West Bengal is getting ready for Basanta Utsav. One of their most anticipated festivals of the year. While Holi, one of the largest North Indian holidays, is knocking on the door. The event, which was started by Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal. Honours and celebrates spring and its various hues.
The beginning of Basanta Utsav
Using flowers and abir, Tagore created Basanta Utsav in the early 1920s to honour the colours of phagun (spring) (dry colours). The festival starts early in the morning with a parade in which instructors and students dressed in basanti (yellow) sarees and kurtas. Make their way from the university to the maidan (ground). Millions of people from all around the state, country, and world attend the event. Including many famous persons, past students, ashramiks (Visva-Bharati alumni who have lived in Tagore’s Ashram on campus for many years and generations), and locals.
Everyone participates in a celebration where they paint each other with a dry powdered colour known as abir later in the day, after the cultural programmes are practically finished. Participants range from students and teachers to members of the general public and tourists. Every year, a number of famous people, well-known musicians, authors, and literary figures attend the festival and join the audience in singing and dancing.
Visva-Bharati University
Tagore, who couldn’t stay restricted inside the four walls of a classroom. Promoted traditional and old Indian education in opposition to the westernised paradigm. He built Santiniketan’s open-air classrooms in Bengal’s Birbhum district.
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According to Tagore, creativity knows no limitations and cannot be restrained inside the classroom’s four walls. Residents and students still stay in mud huts with thatched roofs as part of the university infrastructure. Which lacked concrete boundary walls until last year, in an effort to decrease air pollution.
