Visva-Bharati on Monday said many plaques installed in the past on the university compound did not bear the name of Rabindranath Tagore, the varsity’s founder, as is the case of some recent ones set up at Santiniketan declaring it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The statement of the central university came when its Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty is under fire from various quarters for installing three plaques without the name of the Nobel Laureate poet who had founded the institute over a century ago.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had earlier urged the Centre to remove the plaques as they bear the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the ex-officio Chancellor, and the VC but not that of Tagore. As no action was taken in this regard, workers of her party, the Trinamool Congress, staged a sit-in near the campus. Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP had also called upon Visva-Bharati authorities to set right the omission of Tagore’s name in the plaque as it involved the sentiments of millions of Bengalis. In a statement on Monday, Visva Bharati spokesperson Mahua Banerjee said that in the past also several plaques were set up in the institute, which did not bear Tagore’s name.
Such installations include those having the names of then PM and Chancellor Jawaharlal Nehru in one, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Modi in another, and then President Pranab Mukherjee in a third one, according to the statement. Without naming anyone, the statement read, It is clear that those who are making futile bids to foment disturbances in Visva Bharati are either expressing their ignorance or doing politics unnecessarily to serve their interests. Or going by the proverb, they are fishing in troubled waters.
Those who claim that the plaque installed after the UNESCO honour goes against the heritage of Visva Bharati must know that there are others that bear names of only former VCs and there was no hue and cry over heritage being violated, the spokesperson said. Santiniketan campus of the university in Birbhum district was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List on September 17.
The so-called Tagoreans might cry hoarse over the issue, but they cannot obliterate the names of Narendra Modi and Bidyut Chakraborty as Chancellor and VC respectively. They cannot label these two names as irrelevant, the statement said. Whether the names of the poet and his father Maharshi Devendranath Tagore are mentioned in any plaque are not, their contributions cannot be forgotten, she said.
The statement came days after the Visva Bharati VC said that work was underway to ”prepare” a plaque retaining UNESCO’s declaration of Santiniketan as a world heritage site and in adherence to Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) guidelines. In his letter to the chief minister, the VC called upon her ”not to continue to form your opinion on the basis of what your sycophants convey”.
Established in rural West Bengal in 1901 by the renowned poet and philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore, Santiniketan was a residential school and centre for art based on ancient Indian traditions and on a vision of the unity of humanity transcending religious and cultural boundaries, according to a UNESCO website. Tagore set up a university there in 1921. Visva-Bharati was declared a central university and an institution of national importance by an Act of Parliament in 1951.
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