Tagore renounced his knighthood in response to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919 . In the repudiation letter to the Viceroy , Lord Chelmsford , he wrote Tagore despised rote classroom schooling : in " The Parrot 's Training " , a bird is caged and force-fed textbook pages — to death . Tagore , visiting Santa Barbara in 1917 , conceived a new type of university : he sought to " make Santiniketan the connecting thread between India and the world and a world center for the study of humanity somewhere beyond the limits of nation and geography . " The school , which he named Visva-Bharati , had its foundation stone laid on 24 December 1918 and was inaugurated precisely three years later . Tagore employed a '' brahmacharya '' system : '' gurus '' gave pupils personal guidance — emotional , intellectual , and spiritual . Teaching was often done under trees . He staffed the school , he contributed his Nobel Prize monies , and his duties as steward-mentor at Santiniketan kept him busy : mornings he taught classes ; afternoons and evenings he wrote the students ' textbooks . He fundraised widely for the school in Europe and the United States between 1919 and 1921
Jallianwala Bagh massacre
Jallianwala Bagh massacre
Rabindranath Tagore