Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Asoke Bhattacharya
Jadavpur University, Calcutta
Introduction
It will be no exaggeration to state that the edifice of
modern India rests on two pillars: two towering
personalities of the twentieth century - Rabindranath
Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-
1941) was born in Calcutta (Kolkata of today), the then
capital of British India situated in the eastern part of the
country. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 – 1948)
hailed from Porbandar in Gujrat situated in the western
part. Their thoughts – social, economic, political and
religious – emerged from the very Indian context and
culminated in a full-fledged anti-colonial and nationalist
worldview though for both of them the transformation was
slow yet steady. Both of them thought colonialism was an
internal psychological construct and paid less attention to
the externally superimposed domination of the alien power
which, they felt, would crumble once the people were
aroused. Both of them prescribed a philosophy of life
based on Indian values, ethics and customs. Both the
thinkers invoked ancient Indian wisdom as a weapon to
fight not only British colonialism, but also the ignorance
and superstitions prevalent in Indian society. For them,
political emancipation was the disappearance of only the
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi was a great genius of enlightenment who reached
almost every household of the nation. Under his
leadership, the spirit of India was aroused. All of Gandhi’s
movements had deep social connotations. Gandhi’s
educational ideas were unique. Since the advent of the
British rule, many educationists and thinkers had
condemned the British-imposed colonial education system
as unreal, inadequate, rootless, shallow, alien,
demoralizing and denationalizng. Gandhi condemned it in
moral terms - conceived and born in error, nurtured in sin.
Gandhi’s experiments in education began in South Africa
with the foundation of the Phoenix settlement in 1904 and
the Tolstoy Farm in 1910. He laid stress on education
through craft. He used to say that there was no point
developing the brain only. One had to develop one’s brain
through one’s hands. If he were a poet, he would write a
beautiful poem on the possibility of the five fingers of the
hand... Books are never sufficiently interesting to hold the
interest of the mind. The mind begins to wander. Only
manual work brings you back to reality.
Biographical Outline
Phoenix Settlement
Tolstoy Farm
Conclusion
Both Tagore and Gandhi looked at education from a
post-colonial perspective. Their experimentations bore the
stamp of India’s national heritage – the Vedas and the
Upanishadas. Tagore’s scheme was to transplant in
modern India a slice of the ancient ashramic principles
where students and teachers would live together in familial
bondage. Learning would take place in a spirit of
togetherness – both with human beings and the nature
around. Individuality of the child would flourish through
exposure in the realm of art, literature and music.
Physically the child would take part in the day to day
chores like in ancient times when the disciple along with
the members of the Guru’s family used to milch the cow,
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