An Indian Infusion: Oct 21 - Humanities symposium

My apologies for the long delay in blog posts...it's been a busy later part of October & also have taken a couple of days each week to nestle into my flat, rest, process a bit on all that had already happened & what was in the future. I'd outline the days activities, sketch out what I'd write about later when I returned from a full day...then not get back to the blog, first for a few days, then a week & a half! Lesson learned...

I ventured out to one of my primary school connections on the 21st to participate in a Humanities symposium on Gender in the Writings of Tagore. It was fascinating to hear how these seminal West Bengali stories, dramas, song & art by Tagore translated so well into contemporary discussions on the role of women.

The symposium began with music, as many events do in Kolkata...a Tagore song by the music teacher & student. (The video isn't loading too well through the blog...you may access it, I hope, at Opening Song of Humanties Symposium, Calcutta International School on youtube.)

Dr. Das, the director of CIS, opened the symposium with a simple, yet powerful statement, "Any house is lacking if they don't have humanities included." She continued that Tagore is suitable for all times and all places & that globalization is the theme of our time, allowing a new lens to be applied to his work. The purpose of the symposium, was, ultimately, "to inculcate an interest in Tagore" amongst the students.

The panel was an impressive list of West Bengali change agents, including Ms. Krishna Bose, a current professor, former Indian parliamentarian and writer, whose memoir "An outsider in politics" dealt with many of the issues confronted during the symposium.

She started the discussion by paying homage to pioneering men who first helped with women empowerment - ending bride burning, stopping child brides, convincing others that girl children must also be educated and of course Tagore...how he radically spoke of the trials of women but also gave solutions, creating empathy and presenting ways in which they could realistically escape their plight so many faced during the early 20th century.

Three students presented papers in the theme
1. Historical position of woman during Tagores time with contemporary and Bengal lens
2. Feminism During the Times of Tagore - sati widow burning...he included women who could remarry in his stories, a controversial topic for the times
3. Examination of the times of confluence of religion, independence and social emergence...based on critical analysis of "Broken Nest", a famous West Bengali movie, comparing it to a Tagore poem.

There were several interesting points made during the three-hour panel discussion and question/answer session:

1. Tagore never took "ism" for granted. Tagore argued in essays that women are created by nature to create harmony but too often isolated or defined as harmony in domestic venue, leaving a vacuum in public domain of harmony since men who ran the world didn't carry a woman's skill set.

2. In other essays, written after traveling to US he asserted that the modern world was becoming too dehumanizing due to materialism, access to wealth and self advancement, reducing society to a "mechanical coldness", abandoning the more female side of human nature. (This was in 1915 - a fairly forward thinking idea!)

3. Tagore wrote during a metaphoric time & appropriately linked the self-awareness & bias against women by men to the colonized mindset of India under British rule. His feminism, then, became an extension of nationalism, moving across the country as interaction with the West increased. He cautioned that all should examine how the rapid change within colonized Modernity be examined both individually and throughout the layers of society.

4. A famous Bengali singer of traditional songs, focusing on Tagore, presented the youngest view point, both as an Indian who lived abroad in Canada growing up and as someone in his early twenties moved back to know his heritage more intimately. He noticed how the essays presented by the students spoke of emancipation while older generation spoke of more traditional roles which may still have a place. His statements were quite frank - Tagore wanted to represent a balance between the genders & the older panelist members were inaccurately relaying him in a more misogynistic, asexual manner, which Tagore would not have agreed with should he be here to defend his writings.