ABSTRACT
Naming is an act of clarification, as it involves a thorough scrutiny of the object to be named. This is important for characterizing the social thought of Rabindranath Tagore, which has been a matter of controversy for almost a century. Tagore sought decolonization of consciousness and civil society without resorting to nationalism. His antinationalist universalist humanism was an idealist project, but not totally abstract, because he created this worldview with a deep awareness of the socio-political situation in the colonies and in the world elsewhere. Tagore's modernism and anti-nationalism do not have a simple linear relationship. Tagore seeks mutuality and creative relations between cultures, an ethos in which a true humanism can be accomplished at the level of morality and creativity. Tagore's two educational institutions provide good examples of an alternative decolonizing pedagogy. The first, Santiniketan, a children's school, was established on the family's estate in 1901, and the second, Sriniketan, an agricultural and handicraft institute, in 1921.
