Bengalis say that Santiniketan is not a place, but a way of life. As its name suggests, it is the “abode of peace”, and its very atmosphere transports you to another world. Although it is located two hours from the big city of Kolkata, Santiniketan has managed to retain its idyllic old-world charm.
In 1863, Debendranath Tagore established an ashram where anyone, regardless of caste or creed, could come to Santiniketan to meditate on the one Supreme God. In the years that followed, his son, India’s most famous poet, Rabindranath Tagore, would also find peace in this same place. In 1901, he founded the Brahmacharya ashram (modelled on the ancient gurukul systems), now known as Patha Bhavana, a school for children where they are educated under the trees, in close contact with nature. Tagore firmly rejected the idea of crowded classrooms and believed that ‘the highest education is that which does not merely impart information, but which brings our life into harmony with all existence’.
In 1921, he created the educational complex that would later become one of India’s most important universities, Visva Bharati, laying the foundations for learning and intercultural exploration.
With innovative staging, the exhibition ‘Under the Shadow of the Banyan Tree: Rabindranath Tagore’s School’ invites visitors to experience this educational world and rediscover the genius of Rabindranath Tagore, best known in Spain as a writer and the first non-European to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, but who also excelled in music, composing more than 2,500 songs in a genre known as Rabindra Sangeet (‘songs of Rabindranath’), in painting, with a style of his own that influenced later generations of painters and with the achievement of being the first Indian artist to exhibit his work in Europe and the United States, as well as many other facets such as social reformer, philosopher, pioneer in the defence of women’s rights in India, etc.
The exhibition offers a unique immersive experience that plunges visitors into India through an audiovisual show from the poetic perspective of Rabindranath Tagore. An imaginary journey from Spain to Calcutta to reach the forests of Santiniketan, the abode of peace, where he founded his Visva Bharati educational complex in 1921. It also features spaces dedicated to his educational model, photographs and videos of Santiniketan and Tagore, others dedicated to his music, his connection with the world, and first editions of his books from the ‘José Paz Rabindranath Tagore Library’, all in a creative itinerary that awakens the visitor’s senses.