Tripura to set up Tagore museum

AGARTALA - As a tribute to Rabindranath Tagore, Tripura will set up a museum and research centre at the 93-year-old Pushpavant Palace where the Nobel laureate had stayed during his last visit to the state in February 1926.

The memorial will be part of the year-long celebrations of Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary. The Pushpavant Palace, currently the Agartala Raj Bhavan, was built in 1917 by the then king, Maharaja Birendra Kishore Deb Manikya who ruled 1909-1923.

The proposed museum and research centre was part of a package announced by Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar here Monday night as a tribute to Tagore, who had close relations with the erstwhile princely state of Tripura.

This close relationship prompted the bard to visit the state as many as seven times between 1899 and 1926.

Under the package, a 1,800-seat Tagore Memorial Centre in Agartala would also be built up at a cost of Rs.275-million, a full-size statue of Tagore would be installed in front of the centre, and the under construction government degree college at Bishalgarh in western Tripura would be named after Tagore.

The present Raj Bhavan would be shifted to the capital complex on the city’s outskirts, where the civil secretariat - the headquarters of the Tripura administration - was shifted last year.

“Through year-long commemorative programmes, we would take Tagore’s works to every place and every man, woman and youngsters,” said the chief minister.

“Youngsters and students should not only focus on examination and career building but also be acquainted with Rabindranath Tagore in a better way,” Sarkar, a Tagore fan, told a gathering here Monday night.