Visva-Bharati University

Visva-Bharati

'বিশ্বভারতী विश्वभारती
Motto	Yatra Visvam Bhavatyekanidam
Motto in English	Where the world makes a home in a single nest
Type	Centrally funded Autonomous university
Established	1921
Chancellor	Prime Minister of India
Vice-Chancellor	Vacant
Academic staff	515
Students	6,500
Location	Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
Campus	Rural
Affiliations	UGC
Website	http://www.visva-bharati.ac.in

Visva-Bharati University (Bengali: বিশ্বভারতী বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়) is one of India's major Central Government funded autonomous universities 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. In its initial years Tagore expressed his dissatisfaction with the word 'university', since university translates to Vishva-Vidyalaya, which is smaller in scope than Visva Bharati. 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." On 4 April 2016 Visva-Bharati secured 11th rank ( All Indian Rank) in University category by National Institutional Ranking Framework, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.

The origins of the 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 encourage 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. Pramatha Chaudhuri From 1901 onwards, Tagore used the ashram to organise the Hindu Mela, which soon became a centre of nationalist activity. Through the early twentieth century the zamindars of Surul (Sarkar Family), another neighbouring village, a few minutes by cycle from the Uttarayan Complex, and the zamindars of Taltore, a village just north of the university town, continued to sell their lands and other properties to the ashram and the college that was being built on this spot.