'I don't think Rabindranath had wanted Visva-Bharati as an institute providing mere degrees to the students. He wanted it to be an oriental centre of learning where foreigners will come for advanced research. And there will be a healthy exchange of knowledge,' Supriyo Tagore, the great grandson of Rabindranath's elder brother Satyendranath Tagore, told IANS in an interview.

'There has been no effort on the part of the authorities to implement such concepts. Rabindranath had visualised the university as an institution that would facilitate the creation of knowledge. But there is a total lack of will among the powers-that-be,' Supriyo said.

Rural reconstruction was very close to Rabindranath's heart for which he founded a special school at Surul close to his Santiniketan Ashram, said Supriyo, 72, a former principal of Visva-Bharati's Patha Bhavana school.

'At the core of Tagore's thoughts was a desire to nurture humane feelings. For this, he had settled poor Santhal families at Pearson Pally (named after the poet's associate William Winstanley Pearson), close to Santiniketan as part of his rural reconstruction and tribal welfare initiatives. But the university has simply turned a blind eye to the

sufferings of these poor families,' he alleged.

'I feel like crying when I see their condition. Former MP Somnath Chatterjee and others have tried to help them out. But when some of us approached Visva-Bharati, we were told such activities are outside the purview of the central university.

'These Santhal families don't have the means to get education. There is an acute shortage of drinking water in the locality. The university seems to have all but forgotten Tagore's ideals,' he said.

He accused the university of being guided by 'crass commercialism', adding: 'Sangit Bhavana (the music institute) has now become synonymous with propaganda and a means of getting funds. There is little scope for research. There is no quality library.'

However, he praised Kala Bhavana (the institute of fine arts), saying a lot of creative work was being done there. 'Kala Bhavana is the only wing where there is an honest effort to implement Tagore's philosophy.'

According to Supriyo, the university has been devoured by politics.

'Be it the teachers' bodies or the non-teaching staff organsiations, there is politics everywhere. Even appointments are guided by political considerations.'

Supriyo, who was principal of Patha Bhavana for a long time before taking voluntary retirement in 1995, said: 'One of the reasons for my decision was that I was not able to implement my ideas. I found Patha Bhavana, or for that matter the entire university, had become exam centric.'

Rabindranath Tagore had wanted a communion between students and nature, the teacher and the taught at Visva-Bharati.

'I passed out of the Patha Bhavana in 1954. Our teachers, true to Rabindranath's philosophy, would acquaint us with plants, birds and insects by taking us for regular strolls in the sprawling campus or even outside. Nowadays, teaching has become completely bookish.'

He regretted that efforts were on to take Patha Bhavana out of the ambit of the university and run it like any other government school.

'This is again contrary to Tagore's ideals. He had visualised the university as a complete education centre from the primary to the highest level.'

Rabindranath founded Visva-Bharati university in 1921. The poet's 150th birth anniversary falls Sunday, May 9.

He devised a new language for contemporary art in the first decade of the 20th century, freeing it from the colonial stranglehold.

In an essay in 1926 (Art and Tradition), Tagore spoke about his journey away from nationalism in aesthetics to a more independent terrain saying, 'When in the name of Indian art, we cultivate a certain bigotry born of the habit of a past generation, we smother our soul under idiosyncrasies that fail to respond to the ever-changing play of life.'

Born in 1861 on the Indian calendar date of 'Pochishe Boishakh' - which falls May 9 this year - Tagore the youngest of 14 children of the clan, was inspired by sketches made by his elder brother Jyotirindranath, a gifted artist.

The images lingered in his mind and for the last 23 years of his life, the poet and novelist devoted himself to mastering techniques of water colour, gouache, tempera and mixed media of ink, etchings, oil and pencils to create an eclectic body of art that included doodles, scratch art, word art (suggestive of colours), visages, figures, wildlife and naturescapes.

'Of all the artists, the story of Rabindranath Tagore's emergence as a painter is the stuff that myths are made of. At the age of 67, his artistic impulses suddenly broke all barriers and flowered like a restless stream reflecting many moods,' says eminent art writer and critic Ella Dutta.

His figurative compositions were characterised by a mute almost dull but varied colour palette, long, ovoid and gaunt faces of women with linear bodies, mysterious forests, exotic birds, animals, plural spaces suggestion assimilations from cultures, complex spiral forms that sometimes arose from a jumble of irrelevant words.

At a historic exhibition in Paris May 5-May 19, 1930, duchess Anna de Noailles, in her opening remark on Tagore's paintings, described them as, 'To me, it is like climbing a staircase of dreamland'.

Artist Mukul Dey, who sponsored one of Tagore's exhibitions and photo-documented his art, reminisces in one of his articles, 'Exactly 22 months before his Gallery Pigalle exhibition, Tagore had stayed at 28 Chowringhee Road in Calcutta (which happened to be his residence) and ... absolutely immersed himself in his paintings and if not more - completed 126 works.'

The exhibition of Tagore's art in Paris was followed by expositions in England, Denmark, Sweden, Rome, Germany, Russia and Europe. Calcutta (Kolkata), his home turf, hosted the show a year later in 1931.

Tagore's paintings, say historians, created a flutter in Germany drawing visitors like scientist Albert Einstein.

Writes Debashish Banerjee, 'The Jorasanko family culture in the mid-19th century offers an interesting example of the operation of the Bourdieu's theory of toxic practise.

'Subjective autonomy, critical consciousness and democratic openness to the 'other', enlightenment constructs of liberty in the public space of modernity were pressed into close relocation with the affective density - and the dialogic and dynamic co-constitution of taste, fantasy and understanding of Bengali village community.' It brought out the soul of Bengal in his art.

In 1913, Tagore landed at the Chicago Art Institute Armoury show with 1,600 exhibits and researched a gamut of modern masters from the impressionists to Marcel Duchamp. Tagore's visit to the British Museum exposed him to primitive art - which he later encountered in Indonesia, China and US. The exposure - followed by several more thereafter - imbued his compositions with mystical aura.

Tagore identified with the world in colours. His art verged on the abstract inspired by surrealism, expressionism and post-modern impressionism practised by the early 20th century masters in Europe in America.

'The world speaks to me in colours; my soul answers in music,' was his oft refrain.

--Indo-Asian New Service

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