DEPARTMENT OF Bengali (বাংলা বিভাগ)

The Department of Bengali, Visva-Bharati is one of the largest Departments, and it has been playing  important roles in the university’s academic pursuits since its inception in 1951. From the very beginning of the establishment of Santiniketan Brahamavidyalaya in 1901, teaching and learning of  Bengali language and literature received a special emphasis. Gurudev Rabindranath  along with Pandit Kshitimohon Sen and Nityananda Binod Goswami were engaged in teaching Bengali literature. The Department became a full-fledged one in 1951, when Visva-Bharati was christened as a Central University and an Institution of National importance. The location of the  Department was changed from the centre of the Asrama to the  Vidya-Bhavana Angana in 2004, and the first floor of the Bhasha-Vidya Building in 2012-13. It came under the aegis of the Bhasha-Bhavana in 2009. The present faculty members of the Department retained the legacy set by its erstwhile luminous predecessors like Prof. Prabodh Chandra Sen, Bijanbehari Bhattacharya, Upendra Kumar Das, Ashokebejoy Raha, Panchanan Mandal, Satyendrnath Roy, Bhudeb Choudhuri, Bhabatosh Dutta, Somendranath Bandyopadhyay, Gopikanath Roychoudhury, Sukhomoy Mukhopadhyay, Pasupati Sasmal, Rambahal Tiwari, Sutapa Bhattacharya et al. Students and scholars from different states of India and abroad join this Department for study and research. Father Paul Dietenne, Sanjida Khatun et al. were luminaries alumni of the Department of Bengali.  In the recent past, Tupur Gao, a student from China completed her MA in this Department. This  can be regarded as a legacy of Tan Wen(the daughter of Tan-Yun-Shan, the founder of Cheena Bhavana; who topped in the Class) in the history of the Department.