#books
Home in the World,
Amartya Sen.
Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s memoirs left me with a wish that if only I could have studied in Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan like Indira Gandhi, Satyajit Ray and Amartya Sen himself.
Nobel prize winner Dr Amartya Sen in his memoir, ‘Home in the World’ pays glowing tributes to his alma mater.
He was born in Santiniketan and was given the name Amartya ( Immortal) by Tagore himself. His maternal grandfather Kshiti Mohan, for decades, taught in Santiniketan, and was a close colleague of Tagore.
His mother Amita had not only studied in Tagore’s school, but was a leading actor in the dance-dramas written and directed by Rabindranath himself.
Amartya Sen calls Santiniketan, ‘School Without Walls’.
Classes in Santiniketan were unusual. They were held outdoors. Prohibition of physical punishment was a rule on which Rabindranath was insistent.
Santiniketan was different from other schools. It was a progressive, co-educational school, with an immensely broad and inclusive curriculum, including substantial immersion in the cultures of different parts of Asia and Africa.
Amartya Sen quotes Satyajit Ray:
” I consider the three years I spent in Santiniketan as the most fruitful of my life…. Santiniketan opened my eyes for the first time to the splendeours of Indian and Far Eastern Art. ..”.
The group of eminent teachers included Sylvain Levi, Charles Andrews, William Pearson, Tan Yun-Shan, Leonard Elmhirst and artists like Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Bajaj.
“The principle of his ( Tagore’s) method
of teaching is that the individual must be absolutely free and happy in an environment where all is at peace and where the forces of nature are all in evidence; then there must be art, music, poetry, and learning in all it’s branches in the persons of the teachers; lessons are regular but not compulsory, the classes are held under the trees with the boys sitting at the feet of the teacher, and each student with his different talents and temperament is naturally drawn to the subjects for which he has aptitude and ability”.
……If you have freedom, you will have reason to exercise it – even during nothing would be a kind of exercise. It is the training to make use of the freedom to reason (rather than fearing it, as rote learners are taught to do) that Tagore was trying to advance through his unusual school.
Santiniketan was also generous in leaving lot of time for sports.
Apart from the teachers, the students learned a lot from the visitors who came to speak on a variety of subjects.
Amartya recounts the visits ofMahatma Gandhi,Chiang Kai Shek and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Tagore argued, ‘ the imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education’.
– Joy Kallivayalil.
