CHAPTER IX
A SPIRITUAL COMMONWEALTH
God, the Great Giver, can open the whole universe to our gaze in the narrow space of a single lane.—Jivan-smitri, Rabindranath Tagore.
In Shanti Niketan we shall see how Rabindranath Tagore has sought to develop the idea of a House of Peace, a boys' republic, a school-house without a taskmaster, to serve as a model to young India. With a similar desire it was that he followed the steps of his father, the Maharshi, into that religious republic which, to a western eye, looks at first like the gathering up of the ideals of Brahmanism and Christianity into a common fold. We need reminding perhaps that the India in which Ram Mohun Roy set up the Brahmo Samaj was not quite the India we know now, and that in 1841, when Devendranath Tagore joined the movement, the current Brahminism was still deeply tinged with idolatry. Even now all the ages of India's religious history, from first to last, are represented
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