Santiniketan, the town in West Bengal where Nobel laureate, poet, and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore established a residential school and centre for arts in 1901, has been listed as UNESCO World Heritage site.
"BREAKING!
New inscription on the @UNESCO
#WorldHeritage List: Santiniketan, #India 🇮🇳. Congratulations!," UNESCO wrote on Twitter.
Union Minister Meenakashi Lekhi expressed her delight over Santiniketan getting the UNESCO tag and dedicated it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"A birthday gift from the Prime Minister to Bharat! 🇮🇳
Delighted to share that Santiniketan has been successfully inscribed as Bharat’s 41st World Heritage property on the UNESCO’s World Heritage list. My congratulations to all and especially to my brothers & sisters from West Bengal. This successful nomination is dedicated to the vision and dynamic leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi Ji, also the Chancellor of Visvabharati, whose keen interest in India’s heritage and its global acknowledgment and appreciation that guides us for inscribing India’s tangible heritage on the World Heritage List," she wrote on X.
Established in 1901, with no more than five students on the roll, the school was intended to counter the education system introduced by the British. By 1921 the school expanded into Vishva-Bharati University, which sought a basis for a common fellowship between the cultures of East and West.
Vishva-Bharati is a residential university with separate colleges for fine arts and crafts, Sino-Indian studies, music and dance, research in Asian languages, teacher training, technology, and postgraduate studies and research.
Shantiniketan also contains Udayana, Tagore’s residence.