247. A Visit to “Bosanko”: Part 2 – Santiniketan

 ( ही पोस्ट मराठीत इथं वाचता येईल.)

The moment one hears the name Santiniketan, the name Rabindranath Tagore immediately comes to mind. Open classrooms without walls, children sitting under trees, Gurudev, Visva-Bharati — a familiar picture appears before our eyes. We know this place as an educational and cultural pilgrimage centre, where education is not about examinations but about experience, and art is not something confined within rigid frames. A beautiful — and perhaps somewhat idealised — image of Santiniketan lives in our minds. At the same time, a quiet curiosity arises: does all this still exist as it once did, or has it changed?

If one visits Santiniketan merely as a tourist, a single day is enough for an ordinary person like me. Tagore’s house, a museum, the handicrafts market, a souvenir picked up from the weekly haat — and then it’s time to leave. While the identity of Santiniketan as a calm and beautiful place is true, it is also incomplete. Because Santiniketan is not a place that can be “finished” in one visit. Even today, it remains, in a way, a space that invites introspection.

Santiniketan is not merely a memory of Tagore; it is a vision and a philosophy he nurtured. His attempt to erase the boundaries between human beings, nature, education, art, and society can still be felt here. I was fortunate not to be in a hurry to see and leave like a tourist. I was able to stay with local people and, following their recommendations, do one carefully chosen activity each day. As I explored Santiniketan slowly, its many layers began to reveal themselves. Of course, I did not see everything, nor did I understand everything. But my introduction to Santiniketan had begun.

History

In 1863, Rabindranath Tagore’s father, Debendranath Tagore, established a small ashram on this open, arid land near Bolpur. Santiniketan — meaning “the abode of peace.” Debendranath purchased twenty acres of land from a landlord named Sinha. He chose this land as an ideal space for meditation, contemplation, and a peaceful life close to nature. The purpose of this purchase was to take the spiritual and social education of the Brahmo Samaj beyond conventional boundaries — to engage in dialogue with nature and to begin a “study of life” that lay outside the rigid frameworks of material education.

At that time, no one could have imagined that this quiet, somewhat isolated place would one day become a centre of global thought.

Rabindranath Tagore did not see this space merely as an ashram, but as a laboratory of education. In 1901, he established the Brahmacharya Ashram school here. The decision to move classrooms out from enclosed walls into the shade of trees was not merely educational — it was also political and cultural. It was an attempt to offer an alternative to colonial education, and to create a dialogue between Indian traditions and global ideas. Here, observation was valued over rote learning, coexistence over competition, and understanding over examinations.

In 1921, Visva-Bharati was established. “Yatra visvam bhavatyekanidam” — where the whole world becomes one nest — was not just its motto, but the guiding principle of life here. Students, artists, and thinkers from India and abroad began arriving. Santiniketan ceased to be one individual’s dream and became an intellectual and cultural movement built through collective effort.

Seeing the entire world as one home meant that education here was never limited to classroom knowledge alone. Seasons, festivals, art, nature, and human relationships — all became part of the learning process. Today, UNESCO has recognised Santiniketan as a World Heritage Site, but for local residents and students, it continues to be a place that “teaches one how to live.”

Today, Santiniketan is recognised as a distinct campus that forms the heart of Visva-Bharati University.

Viswa Bharati Campus Map

Santiniketan and Sriniketan together make up the vast campus of Visva-Bharati. Santiniketan houses departments of art, music, languages, and the humanities, while Sriniketan is known for experiments in rural reconstruction, agriculture, and social development. In that sense, Santiniketan is not merely a geographical space, but a way of life — and Visva-Bharati is its formal, institutional expression.

Heritage Walk

The Santiniketan Ashram Heritage Walk is conducted only on Sundays. Since we reached Bolpur on Saturday night, the Heritage Walk became our first activity.

Heritage Walk is little costly

According to the information leaflet, the walk includes Chhatimtala, Santiniketan Griha, Upasana Griha, Taladhwaj, Nutan Bari, Dehali, Santoshālaya, Ghantatala, Purba Toran, Paschim Toran, Singha Sadan, Patha Bhavana, Dinantika, Cheena Bhavana, and Hindi Bhavana. Except for one or two places, we managed to see almost all of them.

Anasua had already gone ahead and collected the tickets. Guides were available in three languages — Bengali, English, and Hindi. We joined another group and began the walk with a Hindi-speaking guide.

The tree known in Bengali as Chhatim refers to the Alstonia scholaris (devil tree). It was under two such trees that Debendranath Tagore meditated during his first visit in 1862 — which gives this place its significance. These trees could only be viewed from a distance, from beyond a fence. In fact, many places could only be observed from afar. Considering society’s obsession with selfies and the habit of carving one’s name on walls, this distance between tourists and heritage structures seems necessary.

Open classroom

Classes from the primary level onwards are conducted within the ashram campus. At many places, one sees large circular stone platforms around trees. These are vartulas — circular seating arrangements where students sit. One portion of the circle is slightly elevated; that is where the teacher sits. Even today, classes are held under the open sky, without walls.

Built in 1919 in the Buddhist architectural style, Ghantatala is still in daily use.

Path Bhavan

 This is the office building of Patha Bhavana. Established in 1901 with just five students, Patha Bhavana continues to provide primary and secondary education. The wall-less classrooms mentioned earlier are part of Patha Bhavana. The old building now functions as an office. I particularly liked the colour of this building, as well as its architectural style. Santiniketan reflects a fusion of many styles — whether in architecture or painting. There is a sense of simplicity combined with an extraordinary beauty that one still feels here. At first glance, it seems that Santiniketan has mastered the art of preserving what is good from the past while embracing the new.

There is an old banyan tree in the area. Lingering around it felt calming. A couple of small children were swinging on its aerial roots. On a nearby platform, boys and girls from Patha Bhavana were rehearsing a dance to the song “Ekla Cholo Re.” They were completely absorbed in their practice, utterly unconcerned about tourists watching them.

Nutan Bari (called Natun Bari in Bengali) was built in 1902 after the death of Mrinalini Devi, Rabindranath Tagore’s wife. Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi stayed here for some time. Santiniketan Griha is the oldest house in the campus; Mahatma Gandhi also stayed there. Rabindranath wrote many of his later-famous poems in this house — though I don’t know exactly which ones. In one of the buildings, I was able to see paintings by Nandalal Bose on the walls and ceiling. That was such a wonderful experience. The paintings felt so fresh and alive! I cannot put into words what I felt upon seeing them.

After wandering around the campus for two hours, we stepped outside, where there was a huge crowd. Amidst it, two musicians were completely immersed in their performance. Listening to them was also deeply pleasant.

Musicians

Republic Day Programme and Art Exhibitions

On the morning of January 26, we returned to the Visva-Bharati campus for the Republic Day programme. We arrived a bit late, so I could not figure out who the chief guest was. But that guest did not utter the words “Constitution” or “Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar” even once. This reminded me of the young father I had met on the train (my co-passenger), mentioned in an earlier post. There wasn’t a very large crowd at the programme either, and most of those present seemed to be schoolchildren.

On the way back, we stopped at a place for alu chop and tea. The earthen stove there was lovely.

Earthern Chulha

At this small square, there were three or four tea stalls. On one side, I noticed a statue of Dr. Ambedkar and went closer to admire it. A man from New Delhi had donated the statue in memory of his father. It felt good to see it.

Statue of Dr. Ambedkar

One day, we visited Rabindra Bhavana, built in 1942 after Rabindranath’s death. It is also known as the Tagore Museum. The museum is called Bichitra — meaning astonishing, diverse, beautiful, and more. It was established in 1961, during Rabindranath’s birth centenary. The museum houses a replica of Tagore’s Nobel Prize, his correspondence with figures like Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, and Romain Rolland, and more than fifteen hundred of his paintings. Photography is not permitted inside.

As I walked through the museum, I noticed people from all social classes — poor, middle-class, and wealthy — observing the exhibits with devotion and engaging in thoughtful discussion. One repeatedly senses that Rabindranath Tagore remains a point of pride, identity, and deep emotional connection for Bengal even today.

Uttarayan consists of five houses — Konark, Shyamali, Udayan, Punashcha, and Udichi — each with a beautiful name. Rabindranath lived in these houses at different periods of his life. Shyamali is an earthen house.

"Udichi"

I was amazed by the various architectural experiments in these houses.

I had heard that small reproductions of Tagore’s paintings were available for purchase at the sales counter, but I found nothing. The familiar “government office” attitude was evident. The staff were inattentive, and my enthusiasm for buying anything faded away.

We visited an exhibition of Ajanta Mural Tracings by Ganesh Haloi.

Exhibition Poster

There was no one else there besides us. The lighting was so poor that the tracings were not clearly visible. The security guards, however, were enthusiastic and shared a lot of information. I later learned that Ganesh Haloi had worked in Ajanta for six years. His tracings are beautiful. I wondered how he managed to create them, but did not seek out the answer. I later learned that he has published a book on this subject — perhaps the details lie there, or must be sought elsewhere.

Most of us are familiar with Rabindranath Tagore’s name. But alongside him, three other painters played a crucial role in Santiniketan: Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, and Benode Behari Mukherjee. An exhibition of works by Baij and Mukherjee was held in another gallery. Those paintings were also extraordinary — intensely alive. Benode Behari was blind in one eye and had limited vision in the other, yet his paintings are remarkably realistic. I kept wondering how he managed to paint this way. As the exhibition time was coming to an end, we had to leave. But the paintings alone were reason enough to return to Santiniketan.

On another morning, we visited a photo exhibition on the life and work of Ritwik Ghatak. It struck me then how few of his films I had actually seen. In another gallery, there was an exhibition of works by Krishna Reddy. I encountered a new form called “printmaker painting.” A young student from Santiniketan (who had also come to see the exhibition) tried to explain it to me in simple language, but most of it went over my head. The paintings, of course, were beautiful.

While viewing all these exhibitions in Santiniketan–Bolpur, I felt an overwhelming sadness at how little I understood about art. For someone like me, illiterate in the language of visual art, this was an entirely new universe — at once wondrous and deeply pleasing, yet also distant, maintaining a certain reserve.

Learning to understand the language of art is necessary. It is not merely a new script, but a new way of thinking, a new form of dialogue — opening up countless possibilities.

Does our everyday life contain both simplicity and beauty? How do we truly look at nature? Can we see what artists see? Do we have the commitment to art that its practice demands? Do we adequately understand what — and whom — we are truly connected to in this world?

Many such questions kept arising in my mind during this wandering. Santiniketan has certainly given me a new way of seeing. How long its spell will stay with me — only time will tell.

******

To North Kolkata in the next post.