB to look into these issues.

A spectacular failure

We need to change our mindset – and try to adopt the community building character and belief that Rabindranath tried so hard to build, and failed so spectacularly, thanks to the Rabindra-devotees that have been so busy milking the Tagorian cow for all it is worth.

One of the reason I stay away from ex-student bodies is the sheer lack of depth in most everything that they do.

A dangerous tradition

There is a dangerous tradition of refusing to call a spade a spade, along with a caustic trend of keeping unpleasant truths shrouded in mystery or kept under wraps.

One thing the Alumni might consider is this – why don’t good people come forward with lots of good suggestions and engage in constructive debates on the issues of the day? Why is it that all efforts to have a healthy and highly participated debate amongst ex-students normally does not bear fruit? As the proverbial saying goes – the silence id deafening.

There usually is a reason why good people do not waste time with these topics. Good people are busy, and do not like to engage in pursuits of absurdities.

Neither the University, nor the people living off it and around it, or people wanting to capitalize on it half a world away, seem to have the stomach for truth. A vast majority of folks refuse to stand up for anything at all, and will only engage is trivia and rubbish. A deafening silence is the common outcome of all efforts at any root cause analysis of anything.

That more or less explains why no real brainstorming is possible with the Alumni or with anybody related to Santiniketan.

We are all afraid of truth.

One cannot engage in brainstorming, if one cannot face truth.

Besides, one must have a brain to start with, and then be willing to seriously engage it on difficult and unpleasant issues. One must also have the right mind set, dedication and doggedness to progress through a difficult an unpleasant but necessary processes.

So that is my contribution and the quota for the month Sotuda – towards a brainstorming.

I wonder if you got more than you had hoped for.

Cheers and best regards
Tonu

Visva Bharati – a wish list as a white paper

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We go through the ebb and flow of interest and disinterest – when it comes to Visva Bharati and Santiniketan. This is in contrast with my constant tug at the roots of Tagore’s evolution as a man and as an architect of modern India.

So, in one of my weaker moments, and under some coaxing by Leena di (Chatterjee – Mrs. Tan Lee, of Delta, Canada), I had written a four page note and passed it to them.

It became a kind of bother, because Leena di thought it was very good but needed to be tweaked, and then it needed to be sent to the bigwigs. Bigwigs ? I was not going to send it to anyone, big or small wig, because I really did not think it mattered.

Leena di felt otherwise and wished to send the cleaned up white paper to folks.

Meanwhile, the flow of interest has turned to the ebb of disinterest, and a suspicion that it did not really matter what anybody wrote or thought about Visva Bharati or Santiniketan. It would go its way, just like the human civilization is taking the planet to its ultimate course. It does not really matter an iota, what anybody thinks.

However, I do know from talks with Sabujkoli Sen that work is afoot on the issue of the ex-student community, so that a large database can be prepared by their computer department, and used for a global electronic voting for election of future members.

And so, I thought I will preserve my uncorrected and written off-the-cuff white paper here, before I hand it to Leena di for her to do whatever she liked.

——————-

SRINIKETAN 

  1. Preservation of Indigenous Rice Strains.
  2. Research and promotion of chemical free organic farming.
  3. Promotion of sale outlet for organic produce.
  4. Revitalize the Samabaya Samitee arrangement for promotion of local organic farming to the University and surrounding areas, with help and involvement of other streams of Visva-Bharati.
  5. Consider inviting famous soil preservation and sustainability activists such as Vandana Shiva of Dehradun and Debal Deb of Odisha, to visit Santiniketan, study the state of Sriniketan, and help amend the Sriniketan constitution, to bring it back to health and to perform its designated function.

SANGEET BHAVAN

  1. Research on Arnol Bake’s early recordings.
  2. Research on revival of Gauria Nritya
  3. Consider presenting social dance drama not only for the yuppy upper middle class but also to the real targets of these creations – the rural Bengal. Start with having one dance drama presented in the Poush Mela along with other “Yatra”s, for a start. Emphasize on the message of the dance drama instead of superficialities.
  4. Find others means of promoting Tagore’s social messages through dance drama and other plays into the Bengal heartland and beyond. Stop hankering for visiting big cities and foreign countries for stage presentation to the non-plussed elite. Remember, Tagore went with dance drama presentation to big cities to raise funds to run Santiniketan, since he refused help from the British Govt. Today, the university runs with Govt money, and VB does not need to raise funds to this end. The dance drama were designed as social msg for the rural class and Tagore has written about this. Follow his writings and view and use your logic. Let VB be the agent of social change which it was designed to be and deserves to be.

RABINDRA BHAVAN

  1. Research on Elmhirst-Kalimohan correspondence.
  2. Research on Salil Ghosh-Elmhirst correspondence.

PATHA BHAVANA

  1. Review of course syllabus. Consider inclusion of topics such as organic farming, soil preservation, sustainability of development,  and effects of man’s actions on climate change/Global warming.
  2. Encourage senior class students in field research on these topics.
  3. Include in syllabus (civics section) – the need for an effective civil society in Bengal.

VIDYA BHAVAN

  1. Conduct research on social science to assess current situation and future trend of demographic changes undergoing in surrounding territory in the district of Birbhum, West Bengal, and South Asia.
  2. Research on the absence on an effective Civil Society in Bengal and effective means of re-invigorating it. Merge this research with ground experiments through other wings of the University and the ex-student body.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

  1. Engage in serious socio-economic study of the status of the tribals in villages around Santiniketan, and engage long term live experimentation in order to find ways to save the tribals from their perpetual state of servitude and political social and economic disenfranchisement. Make this among the most pressing themes of the socio-economic studies of the University. Engage other departments to join hands in field experiments and put in place a system by which one can learn on the job and fine tune to see what works long term. Once a successful method has been tested, promote it through the local and federal Government for the rest of the tribal community.

INDEPENDENT AUDIT OF DEPARTMENTS

  1. Arrange for an audit of the Engineering department, to help identify and root out corruption with regard to orders given out for construction as well as material orders, as well as vetting of the kind of construction that is to be erected on Visva-Bharati territory and aesthetics.
  2. Audit all departments within VB for efficiency, functionality, adherence to the constitution and to identify over-employment and surplus employment. Use this to cut the fat and trim the institution.
  3. Have a procedure in place to subject all departments of the University to periodic independent audit from reputed and capable firm.

POUSH MELA COMMITTEE

  1. Give preference to rural and artisan products and promote chances of their financial success against urban industrial products. Example, do not allow giant wheels so that rural industry of hand operated “Nagor Dola” can make a come back.
  2. Appoint qualified persons to decide what kind of performers are allowed to perform on stage for folk music, kobi gan etc, so that genuine and high quality performers are promoted instead of third grade copy cats and make belief folk mendicants.
  3. Appoint a qualified committee to revisit the issue of the purpose of the Poush Mela in todays context, that serves a purpose for Visva-Bharati to support and promote it. Consider the hygiene issues of clean water supply, sanitary facility etc of the visitors.
  4. Downsize the mela. This should be easy if industrial product outlets are reduced greatly. This will turn the Mela into something manageable and meaningful and hopefully keep the bad crowd away.

EX-STUDENT BODY

  1. Find ways to unify entire ex-student diaspora. Have no illusion, the ex-students have never been able to come together under a single umbrella in the century old history of the institution, and have more often than not been engaged in activities for personal gain in the guise of “Rabindra-prem”. Factionalism within the community plagued Santiniketan even during Rabindanath’s own life, and has pained him immensely. It has also continued till date. The reason it is not discussed is perhaps ex-students are, like most others, in denial of truth. Accepting a glaring fact is the first step towards addressing the problem. This is going to be very difficult, but take this task on a war footing. This should, in my view, be the first task of the Ex-student body, instead of lecturing the University or anybody else.
  2. Engage in development of a strong and forward thinking civil society in and around Santiniketan, with inclusion of staff and students of VB-Santiniketan, Sriniketan complex, local shopkeepers, surrounding villages, and the Samabaya Samity movement. Creation of such a civil society was the hall mark of early Bengal reformers, and a lesson that was being fine tuned by Rabindranath around Santiniketan. This is a subject hardly ever talked by the current batch of ex-students. Better late than never. Most of the progress of the concept of Visva-Bharati hinges on a vibrant civil society around the place, and by extension, influencing greater Bengal and India. Engage in introspection on the future of VB, which is affected by greater forces around it such as the decline of a reform oriented Bengal civil society, encroachment of corruption and nepotism in all walks of life, changing demography and population density, and VB’s dependence on financial dole outs from Delhi. This too is a long and hard task, but there is no getting away from it if one wishes to see long term survival and improvement of Visva Bharati to a world class institution for hatching greater visions for humankind, while having very strong socio-economic roots into the rural community surrounding it. This was what VB was, and this is what it was conceptualized to be. If well wishes of VB do not engage in it, nobody else will.
  3. Improve upon this list by more cognitive thinking, analysis of ground reality, a more serious study of Rabinranath’s introspections on the need of a future India, fresh analysis of the future awaiting Bengal and India in this rapidly changing and deteriorating state of the society and planet. Get Visva Bharati to engage in these essential studies on a serious footing for proper implementation of Rabindranath’s vision and the meaning behind the word Visva-Bharati. The institution was to be a hot bed of cultural, social and ecocnomic lab experiment of ideas, and not a static body frozen in time and reproducing meaningless dance dramas without their social context.
  4. Make all functions of the Ex-student body “COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT”, with every aspect of its dealings open in public domain and with no “SECRETS”. The group must stand the test of transparency.

Tonu

A letter to a Vice Chancellor

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To: Mr. S. Duttagupta

Vice Chancellor, Visva-Bharati University

Santiniketan

Vice-chancellor@visva-bharati.ac.in

 

Subject : Expulsion of Ms Andrea Loseries and Mr. Shin Sangwhan

 

Dear Mr. Duttagupta

 

I write this as an alumni of Patha Bhavana, and as a member of a family with a five generation long association with the institution and the place.

My maternal grandfather, Kalimohan Ghosh, worked with Rabindranath Tagore in rural reconstruction efforts in the villages under the Tagore estates in eastern Bengal when Rabindranath was involved in overseeing these estates. Later, when he came to Santiniketan, Rabindranath brought Kalimohan to Santiniketan for helping kickstart the Sriniketan project, working with Leonard Elmhirst in the initial stages. Kalimohan’s mother was the first generation of our ancestors to live a considerable part of her life in Santiniketan. My mother Sujata Mitra was born in Santiniketan and ended her life there. My father Sukhamoy Mitra was a professor in Kala Bhavana, and he too ended his life there.

My maternal uncle, Santidev Ghosh, was with Sangeet Bhavana till he retired, and was peronsally requested by Rabindranath not to leave Santiniketan for better financial gains elsewhere. Other members of my family too have long association with the place.

I was born there and did my schooling in Patha Bhavana. My daughter, the fifth generation, did her college there.

Anyhow, I had wished to write to you about a few issues that I felt were of importance, and on which I did not get a good response from Visva Bharati earlier. These included :

  1. Research on the earliest wax cylinder recordings made by Arnold Bake, between 1925 and 1928, mostly in and around Santiniketan. These are now in London. Not enough research has been done on these. My suspicion is that these might contained unpublished voice recordings of Rabindranath, Dinendranath, Santidev, Gagan Harkara and many others. Visva Bharati should have been the best institute to be involved in research of these yet un-researched audio material and identification of those recordings. The last person I know to study some of those early recordings of Arnold Bake was late Mr. Nazir Ali Jairajbhoy. I have had some exchange with his wife Amy Katlin Jairajbhoy of California, noted for her own work on ethnographic filming and ethnomusicology including work among marginal music groups in India. She too has knowledge on the topic of her late husbands work with the Arnold Bake collection. She wrote to me that she had video recording of Dinendranath performing in Santiniketan. Anyhow Nazir Ali Jairajbhoy worked mostly with the later life recordings of Arnold Bake (made outside of Santiniketan) and not the early life recordings, made in Santiniketan. Unfortunately, I had not succeeded in getting Visva Bharati interested in this research.
  2. Better preservation and research on the manuscripts currently in possession of Visva Bharati, which include a lot of un-researched history on the circumstances under which these manuscripts came to Visva Bharati. Kalimohan Ghosh was reportedly involved in collecting some of them from surrounding villages where the original family held manuscripts were in deteriorating condition and the families in question could not tend to them. These documents needed more public awareness in preservation of our cultural heritage and needed better exposure to popular media and further research by current scholars. There is also the related issue of the Surul Inscription and its historical significance. Such items are worth being published in Archaeological and historical and geographic magazines. Items less important than them often grace the pages of National Geographic or International Archaeological magazines. It should have been the duty of people of Visva Bharati to get these invaluable artifacts and documents to the world view and fire the imagination of the younger generation on preservation of cultural heritage.
  3. Refocus on the need for research in sustainable low carbon footprint existence through the rural reconstruction unit of Sriniketan, and finding a solution to the yet unsolved dilemma for India on how to redress the economic imbalance between an exploitative urban Indian economic growth path and an exploited rural Indian economic devastation. There is no task more important than that and not just for Visva Bharati or India, but for a wide swatch of humanity across the planet. Rabindranath did not tinker with Sriniketan for satisfying a superficial hobby. It is distressing to see how far the Sriniketan effort has degenerated in the radar of Visva Bharati. I was also tempted to get Visva Bharati interested to helping out some of the chemical free organic farming efforts ongoing, and being supported by small NGOs to bring a debt free and toxic free natural food cycle economy back in the villages around Santiniketan. These were areas where Sriniketan should have been playing a pioneering role for the nation. There is also other efforts, such as preservation of indigenous varieties of rice strains. India had more than a hundred thousand varieties of rice, developed over several millennia of experimentation, to suit differing soil and weather conditions. But in the past few decades, the corporation driven mono-culture has gripped the nation and India is rapidly losing her biodiversity with regard to rice strain varieties, and today it has no more than two thousand or so trains of rice left. There are a handful of people desperately trying to preserve what can still be preserved, because the day is coming soon when non sustainable high fertilizer high pesticide genetically modified patent holding crop technology, already proving a failure in the west, is going to have to be replaced, and India will have lost its five thousand year old wisdom of rice cultivation by then. Sriniketan, again, should have been in the forefront of these efforts. And again, I failed to get anybody interested in such “boring” issues.
  4. Engage in a research of the decades long chain of correspondence between Kalimohan Ghosh and Leonard Elmhirst, currently preserved in the UK. These documents contained invaluable information on the purpose Kalimohan was sent by Rabindranath to various countries in Europe and the middle east to learn from their education, agricultural and rural reconstruction programs and then to see how to filter through them, and experiment with what might be modified and made usable under Indian conditions, through micro-experimentations in Sriniketan and elsewhere. My belief is that these are treasure troves that best deserve to be researched by Visva Bharati, but unfortunately these documents are not preserved in Santiniketan and are likely to be auctioned off by Dartington Hall if no one shows any interest. I have not had any success, again, in getting Visva Bharati interested in these issues. And that is not all. After the demise of Kalimohan, for the next so many decades, his fourth son Salil Ghosh continued a correspondence with Leolard Elmhirst, till Elmhirst passed away. Those documents too, are filed and preserved by Dartinton Hall. Those too are expected to be illuminating for research on a number of topics, the most important being Rabindranath’s efforts to start the ground work of research to eventually be the pathfinder that might halp solve some of the future problems that India was surely expected to face. Needless to say, I failed to get the University interested in this work. In fact, my experience has been that one immovable constant about the university is its lack of interest in engaging in anything worthwhile.

Rabindranath had toyed about the need for an ideal institute that was more than a school or a college or an university. India having lost its forests of the Upanishadic Aranyak period and the Tapovan phase of its history, he had toyed and experimented with conceptualizing a century ago, under difficult circumstances not under his control, how one might bring back an ambience that were to be a similar germinating ground of brilliant minds. He even selected the name, Visva Bharati, not out of a hat, but after careful deliberation.

However, instead of writing on those “boring” topics, new developments in Santiniketan coax me instead to write to you about a wholly different topic, getting rid of all non-Indians.

I now understand that the university is busy kicking out the last of the foreign professors, such as the Ms Andrea Loseries of Austria and Mr. Shin Sangwhan of Korea.

This has surprised, disappointed and pained me. In one swift stroke, Visva Bharati appears to have amputated the Visva out of itself and prepared to reincarnate itself as a Bhubandanga-Bharati.

There would be no point in engaging with the university on lofted topics of research on Arnold Bake’s recordings or Manuscriptology, or preservation of indigenous strains of rice, or studying old correspondence between dead people like Elmhirst and Ghosh, if the university is mainly focussed on burying itself into a tomb in Birbhum.

I shall therefore request you to seriously contemplate on what direction you are to steer this institution towards in the forthcoming years, and to contemplate on what Rabindranath might have envisaged the destiny of Visva-Bharati and India was to be, and in todays larger geo-ecological-economic context, how rational thought might prompt one in course correction for this supposedly open institute in the development of human endeavor of global significance  that was to sprout itself from the soil of India.

I would also suggest that Visva Bharati assumes a bit of humility, and absorb a realization that it needs good people more than good people needs Visva Bharati. It is the unproductive and lazy manipulative people that Visva Bharati has no dearth of, and who would cling to VB at any cost, because their presence has no constructive value and they have nowhere else to go.

Thanking you

Santanu Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada

1-604-597 8261.

Tonu@me.com

cc: The registrar, Visva-Bharati University

registrar@visva-bharati.ac.in

Cc by physical mail to : Sri Pranab Mukherjee,

Rastrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, India

Is it always someone else’s fault ?

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The date was November 8, 2009.
I had written on the then maintained blog on Santiniketaner Khata, about my feelings and frustrations about the continued decline of Santiniketan. It got off to a flying start to from a world beating institution way ahead of its time and geared to spearhead creative as well as social movements on multiple fronts for the nation, and for the region and for the world of the future. But from that, it has now come to a sorry state of irrelevance so deep and pathetic that it defies logic.
And yet, there seem to be no serious soul searching by anybody. I find the bizarre situation not an act of God, and not a machination of the Delhi Government. I see the people of Santiniketan, the Bengali group and the exstudents of Santiniketan as directly responsible for the deterioration of the institution. Out of them, the ex-students have been the biggest failures. They failed to live up to any single expectation of its founder.
This has been a cause of a major heartburn for me, I have tried to shake the apparently lethargic and drugged group of ex-students into some form of recognition that the ball stops at our court and to contribute into some serious thinking and joining hands and doing something more than lip service towards reviving the institution.
My failure, along with every other person before me and after me, has made writings such as the one I did in November 2009 so heart wrenchingly bitter. It is like admitting that we, ourselves, are the greatest failures as social humans.
We are in fact the reason india will struggle to get out of its difficulties. Those of us that have migrated to the west, we ourselves are responsible again for overseeing the slow deterioration of the west and devaluation of its great institutions and philosophies.
Its like a virus. We go everywhere to suck out what benefit we can for ourselves. But instead of contributing to its growth and giving something back in return, we have only learned to take and take and never give anything back.
Welcome to the new diaspora of educated Indians – the techno-maggots of the new millennium. We have mastered the art of training, and yet have not understood the meaning of the word ‘education’.

And for those that worry about the decline of Visva-Bharati, look no further than the ex-students to find one of the main root causes of its decline.
The decease lies within.

————————————–

Is it always someone else’s fault ?

We spend a lot of time, thinking and talking of Visva-Bharati and who and what has been the reason for its decline.
It is my belief, that the ball is in our court, and the biggest fault lies on the shoulders of the ex-students. Of course, I do not expect the ex-students to agree. Admitting fault is not in anybody’s nature.
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.

Tagore and Gandhi - Wikipedia

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

November 8, 2009

————————————————–

I wrote than more than two years ago on the Khata blog. Now that I am planning to close down every other site, more or less, except this one. I thought I shall bring over some of my musings from there, to here.

Nothing much has changed in these two years, except that Santiniketan has faded further into the backwaters of the world, slowing decaying, along with the rotting vegetation of a dying forest.

Tonu – March 24, 2012

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.