Tagore’s “rooted-cosmopolitanism” and international mindedness against institutional sustainability

ABSTRACT

Cosmopolitanism is often seen as a western concept associated with liberal individualistic values. It is also associated mostly with the urban educated middle-class. However, cosmopolitan thinking has been also prevalent in the East. Scholars in the twenty-first century are increasingly arguing that, there are multiple ways of thinking about cosmopolitanism originating from different regions of the world. Among Eastern thinkers, Rabindranath Tagore from colonial British India has been considered by many as one of the most cosmopolitan thinkers. The uniqueness about Tagore’s cosmopolitanism is that, it did not uproot him from his rural Bengali roots and sense of ethnic identity. He was very much a “rooted-cosmopolitan”. In his book, ‘Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers’, Kwame Anthony Appaiah had agued that, a “rooted cosmopolitan” is someone who was rooted in his own cultural context while having an open-mind to feel literally at home in the world. This article draws on archival research at Rabindra Bhawan in Shantiniketan and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library archives to further this argument and demonstrates how Tagore’s school and university were built drawing on his “rooted cosmopolitan” ideals and international mindedness. In conclusion, this article highlights some of the challenges of sustaining the reformist educational institutions led by Tagore’s unique personality traits, social and pedagogic reform movements in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century colonial British India.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian Cosmopolitanism
• international Mindedness
• Tagore
• institutional Sustainabilty
• global Citizenship Education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the O.P. Jindal Global University Faculty Research Grant [JGU/RGP/2018/006].

Notes on contributors

Mousumi Mukherjee

Dr. Mousumi Mukherjee is Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the International Institute for Higher Education Research & Capacity Building, O.P. Jindal Global University, India. She is a Research Standing Committee Member of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies. She has has over 19 years comparative educational experience in India, United States and Australia. She has published in many peer-reviewed journals and edited books.