The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies

Research

Visual Art and Cultural Revival: Sister Nivedita, Patrick Geddes, and the Tagores by Murdo Macdonald

Taking visual art as his guiding theme Murdo Macdonald explores the network of interdisciplinary thinkers that included Sister Nivedita, Patrick Geddes and Rabindranath Tagore. Attention is also given to the contribution of Rabindranath’s nephew Abanindranath, the leader of the Bengal school of painting. The analogies between Geddes’s advocacy of cultural revival in Scotland and Tagore’s advocacy of cultural revival in Bengal are also noted, as is the contribution of Ananda Coomaraswamy.  Read more

Blanka Knotkova-Capkova

In Conversation: On The Tagore Sensibility with Prof Bashabi Fraser and Dr Blanka Knotkova

At an international collaborative conference organised by Manipal University and Edinburgh Napier University at Manipal in February 2020 on Society and Freedom(s): the Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore’s Ideas Today’, Prof Bashabi Fraser, Co-Convenor with Dr Padma Rani (Director, School of Communication at Manipal University) of the conference, interviews Dr Blanka Knotkova, a keynote speaker on her feminist perspective on Tagore’s work. The interview was recorded and produced by the Media students of the School of Communication at Manipal University. Read more

Prof Bindu Puri, Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi

The Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth by Prof Bindu Puri

My recent book on the Gandhi-Tagore debate, The Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth, argues that the debate between Gandhi and Tagore appeared to have been about many issues: Satyagraha, the non-cooperation movement, the boycott of educational institutions, swadeshi, Gandhi’s mantra that “swaraj can be attained by the charkha” (Tagore in Bhattacharya (ed), 2008:109) and the possibilities of self-mortification in Gandhi’s fasts.  Read more

Prof Malashi Lal

Tagore and Gandhi on Women by Prof Malashri Lal

Lord Bruce concludes his discussion piece, agreeing with Jawaharlal Nehru, that Tagore and Gandhi “represented two aspects of the truth, neither of which can be ignored”. Prof Amiya Sen, in a different framework of “religious thought” is of the opinion that Gandhi and Tagore “treated religion to be an integral and eternal part of Indian life and values even as they were only too well aware of the problems inherent.” Read more