Santidev Ghosh

Who was Santidev Ghosh?

Santidev Ghose was an Indian author, singer, actor, dancer and maestro of Rabindra Sangeet.

Sagarmay Ghosh the renowned editor of Bengali literary journal Desh, was his younger brother.

As a teenager, Ghosh was selected by the first non-European Nobel Prize-winning Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore to be a teacher in Santiniketan and sent across India and even to Sri Lanka, Java and Bali to further his musical education for that purpose. Tagore also encouraged Ghosh to act and dance in the poet-laureate's dance dramas, for which Ghosh displayed an uncommon talent for singing, as well as dancing and acting. Some of the poems of Tagore which he converted to new forms of poem-songs, to be sung continuous without repeating the first two lines after each stanza, such as "Krishnakali", were first presented to the public by Ghosh. During his long and productive life in Santiniketan, Ghosh taught numerous students, many of whom were to later become famed notable singers themselves, such as Suchitra Mitra and Pramita Mallick. He also garnered fame as author and an authority, on Asian music and especially that of Rabindranath Tagore.