RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S Santiniketan, the university town in West Bengal's Birbhum district, has been inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List. This was announced by the international agency on Sunday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee is being held till September 25. Santiniketan becomes the 41st UNESCO World Heritage Site in India and the third in West Bengal, after the Sundarbans National Park and the Darjeeling Mountain Railways. Last year, the state's Durga Puja got space in “Intangible Cultural Heritage of humanity” under UNESCO. There had been repeated efforts in the past to secure the status of UNESCO World Heritage Site for Santiniketan, especially in the run-up to Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary in 2010. Reacting to its inclusion on the heritage site list, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Delighted that Santiniketan, an embodiment of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore's vision and India's rich cultural heritage, has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. This is a proud moment for all Indians.” Congratulating the people of West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee posted on X: “Glad and proud that our Santiniketan, the town of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, is now finally included in UNESCO's World Heritage List. Biswa Bangla's pride, Santiniketan was nurtured by the poet and has been supported by people of Bengal over the generations. We, from the Government of West Bengal have significantly added to its infrastructure in the last 12 years and the world now recognises the glory of the heritage place. Kudos to all who love Bengal, Tagore, and his messages of fraternity. Jai Bangla, Pranam to Gurudev.” Established in 1901 by the Nobel Laureate, Santiniketan was a residential school and centre for art based on ancient Indian traditions and a vision of the unity of humanity transcending religious and cultural boundaries. A ‘world university’ – Visva Bharati – was established at Santiniketan in 1921. According to the nomination dossier submitted by India, which is essentially a document submitted to justify why the specific nomination is fit for inscription on the list, “Santiniketan is directly and tangibly associated with the life, works and vision of Rabindranath Tagore and the pioneers of the Bengal School of Art. It exhibits the crystallisation of their ideas of internationalism, humanism, inclusiveness, environmentalism and a pan Asian modernism.” The dossier called it “an outstanding example of an avant-garde enclave of intellectuals, educators, artists, craftspeople and workers who collaborated and experimented – free from the established European colonial paradigms – to espouse a unique architectural language and herald a new modernism in art, architecture, landscape, product design and town planning”. It also drew parallels for Santiniketan with other art movements of universal value, such as Bauhaus, the German art school, and the Mingei in Japan. “Founded in the same year as the Bauhaus, Kala Bhavan at Santiniketan embodies an alternative modernity and an internationalism in stark contrast to the austere puritanism of the former. Unlike the absolute functionalism advocated by the Bauhaus, Santiniketan’s arts school espoused a romantic humanism that was eclectic and playful. it represents a strand of design enquiry parallel to other turn of the century movements like the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, the Mingei in Japan and the Vienna Secession in Austria,” the dossier said. The dossier was prepared by Prof Manish Chakraborti, Head, School of Architecture and Planning, Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata, along with renowned conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah. “It is a great news for India, Santiniketan and Bengal. This holds immense value for the present and as well as for the future when it comes to education, which is not an isolated affair but linked to various other fields like arts, paiting and nature etc. These were experimented at Santiniketan to great significance. Now we have to be more responsible towards managing the surrounding and the core area of Santiniketan, which is mainly the campus of Visva Bharati University, and improve and enhance the existing core area,” Chakraborti told The Indian Express. Along with the dossier, the country has to submit a site management plan to protect and preserve the site. India has recorded that the total area of the nominated property is 36 hectare, which has to be conserved and protected by the ASI, while the buffer zone of 537 hectare will be regulated by the ASI for any kind of construction activities. Chakraborti said it took almost two years to prepare the dossier – a large part of the research was borrowed from a previous dossier which was submitted in 2010. The latest dossier was submitted in 2021. Following the announcement on Sunday, teachers at Visva Bharati University and residents of Santiniketan took out a procession on the campus in the evening to celebrate the occasion. University vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarti said, “Today we are all happy to get this recognition. The path was shown by our guru Rabindranath Tagore. Despite so many difficulties, Tagore set up this university. Later, others took forward his legacy. Today we are trying our best to uphold this legacy and pass it on to the next generation. On behalf of Visva-Bharati, I thank everyone for this. Let us work together to take the university to the next level.” Union Culture Minister G Kishan Reddy called it a gift on PM Modi's 73rd birthday, adding, “Prime Minister is the chancellor of the Visva Bharati and it is under his dynamic leadership that the Ministry of Culture is committed to the global recognition of our monuments and sites and places that showcase our rich history and culture.” Other sites to find place on the prestigious list on Sunday include Ancient Jericho in Palestine; the Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor of Silk Roads in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan; the Gedeo Cultural Landscape in Ethiopia; and the Cultural Landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai Mountain in China’s Pu’er.
