Tagore the educator, rural reformer comes alive in 'A History Of Sriniketan'

New Delhi, March 8 "I alone cannot take responsibility for the whole of India. But even if two or three villages can be freed from the shackles of helplessness and ignorance, an ideal for the whole of India would be established. Fulfil this ideal in a few villages only, and I will say that these few villages are my India. And only if that is done, will India be truly ours. The scale of our enterprise will never be a matter of pride to us but let us hope its truth will be."

A century ago, Rabindranath Tagore set up a centre for rural construction called Sriniketan as wing of his Visva-Bharati International University at Shantiniketan in an attempt to inspire the deprived sections of rural society to self-reliance and to make them economically independent.

"Tagore was not one to accept that all improvements had to wait for our country's political independence. He did not subscribe to that commonplace view. He believed that a great deal could be done, by ourselves, for our own people, even with the colonial government at the helm," historian and Tagore biographer Uma Das Gupta told in an interview of her book, 'A History of Sriniketan – Rabindranath Tagore's Pioneering Work in Rural Reconstruction'

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