A Meeting of Two Minds: Geddes Tagore Letters

This seminal correspondence is a testimony to a great friendship, showing how 'The Twain', the East and West, can indeed meet. In the compiled letters, one can see how Patrick Geddes, the Scots polymath and Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian Nobel Laureate, exchange, comment on and share ideas on education, the environment, rural reconstruction, while they remain staunch Peace Warriors in a climate of mounting world conflict.

About the Author :
Bashabi Fraser was born in West Bengal in India and had a wonderful childhood in London where she swung high in Kensington Gardens, built snowmen in her backgarden, shot down the pavement on her scooter and also entered the poetry world with the Commonwealth Scholar Prize for her poetry. After that she went back to India to attend a convent boarding school in the Darjeeling Himalayas. Here she managed to break all the rules and was threatened with expulsion, which never quite materialised. During her holidays, she went to stay with her parents on a beautiful university campus on the foothills, where they were professors. Here she kicked off her shoes to wade in the stream, climb trees and run around the vast meadows. But she also liked to take a book to read or a note book to write poetry, sitting in the Sal forest at the heart of this campus. This love of the open has stayed with Bashabi, together with her love of poetry, which she continued writing as she moved worlds between, London, Darjeeling, Kolkata and Edinburgh. Bashabi's multicultural experience finds voice in her poetry which combines the grace of the east with the pragmatism of the west in a blend that is distinctive. A Ph.D in English Literature, Bashabi is currently an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at the Open University in Scotland and the West Midlands and a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies at Edinburgh University. She is an academic, a poet, a children's writer, has written a shadow puppet play and is now working on a novel and a long narrative poem. She also trained as an Indian classical dancer and is a choreographer, and much of her poetry reflects Indian ragas and talas, to which her daughter, Rupsha, dances. Bashabi now lives in Edinburgh with her husband Neil Fraser, an academic whose self-effacing presence keeps Bashabi going. Bashabi's books include Just One Diwali Night, 'Life', Tartan & Turban, Topsy Turvy and A Meeting of Two Minds: Geddes Tagore Letters.

Review :
"'...The correspondence presented here centres on shared educational ideas...Interwar internationalist idealism foundered in further terrible world war, but the ideas of Tagore and Geddes fed into later educational thought. Beside documenting a noble attempt at cross-cultural co-operation, Dr. Fraser's collection of correspondence restores to life the attractive personality of Geddes's son Arthur who, as disciple of Tagore,... linked the world of two visionaries.' Angus Calder, Historian, Journalist, Literary Critic and Poet 'I enjoyed reading the letters, not least the perceptive introduction...These letters connect not simply two men but two civilisations together in one world. Both, in Tagore's words, 'started with this one simple idea, that education should never be disassociated from life'. Their shared legacy can be no greater than that'. David McCrone, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Governance, University of Edinburgh 'In this luminous exchange of letters between two kindred spirits Bashabi Fraser has revealed a new fascinating side to the age-old relationship between India and Scotland. Rabindranath Tagore and Patrick Geddes were inspirational innovators and their quest for a dream of perfection was clearly a meeting of true minds.' Trevor Royle, Associate Editor, Sunday Herald '...Tagore and Geddes share an expansive vision of education and their letters cross the world developing this generalist, internationalist outlook. In an era of cynicism and hopelessness here lies inspiration from an earlier day when ideas were shared eagerly and 'globalism' was a source of joy and energy. Where education now has been reduced to a functionary training - here are two thinkers exploring what it means for cultural renewal, exchange and celebration of the human potential'. Mike Small, writer and editor of The Journal of Civics and Generalism - www.patrickgeddes.co.uk"