News Analysis India

Tag: Visva-Bharati university

  • Bengal: Visva-Bharati professor, accused of casteist slur, files harassment complaint against student

    By PTI

    KOLKATA: A professor of the Visva-Bharati on Friday filed a police complaint alleging harassment by one of the three pupils expelled by the varsity after the student, who has now been granted relief by the Calcutta High Court, accused him of hurling casteist slurs.

    Somnath Sow, the student, alleged that he came across professor Sumit Basu at a tea stall in Shyambati area of Santiniketan in the morning.

    It was at that time, Basu “called me a Dalit and said he do not want to talk to me”, Sow alleged.

    Sow said that he has filed a complaint at the Santiniketan police station over the matter.

    Basu, a teacher of Manipuri dance at Sangit Bhavana, also filed a complaint with the police alleging that Sow, an SFI leader, abused and heckled him.

    In his complaint, Basu claimed that when he was returning home, he was stopped by Sow who was on his motorcycle, following which he was heckled and abused.

    A varsity official denied that Basu had made any racist comment against Sow.

    Instead, Sow made provocative comments against the professor mocking his closeness with vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty, the official claimed.

    “Sow also dared him to take any action and continued to argue with him,” he alleged. A police officer confirmed that two complaints were filed but refused to divulge any details.

    The campus was on the boil since the last week of August as the varsity rusticated Sow and two other students for “disorderly conduct”.

    On Wednesday, the high court set aside the rustication order, bringing back normalcy to the central varsity.

    Meanwhile, the varsity sent a notice to professor Sudipto Bhattacharya, who took part in the protest against the rustication of the students and was present in the sit-in near the residence of the vice-chancellor last week.

    The notice, signed by the officiating registrar, stated, “You are reported to have instigated a group of students while they were agitating near the residence of the Vice Chancellor to undertake vandalism, seize the residence of the Vice Chancellor, disrupt the normal activities of the university and other unlawful activities.”

    Bhattacharya, an office-bearer of the Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association, was asked to reply within three days.

    Terming the notice undemocratic, the professor at the Department of Economics and Politics said, “The allegations raised against me are baseless. I will reply within the given time.”

  • Visva-Bharati University issues second show-cause notice to Prof who filed FIR against VC

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: The Visva-Bharati University has issued a second show-cause notice to a professor, who had lodged an FIR against the vice-chancellor, asking him to explain how he could make statements to the media about the case against the VC.

    Professor Manas Maity of Physics department had lodged an FIR against Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty at Santiniketan police station on June 12 for allegedly insulting and humiliating him and some other faculty members by making some “unsavoury comments” against them at the meeting.

    The central university on Monday asked Maity to explain how he could make statement about filing of the FIR against the VC.

    The varsity said such comments by the concerned “is scurrilous and prejudicial” against the interest of Visva-Bharati.

    A varsity source said Maity was asked to reply within three days.

    “A section of teachers affiliated to a left body are working to malign the VC. They are working against the interest of Visva-Bharati and only obsessed to create controversy by using media. Their voices are heard via media but not the majority of staff who are miffed over their conduct and want academic activities to continue. But these vast majority do not come out in open. We will put an end to such practices by the left association,” the source said.

    Earlier the Visva-Bharati University authorities on June 13 had issued a show-cause notice to Maity accusing him of showing inappropriate behaviour towards the Vice-Chancellor and not following his instructions during a virtual meeting.

    The central university authorities claimed in the notice that Prof Manas Maity had “hurled abuses” at the VC after being asked to speak on the issue of disbursement of salaries and allegations of “some teachers being lackeys and trying to derail the agenda by making wild allegations”, during the meeting on June 8.

    Maity was asked to reply to the charges within three days.

    Meanwhile, the Jadavpur University Teachers Association (JUTA) on Monday alleged that the Visva-Bharati authorities are pursuing vendetta politics against Maity for filing an FIR against the VC.

    Alleging that the VC has issued a gag order against teachers and other employees, forbidding them from making any statements to the press, JUTA General Secretary Parthapratim Roy said in a statement: “Only those who are willing to sing the Vice-Chancellor’s praises in public will be allowed to do so.”

    “Others will be silenced through the use of charge- sheets, show-cause notices, and so on,” JUTA said, adding “the Vice-Chancellor’s charges against Professor Manas Maity, for allegedly saying uncomplimentary things at the meeting of June 8, are completely unfounded, since Professor Maity did not even speak at the said meeting.”

    “We apprehend that these charges were brought against Professor Maity because he is an executive committee member of the Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association (VBUFA), and has earlier protested against the Vice-Chancellor’s autocratic ways,” JUTA said.

    The All Bengal University Teachers Association (ABUTA) also condemned the suspension of the professor and demanded immediate withdrawal of the suspension order.

  • Amartya Sen asks Visva-Bharati to withdraw allegation that he is illegally holding land

    By PTI
    KOLKATA: Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen on Monday wrote to Visva-Bharati university demanding that it withdraw the allegation that his family is in “illegal” possession of land in its Santiniketan campus and alleged that the accusations are a crude attempt at harassment.

    Sen wrote the letter to Visva-Bharati Vice-Chancellor Prof Bidyut Chakraborty two days after the authorities of the central university asked the West Bengal government to measure the plot owned by him at Santiniketan as soon as possible to permanently resolve the dispute.

    The noted economist said in the letter that his father had purchased free-hold land from the market and not from Visva-Bharati – to add to their homestead and he has been paying taxes for them.

    He had also sent a legal notice earlier this year to the VC asking him to withdraw immediately your false allegation made to the news agencies that a plot of land owned by Visva-Bharati is unlawfully occupied by me.

    While the university was not able to provide any justification for the allegation, it has requested the West Bengal government “to measure the area of our homestead, Pratichi, to compare with the long term lease of land taken by my father in 1940 from Visva-Bharati,” Sen said in the letter.

    “This sudden abuse of an 80-year-old document is clearly a crude attempt at harassment or worse,” he said.

    “Among other errors it ignores the big fact, which I have stated many times (even in the context of this dispute), that a substantial amount of free-hold land was purchased by my father (in the market — not from Visva-Bharati) to add to our homestead on which khajna and Panchayat taxes are paid by me yearly,” the letter said.

    Hence the officiating registrar’s threat of legal action against him if the official discovers any additional land beyond the leased land seems hugely mischievous, Sen said.

    Stating that he is tired of the VC’s repeated claims despite emphatic denials on his part about his phone call to Chakraborty in 2019, Sen said that the VC insisted that the call was made either on June 2 or June 14.

    “On being informed that I was abroad for the entire month of June 2019 and came back to India only in July, the story was promptly altered by the V.C.’s office to assert that I had called in June or July but said the same things,” the letter said.

    “Rather than inventing new falsities and adding to their culpability, Visva-Bharati should withdraw the false allegations made by them, as my lawyer has asked,” Sen said.

    A controversy had erupted on December 24 last year, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the centenary celebrations of Visva-Bharati, when media reported that the university has written to the West Bengal government alleging dozens of land parcels owned by it were wrongfully recorded in the names of private parties including Sen.

    Sen, who now lives in the USA, has said that the land, on which his house stands is on a long-term lease, which is nowhere near its expiry.

    Stating that the Visva-Bharati authorities had never complained to him or his family about any irregularity in holding the land, Sen has accused the VC of acting at the behest of the Centre “with its growing control over Bengal”.

    Visva-Bharati officials were not available for comment on the letter.

    West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and several prominent intellectuals of the state have expressed support to the economist on the row.