Santiniketan, where Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore built the Viswa Bharati university, was on Sunday included on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO.

Santiniketan was established by Tagore in West Bengal’s Birbhum district in 1901 as a residential school and centre for art based on ancient Indian traditions as well as a vision of the unity of humanity transcending religious and cultural boundaries. The Visva Bharati university was set up in 1921.

The decision to include Santiniketan in the list was taken in the 45th World Heritage Committee Meeting held in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh between September 10 and September 25.

On Sunday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that she was “glad and proud” that Santiniketan has been included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

“We from the government of West Bengal have significantly added to its infrastructure in last 12 years and the world now recognises the glory of the heritage place,” she said. “Kudos to all who love Bengal, Tagore, and his messages of fraternity.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the development as a proud moment for all Indians.

In a dossier to justify the nomination, India had said that Santiniketan was directly associated with Tagore’s life, works and vision as well as the pioneers of the Bengal School of Art, reported The Indian Express.

“It exhibits the crystallisation of their ideas of internationalism, humanism, inclusiveness, environmentalism and a pan Asian modernism,” the government had said.

The dossier described Santiniketan as “an outstanding example of an avant-garde enclave of intellectuals, educators, artists, craftspeople and workers who collaborated and experimented – free from the established European colonial paradigms – to espouse a unique architectural language and herald a new modernism in art, architecture, landscape, product design and town planning”.

The government also submitted a a site management plan to protect and preserve the site. The plan said that the 36 hectare area where Santiniketan is located needs to be conserved and protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.