Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan in Birbhum gets UNESCO’s World Heritage List tag

Situated in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, the small town Santiniketan has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

This is the place where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore spent much of his life. Taking to X, UNESCO wrote on 17 September, "New inscription on the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List: Santiniketan, #India 🇮🇳. Congratulations! 👏👏 "

Here's the tweet:

As per the UNESCO details, the Extended 45th Session of the World Heritage Committee is taking place in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) from the 10 to 25 September. The new inscriptions to UNESCO World Heritage List started on 16 September.

Apart from Santiniketan, UNESCO also included Palestine's Ancient Jericho, Silk Roads: Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor, Azerbaijan's Hyrcanian Forests, Ethiopia's the Gedeo Cultural landscape, Benin's Koutammakou, Cambodia's Koh Ker, Mangolia's Deer Stone monuments and related bronze age sites, South Korea's Gaya Tumuli, China's cultural landscape of Old Tea Forests of the Jingmai mountain in Pu’er, Iran's The Persian Caravanserai, Canada's Tr’ondëk-Klondike, Denmark's Viking-Age Ring Fortresses, Germany's Jewish-Medieval Heritage of Erfurt, and Latvia's Old town of Kuldīga.

About Shantiniketan:

Established in 1901 by Tagore, Santiniketan was a residential school and centre for art based on ancient Indian traditions.

In 1921, a ‘world university’ was established at Santiniketan, later recognised as 'Visva Bharati'. Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan is Bengal’s only central university whose chancellor is the Prime Minister.

India had been long striving to get a UNESCO tag for this cultural site located in the Birbhum district. A couple of months ago, the landmark Shantiniketan site was recommended for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List by international advisory body ICOMOS.

In 2010, the Centre had first tried to get the World Heritage tag for Santiniketan and mounted its campaign again in 2021, whose fresh dossier was prepared by the Archaeological Survey of India with the help of Visva Bharati authorities and submitted to Unesco, reported Hindustan Times.