Notable people associated with Santiniketan

The following is a list of notable people associated with Visva- Bharati University and/or Santiniketan, a neighbourhood in Bolpur city in West Bengal, India:

People in the Tagore family

 * Debendranath Tagore established Santiniketan in 1861, a small place for prayers and meditation with land from Bhuban Mohan Singha of Raipur.
 * Rabindranath Tagore started a Brahmacharyaashrama in 1901 and it came to be known as Patha Bhavana from 1925. Founded in 1921 by him, Visva Bharati was declared to be a central university in 1951. In 1913, Rabindranath won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote many of his literary classics at Santiniketan.
 * Rathindranath Tagore, after completing his education first at Santiniketan and then abroad, spent the next four decades of his life serving Santiniketan and Visva Bharati.
 * Pratima Devi was a talented artist and contributed substantially to improvising and popularising Rabindranath's dance dramas.
 * Krishna Kripalani, husband of Nandita, a grand daughter of Rabindranath, taught at Santiniketan for about 15 years, His biography of Tagore was amongst the best ever written.
 * Dwijendranath Tagore, Rabindranath's eldest brother, spent the last twenty years of his life at Santiniketan. He was a poet, musician, philosopher and mathematician.
 * Dinendranath Tagore, grandson of Dwijendranath, was a talented musician. He codified many of the tunes that appeared impetuously to Rabindranath. He named Rabindranath's songs as Rabindra Sangeet. He was the first principal of Sangit Bhavana.
 * Indira Devi Chaudhurani, daughter of Satyendranath Tagore, excelled in both Western and Indian classical music and composed Brahmasangit. She wrote the notations for many of Rabindranath's songs.
 * Abanindranath Tagore, founder of the Bengal school of art joined as chancellor of Visva Bharati in 1942.
 * Asit Kumar Haldar, was art teacher in Santiniketan Vidyalaya from 1911 to 1915 and was incharge of Kala Bhavana from 1919 to 1921.

People of foreign citizenship/ origin

 * This list includes names of persons who may have been citizens of British India, but later became citizens of Pakistan/ Bangladesh


 * Charles Freer Andrews (Deenabandhu Andrews) was a lifelong friend of Rabindranath Tagore and assisted in setting up Visva Bharati.
 * Leonard Knight Elmhirst, set up the Institute of Rural Reconstruction at Sriniketan.
 * Khan Abdul Ghani Khan, poet and philosopher, son of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was sent to Santiniketan, along with Indira Gandhi, by Jawaharlal Nehru. Although known primarily as a poet, he got interested in sculpture, while studying in Santiniketan. He spent his later years in Pakistan.
 * Martin Kämpchen is a Santiniketan-based translator of Rabindranath Tagore's poems from Bengali to German, author, journalist and social worker.


 * Anand Yang, historian, was born and initially raised here.
 * Savitri Devi, the pseudonym of the daughter of a French citizen of Greek-Italian ancestry and an English woman, born Maximiani Portas, was a political activist and writer. She was at Santiniketan for a short while and acquired her pseudonym there.
 * Affandi, the Indonesian master, was at Santiniketan in 1951. His daughter Kartika Affandi had accompanied him.

Other Indians

 * Satyendra Prasanna Sinha, 1st Baron Sinha, of Raipur, had donated for the construction of Singha Sadan with a clock tower and bell. It was in this building that Oxford University conferred its honorary doctorate on the poet.
 * Brajendra Nath Seal, philosopher and vice-chancellor of Mysore University, presided over the inauguration of Visva Bharati on 23 December 1921, and presided over the Visva Bharati Society.
 * Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, founder of the Indian Statistical Institute, framed the constitution of Visva Bharati in 1921, and was general secretary from 1921 to 1932.
 * Nabakrushna Choudhuri freedom fighter was at Santiniketan for a short time. He later became chief minister of Odisha.