Several intellectuals participated in a protest on Sunday against the Visva Bharati University's slight against renowned scholar Amartya Sen, who was included in a list of people alleged to have “illegally” occupied land in Shantiniketan.
A sit-in demonstration was held in front of the Kolkata's Academy of Fine Arts. Bratya Basu, Joy Goswami, Subodh Sarkar, Suvaprasanna, Jogen Chowdhury, Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri and Arindam Sil were scheduled to take part.
Speaking at the event, Basu said that Amartya Sen’s “crime” was that he had raised his voice against the BJP. “If the saffron party comes to power in Bengal, the common people will suffer. They cannot respect people like Sen, who is a renowned academician and a Nobel Laureate too,” he said.
With the TMC backing Sen, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had written a message of support to the scholar on Christmas Day, saying he could count her as a sister in his war against "intolerance and totalitarianism".
Speaking on the controversy about Sen allegedly being in illegal possession of Visva-Bharati land, Banerjee has claimed that the celebrated economist was often targeted because of his anti-BJP stance.
In her letter to the Nobel laureate, she wrote that some nouveau invaders in Visva-Bharati have started raising surprising and completely baseless allegations about Sen's familial properties in Shantiniketan.
"This pains me, and I want to express my solidarity with you in your battles against the bigotry of the majoritarians in this country, the battles that have made you an enemy of these forces of untruth," Banerjee wrote.
Protesters holding banners saying "Insulting Amartya Sen is insulting Bengal", "We won't accept BJP's insult of Bengal" and "BJP is scared by Nobel Laureates" in front of Bangla Academy | Salil Bera
Sen, who was born in Shantiniketan in 1931, has come to odds with VBU Vice-Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty. Chakraborty had earlier alleged that Sen had called him and introduced himself as “bharat Ratna” Amartya Sen—an accusation denied as baseless by the VBU faculty associatino and by Sen. Chakraborty claimed that Sen had asked him not to evict the hawkers from near his house as his daughters bought vegetables from there—Sen has denied this conversation took place.
On Saturday, Sen said there was a big gap between “Santiniketan culture and that of the V.C., empowered as he is by the central government in Delhi with its growing control over Bengal.”
Visva-Bharati university was founded by Rabindranath Tagore, another Nobel prize recipient and literary giant from Bengal, who had given Sen his first name, Amartya.
Sen, in a media statement late Friday, said the entire land occupied by him on the hallowed campus was registered on a long term lease that was nowhere close to expiry.
A huge controversy had erupted on Thursday, 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.
These people had set up restaurants, schools and other businesses on its land, the varsity said, according to the report.
Referring to the reports, Sen said Visva-Bharati authorities had never complained to him or his family about any irregularity in holding the land.
The Nobel laureate asserted that the Visva-Bharati land on which his house stands is on a long-term lease, which is nowhere near its expiry.
"Additional land was bought by my father as free hold and registered in land records under mouja Surul," he said.
A freehold land is a land parcel over which the owner has complete control for perpetuity. "I would prefer to use Indian laws as they exist. For mental strength, I may clutch the beautiful old picture of our home by Abanindranath Tagore, among others," he said.
Abanindranath was a nephew of Rabindranath Tagore and a famed painter of the Bengal School of Art.
Amartya Sen's maternal grandfather Kshitimohan Sen was a pupil at Santiniketan that evolved into a university over time, and was honoured with 'Deshikottam', a coveted award, in 1952. Kshitimohan Sen was the award's first recipient.
On media reports about the VC's claim to the faculty that Sen had called him up deprecating eviction of hawkers who sell their wares in front of his house 'Pratichi', Sen said, "He would be spared the necessity of inventing completely imagined conversations with me, beginning impossibly with me introducing myself as 'Bharat Ratna' something that no one has ever heard me do".
Taking a swipe at Chakrabarty, Sen called him "an inventive artist".
BJP state chief Dilip Ghosh had on Friday cautioned Sen against being "used" by people with political interests.
"We may disagree with him ideologically but we have respect for him. We urge him not to be (allowed to be) used by anti-development political forces in West Bengal," Ghosh said.
The US-based economist, an icon of Bengali achievement on world stage, has often been critical of the Narendra Modi government's economic policies.
With inputs from PTI
