Born and brought up in a village in the Indian state of Orissa, Mohanty studied both literature (at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India), and linguistics at the University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
In 1972 Mukherjee's former student at Santiniketan, filmmaker Satyajit Ray, made a documentary film on him titled "The Inner Eye".
Besides the visits to the Sabarmati Ashram of Mahatma Gandhi and Santiniketan of Rabindranath Tagore gave him a new vision of Indian Sanyasa (monasticism).
Towards the west is famous Nanoor (birthplace of Chandidas), Bolpur-Santiniketan (home of Visva Bharati University founded by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and of Amartya Sen).
During late 1940s Ilambazar terracotta temples were photo-documented by artist Mukul Dey of Santiniketan.
In 1922, in the village of Surul (now Sriniketan) adjacent to Santiniketan, West Bengal, he set up for Tagore an Institute of Rural Reconstruction.
These views crystallised in his experimental school at Santiniketan, (শান্তিনিকেতন, "Abode of Peace"), founded in 1901 on the site of a West Bengal estate inherited from his father.
At this time he owned a property called Santiniketan (abode of peace) at Ferny Creek in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne.
After teaching in several colleges of Bihar, Siyaram Tiwari joined Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan (West Bengal), an institution founded by Nodel laureate Rabindranath Tagore and now a central university as a Reader in the Department of Hindi in January, 1976.In due course, he rose to the rank of Professor and became Head of the Department of Hindi as well as Dean, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences.
Among his most noted later paintings were his triptych Celebration, which when sold for Rs 1.5 crore ($317,500) at a Christie’s auction in 2002, was not only the highest sum for an Indian painting at an international auction, but also triggered the subsequent great Indian art boom; his other noted works were the 'Diagonal Series', Santiniketan triptych series, Kali, Mahishasura (1996).
Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India, Senior research Fellow 1952-54, Visiting Professor of Sino-Indian Studies 1955-59
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In 1952 he left Peking and moved to the Visva-Bharati University of Santiniketan in India, founded by Bengali writer, Rabindranath Tagore, first as a Senior Research Fellow, and later as professor and director of the Department of Sino-Indian Studies until he became emeritus in 1959.
She donated three works of art to India, two of which can be found on public display: the woodcarving "Satyagraha" in the National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi and a stained glass plaque depicting a poem in Sanskrit by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, which is in the Tagore Museum at Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, Bolpur, West Bengal, India.