Visva-Bharati refuses to allow lecture on Amartya Sen in its library

After a lull that included the appointment of a new fulltime Vice-Chancellor, the political atmosphere in Visva-Bharati appears to be heating up once again with the Rabindranath Tagore-founded institution not allowing a lecture on Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to be held in its library auditorium.

The lecture, scheduled for August 14 by noted economist Jean Dreze, was organised by a Bengali little magazine called Anustup, which recently brought out a special issue on Prof. Sen, in collaboration with Visva-Bharati’s Department of Economics and Politics, and the A.K. Dasgupta Centre for Planning and Development.

Following the university’s refusal to grant permission, the event was held, on the same day, at a private auditorium called Geetanjali. “Amartya Sen is a child of the Santiniketan library and of India’s most illustrious scholars. It i​s startling that an event celebrating his work had to be shifted from the library to a local hall in Bolpur. So much for the freedom of expression,” Mr. Dreze told The Hindu.

On the event not being allowed in the university, Visva-Bharati PRO Atig Ghosh said: “Nobody is given permission to hold an event in the university exactly at the same time as a heritage event is taking place in the university. In this case, the Rabindra Saptaha lecture was scheduled to take place at Lipika Auditorium from 7 p.m. and no other overlapping programme could be permitted.”

But professors who were looking forward to the lecture being held in the university library said that the Rabindra Saptaha (or Tagore Week) was inaugurated on August 8 by Union Minister of State for Education Sukanta Majumdar and that the event was in no way interfering with the ongoing heritage event. “The real reason for the refusal to grant the auditorium is that both Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze are regarded as eyesores by the BJP-led government at the Centre,” a teacher said.

What’s surprising is that immediately after Mr. Drèze’s speech, Visva-Bharati issued a notification removing Prof. Apurba Kumar Chattopadhyay, one of the organisers of the lecture, from his position as chairperson of the A.K. Dasgupta Centre. He had been appointed to the position on May 21. The order for his removal was issued immediately after the lecture.

On August 6, following the controversy erupting from the letter of a Delhi Police officer who called Bangla a “Bangladeshi language”, the university issued a gag order reiterating that no one from the institution should speak to the media without the permission of the V-C or going through the PRO. This, too, has not gone down well with many in Visva-Bharati, who were hoping that such restrictions would ease under the new V-C.