In the Rabindranath Tagore-founded Visva-Bharati, protests overshadowed celebrations on the poet’s birth anniversary as a large group of people continued their sit-in against the university’s move to take away a piece of land from the Santiniketan house of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen.
The university had initially planned a number of events for the poet’s birthday — this year it fell on May 9, as per the Bengali calendar — but closer to date it not only pruned the number of events but also announced the closure of Rabindra Bhavana for the day “due to unavoidable circumstances.”
Visva-Bharati is the only Central university in Bengal and the only institution whose Chancellor is the Prime Minister of India, and ever since Prof. Bidyut Chakrabarty took charge as the Vice-Chancellor in late 2018, the university has witnessed conflicts over political ideology, with detractors accusing the Vice-Chancellor of favouring the right wing.
On April 19, the university had issued an order asking Prof. Sen — a known critic of the Central government — to vacate, within 15 days, as many as 13 decimals of land from his Santiniketan house. The house, called Pratichi, is built over 1.38 acres of land, and the university claims that 13 decimals (0.13 acre) belonged to it. Professor Sen, who went to the Calcutta High Court, said that the 1.38 acres was given for a lease of 99 years to his father Ashutosh Sen in October 1943. The High Court has restricted Visva-Bharati from taking any action until the Local Court decides on the matter.
“Visva-Bharati should remember that the vast tract of land they enjoy was primarily given to them by the community. Even the land in question was donated to the Visva-Bharati. The Sen family has been occupying this land when Visva-Bharati was not a Central government university. Even if there is any truth to their claim, they should have been benevolent and resolved the matter. In my view, the spat is not about the land but the person involved,” educationist Sudripta Tagore, himself a former student of Visva-Bharati and a member of the Tagore family, told The Hindu.
The protesters, who have the backing of the Trinamool Congress government, celebrated the poet’s birth anniversary by singing, dancing and holding a recitation outside of Prof. Sen’s house. “We vehemently condemn the V-C’s unprecedented act of cancelling major programmes of Rabindra Jayanti and closing the Rabindra Bhavana museum for tourists. On the other hand, Rabindra Jayanti was celebrated with great enthusiasm by the Sanskritik Pratirodh Mancha, or Cultural Resistance Platform, in presence of around 2,000 people. It seems the V-C confined himself to his residence out of panic,” said Sudipta Bhattacharyya, president of Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association.
The university PRO, when asked for comment on why it chose to cut down on the number of events planned to celebrate the poet’s birth anniversary, said: “[It was done] due to scorching heat which is not only unbearable but also likely to cause health ailment to many student-participants. Hence, the programmes have just been rescheduled.”
Mr. Bhattacharyya, however, said the events cancelled by the university were scheduled at 9 A.M. and 7 P.M., when the weather is not hot, and that the official communication had cited “special circumstances”—and not the weather — for the cancellation. “They are simply scared of the cultural resistance by the people,” he said.
