Rabindranath Tagore and the Scotland + Justice, Utilitarianism and Education

Come along to The Outhouse, (12A Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh), for 7pm start on Thursday 26th October 2026. There will be some food provided on the table, and you are invited to bring along an item of food to put on the table and take away what is left at the end. Prof Bashabi Fraser will be talking about 'Rabindranath Tagore and the Scottish Interchange; A Transformative Encounter'. After a break there will be a second talk of the evening ‘Justice, Utilitarianism and Education as a Right' by Alex Dunedin

All the events are free and informal. A relaxed atmosphere where anyone can do a talk or share an activity and people can come along and listen to. All are welcome to publish on the website; there are no editors, only authors.

Rabindranath Tagore and the Scottish Interchange: A Transformative Encounter

Bullet points the talk:

• The Bengal Renaissance
• Macaulay’s Minute on Education
• Scottish Educators in Bengal
• Rural Reconstruction and Cooperatives
• An International University in Bengal
• The Scotland-India Interchange and Legacy

A few paragraphs on the subject:

This study will move between Scotland and India, referring to some key figures who form the links in the chain that has fostered a living history of exchange in a colonial encounter which was transformative, assessed here in a postcolonial reappraisal. The stalwarts that will be brought in are David Hare, Revd Alexander Duff, Sir Daniel Hamiltion, Sir Patrick Geddes and Dr Arthur Geddes, Scottish luminaries who part of the Bengal Renaissance which was led by Raja Rammohan Roy and the Tagore family.

In this exploration of the Tagore-Scottish Interchange, we will go back in time, to the period of the Bengal Renaissance, starting with the period when Rabindranath’s grandfather, Prince Dwarkanath Tagore (1794-1846) whose knowledge of Persian, Arabic, English and French signified an ability to bridge the East-West dichotomy. He was a keen supporter of his close associate of Raja Rammohan Roy (1772-1833), founder of the Bramha Samaj in 1828 and the leading spirit of the Bengal Renaissance. Of Raja Rammohan Roy one can say that he did not just belong to a great epoch of transformation, but was the creator of an epoch that would lead India into the modern era, through his untiring advocacy for religious, social and educational reforms.

The link between Edinburgh and the Tagore family is evident in the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh that was conferred in September 1842 on Rabindranath’s grandfather, Dwarkanath Tagore. There is also Dwarkanath’s gift of the Ragamala paintings which are now with the Special Collections of the University of Edinburgh which also hold the ScoTs Tagore collection donated by the late Prof Indra Nath Chaudhuri, our Tagore Chair at ScoTs, Dr William Radice, the Patron of ScoTs and Prof Bimalendu Bhattacharya.

In July 2025, the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs) installed the beautiful bust of Rabindranath Tagore sculpted by the renowned Indian sculptor, Ram Vanji Sutar at Sandeman Garden, behind the Scottish Storytelling Centre, where he stands facing the bust of Patrick Geddes. So now the two close friends now can talk to each other beyond death. This is a place of pilgrimage for all of us who wish to remember the continuing links between the sub-continent and Scotland, symbolising an encounter which has been both transformative and enriching.

A few paragraphs about you:

Bashabi Fraser, CBE, PhD, HonFASL, is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing and Director of Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs), Edinburgh Napier University, and Honorary Fellow of the Association of Literary Studies Scotland (ALS), and a Royal Literary Fund Associate Fellow. She is the Chief Editor of the academic and creative peer-reviewed international e-journal, Gitanjali and Beyond and is on the Editorial Board of WritersMosaic.

Bashabi is an award winning poet, children’s writer, editor, translator and academic She is the recipient of a CBE (2021 New Year Honours) for Education (academic work), culture (poetry) and cultural integration (her bridge building projects linking Scotland and India). She has been declared Outstanding Woman of Scotland by Saltire Society in 2015.

Her work traverses continents in transnational literary projects. She has authored and edited 30 books, published several articles and chapters in academic and creative books/journals and has been widely anthologized as a poet. Her recent publications include 5 beautifully illustrated delightful children’s books: A Card for my Mum (2025), 4 books as part of the Will you be my friend series: The Monkey’s Proposal (2025), I am a Squirrel up your Tree (2025), A Cat and Mouse Game (2025), I’m Slimy and Grimy (2025); a volume of selected poems in a bilingual chapbook in Spanish and English, The World at the Doorstep (2024), translated by Cristina Riano Alonso; Habitat (2023); Lakshmi’s Footprints and Paisley Patterns: Perspectives on Scoto-Indian Literary and Cultural Interrelations (2023); Patient Dignity (2021) and Rabindranath Tagore (2019) Other publications include The Ramayana, A Stage Play and a Screen Play (2019), My Mum’s Sari, (2019), The Homing Bird (2017), Scottish Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Continuum of Ideas, Co-ed. (2017), A Confluence of Minds: The Rabindranath Tagore and Patrick Geddes Reader on Education and the Environment, Co-ed (2017) and Letters to My Mother and Other Mothers (2015).

Bashabi’s research interests cover (1) Postcolonial Literature and Theory; (2) Tagore Studies; (3) Migration and Diaspora; (4) Transnationalism and Transculturalism in a postmodern world; (5) Personal Narratives and Oral History; (6) Literary Theory and Creative Practice.

Her recent awards include the Honoris Causa, D. Litt from Swami Vivekananda University (2025), Special Felicitation, Jadavpur University (2025), Indira Gandhi Gold Plaque from the Asiatic Society, Indian Ministry of Culture (2023) for Inter-cultural Cooperation, Swami Vivekananda University’s Vivek Jyoti Sanman (Lifetime Achievement Award, 2023); Special Honour conferred as writer and Tagore Scholar awarded by Bangla Worldwide, 2023; Lifetime Achievement Award, 2022 presented by the UK Bengali Convention (UKBC); the Dr Maheswar Neog IPPL Award for Poetry 2022; Kavi Salam from Poetry Paradigm and Voice of the Republic in India in 2019; the Word Masala Foundation Award for Excellence in Poetry in 2017, Special Felicitation as a Poet on International Women’s Day by Public Relations Society of India, March 2017, Rabindra Bharati Society Honour, 2014, Women Empowered: Arts and Culture Award in 2010 and the AIO Prize for Literary Services in Scotland in 2009.

Bashabi is a Director on the Board of the Patrick Geddes Trust, Honorary Vice President of the Association of Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS), an executive committee member of Scottish PEN, a Trustee of the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust, Ambassador for the Federation of Writers (Scotland). She is the founder and Hon’y President of the Advisory Board of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library (IPPL) in Kolkata and a Trustee of the Edinburgh South Asian Association. She is on the Advisory Board of the V&A Museum in Dundee and the Indian Association of Scottish Studies. Bashabi is on the Editorial Board of several international peer-reviewed journals and has been an Adjudicator for several national and international creative writing competitions. Most recently, she has been on the panel of judges of the Kavya Prize in Scotland for 2022 and is a judge for the Saltire Society Non-Fiction 2022 Prize. Bashabi lives with her husband, Neil Fraser in Edinburgh and has a daughter and grandson.

If you would like links and information resources, please visit the website:
https://raggeduniversity.co.uk/2026/11/04/26th-nov-2026-rabindranath-tagore-and-the-scottish-interchange-a-transformative-encounter-by-bashabi-fraser/

There will be a break after the first talk to have a bite to eat and fill our glasses, and following there will be the next installment in the Education as Human Development series:

Justice, Utilitarianism and Education as a Right

Bullet points of what you would like to talk about:
Justice, Utilitarianism and Education as a Right
The Intra-Action of Individuals and Environment
Defining Intra-Action
The Need for Interdisciplinary Approaches
Justice Versus Utilitarianism in Social Institutions
Utilitarianism and Adaptive Preferences
Education as a Matter of Justice
Education, Human Rights, and Development
The State as a Corporate Parent
International Frameworks for Education
The Collective Importance of Education

A few paragraphs on your subject:
I plan on doing a presentation around 40 minutes long followed by a discussion with those in the room. This is the continuation in a series of 14 presentations which I have been doing charting the research and exploration of Education as Human Development. A key idea in this work has been thinking about what is important in someone’s environment (their sociological habitat) and understanding the vital roles which learning plays as a part of their thriving in life.

In this talk I will walk through the connections which exist between someone and their environment suggesting that what happens outside of the body is reflected on the inside of the body – in terms of physiology, psychology and emotional wellbeing. To describe this linkage I draw on the idea of ‘intra-action’ described by Karen Barad who offers a way of understanding realities as tangled and mutual.

Learning and education in my framing are social behaviours which help us appreciate, understand and respond appropriately to our circumstances. They are evolutionary processes that help us make up our minds and learn how to change our minds. I argue that there is a need for interdisciplinary approaches which afford a variety of lexicons helpful in approaching a tangled and messy world – a world which is not well represented by categorical and abstracted notions traditional in formal education.

Formal education as a social institution must therefore speak both to what is just and fair to an individual in a society, but also what serves utility. This opens up a critical investigation of social institutions and the problems of Utilitarianism that commonly shape the way they respond to the individual in their life circumstances. In this talk I will sketch out what Utilitarianism is and how ideas of the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people can give rise to problems which negatively affect good outcomes.

I will talk about what I call ‘the utilitarian spectre’ and approach how the person, the individual can become depersonalied and dehumanised in the shadow of Utilitarian decision making allowing for unjust things to happen. This can create situations where people develop maladaptive responses in relation to things which benefit their human development; people can exist in unhealthy relationships with institutions and as a result settle for not developing their wellbeing (aka adaptive preference formation).

I argue that education itself must be understood as a matter of justice and its associated learning and environments are associated with inalienable human rights precisely because it occupies such a profound place in the wellbeing of the life of a person. This forces us to think about the differences which exist between formal institutional education and informal lifelong learning diffuse throughout the lives of people. It demands we look at the behaviour of the institution in order to understand it’s defacto nature.

I explore the context of how institutions have become forged as ‘corporate parents’ in society and raise questions asking – ‘if these institutions have become parents to people, then from their behaviour we must ask what kind of parents are they ?’. Unfortunately not all parents provide the vital nurture needed for a child to develop; are our institutions doing this ?

I finish touching on international frameworks of education and want to open up a discussion about the collective importance of education for the health, wellbeing and functionality of a society. This all directly relates to various histories of free education such as the Ragged Schools movement and the Saturday School movement which made important provision where the state failed important British communities of colour.

A few paragraphs about you:
I am an individual who has been long involved in learning through social traditions of education. My personal development has become of great interest as I have learned a lot of things through unconventional routes and been inspired by many people through their sharing in the Ragged University project. I would go as far to say that my learning from those who have chosen to do presentations and activities through Ragged University has been the most profound influence on my growth and development, ultimately leading to rich and valuable connections to the world around me.

As someone who did not have a good experience in early years of learning I had always assumed that ‘education’ was not for me, nor was it ‘interested’ in me. In my adult years I have found these preconceptions incorrect and discovered that the differences I percieved as not truly representative of a more progressive understanding of what education is and functions as in our lives. My experience of putting on community education events which I could learn from and socialise through, has been a great journey of discovery finding out about how we are all involved in education and learning – but also crucially, how people who teach in formal settings are passionate about sharing their knowledge and craft as citizens.

My research in Education as Human Development is a distillation I have made from all the experiences and things I have learned from over the past sixteen years (and longer) where I am trying to make sense of many aspects of what learning does in my life (and the lives of others) and the impacts of it being withheld. In this series of fourteen talks I am working through discussions of the manuscript I made and also exercising the communications and conversational skills which are a part of my personal development. I hope you will join me and help me think critically about the ideas I am exploring.

For more links, a bibliography of references and information resources please visit the website:
https://raggeduniversity.co.uk/2026/11/04/26th-nov-2026-justice-utilitarianism-and-education-as-a-right-by-alex-dunedin/