When man is honoured for his excellence his ascent is assured. To Rabindranath Tagore, man is more than his thoughts and actions. The poet envisioned man in an altogether different fashion because he himself denies commonality and passivity. As a deeper observer of his own feelings through contemplation and action, he places man on a pedestal on which he remains absolutely different, indeed  glorious in spirit . The Universal Man is eternally ‘blessed with the universal personality’; he knows how to endear humanity even under trying circumstances in the search of truth and beauty, goodness and magnanimity.

How does Tagore highlight the fundamental and significant aspect of man? How does one define his true identity? The poet wrote: “The aspect of man which has surpassed the animal grows with its ideal. It is an aspiration for that which is not evident in the material world nor urgent for his physical life; it belongs to his universal self. In the Rigveda we find of this universal Being: Padoasya visvabhutani/Tripadasyamritang divi. A quarter of him is in the apparent world, the remainder subsists above in the form of immortality.

This is proved when the individual man at a great cost to himself thinks the thoughts of all men, fulfils the desire of the many and gives form to the joy that is for everyone. The extent to which his trend is in the opposite direction, towards the narrow distinction of time and place, to that extent he is a barbarian.” (Man, Andhra University Press, 1991, p.6)

As challenging as he was intrepid, man, in the perception of Tagore, is a timeless symbol of refinement and serenity. That education is a dream, a concept that is as unque as it is uplifting. The poet’s school is an enviable enigma. It is yet to be accorded the honour and adoration, effort and attention. In the name of education it is furnished with the latest gadgets to facilitate parrot-like instruction, reminiscent of the dasta panchtar Andaman ~ the cellular prison-house from ten to five. Where is their joy and freedom in education? More than a century ago in Santiniketan, the poet’s demonstrates how to dream in its arms ~ the dream that never fades but ever pulsates with the spirit ~ She dwells in us and around us however far we wander/ For she is our own, the darling of our hearts, our Santiniketan.

Indeed, the courage of Tagore, the pioneer of education towards the eternal identity of man, is yet to be honoured for genuine poignancy and practice. Since education is, one can frankly admit, nobody’s business for faith and advancement of joy and freedom, fairness and fullness, it has failed to reveal the diverse avenues of man. We are yet to be touched with the faith of Tagore ~ “Children are living things, more living than grown-up people, who have built their shells of habit around them.

Therefore, it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should not have mere schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love. It must be an ashram where men have gathered in the peace of nature, where life is not merely meditative, but fully awake in its activities, where boys’ minds are not perpetually drilled into believing that the ideal of the self-idolatry of the nation is the truest ideal for them to accept; where they are bidden to realize man’s world as God’s kingdom to whose citizenship they have to aspire; where the sunshine and sunset and the silent glory of the stars are not daily ignored; where nature’s festivities of flowers and fruits have their joyous recognition from man; and where the young and the old, the teacher and the student sit at the same table to partake of their daily food and the food of their eternal life.”

Therefore, an interactive relationship between the teacher and the taught in learning the true meaning of education and man is now sadly and appallingly missing. When learning turns into earning by hook or by crook and teaching deviates from  the welfare of man and society,  the less said about education and man, the better.

The changing vision of man has not escaped Tagore’s notice. To say the least about religion and man is to avert partisan attitudes, puerile and utterly inane. The identity of man in terms of religion is that religion is a habit, a discipline, a transparent and spontaneous way of life totally based on the spirit of Truth, Beauty and Goodness between man and man anywhere and everywhere. It is a force within man or praiti as Tagore strongly asserts in terms of the Upanishads. It is the religion of realisation of man irrespective of caste, creed, nationality, colour, heritage, culture and tradition. Tagore’s Visva-Bharati, where the world makes its home in a single nest, upholds this great vision of religion ~ the religion of man.

The hallmark of humanism is cultivation of crystallised consciousness of which man is proud. This calls for  freedom to be as one ought to be. Indeed one should always be guaranteed the freedom to create and criticise, grow and develop. In the invaluable words of Tagore, “By squeezing human beings in the grip of an inelastic system by forcibly holding them fixed, we have ignored the laws of life and growth.

We have forced living souls into permanent passivity, making them incapable of moulding circumstances to their own intrinsic design, and of mastering their own destiny. Borrowing our ideal of life from a dark period of our degeneration  we have covered up our sensitiveness of soul under the immovable weight of a remote past. We have set up an elaborate ceremonial of cage-worship, and plucked all the feathers from the wings of the living spirit of our people.

And for us ~ with our centuries of degradation and insult, with the amorphousness of our national unity, with our helplessness before the attack of disasters from without and our unreasoning self-obstructions from within ~ the punishment has been terrible. Our stupefaction has become so absolute that we do not even realise that this persistent misfortune, dogging our steps for ages, cannot be a mere accident of history, removable only by another accident from outside.” (Creative Unity ~  The Spirit of Freedom, Macmillan India Limited, New Delhi, 1988, pp. 138-39). He has thus highlighted the supreme importance of the enlightenment of man.

(The writer is former Professor of Education, Visva-Bharati University)