UNESCO team to visit Visva-Bharati varsity

A United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) team will be visiting the Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, this week to consider the possibility of declaring it a world heritage site.

The Ministry of Culture, through the Archaeological Survey of India, sent a dossier to the UNESCO earlier this year nominating Santiniketan as India's official entry for World Heritage Sites.

A review committee from the UNESCO would examine the proposal and visit the premises including Uttarayan, the complex where the residences of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore were located, the archives and museums and various other buildings which house murals, frescos and paintings, said a senior varsity official.

The team would also meet officials, cultural personalities and experts after which would consider the proposal and see whether the Vishva Bharati can be declared a heritage site. They would also see which areas of the University's sprawling 150 acre campus could be included.

Santiniketan was nominated as the official entry in 2010 keeping in mind that the country is celebrating the 150 th Birth Anniversary of the National Poet this year.

Full report here Hindu

Rahul charms Santiniketan on his maiden trip

Hailed as "Rahulda" and "Rahulji" by students, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday received a tumultuous ovation as he paid his maiden visit to Visva Bharati university, which was founded by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and had three chancellors from the Nehru-Gandhi family.

A free-wheeling question-answer session with students, much like his father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi held, inauguration of an exhibition and brief meetings with the principals of various departments and senior officials marked Rahul Gandhi's 98-minute stay in the campus.

Kickstarting a three-day visit to West Bengal, with the agenda of reviving the Congress ahead of next year's assembly polls, the young leader got late by 40 minutes. The delay was caused because he had to take a detour via Panagarh as the helicopter allotted to him could not take off from Kolkata due to heavy rains.

Full report here Times of India 

Book with rare Indira pics, Nehru's letters

The Visva-Bharati University is coming out with a book containing unpublished letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru to Rabindranath Tagore besides rare photographs of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The coffee table book, titled 'Three Chancellors', will depict the relationship between the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Tagores.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi personally came to the aid of Nilanjan Banerjee, the editor of the book, and mailed him some rare photographs of her late mother-in-law Indira Gandhi.

"Responding to our request, Mrs Gandhi has recently sent us 18 rare and personal photographs featuring Indira Gandhi during her student days in the Visva-Bharati," Banerjee, who works as a curator of Tagore's museum at Santiniketan, told PTI.

Full report here Times of India

The many shades of Rabindra Sangeet

Inspired by her martyred intellectual father Professor Rashidul Hasan, noted Tagore artiste Roquaiya Hasina Neely began learning music at the age of six. Though her father taught English literature in Dhaka University, he had a great penchant for Bengali literature and the creative works of Rabindranath Tagore in particular.

"My father was a life member of Visva Bharati University. I went with him to the University for several festivals, where I got close to legendary singers like Kanika Bandyopadhyay, Neelima Sen and Shanti Dev Ghosh. They inspired me to sing," says Neely.

In her early days in Birbhum, West Bengal, Neely had her initial musical lessons from Radhapada Sarker. Though she learnt Rabindra Sangeet for a few years at the Bulbul Academy of Fine Arts (BAFA), in the pre-Liberation years, her music education was further refined under eminent teachers like Waheedul Haque, Abdul Ahad, Dr Sanjida Khatun and Zahidur Rahim of Chhayanaut just after the birth of Bangladesh.

Amongst the themes of Tagore's songs like Puja, Prem, Prokriti and compositions from the bard's plays like "Bhanushingher Padaboli", Neely loves to render songs that have melancholic shades.

Full report here Daily Star

Sonia to send rare Indira photos for V-B book

None other than Congress president Sonia Gandhi is taking an interest in a book that is about to be published by Visva Bharati on the occasion of Rabindranath Tagore's 150th birth anniversary. She is helping the author of the book, a Tagore scholar at Visva Bharati, to put together rare photographs and documents from her family collection. The book, Three Chancellors, talks about little known facts about Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi vis-a-vis the university. Hence, Sonia's interest in the book.

The writer, Nilanjan Bandopadhyay, is the special officer at Rabindra Bhavan, which is the Tagore memorial museum of VB. The book has been planned as a coffee table book and will be published by a city-based publisher who has collaborated with VBU for many prestigious publications.

Bandopadhyay had requested Sonia Gandhi to help him with some rare photographs and documents related to Nehru and Indira Gandhi pertaining to the university. On Wednesday, she wrote back to Bandopadhyay saying she would send some photographs Indira Gandhi had taken during her student days at Santiniketan, along with some suggestions on archival documents that the writer might use for the book.

Full report here Times of India