Part II: Tagore’s Idea of the University
Rabindranath Tagore’s essay “The Centre of Indian Culture” gives us a compelling vision of a university rooted in India’s civilizational traditions yet open to the world. This ideal is embodied in the very name Visva-Bharati, which brings together the world and Bharat, expressing Tagore’s aspiration for a meeting of civilizations in which India’s intellectual traditions could flourish through engagement with the world. First delivered as a lecture in Madras (now Chennai) in February 1919, amid…