Winds of change

Santiniketan is more a weekend getaway for merry making, drinking and binge buying of crass handicrafts

Almost 10 days after the country celebrated Teacher’s Day, a video clip of the celebrations at Sangit Bhavana, one of the departments of Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati, went viral. Informally started in 1919 as part of the Kala Bhavana to take forward Tagore’s idea of art and music being integral to education, Sangit Bhavana was later established as a full-fledged department in the early 1930s.

Many famous singers, musicians and dancers, both of the classical school and indigenous or folk cultures, have taught at and visited Sangit Bhavana and its current faculty still boasts of powerful teachers and performers. However, on