Shantiniketan

Known to few, mainly as Rabindranath Tagore's home and now a university, Santiniketan is a small town located in the Birbhum district of West Bengal. The town comprises mainly of Visva Bharati University. The University was set up by Rabindranath Tagore's father and later popularized by him to radically change the concept of education in India. Today, this beautifully laid out university and small sleepy town has acquired the status of a unique tourist haven, where lines of knowledge and aesthetic brilliance merge. When one walks into the ashram and watches the classes in progress in the open air, the memory recalls the dreams a poet dreamt once. One is instantly transported to another world of love and peace and brotherhood. Santiniketan remains a bit of an enigma, a small village, which is being rapidly overtaken by the city's false and temporary glamour. However, Santiniketan can never be a disappointment: it is not just a dressed-up tourist façade. It has too many memories to contend with.

Calm and peaceful, the place was once called Bhubandanga after a local dacoit. Maharishi Debendranath Tagore renamed it as Shantiniketan, meaning abode (niketan) of peace (shanty). Initially a university founded by Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the place has now become a popular getaway. The university boasts of great illustrious students including Indira Gandhi, Satyajit Ray, Abdul Ghani Khan, Jahar Dasgupta and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen. The University itself has been embedded with literary classics and historical background amidst its vast campus grounds, open air-classes and tranquil atmosphere. Not just home to some best colleges and centers of the world, Shantiniketan is also renowned as one of the coveted tourist places in West Bengal. The pleasant weather at Shantiniketan attracts tourists across the year, with major number gathering around the famous Vasant Utsav, to mark the festival of Holi, with the onset of spring. You can find some splendid sculptures, murals, frescoes and paintings of Rabindranath, Nandlal Bose, Ramkinkar, Bindobehari Mukhopadhyaya and others beautifying the university campus. Apart from the campus highlights, there are numerous parks, architectural buildings, museums, shrines and birth places to keep visitors glued to Shantiniketan.

Santiniketan is a small town located in the Birbhum district of West Bengal. The town comprises mainly of Visva Bharati University. The University was set up by Rabindranath Tagore's father and later popularized by him to radically change the concept of education in India. Today, this beautifully laid out university and small sleepy town has acquired the status of a unique tourist haven, where lines of knowledge and aesthetic brilliance merge.