Santiniketan is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Santiniketan is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

After months of anticipation, Santiniketan in West Bengal, the home of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore around five hours from Kolkata, has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The news comes months after the UNESCO World Heritage Centre had added the cultural hotspot from West Bengal to its tentative list, on the recommendation of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a France-based international NGO that serves as an advisory to the centre. The decision was made at the World Heritage Committee meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on 17th September,2023.

It makes Santiniketan the 41st location from India inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site—and the third from Bengal after the Darjeeling Himalayan Railways and the Sundarbans National Park.

Built by Tagore’s father, Debendranath “Maharshi” Tagore, around 160km from Kolkata, Santiniketan was originally an ashram where anyone—irrespective of caste or creed—could visit to meditate. Maharshi built both Santiniketan Griha and the stained-glass Upasana Griha, where worship is non-denominational, in the second half of the 19th century as part of the founding of Santiniketan, “and the universal spirit associated with the revival and reinterpretation of religious ideals in Bengal and India,” says the UNESCO website. The Nobel Prize winner developed the ashram into a college (later given university status). Now, Visva-Bharati has become the first university in India to be bestowed the title.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India

India boasts dozens of other UNESCO World Heritage Sites dotted across the country, such as the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, the Red Fort complex, Elephanta Caves and the Mahabodhi Temple complex in Bodh Gaya, Bihar. However, a number of sites still await the honourable tag and remain on the tentative list. This includes the temples of Bishnupur in West Bengal as well as the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. The tentative list is an inventory of those cultural sites that may be considered for nomination in future.

Other sites that have made it to the list along with Santiniketan include the Viking-Age Ring Fortresses in Denmark, the Persian Caravanserai in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Gaya Tumuli in the Republic of Korea and more.