Along the western boundary of Santiniketan, on Sriniketan Road, is an ageing white house, its green windows and doors opening into a breezy veranda. Low railings and the grove of trees that lead to the house are a reminder of Rabindranath Tagore’s idea of Visva-Bharati: old-timers say he was against homes being fenced off or hidden behind high boundary walls.
Change has crept into the university town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, not only in the way ashramiks (residents) settled on campus have begun to lock their doors, or in the sal trees lost to concrete builds, but also in the presence of a police force. Under a mango tree weighed down by a surfeit of the summer fruit, they sit in a tent day and night, outside Pratichi, the ancestral home of economist Prof. Amartya Sen.
A portion of land on which the house stands has been the centre of controversy since 2020, from the time the university had named Prof. Sen among the list of people holding excess land. But things took a hard turn on April 19, 2023, when Visva-Bharati university authorities issued an eviction notice to Prof. Sen for a part of the property. The six-page notice also added that in the event of “refusal or failure to comply with this order within the period specified”, he “and all persons concerned” were “liable to be evicted from the said premises, if need be, by use of such force as may be necessary”.
