Several Opposition leaders have criticised West Bengal’s Visva Bharati university for installing plaques that feature the names of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty, but that do not mention the university’s founder Rabindranath Tagore.
Three such plaques have been installed inside the premises to mark Santiniketan’s inclusion in the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, The Hindu reported quoting the university’s spokesperson.
Santiniketan, now a university town, was added to the list in September. It was established by Tagore in West Bengal’s Birbhum district in 1901 as a residential school and centre for art based on ancient Indian traditions as well as a vision of the unity of humanity transcending religious and cultural boundaries. The Visva Bharati University was established in Santiniketan in 1921.
The plaque says “UNESCO Inscribed World Heritage Site”, followed by the prime minister’s name with the designation “Acharya”, or chancellor, and Chakrabarty as “Upacharya”, or the vice-chancellor.
In a social media post, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Jawhar Sircar alleged that Modi and Chakrabarty were taking undue credit for inclusion of the university town in the heritage list by the United Nations agency.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Thomas Isaac also highlighted the omission of Tagore’s name from the plaque.
Dr Shama Mohamed, spokesperson of the All India Congress Committee, said in a social media post that the plaques were not only an insult to Tagore, but to all Indians.
In a dossier seeking the nomination, India had said that Santiniketan was directly associated with Tagore’s life, works and vision as well as the pioneers of the Bengal School of Art.
“It exhibits the crystallisation of their ideas of internationalism, humanism, inclusiveness, environmentalism and a pan Asian modernism,” the government had said.
The dossier described Santiniketan as “an outstanding example of an avant-garde enclave of intellectuals, educators, artists, craftspeople and workers who collaborated and experimented – free from the established European colonial paradigms – to espouse a unique architectural language and herald a new modernism in art, architecture, landscape, product design and town planning”.
Former Visva Bharati officiating vice-chancellor Sabujkali Basu had later clarified that the United Nations’ honour has not been bestowed to any university located in the area, but to the entire place of which the central varsity is an integral part, PTI reported.
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