Santiniketan, the place where Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore built Visva-Bharati over a century ago, has been recommended for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List by an international advisory body, Union Culture Minister G Kishan Reddy said.
India has been striving for long to get a UNESCO tag for this cultural site located in West Bengal’s Birbhum district.
“Great news for India on the Jayanti of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Santiniketan in West Bengal has been recommended for inscription to the World Heritage List by ICOMOS, the advisory body to UNESCO World Heritage Centre,” Reddy said in a late-night tweet on Tuesday.
“This furthers the vision of PM Narendra Modi to showcase our rich cultural heritage to the world. This will formally be announced in the World Heritage Committee meeting to be held at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in September 2023,” the minister said in his tweet.
The France-based International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) is an international non-governmental organisation that comprises professionals, experts, representatives from local authorities, companies and heritage organisations, and is dedicated to the conservation and enhancement of architectural and landscape heritage around the world.
At a media interaction in Delhi on Wednesday, Reddy spoke about ICOMOS’s recommendation, and said when ICOMOS makes its recommendation, it becomes “almost certain” that the World Heritage Committee will accept it, so India, in September is likely to have another reason to rejoice.
The development has been hailed as a “proud moment” by the authorities of the university.
“To our knowledge, Visva-Bharati is the first living university in India which will be bestowed with the honour,” its spokesperson Mahua Bandyopadhyay told PTI on Wednesday.
She said a top Archeological Survey of India official informed the university on Tuesday about the recommendation by ICOSMOS for the inscription of Visva-Bharati in the World Heritage List.
“This news coming on the birth anniversary of Gurudev (Rabindra Nath Tagore) should be a proud moment for Bengal and the country”. Gurudev’s 162nd birth anniversary fell on May 9, the 25th day of the Hindu month of Baisakh which has earned a special importance among Bengalis across the world.