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Shantiniketan,
West Bengal,
India
Shantiniketan ("Abode of Peace") began as
a meditation centre founded and endowed in 1863 by Maharishi Debendranath, the
father of the Nobel laureate Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, who, in turn,
established the Brahmo Vidyalaya (school) and in 1901 another open-air
laboratory school. By 1921 the latter had expanded into Vishva Bharti
University, which sought a
basis for a common fellowship between the cultures of East and West. A
residential university with an international student body, hostels, and
extensive grounds, it includes colleges for fine arts and crafts, Sino-Indian
studies, music and dance, research in Asian languages, teacher training,
technology, and postgraduate studies and research. Rabindra-Sadana is the
university's museum and academy for the study of Tagore. The town also contains
Udayana, Tagore's residence. Another Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen, studied at
Shantiniketan, as did Satyajit Ray and Indira Gandhi. At nearby Sriniketan
is an institution founded in 1922 by Tagore and an associate that is concerned
with rural reconstruction, health, social welfare, and the revival of ancient
arts and handicrafts. Many outstanding Indian painters have studied there. [Adapted from Encyclopedia Britannica;
Dec 05]
Vishva Bharti
University
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Founded by
Tagore
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One of
Tagore's homes
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Typical
university road
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Open air
classroom
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Open air
classroom
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Open air
classroom
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Open air
classroom
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Carvings at
the university
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A village near
the university
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Village women
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Country home,
Bolpur
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Sculpture by
Ramkinkar Beij
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Baul musician
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Baul musician
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Smiling hijra
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"I am partial
to seeing Tagore as an educator, having myself been educated at
Shantiniketan. The school was unusual in many different ways, such as the
oddity that classes, excepting those requiring a laboratory, were held
outdoors (whenever the weather permitted). No matter what we thought of
Rabindranath's belief that one gains from being in a natural setting while
learning (some of us argued about this theory), we typically found the
experience of outdoor schooling extremely attractive and pleasant.
Academically, our school was not particularly exacting (often we did not
have any examinations at all), and it could not, by the usual academic
standards, compete with some of the better schools in Calcutta. But there
was something remarkable about the ease with which class discussions could
move from Indian traditional literature to contemporary as well as classical
Western thought, and then to the culture of China or Japan or elsewhere. The
school's celebration of variety was also in sharp contrast with the cultural
conservatism and separatism that has tended to grip India from time to
time."
[-Amartya Sen in
The Argumentative Indian, pp. 115, Penguin 2005]
"I consider the three years I spent in Shantiniketan as the
most fruitful of my life ... Shantiniketan opened my eyes for the first time
to the splendors of Indian and Far Eastern art. Until then I was completely
under the sway of Western art, music and literature. Shantiniketan made me
the combined product of East and West that I am."
[-Satyajit Ray, as quoted by Amartya Sen in The Argumentative Indian,
pp. 115, Penguin 2005]
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