A Kahaani Koncerti initiative to revisit Tagore's vision, sparked off from a book by Prof Sushanta Dattagupta, former VC of Visva Bharati, titled: 1921-2021 Visva Bharati: A Vision Betrayed. Please give your opinion on the issue and follow us for all activities being undertaken to explore the initiative.
Episode 3. Tagore and Kala Bhavan
Sriniketan, Patha Bhavan, Kala Bhavan were many of the "platforms" that Rabindranath Tagore had established as a part of his vision implementation. Even though art classes were initially a part of Patha Bhavan, the school, and had produced many eminent artists like Mukul Dey, he later set up Kala Bhavan, which today is one of the major art centres of India.
In continuance of our initiative to revisit Tagore's Vision, we invited Dr R Siva Kumar, who joined Kala Bhavan as a student and later became its principal, to discuss the issues with Prof Sushanta Dattagupta, former VC of Visva Bharati and amongst others, author of Visva Bharati 1921-2021 A Vision Betrayed.
Dr Siva Kumar, who has since made Santiniketan his home, is an internationally noted contemporary Indian art historian, art critic and curator.
In 2010, in his interview with the ‘Web of Stories’, the eminent artist K. G. Subramanyan refers to R. Siva Kumar as "one of the best" art historians of India. He was awarded the Kesaripuraskaram for art writing by the Lalit Kala Akademi, Kerala, in 2010.
He has also curated major exhibitions like "Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism", and “The Last Harvest: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore” and retrospectives of important Indian artists, such as Rabindranath Tagore, Benode Behari Mukherjee (co-curated with Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh) and K. G. Subramanyan, amongst others.
Episode 2. Tagore’s Vision on Education
Dr Dipankar Dasgupta, who taught at the Indian Statistical Institute between 1982 and 2006, and at various universities around the world, has authored a book on South Point School, his alma mater - felt that the influence of Tagore’s vision on education was practiced without a Tagorean tag when he was in school. He singles out thespian Utpal Dutt, who taught him in school and other teachers, who unknowingly distilled the Tagorean Vision without branding it as such.
Episode 1. Revisiting Tagore’s Vision
Dr Martin Kempchen - who, by his own admission has lived in Shantiniketan more than Tagore himself, is an eminent scholar who has translated Ramakrishna and Tagore into German, was our first guest for the Talking Tagore Series. In this conversation with Dr Sushanta Dattagupta, Dr Kempchen offers the way forward to carry out Tagore's Vision, which can be beyond the boundaries of the campus.