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Shantiniketan, West Bengal
How to reach there
Rail: The Shantiniketan Express leaves Howrah daily.
Accomodation
Location
It is three km from Bolpur.
The Visvabharati University is at
Shantiniketan. The brilliant and prolific poet, writer and nationalist
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) founded a school here in 1901. It
later developed into a university with emphasis on humanity's relation
with nature - many classes are conducted in the open air. Tagore
went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1913 and is credited with introducing
India's historical and cultural greatness to the modern world. In
1915 Tagore was awarded a knighthood by the British but he surrendered
it in 1919 as a protest against the Amritsar massacre.
There are colleges of science, teacher training,
Hindi, Sino-Indian studies, arts and crafts, and music and dance.
It's difficult to get the real atmosphere of the place if you're
not studying here but there are a number of things to visit. There's
a museum and art gallery within the Uttarayan complex where Tagore
lived. The university is open to visitors in the afternoon but closed
on Wednesday, the day the university was founded.
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