A Lady put a question in a letter written by her to Rabindranath about the method of female education to be followed in India. Rabindranath in reply to that letter wrote to her on 24th Nov,1921;
" I think there is no line of demarcation of education, in its true sense of term, between East and West.The sun rises and we gets its benefit whether we live in East or in West. It is the property of human beings as a whole.There is difference about social customs, religious behaviours in East and West. There is difference even in the system of development of art, literature and music. I don't say that we have to remove all these differences by force and it is not also justifiable to protect them by force. If I say that we have to preserve our truth by enclosing them with superstition, I have to say that those great men of the West who are intensely doing research work on Veda, Vedanta or Budhism, are committing blunder. Similarly, I cannot accept the idea that it is only the West who have rights to discuss about any art, music and literature where the men of letters of our country have no right to say anything of the west. I cannot imagine to accept such injustice and unworthy actions. In fact, the defect of our modern education is, we learn foreign knowledge and not our own learning. Though we can't neglect foreign knowledge and foreign education.A great object of education every human being must have access to all the knowidges acquired so far human beings of the world. The truth invented by any person of any country is the asset of all the human being. That is why-I think that the truth discovered by the people of India will be open to all, so also the discoveries done by the people of West will have access to the people of our country. The man of any country can form his own ideal after knowing the all the knowledges of the world.This is true in the case of all female persons of our countries also. If the learning is not good for human being, whether it is East or West, this is to be given up.
Rabindranath tried to implement his ideals in Shantiniketan.
