Visva-Bharati Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty’s tenure, marked by a prolonged confrontation with his detractors at Santiniketan, comes to an end on November 8 on the same confrontational note, even though Prof. Chakrabarty claimed that he enjoyed his term at the institution founded by poet Rabindranath Tagore.
“I enjoyed every bit of my tenure as Visva-Bharati’s Vice-Chancellor,” Prof. Chakrabarty told The Hindu on November 7, within an hour of sending a long, caustic letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who had been critical of many of his actions as the V-C. There are no signs, so far, of him getting an extension.
Visva-Bharati, 160 km from Kolkata, is run by the Central Government; in fact, it is the only Central university in West Bengal. Unlike in other universities, its Chancellor is the Prime Minister of India. Prof. Chakrabarty, who took charge in November 2018, has often been accused of promoting the right-wing in Santiniketan. He has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on many occasions, especially giving him the credit for UNESCO’s recent recognition of Santiniketan’s heritage status.
‘Den of corruption’
His letter to the CM, written in Bengali, said that Visva-Bharati was a den of corruption. Those who had tried to clean up the system had always been targeted, he said, noting that this list included even the first Vice-Chancellor of the university, Rabindranath’s son Rathindranath Tagore, who had to quit when he was barely two years into his tenure.
“Those who claim to be followers of Rabindranath Tagore — they all work towards personal gains, making Rabindranath’s philosophy a tool of their selfish motives. Vice-Chancellors hardly get enough time to understand issues and solve them. They are attacked immediately. But not everybody’s efforts are in vain. Some have been successful in implementing the philosophy of Tagore through their actions. Today Visva-Bharati is truly world class; both admissions and recruitments happen through all-India exams and not through recommendations,” Prof. Chakrabarty wrote.
Clashes galore
While his tenure will be remembered for frequent suspension, show-cause, and termination notices served to employees, including professors, what brought him into news towards the fag end of his tenure were two issues that also earned the anger of the State’s ruling Trinamool Congress.
The first issue was Visva-Bharati’s sudden claim that a part of the land on which Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s ancestral home in Santiniketan stands belonged to it; the matter is now in court. The other issue was the recent erection of two plaques demarcating Santiniketan as a UNESCO world heritage site. These plaques bear the names of Chancellor Narendra Modi and Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty; the V-C’s critics say that Tagore’s name has been deliberately left out. The university said these plaques were only temporary, until ASI-approved plaques arrived.
Last Sunday, the Santiniketan Trust, formed by Rabindranath’s father Debendranath Tagore in 1888, lodged a complaint with the local police saying that one of the plaques was installed on its land without permission. The university retorted saying it was the trust that functioned out of Visva-Bharati land and not the other way round.
The biggest critic of the V-C has been the Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association. It remains to be seen whether peace returns, at least temporarily, to the Abode of Peace, that is Santiniketan, once Prof. Chakrabarty’s tenure ends at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
