A History of Santiniketan: A university against national chauvinism

Uma Das Gupta's history of Santiniketan traces Tagore's educational vision, the making of Vishva-Bharati, and the challenges that shaped his alternative to nationalist orthodoxy

A History of Santiniketan – Rabindranath Tagore and His Life’s Work 1861-1941

By Uma Das Gupta

Published by Niyogi Books

220 pages   ₹695

  In the autumn of 1916, two years into World War I, Rabindranath Tagore was visiting Los Angeles. Tagore’s school at Santiniketan, about 160 kilometres north of Calcutta, was yet to grow and transform itself into a university. In a letter to his son, Rathindranath, on October 11 that year, Tagore wrote: “The Santiniketan school must be made the thread linking India with the world. We must establish there a centre for humanistic research concerned with all the world’s people…the