CALCUTTA, 8 December 2004 — The long wait is over. Replicas of national poet Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel gold medal will soon be on display once again at West Bengal’s Visva Bharati University eight months after the original medal was stolen.
Sweden’s Foreign Secretary Hans Dahlgren will hand over gold and bronze replicas of Tagore’s 1913 Nobel medal for Literature to India’s Foreign Minister Natwar Singh in New Delhi today, according to information received in Calcutta.
The Swedes are keen that the replicas remain on display in India’s Parliament before they are formally handed over to Visva Bharati authorities in January for the benefit of thousands of Tagore buffs who flock to Santiniketan to gaze at the medal.
“We are very grateful to the Nobel Academy and the Swedish government for re-minting the priceless medal. And we will be really honored if Dahlgren or Sweden’s ambassador in India travel to Santiniketan with the replicas next month so that we can publicly thank them”, Visva Bharati Vice Chancellor Sujit Kumar Bose told Arab News.
