Union Minister for Culture and Tourism, G Kishan Reddy has said that Santiniketan, where Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore constructed Visva-Bharati more than a century ago, has been proposed for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
On the evening of May 9, the Union Minister went on Twitter and said, “Great news for India on the Jayanti of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Santiniketan, West Bengal, has been recommended for inscription to the World Heritage List by ICOMOS, the advisory body to UNESCO World Heritage Centre”.
This furthers the vision of Hon’ble PM Shri @narendramodi to showcase our rich cultural heritage to the world.
This will formally be announced in the World Heritage Committee meeting to be held at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in September, 2023.
2/2 pic.twitter.com/lkI3KOog5H— G Kishan Reddy (@kishanreddybjp) May 9, 2023
He further stated, “This furthers the vision of Hon’ble PM Shri Narendra Modi to showcase our rich cultural heritage to the world. This will formally be announced in the World Heritage Committee meeting to be held at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in September, 2023”.
Notably, Union Home Minister Amit Shah paid tribute to Rabindranath Tagore on his birth anniversary this year and visited his ancestral house – Jorasanko Thakurbari.
The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is headquartered in France and is an international non-governmental organisation devoted to preserving and enhancing architectural and landscape heritage all over the world. It is made up of professionals, experts, and representatives from local governments, companies, and heritage organisations.
The France-based International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is an international non-governmental organisation that comprises professionals, experts, representatives from local authorities, companies and heritage organisations and is dedicated to the conservation and enhancement of the architectural and landscape heritage around the world.
The development has been hailed as a “proud moment” by the authorities of the university.
“To our knowledge Visva-Bharati is the first living university in India which will be bestowed with the honour,” its spokesperson Mahua Bandyopadhyay said. She said that on May 9, a senior member of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) informed the university of ICOSMOS’ recommendation to add Visva-Bharati to the World Heritage List.
It’s a memorable moment for all Indians worldwide because the announcement was made on Gurudev’s 162nd birth anniversary, making it special.
The Vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, Bidyut Chakraborty, said, “It is a great news and a matter of pride for everyone – every stakeholder of Visva Bharati, in fact every citizen of the land”.
But it’s a decade-long struggle; a dossier on Santiniketan was prepared by Abha Narain Lambah Associates with conservation architect Manish Chakraborti in 2009. The dossier was commissioned by the ASI and was submitted in 2021. This dossier was then sent to ICOMOS for approval.
According to Lambah, any submission for a world heritage tag requires justification for the site’s exceptional universal value, “at the threshold of the 20th century, when India was grappling with colonialism, the partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi freedom movement, Rabindranath Tagore and the pioneers of the Bengal School of Art steered a new exploration in art, design and cultural interchange. Santiniketan is the tangible realisation of an educational and artistic community’s encounter with pan-Asian modernity”.
She explained, “Santiniketan demonstrates the development of an Asian avant-garde that veered from the prevalent Beaux Arts and European modernism to forge a new design aesthetic rooted in its cultural context and history”.
While talking about the construction of the building, the conservation architect Manish Chakraborti said, “Santiniketan was a bold attempt to revive indigenous construction techniques to create a contextual, regional modernism”.
The Visva-Bharti University offers a variety of courses ranging from the STEM branch to social sciences and humanities. It would be India’s 41st world heritage site and going to be the third site of Bengal; the other two are Darjeeling Himalayan Railways and Sundarbans National Park.
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