BENGAL - A STUDY OF SOCIAL CHANGES AND LIFE STYLE (MAINLY FASHION) FROM 1800 TO 2000

GUIDE-MRS SUCHITRA SETH
DOCUMENT SUBMITTED BY – SOMDUTT SARKAR (5TH SEMESTER, TEXTILE DESIGN,NID)
ARNAB SENAPATI (3RD SEMESTER, TEXTILE DESIGN,NID)

BENGAL – A STUDY OF SOCIAL CHANGES AND LIFE STYLE (mainly fashion) FROM 1800 TO 2000

A study on the history of Bengal and changes in Bengali lifestyle (mainly fashion) through the ages was done by us as a part of our history of design course.
We mainly looked into photographs as our reference. Verbal sources and Literature was also referred. We also studied Rabindranath tagore, an integral part of the Bengali culture. Some movies like “Ghare Baire”, “Charulata”, “Tin kanya” etc were also seen in order to get an idea of how changes have taken place over the years. “Prothom aalo” and “Sei somoy” of Sunil Gangopadhay helped us get a picture of the changes that took place. “Hna hannattye” and ‘Mongpute Robindronath” of Maitreyi devi also helped us get an insight of the time period.
Photographs are not just frozen memories outlined with sunshine and clouds but do speak a lot about the social and cultural back drop of a particular scenario.It gives the viewer a hint about so many aspects of the subject. (Social, Cultural, Psychological, Geographical, Historical or Political)
Photographs in the beginning had been a privilege and a lavish pleasure confined only among the rich and upper middle class of the Indian society. The rural mass never had a fair chance to pose in front of the camera.
So old photographs are very few and not every aspect of the society is captured in them.
There were major social and political events, scientific discoveries and industrial progress in the country but not all these are always noticed to have influenced the life of Indians in the photographs that we got.
So our research was based more on verbal sources, literature.

There is a lot of British influence in the Bengali culture- in architecture, in dressing, in education system, in various other aspects of life style. Before discussing the major impact of the British on the Bengalis we must have at least a rough sketch on the the bengal renaissance.
BENGAL RENAISSANCE can be said to have started with Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1775-1833) and ended with Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), although there have been many stalwarts thereafter embodying particular aspects of the unique intellectual and creative output .Nineteenth century Bengal was a unique blend of religious and social reformers, scholars, literary giants, journalists, patriotic orators and scientists, all merging to form the image of a renaissance, and marked the transition from the 'medieval' to the 'modern.During this period, Bengal witnessed an intellectual awakening that is in some way similar to the Renaissance in Europe during the 16th century, The parallel socio-religious movement, the Brahmo Samaj, developed during this time period and counted many of the leaders of the Bengal Renaissance among its followers. In the earlier years the Brahmo Samaj, like the rest of society, could not however, conceptualize, in that feudal-colonial era, a free India as it was influenced by the European Enlightenment (and its bearers in India, the British Raj) although it traced its intellectual roots to the Upanishads. Their version of Hinduism, or rather Universal Religion (similar to that of Ramakrishna), although devoid of social evils like sati and polygamy that had crept into the social aspects of Hindu life, was ultimately a rigid impersonal monotheistic faith, which actually was quite distinct from the pluralistic and multifaceted nature of the way the Hindu religion was practised. Future leaders like Keshub Chunder Sen were as much devotees of Christ, as they were of Brahma, Krishna or the Buddha. It has been argued by some scholars that the Brahmo Samaj movement never gained the support of the masses and remained restricted to the elite, although Hindu society has accepted most of the social reform programmes of the Brahmo Samaj. It must also be acknowledged that many of the later Brahmos were also leaders of the freedom movement.
The renaissance period after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 saw a magnificent outburst of Bengali literature. While Ram Mohan Roy and Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar were the pioneers, others like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee widened it and built upon it. Later, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, a great saint of Bengal, is thought to have realized the mystical truth of all religions, and to have reconciled the conflicting Hindu sects ranging from Shakta tantra, Advaita Vedanta and Vaishnavism, as well as other religions like Christianity and Islam. In fact Ramakrishna made famous the Bengali saying: Jato Mat, Tato Path. (All religions are different paths to the same God).
The Vedanta movement prospered principally through his disciple and sage, Swami Vivekananda who on his return from the highly successful Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1893 and subsequent lecture tour in America, became a revered national idol.Swami Vivekananda urged Indians to break free from the shackles of colonialism, past and present and reaffirmed service to mankind as the highest truth of the Hindu Vedantic religion. "Service to mankind is service to god" was his motto. He was the first Indian to conceptualize an absolutely free, prosperous and strong India, which while appreciative of its rich cultural past would be vibrant enough to walk confidently into the future.
THE TAGORE FAMILY, including Rabindranath Tagore were leaders of this period and had a particular interest in educational reform . Their contribution to the Bengal Renaissance was multi-faceted. Indeed, Tagore's 1901 Bengali novel, Nastanirh was written as a critique of men who professed to follow the ideals of the Renaissance, but failed to do so within their own families. In many ways Rabindranath Tagore's writings (especially poems and songs) can be seen as the imbued with the spirit of the Upanishads. His works repeatedly allude to Upanishadic ideas regarding soul, liberation, transmigration and - perhaps most essentially - about a spirit that imbues all creation not unlike the Upanishadic Brahman.Tagore's English translation of a set of poems titled the Gitanjali won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He was the first Bengali, the first Indian as well as the first Asian to win the award. That is only one example but the contribution of the family is enormous. The tagore family was known for religious and cultural innovations during the 19th Bengal Renaissance. The profound social and cultural involvement of his family would later play a strong role in the formulation of Rabindranath’s educational priorities. His grandfather Dwarkanath was involved in supporting medical facilities, educational institutions and the arts, and he fought for religious and social reform and the establishment of a free press. His father was also a leader in social and religious reform, who encouraged a multi-cultural exchange in the family mansion Jorasanko. Within the joint family, Rabindranath’s thirteen brothers and sisters were mathematicians, journalists, novelists, musicians, artists. His cousins, who shared the family mansion, were leaders in theatre, science and a new art movement.
The tremendous excitement and cultural richness of his extended family permitted young Rabindranath to absorb and learn subconsciously at his own pace, giving him a dynamic open model of education, which he later tried to recreate in his school at Santiniketan. Not surprisingly, he found his outside formal schooling to be inferior and boring and, after a brief exposure to several schools, he refused to attend school. The only degrees he ever received were honorary ones bestowed late in life.
His experiences at Jorasanko provided him with a lifelong conviction concerning the importance of freedom in education. He also realized in a profound manner the importance of the arts for developing empathy and sensitivity, and the necessity for an intimate relationship with one’s cultural and natural environment. In participating in the cosmopolitan activities of the family, he came to reject narrowness in general, and in particular, any form of narrowness that separated human being from human being. He saw education as a vehicle for appreciating the richest aspects of other cultures, while maintaining one’s own cultural specificity.
As he wrote; “I was brought up in an atmosphere of aspiration, aspiration for the expansion of the human spirit. We in our home sought freedom of power in our language, freedom of imagination in our literature, freedom of soul in our religious creeds and that of mind in our social environment. Such an opportunity has given me confidence in the power of education which is one with life and only which can give us real freedom, the highest that is claimed for man, his freedom of moral communion in the human world.... I try to assert in my words and works that education has its only meaning and object in freedom–freedom from ignorance about the laws of the universe, and freedom from passion and prejudice in our communication with the human world. In my institution I have attempted to create an atmosphere of naturalness in our relationship with strangers, and the spirit of hospitality which is the first virtue in men that made civilization possible.
I invited thinkers and scholars from foreign lands to let our boys know how easy it is to realize our common fellowship, when we deal with those who are great, and that it is the puny that with their petty vanities set up barriers between man and man.” [1]
As well as growing up in a household that was the meeting place for leading artists and intellectuals from India and the West, Rabindranath had a further experience which was unusual for someone of his upbringing. In the 1890s, he was put in charge of the family's rural properties in East Bengal. His first experiments in adult education were carried out there as he gradually became aware of the acute material and cultural poverty that permeated the villages, as well as the great divide between the uneducated rural areas and the city elites. His experiences made him determined to do something about rural uplift, and later at Santiniketan, students and teachers were involved with literacy training and social work and the promotion of cooperative schemes. As an alternative to the existing forms of education, he started a small school at Santiniketan in 1901 that developed into a university and rural reconstruction centre, where he tried to develop an alternative model of education that stemmed from his own learning experiences.
A lot of cross pollination took place in the tagore family due to their foreign contacts. On the other hand the common mass in Bengal got influenced by the British rule of that time. British architecture influenced the indian aesthetic of architecture of that period. Calcutta is a major witness where still today we get to see those buildings and monuments with british architecture. Not just architecture but the lifestyle in general including dressing,eating habits also witnessed some changes.The Bethene School, one of the oldest schools for girls in Calcutta, started propagating women’s education. Women, who were so long confined within the four walls of their house now started coming out of their house . With the increased importance of woman in the bengali houehold,strengthened by the efforts of the great bengal reformers the dressing style in general also saw a plethora of changes.
THE BRITISH INFLUENCE ON FASHION IN BENGAL is undeniable. There was no concept of stitched garment in Bengal. Men used to wear dhoti as a lower garment coupled with a shawl or “uttariya” for covering the upper body, while women used to wear sarees. Sometimes they used to carry a light shawl while they used to go out of their houses.There was no concept of blouse. But when girls started going out to schools the British teachers thought that they needed something more refined for covering their upper bodies and so blouse was introduced.
With the advent of the british also came the BABU CULTURE in Bengal, which is described briefly in the later part of this write up.
HOSTORY OF BENGALI FASHION

Dresses of the women folk - In Bengal, the typical women dress has always been the sari. At one point of time, wearing a saree and veiling the head was the norm of the society. The saris of Bengal come in a wide range of hues, the most popular being the red and the white. Red and similar other bright colours were usually worn by ladies of lower age group. Since, earlier the Bengalee women used to wear sari from a very small age, these bright coloured saris suited to their taste and at one point of time it was customary to wear red sari in marriages as red was considered to have a lot of ritualistic values. Middle aged women i.e. women between thirty-five and forty generally wore light coloured saris and women above forty mostly used to wear white and off white coloured saris. White was also the colour of the widows. Ladies who became widow even at the age of fifteen, used to clad themselves in white coloured saris. But this trend is no longer prevalent. These days women off all ages are found to be wearing bright and gorgeous colours. Even the widows today are not found in white. Most women, these days, dress up according to their own choice and not according to the choice of the society. Conforming to this standard practice, women used a piece of cloth called “Orna” in addition to sari for veiling their head or at times they used the sari itself for veiling (ghomta). Due to the influence of the Turks, Afghans and the Mughals, there was a recognizable difference in the garments of the women folk. From the Pathans and the Mughals, our ladies got the “Salwar” and the “Kameez”. But these garments did not penetrate deep within the Bengali community much at that time and the basic convention of wearing the sari was not affected. It went on undisturbed Due to the influence of the Turks, Afghans and the Mughals a marked change was also noticed in the garments of the women folk. The practice of wearing colourful sarees started from this period. The “Anchal” of the saree was left over the shoulder to enhance the beauty. The “Choli” or the “Kancholi” as we know today was introduced to the women as the “Angia”. From the Pathans and the Mughals our ladies got the “Salwar” and the “Pajama”. This Pajama was of the same variety worn by the gentlemen. They also adopted the “Ghangra”, the “Do-patta” and the “Orna”. From them hung a bundle of keys or sometimes a tinkling ornament known as the “Kinkini”. But these garments did not penetrate deep within the Hindu society and the basic convention of wearing the saree was not affected. In short the Bengalis retained their own dress code in spite of so much influence of the Pathans and the Mughals.The weavers of Bengal produced varieties of fabrics. It need not be mentioned that the aesthetic sense of the Bengalis is the source of their textile triumph. With their artistry the Bengalis overwhelmed the world community. “Dhakai Muslin” overawed the whole world and this success of the textile brought about the downfall of India as the British interest in merchandise gradually shifted to creating a dominion.
In the year 1826, Feni Parks, a lady from England, attended the function at one of the rich Bengali house holds. She was curious to see and know about the women of the well-to-do families. In her diary she mentions having met two ladies who were extraordinarily beautiful. Judging by their dresses she came to understand the reason, why no one else other than their husbands were allowed in the inner quarters. They wore fine Benarasi sarees embroidered with golden laces that were fastened to the bodies with two twists with one end of the saree left over the shoulder. As wearing undergarments were not prevalent then, the fine silk emphasized the contours of their body.
Evolution of the Saree- the modern era inevitably changed the course and the convention. After Sri. Satyendra Nath Tagore returned to Bengal from abroad he had to leave for Bombay for his posting in civil service. He wished to take his wife Gyanadanandini devi with him. But a serious problem cropped up as to the dress the lady would wear while stepping out of her inner quarters. The solution to this problem came from a French tailor. He prepared an oriental dress for the ladies.
Contribution of Gyanadanandini devi-Later in Bombay, Gyanadanandini ransacked the market for a perfect dress that would be fashionable as well as fit to be worn in the society. She appreciated the style the Parsi women adapted while wearing the saree. She emulated them and also mastered the use of petty-coat, the chemise and the blouse. Thus she became the founder of the contemporary Bengali fashion for the ladies. More improvisations came when the Maharani of Coochbihar, Suniti Devi brought in more improvisations. She founded the trend of pleating and broaching the part of the saree that was hung over the shoulder as the “Anchal”. There were immense changes in the jackets and blouses as Frills started being used frequently on blouses.
The Bengali women implemented their own trends. The Bengali women defied the Pathan, Mughal or the English fashions and implemented their own trends. They started using the concept of colour matching and began wearing separate dresses for different seasons. Spring was the time for them to wear sky blue saree with black border and used floral garlands as headdress. During the Durga puja they wore sarees of different hues accompanied by floral ornaments and used cosmetics made from sandal and flowers. During holi they wore a white Muslin saree so that the colours strewn on the saree acquired prominence.
The ladies of the Tagore family became the trendsetters when it came to the usage of the sarees in the Bengali community. In this way in the nineteenth century a modernised trend of wearing the saree started its journey.
Men's wear- Under the British rule, started a new era and with it the Bengali dress sense also took a significant turn. For the gentlemen too, the century offered a stable fashion. In the British era men used to wear the coat and the trousers emulating the foreigners but the community at large did not accept the fashion. That is why till the mid nineteenth century the English dress code was ignored. To keep compatibility with the modern era a few changes were made in the conventional fashion and this was believed to suffice. The China coat and the vest were used and for the juniors there was the “Dolai”. Sandles were worn. Men sometimes used the turban and the shawl. The rich instead of a vest wore cloaks.
The Babus-We find a detailed description of the babus in Sri.Shibnath Sashtri’s writings. According to his writings in those days in the middle class families a special creed of people began to assert their culture in the community. Known as the “Babus”, these people were of a happy-go- lucky type and had dark circles round their eyes as a result of living an excessively promiscuous nocturnal life. These people had long cascading hair till the shoulders and used ink powder as dentifrice. They wore fine “Dhoti” with black border, a Muslin vest and round the neck hung a piece of braided white cloth. They wore Chinese shoes fitted with buckles.[2]
Tagore household became a trendsetter in fashion.Maharshi Debendranath Tagore was invited at a function at the Shovabazar Rajbari. All the rich and the famous of Calcutta were invited in the party. But at that time Maharshi was running through a financial crunch as he had to pay off his father’s debts, and this news had spread through the city like wild fire and every one was curious to know the way Maharshi would dress himself. This rumor reached the Thakurbari too and when Maharshi came to know about it he promptly ordered for a pair of Muslin shoe studded with pearls. What happened next was inevitable. Everyone in the party was waiting Debendranath Tagore
anxiously for the Maharshi. When Maharshi finally entered the banquet, people were enthralled to see him. There was nothing gaudy about his dress. He was wearing a milk white turban and a gown but his glittering shoes attracted the attention of all. At the sight of this, the “raja” of the Shovabazar Rajbari, who was also a good friend of Maharshi, called everyone and said that one should learn aristocracy from Maharshi, what every body wore round their neck and their head dresses, he nonchalantly kept that to his feet. Apart from Maharshi, his brother Nagendranath was also a very aesthetically inclined person.
Jyotindranath Tagore Another member of the Tagore family Jyotindranath Tagore also took a resolution to change the overall fashion trend of the Bengalis. For this he brought a fusion in the sponge wood cap with the turban and the pajama with the “Dhoti” and in the process formed a peculiar dress. He attached a pleated piece of cloth in front of the pajama simulating the “Kocha” of the “Dhoti” and mixed the sponge wood cap and the turban in such a way, which never seemed like a convincing head dress. Although Jyotindranath himself used to wear this peculiar dress, no body in the society dared to follow him.Thus the “dhoti” remained the “Dhoti” and the pajama the pajama. The trend of wearing the “dhoti” was challenged after the independence. The Bengalis saw that while going about their daily work, “Dhoti” was unsuitable. Thus they resorted to the coats, trousers and the shirt. The saree was replaced with the “Salwar-Kurta” and the “Orna”. This was readily accepted by the mass. This trend is prevalent now-a-days while new fashions are born every day. But the saree and the “Dhoti” are not done with. The Bengalis have a special respect for these garments and adorn them on occasions and ceremonies to relive their golden era of the yester years.

Modern dress-The end of the 19th century and the advent of the 20th century brought changes both in male and female dress styles. The effects of the Second World War in particular led men to adopt western cuts of shirts and trousers and suits and ties. The pyjama of Muslims and the dhuti of Hindus were frequently worn with western collar-and-cuff shirts. The kurta or punjabi, or the loose tunic, continued as formal wear, topped with waistcoat and a chadar or shawl on the left shoulder, but increasingly men donned western suits for office and state and official functions. Shoes also were laced and buckled in the western style, but pump shoes and sandals continued to be worn with indigenous costumes. Caps of different designs, either of plain cotton or embroidered, were worn by Muslim men on festive occasions. The sola tupi or sun-hat of the British was worn by Bengali officials, who also dressed in western uniforms of khaki, white or navy blue in various capacities.
The polka dot prints are gift of the 60s to the Indian wardrobe. Bell-bottoms became very fashionable in the late 1960s and much of the 1970s, both for men and women. They began as part of the hippie counterculture movement in the 1960s, together with love beads, granny glasses, and tie-dye shirts; in the 1970s, they moved into the mainstream.
Loon pants (shortened from "balloon pants") were one type of bell-bottomed trousers. They flared more from the knee than typical bell-bottoms, in which more of the entire leg was flared. They were a 1970's fashion, and could initially only be bought via catalog from a company in Britain which advertised in the back of the New Musical Express. They were usually worn with a Led Zepplin and Jesus boots (sandals). They became associated with disco music.
When the disco backlash occurred, late in 1979, bell bottoms quickly went out of fashion along with leisure suits and other clothes that had become associated with disco. The 1980s saw new trends in men's fashions. The influence came mainly through satellite television and increased travel. There was a conscious evolution of the classical Mughal styles, in which designers adapted elaborate dresses to meet contemporary needs. Punjabis with buttoned-up collars became longer, and the embellishment of exotic needlework or blockprint patterns enhanced the cut. Combination punjabi suits developed to men's three-piece ensembles. The third item was the left shoulder shawl or the graceful sleeveless long cloak with slits on the sides and finely embroidered. These are usually made from expensive silks, tassars and textured woven fabrics with gold braids or gold and silver embroideries. Since the 1990s, fashion designer men's wear has taken over as formal evening wear at weddings and festivals, reducing the use of western-style suits among the young elite. As cultural functions demand indigenous dress, the kurta-pyjama or punjabi-pyjama is still in common use, with or without waistcoats. For office and workplace trousers with open-collar shirt are commonly worn. Working class people of all religions still prefer the lungi-genji, the sewn sarong and short-sleeved cotton vest, as a daily garb. Both rural and urban common people wear the climatically suitable lungi-genji or lungi with shirt, which has been the unofficial national dress of Bengal for centuries. Middle and upper class men wear the lungi at home, usually with stylish punjabi. Western influence on urban Bengali women's dress entered in subtle ways at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. While the sari remained the same in drape, the blouse took on western styles, for instance, puff-sleeves or tight-fitting sleeves up to the wrists, made out of rich materials such as velvet, satin and brocade. The necklines, too, were scooped out wider and lower as in European dress and came to be fringed with laces, brocade braids, and various decorative borders. Post World War II changes brought in printed mill cloths, saris and blouses of the same material. The traditional handloom saris continued to be worn by ordinary women, as they were cheap and durable. The upper and middle class women wore the expensive silk jamdani and benarasi saris for weddings and festivals, and fine hand-loomed cottons at home. The innovation of artificial silk provided rich looking clothes at prices affordable by those in the low-income bracket. The period from 1945 to 1975 did not see much change. In the 1980s, information and visual communication media caused sudden extraneous changes. Access to sari fashions from India led to a demand for change in weaving textures, colours and embellishment. Designer saris, embroidered in nakshi kantha embroidery, brush painted, and tie-and-dye saris became fashionable. Blouses varied between the U-neck, which placed emphasis on the sari, and the conventional round open neckline exposing shoulders and neck for gold or silver jewelry. Apart from sari, another type of dress, which has suited to the taste of the Bengalees, is the Salwar Kameez. This is a dress, which the Bengalees got from the Pathans and the Mughals. With the emergence of salwar kameez, women, no longer clad themselves in saris from the age of nine or ten. Instead they start wearing saris from the age of twenty or so and at the age of nine they are found in frocks, skirts and similar other dresses. Skirts and frocks are dresses, which are worn even up to the age of twenty. Most women, these days, irrespective of their age, wear salwar kameez in formal and informal occasions. This particular dress has gained popularity over sari, as women feel more comfortable in it. But sari is not out of fashion. It is still a dress, which is worn by many women. Specially on occasions and ceremonies, women of Bengal are mostly found in saris. Even at home, some women still continue the tradition of wearing saris though there exist other types of dresses like the maxi, night dress etc.
Previously sari was the only dress of the urban women. But now in urban areas women wear saris as well as salwar-kurtas. Small girls are found in frocks and skirts , small boys in shirts and trousers. Girls now days, wear frocks and skirts even up to the age of twenty. Urban men wear shirts and trousers as formal dresses, dhotis and pajama panjabis on occasions. Pajama panjabis are also worn as informal wear.
The men in rural Bengal generally wear lungis and dhotis and women wear saris. Even the small boys and girls wear dhotis and saris respectively. But in rural areas also, the scenario is changing gradually. Now the village boys are also found to be wearing shirts and pants and girls are found to be wearing frocks. Men of rural Bengal too, are wearing shirts and trousers these days and women are wearing salwar-kameez. These dresses are commonly found to be worn by the people of younger generation. But the tradition of wearing dhoti, lungi and sari is still prevalent among the people of older generation.The decade from 1990 to 2001 saw an upsurge in sari fashion-shows that showed designers using the time-tried method of combining the classical with the contemporary. Fine cotton saris turned out from mills provided new colour lines and exotic patterns. Working women wore a range of hand block prints and hand-painted saris for daywear. Rajshahi silks for daywear in screen print and batik were followed by evening and party saris of the famous heavier Balaka silk, in rich hues of peacock and turquoise blue, rust and maroon, jade green and golden yellow. A significant entry into women's dress from the 1990s has been the shawl. This practical 3-piece ensemble has become popular among women of nearly all age-groups. Once considered taboo for married Bengali women, the salwar-kameez is now worn by girls attending schools, colleges and universities as well as by housewives and women in different professions. In response to the demands of a more active outdoor life, women have adopted this dress for comfort. This has led to a whole range of products in cotton day-dress, using all the formats of block print, hand and machine embroideries, screen print and dressy evening combinations in lace, silk, brocades, tissues and velvets. Jamdani dopattas, Tangail hand-loomed dopattas and muslin dopattas or orhnas are worn according to the choice of dress.
Women's hairstyles have witnessed noticeable changes since the 1980s. Women traditionally made their long hair up in a coil or khopa, and girls wore braids and plaits, but now they took to varying their hairstyles. Access to media has brought in other fashions and beauty parlours now offer services to trim and perm hair to suit the latest international trends.
Urban women's dress fashions are subject to change on an annual basis, but the sari remains a perennial favourite.

[Perveen Ahmed]


Bibiography-
Tagore Rabindranath. (1922) Creative Unity. London: Macmillan & Co.
Tagore, Rabindranath (1961) Towards Universal Man. New York: Asia Publishing House. Tagore, Rabindranath. (1917) My Reminiscences. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Tagore, Rabindranath (1917) Personality. London: Macmillan & Co.
Tagore, Rabindranath (1929) “Ideals of Education”, The Visva-Bharati Quarterly (April-July), 73-4
Dutta, Krishna & Andrew Robinson (1995) Rabindranath Tagore:The Myriad-Minded Man, London: Bloomsbury.
Kripalani, Krishna, Rabindranath Tagore (1980) Calcutta: Visva-Bharati.
O’Connell, Kathleen(2002) Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet as Educator, Calcutta:Visva-Bharati, 2002.
Tagore, Rabindranath (1980) Our Universe. Translated by Indu Dutt. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House
Tagore, Rabindranath (1961) The Religion of Man. Boston: Beacon Press.
Tagore, Rabindranath (1985) Rabindranath Tagore:Selected Poems. Translated by William Radice. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Tagore, Rabindranath (1966) A Tagore Reader. Edited by Amiya Chakravarty. Boston: Beacon Press.
Selected letters of Rabindranath Tagore (1997) edited by Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson

Important sites

http://murshid.co.uk/Reluctant.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendranath_Tagore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Renaissance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarnakumari_Devi



[1] (Tagore, Rabindranath. (1917) My Reminiscences. New York: The Macmillan Company)

[2] ( Bankim Chandra Chattopadhaya, Babu)