Santiniketan

"But Santiniketan (the Abode of Peace), in the glorious countryside of what today is West Bengal, north of Calcutta (now called Kolkata), was no common place to learn. The school there was founded by the celebrated Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore, who would write the national anthems for two unborn states, India and Bangladesh. The Nobel laureate meant to realize Indians’ intellectual independence through learning, studying all of humanity, with a special attention to Japanese and Chinese civilization. The institution was determinedly unconventional: on arriving, Indira Nehru searched in vain for the classrooms and was startled to discover that her classes were held under the trees. “Everything is so artistic and beautiful and wild!” she wrote to Nehru."

"In order to qualify for Government grants, Shanti Niketan, the famous institution found by the great Rabindra Nath Tagore, the poet of the soul's Godward aspiration and a great representative of undying India, had to give up its Upanishadic motto: satyam, Sivam, sundaram. These figures represent the deepest and loftiest that spirituality has conceived about man, his aspirations and destiny, his hopes and possibilities. But to the modern secular ears of the present-day rulers, these terms sound communal and antiquated."