Visva-Bharati (A Central University ) is a public central university located in Santiniketan, West Bengal. It was founded by Rabindranath Tagore who called it Visva-Bharati, which means the communion of the world with India. Until independence it was a college. Soon after independence, in 1951, the institution was given the status of a university and was renamed Visva-Bharati University. The English daily, The Nation, notes, “Using the money he received with his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, the school was expanded and renamed Visva-Bharati University. It grew to become one of India’s most renowned places of higher learning, with a list of alumni that includes Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen, globally renowned filmmaker Satyajit Ray and the country’s leading art historian, R. Siva Kumar, to name just a few.

The origins of this eminent university date back to 1863 when Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, the zamindar of Silaidaha in East Bengal, was given a tract of land by Babu Sitikanta Sinha, the zamindar of Raipur, which is a neighbouring village not far from Bolepur and present-day Santiniketan and set up an ashram at the spot that has now come to be called chatim tala at the heart of the town. The ashram was initially called Brahmacharya Ashram, which was later renamed Brahmacharya Vidyalaya. It was established with a view to encouraging people from all walks of life to come to the spot and meditate. In 1901 his youngest son Rabindranath Tagore established a co-educational school inside the premises of the ashram.

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