Through the Ages of Life: Rabindranath Tagore -- Son, Father, and Educator (1861-1941)

Research Framework : Thisessay attempts to reclaim Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the “Myriad-MindedMan” from colonial India, through his “ages of life” – as a son, father, andeducator – and his conceptualization of an alternate education and masculinity.Tagore’s critique of colonial education, his experiments with institutions, andhis curriculum emphasizing arts and moral aesthetics over muscular nationalismchallenged the dominant culture of masculinity. His paternalism embraced a“manliness” privileging moral and spiritual sustenance over economic andpolitical considerations. Objectives : By focusing onRabindranath Tagore, an iconic figure of Indian modernity, the essay attempts todemonstrate the tangled relationship between his domestic reality and his publiccommitment to social justice and pedagogy. Methodology : It deploysthe method of contextualized textual analysis by examining a variety of literarysources -- personal narratives, correspondence, lectures, and essays. Results: Foregrounding theimportance of family in its enabling and restrictive capacities, the essayexplores connections between one family’s life and the Bengali understanding ofage, gender, and class in late colonial India. Conclusions: The essaycontends that Tagore’s position as a biological father and the transference ofhis affective concern to a larger body of children, in whom he inculcated a newsense of freedom, were inflected with an alternate sense of masculinity. Contribution: The essaycontributes to our understanding that the role of “fathers,” biological andmetaphorical, attained heightened significance among the educated, affluentcommunity in colonial Bengal. An examination of the interminable connectionbetween Tagore’s personal and public life disrupts the separation between thehome and the world and establishes the centrality of the domestic in Indiannationalist politics. As a father and a reformer, Tagore challenged existingnotions of masculinity through his reformed and secular model of education.