Missing Tagore memorabilia recovered after 13 years

             Indo-Asian News Service

     Dhaka, May 31 (IANS) Bangladeshi authorities have recovered several missing memorabilia of Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore from different parts of the country after they were 'misplaced' 13 years ago.

     Assistant commissioner (AC) for land Dewan Mahamudul Haque handed over 54 Tagore memorabilia to the archaeology department, said Nahid Sultana, custodian of the Rabindranath Kacharibari Museum at Shahzadpur, Sirajganj, The Daily Star reported Saturday.

     Shahzadpur is where Tagore's erstwhile family estate is located, where he lived for some time and wrote some of his famous works.

     The objects were misplaced 13 years ago when the AC land office shifted from the Rabindranath Kacharibari premises to its own building nearby.

     Archaeology department sources said the memorabilia include 19 monograms of Dihikashipur Pargana Zamindar, in charge of the property that fell under Tagore's family estate, a large brass dish, metal glasses, a measuring chain and a bell.

     Most of the monograms bear Bengali and English inscriptions and punch marks on them.

     Sources said rust has eaten away the originality and beauty of almost all the metal relics because of lack of maintenance.

     An official of the archaeology department said: "All the recovered objects will be displayed at the Rabindranath Kacharibari Museum soon."

     Local sources said many such antiquities were lost or misplaced from the Kacharibari just after the 1971 Liberation War.

     Earlier, a number of Tagore memorabilia including a wall clock, mirrors and a cot were recovered from the houses of locals in Atrai Upazila of Naogaon and have been put on display at Potishar Kacharibari, in the only estate Rabindranath Tagore looked after himself.

     Archaeology department officials said they do not have the required funds to turn the historical place into a museum so that the objects used by Tagore could be preserved better.

     Authorities in India and Bangladesh, South Asian nations that share the Tagore legacy, are coordinating their efforts to recover Tagore's Nobel medallion and other memorabilia stolen from Vishwabharati, the university that Tagore set up at Santiniketan in India. They were stolen four years ago.

     Indo-Asian News Service

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