Santiniketan Ashramik Sammilani International is a nonprofit literary, social, cultural, educational, and charitable organization of alumni of Santiniketan, India. It was incorporated in the State of Virginia on September 7th, 2008, with the following objectives.
- Promote Santiniketan’s rich heritage
- Support charitable causes to and for Santiniketan
- Support activities to enrich Santiniketan
- Foster friendships and understandings between and amongst all the well-wishers of Santiniketan
The membership of SASI is open to all person 18 years of age or older without regard to nationality, race, religion, and place of residence. Members should abide by the Constitution and By Laws of the organization. Member should also pay a nonrefundable annual membership or life membership fee. SASI also maintains a Directory which includes names, address, email, and phone list of its members. The directory is password protected and would be provided to the members.
Formation of SASI
Santiniketan Ashram Sammilani International (SASI) is an international alumni association to complement the various branches of the ‘Ashramik Sangha’ in India and the numerous Tagore societies in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. The rising and widespread interest in Santiniketan all over the world, and the resurgence of interest in the works of Rabindranath Tagore, led us to initiate SASI as a registered organization.
A group of alumni of Santiniketan, resident in North America, started an informal branch of the ‘Ashramik Sangha’ over ten years ago. Prominent among the early members were Manasi Adhikari, Ruby Biswas, Leena Chatterjee, Ranjit Dhar, Tan Lee, Bharati Mazumdar, Hitabrata Ray, Subrato Ray, Supriyo Ray, Alo Roy, Chandana Sarkar, and Mamata De. Subsequently many others, including Srila Chatterjee, Piyali Dasgupta, Santanu Mitra, Sharmila Roy Pommot, Anandarup Ray, Dwipen Sen, Swapan De, Malabika Guha, Suparna Adhikary, and others joined the group.
This group produced a volume of reminiscences called “Ek Sutrer Sandhane” in 2006, containing over sixty articles. It was edited by Tan Lee and Srila Chatterji.
Several of the ex Santinikatanites were meeting at the reunions in the Bangasanmelan and discussing the formation of a registered organization of the alumni. The goal and the purpose of forming such an organization have been critically discussed along with the hard work that goes with it. SASI was finally set in motion in a meeting in Toronto during the Banga Sammelan, 2008. Those attending elected Anandarup Ray (President), Santanu Mitra (Secretary), Mamata De (Assistant Secretary) and Karabee Nag (Treasurer). Santanu Mitra and Karabee Nag however, resigned for personal reasons.
SASI 2008-current
Our first task was to define and develop the new association, and to draw up a Constitution, the Articles of Agreement, and the Bylaws. A lot of discussions took place with the members of the Board of Trustees like Subrata Ray (Veltu-da), Hitabrata Roy (Bachchu-da), Alo Roy, and Tan Lee-da along with the president Ananda-da and the secretory Mamata and at last after finalizing the Constitution, SASI has been registered in the state of Virginia in the September of 2008.
In 2009, Srila Chatterji, Chandana Sen, Suryanarayana Sastri, and Subha Addy joined as the Board of Directors. Swapan De served as a treasure until 2011.
In July 2011, Srila Chatterji was elected as President, Chandana Sen, Shivaditya Sen, Tapas Basu, Anuradha Sinha, and Sudeshna Sen were elected as Board of Directors; Joyeeta Ray Sircar served as treasurer until 2013. Anandarup Ray and Mamata De were elected as Trustees. And Alo Ray, Tan Lee, and Hitabrata Roy continued as Trustees.
In July 2013, Swapan De was elected as President, Anuradha Sinha, Tapas Basu, Manasi Adhikari, Malabika Guha, Subha Addy, and Shivaditya Sen was elected as Board of Directors. Supriya Tagore and Jayita Chakrabarti were elected as Trustees. And Anandarup Ray continued as a Trustee.
In July 2017, Malabika Guha took over the SASI presidentship, Sudipta Bhanja Choudhury and Tandra Das served on the Board of Directors. Subha Auddy and Chandana Sen Sarkar served as trustees.
In August 2021, Mamata De elected as SASI President, Sangeeta Banerjee, Payel Bhattacharya, Manisha Das, and Ipsa Bandyopadhyay are serving on the Boards of Directors. Anusri (Chandra) Sen, Sujata Choudhury, Biswajit Ganguli, and Subir Banerjee are our Trustees. Due to COVID 19 situation, SASI fund was not transferred from Malabika to Mamata until March 2022. Therefore, the new fiscal year of SASI started on March 2022, under Mamata De’s Presidentship.
We also requested Sharmila Roy Pommot, Sudhiranjan Mukherjee, Subrato Sen Majumdar, and Syamantak Datta to be our advisors. Our Patrons are Alo Roy, Anandarup Ray, Srila Chatterji, Hena Bagchi, Anuradha Sinha, Swapan De, Jayita Chakrabarti, Joyeeta Ray Sircar, Chandana Sen Sarkar, Subha Addy, and Malabika Guha.
Current and previous members of the Board of Directors and the members of the Board of Trustees have discussed formation of different working committees to oversee the different activities that might be carried out by SASI. Some of these are as follows:
Santiniketan liaison committee: oversee activities in Santiniketan for the betterment of the unique academic and social experience of the students and the residents of Santiniketan. As per this discussion, we have our International Co-Ordinator. In Europe, Shyamali Basu (UK) and Sangita Paul (Stockholm) will help organizing SASI programs; In Australia, Ruma Chakravarti and in Canada: Apan Goswami will help organizing SASI programs.
We have also discussed formation of SASI Regional Chapters within USA. Currently we are working on forming regional groups for SASI. We are also working on forming the following committees.
Public affairs committee: promote literature and social events through activities like publishing Webzine and Face Book together with organizing cultural events.
Fund raising committee: organize fund rising and charitable work to enrich academic goal and betterment of living in the Santiniketan area.
Publication committee: endure projects to record the history of Santiniketan and indulge publication to vision Santiniketan as one the outstanding centers of learning and thoughts. Note that one book named ‘eki sutrer sadhane’ has already been published through this effort.
We will update periodically the progress of the formation of the committees. In the meantime, we like to invite the ex-students, teachers, non-educational stuff of Santiniketan as well as all the well wishers of Santiniketan to join our organization to help us create a platform through which we can support, sponsor, and encourage our Institution to become outstanding centers of learning and thought like Oxford which was formed in lat 12th Century and Harvard which was formed in 1636. Santiniketan has only completed its first century of existence. And as Tan Lee da correctly pointed out Founders vision and philosophy of education before Santiniketan/VisvaBharati University could hope to claim its legitimate position besides her better-known predecessors. It is important that we alumni help in this process and be the ambassadors of our great institution. It is time to payback to our institution by serving her through our limited effort. So please join us and be a member and contribute your ideas and be a part our effort.