Campus Showdown

The battle for influence on the campus of Visva Bharati, one of the state’s most prestigious institutions funded by the Centre, has formally taken a political turn since August 17, when a section of Santiniketan’s local residents not only foiled the varsity’s drive to raise a wall around a ground, they also vandalised constru­ction equipment and a camp office at the site besides demolishing two gates on the campus. Founded in 1921 by Nobel laureate Rab­indra­nath Tagore, Bengal’s biggest cultural icon, the VB is the only institution in India to have the Prime Minister as its chancellor and the President as ‘visitor’.

Since August 17, the developments have been rapid and the signals clear. The state’s ruling party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), took a stance against the authorities, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and governor Jagdeep Dhankhar threw their weight behind vice chancellor (VC) Bidyut Chakrabarty.

The Left-leaning teachers and students blamed mostly Chakrabarty for taking a unilateral and ‘reckless’ decision while also condemning the vandalism on the campus that took place allegedly at the instigation of the TMC. On the other hand, the RSS’ student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which has little inf­luence on the VB campus, hit the streets elsewhere in the state in support of the VC.

What’s more, the VB authorities in a statement on August 17 blamed “miscreants who committed the vandalism with TMC leaders at the lead” and sought central forces to provide security on the campus. The authorities also named the local TMC MLA in their FIR lodged at Bolpur police station.

The police, in turn, also accepted an FIR against Chakrabarty lodged by local residents for organising a large gathering of employees and construction workers defying Covid lockdown norms. The state police have promptly withdrawn the security they used to provide Chakrabarty. “TMC’s hooliganism on the Visva Bharati campus reminded us of the Taliban,” said BJP state unit president Dilip Ghosh.

Mamata Banerjee had said on the very day of the vandalism that a wall segregating the campus from the locality was against the ideals of Tagore. She may have sensed the sentiments of the residents of the quaint university town, for since that day a number of local people, including former teachers and students, have staged demonstrations or issued statements criticising the varsity authority’s role. They argued walls were not fit for Santinetan’s ethos because Tagore himself propagated open campuses and classes have traditionally been held under trees on the campus.

The police, too, made visibly clear bids to shows their sensitivity towards the cultivated ways of Santiniketan. On July 22, the district superintendent of police Shyam Singh along with other senior off­icials met veteran Santiniketan residents who had a history of long association with the varsity to get their opinion on the chain of events. The pol­icemen were all clad in kurta-pyjama, the traditional wear of Santiniketan, and rode bicycles, the traditional commute of the place known for its simple lifestyle.   

“The VC is an agent of the RSS and he is trying to turn the campus into a prison to seamlessly implement the RSS’ designs,” alleges Somnath Sou, a leader of VB Students’ Unity, an umb­rella of various left-wing organisations.  

The VC, over the past two years, had earned the ire of the students’ organisations with a series of moves, inc­luding ones that the students considered political. These included allowing ABVP’s cultural wing to host a national workshop on the campus (which was cancelled following protests), inviting BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta to speak on the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and cancelling a scheduled event of Marxist economist Prabhat Patnaik.

Political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty, a professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta, says he doesn’t think eit­her the BJP or the TMC could politically gain from this tug-of-war. “Of course, it’s over the control of the campus but it’s a lose-lose battle for both. While the TMC will continue to bear allegations of hooliganism, I wonder if the BJP would gain anything by backing the VC,” he says.

By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Calcutta