THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF SANTINIKETAN

The old Santiniketan way has come under fire recently. But many in the community are still striving to maintain Tagore's original vision of openness and inclusivity

- Shamik Bag

As the principal of Santiniketan Sishutirtha School, a Tagore-family founded school—only the third such after Rabindranath Tagore started Santiniketan’s Patha Bhavan and Siksha Satra over a century ago—Sudripta Tagore, 58, teaches the primary schoolchildren, among other things, how to climb trees.

While Sudripta stands guard, he also goads and guides students of the English-medium co-educational school up the trees on the campus in a forested part of Santiniketan town, in West Bengal’s Birbhum district. He instructs them on grip and toehold, to hug and hold. To form lifelong bonds with the trees and bees. With nature and environment. By extension, with Rabindranath Tagore and all that the poet laureate and pioneering educationist stood for in the university town he created, Santiniketan, and its ashram-school, Patha Bhavan, and Visva-Bharati University, that he established in 1901 and 1921, respectively. By teaching students organic farming, Sishutirtha connects to Sriniketan village, about 3km from the main Visva-Bharati campus, where Tagore based his innovative scientific experiments in rural reconstruction and sustainable agriculture.

Sudripta’s father, and founder of Sishutirtha, Supriya, 84, is the fifth generation of Tagore’s elder brother Satyendranath’s family. Shadowed by the heft of his surname, Rabindranath Tagore is a “burden”, Sudripta says, that he has happily carried. “Rabindranath is an idea. He needs to be given a chance,” he says.