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Visva-Bharati - Shantiniketan
Visva-Bharati - where the world meets and makes a home in the single nest.
"Visva-Bharati represents India where she has her wealth of mind which is for all. Visva-Bharati acknowledges India's obligation to offer to others the hospitality of her best culture and India's right to accept from others their best"Rabindranath Tagore(Founder of VISVA-BHARATI)
It was more than 100 years ago that Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore started an experimental school, Brahmacharyashram, with five students, at Shantiniketan. The genesis was his reaction to the joyless, mechanical system of education then prevailing in the country. For Gurudev, sympathy was more important than geography and symphony more than history. By sympathy, Gurudev meant understanding among human beings, evolving into community living and world peace. By symphony, he meant living in communion with Nature so that Nature's bounty, without being ravaged, could be unlocked.
From 1925 this school came to be known as Patha-Bhavana(house of learning).The school was a conscious repudiation of the system introduced in India by the British rulers and Rabindranath initially sought to realize the intrinsic values of the ancient education in India.Such ancient Indian education not only catered for the intellect but expanded the spiritual self. In keeping with this, Gurudev designed his School and University, where the students cooperated with the villagers surrounding Shantiniketan, who were cultivating land, breeding cattle, laboring at the oil mill and spinning cloth. Along with these avenues for the productive self, Tagore attempted to provide for the creative self. Here he was greatly impressed with the folk education of India, which was woven into everyday life.
The school and its curriculum, therefore, signified a departure from the way the rest of the country viewed education and teaching. Simplicity was a cardinal principle. Classes were held in open air in the shade of trees where man and nature entered into an immediate harmonious relationship. Teachers and students shared the single integral socio-cultural life. The curriculum had music, painting, dramatic performances and other performative practices.
Kala Bhavana, the art college of Shantiniketan, is still considered one of the best art colleges in the world. Other institutions here include Vidya Bhavana; the Institute of Humanities, Shiksha Bhavana; the Institute of Science, Sangit Bhavana; Institute of Dance, Drama and Music, Vinaya Bhavana; Institute of Education, Rabindra Bhavana, Institute of Tagore Studies and Research, Palli-Samgathana Vibhaga; Institute of Rural Reconstruction, and Palli Shiksha Bhavana; Institute of Agricultural Sciences.
Cultural heritage:
The doyens of Modern Indian Art, Nandalal Bose, Binode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij transformed Shantiniketan through their progressive ideals and interventions in public art. This site also has a history of theatre and stagecraft, music and cinema, presenting a cultural legacy that is multi-dimensional. Rabindranath himself was a great composer, lyricist, actor, dramatist and painter.
Numerous social and cultural events taking place through out the year, have become part and parcel of Shantiniketan.These include - Basanta Utsav(spring festival/March), Barsha Mangal(monsoon festival), Sharodutsav, Nandan Mela(art fair), Poush Mela(harvest festival/ 22nd to 25th December) to name a few. Of these, the Poush Mela deserves special mention, as it fetches not just tourists, but also artisans, folk singers, dancers, and the traditional Baul from the neighbourhood. As a result of Tagore's idea to introduce vocational training for the local communities to help them develop cottage enterprizes and preserve the local art and crafts, many artisan groups were formed who later made Shantiniketan a major hub of handicrafts. Shantiniketan is famous for its terracotta items & potteries, leather items, cotton fabrics, batik fabrics, wood & bamboo crafts, hand-stiched designer cloths.
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