Tagore's creation mired as VC trades charges with teachers, staff at Santiniketan

Rajat Roy / Santiniketan November 06, 2009, 0:50 IST

Long strike ends for now with PM’s appeal, but further intervention needed.

Santiniketan, RabindranathTagore’s abode of peace in West Bengal, is in turmoil again. Visva Bharati, founded here by the poet and now a central university, which had been closed since September 24, reopened today. It took an appeal from the Prime Minister of India, who is also chancellor of the university, to coax all the striking elements to return to work.

The Prime Minister has never interfered in the affairs of Visva Bharati before. But the situation called for his healing touch. For more than 10 days, workers and teachers in the university had been locked in a tussle with the vice chancellor, Rajat Kanta Ray, showing how a premier centre of education can become a haunt for power politics of the ugliest sort.

In response to the allegations of the faculty, as well as workers, Ray had demanded a thorough enquiry by an external agency into not only his own conduct but also against the ‘wrong-doings’ of some of the workers.

This caused leaders of the Congress, the TMC and CPI(M) to visit the campus. Congress leaders Subrata Mukherjee and Nirbed Roy made common cause with the workers, criticizing the ‘intransigent role’ of the VC. And, Mamata Banerjee shot off letters to the Prime Minister and HRD minister, asking for their interventions. Even the CPI(M) MP from Bolpur (Santiniketan coms under it), Ramchandra Dom, sent a letter to the Prime Minister’s office, seeking his intervention.

Ray was in Delhi to meet the PM to tell him how things have come to such a pass. He also met Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. He has already met the governor of West Bengal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who is also Rector of the university. The VC has also gone on to say that all these agitations have their genesis in recent moves initiated by him for reform, which in turn stirred up the “hornet’s nest” in the university. The main charges against the VC levelled by the employees are of alleged corruption, financial mismanagement and misappropriation of funds, and nepotism in recruitment. A cursory examination of the charges as elaborated in a 10-page letter to the Prime Minister suggests the most important relate to the alleged mismanagement of funds and grants.

The letter has been written jointly by the workers’ union and the teachers association.

For the past several months, Rajat Kanta Ray has been ill and the university is routinely paying for his treatment. The employees, in their letter to the Prime Minister, have claimed that the university has “had to bear the burden of the huge medical bill.” The insensitivity of the letter is only indicative of the extent of deterioration in relations between the VC and the university community.