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”.
For the neighbours, this house has been the subject of reverence and, over the past few months, of curiosity even. Shantabhanu Sen, grandson of Kshitimohan Sen, former Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati and the author of the book Hinduism, lives in the house next door. Pointing to the signage outside in ornate Bengali script, he talks of Pratichi, meaning west. “Amartya is my cousin. My father and his mother were siblings,” the 70-year-old says. “Whatever is happening around this house is injustice and an attempt to harass someone we all look up to.”
The house stands on 1.38 acres and the dispute is around only 0.13 acres or 13 decimals, about 5,500 square metres. Despite its relatively small area, the dispute has rocked the entire State. There has been anger from the time the university had named Prof. Sen an illegal occupant in the first place.
Prof. Sen, who is abroad, in a letter to the university administration in April 2023 said that the land which the university is claiming to own, is part of the family’s ancestral home, which was in the name of his father, Ashutosh Sen. Any “contrary claim” to the plot couldn’t stand till the expiry of the leasehold rights: the land was leased out in 1943 for a period of 99 years.
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The issue made national headlines when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made a dramatic entry to Pratichi on January 30, 2023. Ms. Banerjee backed Prof. Sen’s claim on the land and publicly handed him land documents from the State government.
Over the past four months, the CM has raised the issue a number of times. “You do not know what I can do,” she said, fiercely stating that she herself would lead protests if the university went ahead with its plan to evict Prof. Sen.
During a May 2 State Cabinet meeting, Ms. Banerjee asked party colleagues to organise a demonstration in front of Pratichi, directing that a cultural programme be held. The Calcutta High Court on May 4 stayed Visva-Bharati’s eviction notice to Prof. Sen and asked a court in Bolpur to hear the matter on May 10 (now postponed). But West Bengal’s ruling party, the Trinamool Congress, decided to go ahead with the protests.
A 12-metre-long stage was erected facing the quiet house. “Stand with Amartya Sen!” read the message at the centre of the protest venue followed by a Bengali message with “Rabindra tradition under attack”.
The ‘cultural protests’ continued for four days, from May 6 to 9. Scores of students, faculty members from Visva-Bharati, and locals from Bolpur were joined by artists and public figures from Kolkata at the venue. The university authorities cried foul, arguing how protests could be held when the courts had given a stay order.
From organising a human chain in front of Pratichi to singing songs by Tagore, the protests became a hit from the first day. Chaiti Ghosal, an actor from Kolkata, performed Raktakarabi (Tagore’s play on greed) on the streets outside Pratichi, and Pinki Baij, an alumnus of the university, performed Chandalika (Tagore’s dance drama about love and self-realisation).
Artists Shuvaprasanna and Jogen Chowdhury joined the protests. Mr. Chowdhury painted a portrait of Tagore, the first person to receive the Nobel Prize outside Europe in 1913. Another artwork, of Tagore with a monkey sitting at his feet, trying to set his coat on fire, was seen at various spots of the protest. Mr. Shuvaprasanna sketched Prof. Sen, an alumnus of Visva-Bharati, who won the Nobel Prize eight decades later in 1998.
Reacting to the developments, Prof. Sen in January expressed surprise over Visva-Bharati’s move and said that the Vice-Chancellor, Bidyut Chakrabarty, appointed in November 2021, was trying to please his bosses in Delhi. Prof. Sen has been critical of the policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre.
“Whatever is happening around this house is injustice and an attempt to harass someone we all look up to”Shantabhanu SenProf. Amartya Sen’s cousin
Behind the land dispute
At the time of the protests, on the occasion of Rabindra Jayanti in Santiniketan, Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited Kolkata on May 9 and dropped in at Jorasanko Thakurbari, the ancestral home of Rabindranath Tagore, and offered tributes on the poet’s 162nd birth anniversary.
The Trinamool Congress was quick to point out the “disrespect to Amartya Sen” at Visva-Bharati and said that the Home Minister should apologise to the people of the State before offering tributes to Tagore. Mr. Shah’s remark on May 9 that Tagore wrote the “national song” for two countries was lapped up by the Trinamool, which mocked the BJP leader’s limited understanding of Tagore and his ideals. The State’s CM has on several occasions emphasised that she will resist the ‘saffronisation’ of Visva-Bharati.
Attempts by the BJP to appropriate the legacy of Tagore have not gone well in the past either. In December 2020, BJP president J.P. Nadda made a faux paus by saying that Tagore was born at Visva-Bharati. The Trinamool has not missed any opportunity ever since to highlight the remark as indicative of the saffron party’s lack of knowledge about Tagore. During peak campaigning for the 2021 Assembly poll, the Home Minister visited Santiniketan and a row erupted when he sat on a chair of Tagore while visiting the poet’s house, which has been turned into a museum.
“Visva-Bharati is a shadow of its glorious past and its decline has only hastened since 2014, after the BJP came to power. Those opposing the attempts to saffronise Visva-Bharati are left liberals who are also joined by Trinamool supporters,” says political observer Prof. Biswanath Chakraborty, from the Department of Political Science at Rabindra Bharati University.
Changing colours and culture
In a throwback to the relaxed state of being that Santiniketan once stood for, Subir Bandyopadhyay, the secretary of Visva-Bharati Ashramik Sangha, an association of ashramiks [not necessarily university alumni], talks in detail about the bougainvillea and a few orchids growing on the veranda of his house.
Walking amid the fruit trees in his backyard, with a particular concern for the litchi, he explains, “Rabindranath’s idea of education was an alternative to the colonial idea. Those who come from outside have a different attitude and mental make-up,” he says. Like Pratichi, Mr. Bandyopadhay’s house was built in the 1940s, years before the university came up.
The 70-year-old, whose father Prabhat Mohan Bandyopadhyay was a freedom fighter, says that Visva-Bharati was an “ashram that was later converted into a university”. It was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1951 and is the only university where the Prime Minister is Chancellor.
Like several other inhabitants, he is particularly perplexed about the boundary walls being built around the university. Graffiti on one part of the wall has the face of Tagore behind barbed wire, and reads, “Let your life quietly dance on the edge of time, like dew on the tip of a leaf.”
“The present dispensation has not only built physical walls but also mental walls,” says Mr. Bandyopadhyay. For the past several years, the administration has been at loggerheads with a section of faculty members and students. Every week there are reports of suspensions and terminations, often leading to long legal battles.
“There is an atmosphere of fear; 22 faculty members have been suspended at different times. This includes reputed academicians who have contributed to global projects like the CERN [the European organisation for nuclear research],” says Sudipta Bhattacharyya, president of Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association.
A section of students feels the university administration has been vindictive. “Three students were terminated for breaking a lock on campus. They had to get their suspension revoked by approaching the Calcutta High Court,” Minakshi Bhattacharya, a student leader with the Trinamool Congress, says.
A research scholar, Ms. Bhattacharya says that her PhD has been purposely delayed for several months now because she decided to speak against the university authorities.
Amid the noise, the Vice-Chancellor, who did not respond to messages, has called the ashramiks and university alumni “opportunists”.
Surpriyo Tagore, now in his 80s and a descendant of Tagore, is a respected ashramik at Visva-Bharati. He too feels that the Vice-Chancellor is trying to saffronise the institution, and old-timers’ presence and views are no longer respected.
Tagore’s motto for Visva-Bharati is a Sanskrit verse: Yatra visvam bhavatieka nidam, meaning, where the whole world meets in a single nest. On campus, it seems more a parting than a meeting.
