The confusion pertaining to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s property in Shanti Niketan got murkier when none other than the CM of West Bengal, in her characteristic show of solidarity, landed at Sen’s residence.
Mamata Banerjee is known to exhibit bizarrely high levels of emotion whenever people close to her have been inconvenienced, rightly or wrongly, by authorities. There have been instances when she forced her way into a police station to get her supporter released, donned the advocate’s robes to argue for someone close, sat in dharna against the central agencies when they visited a top cop, and even barged into the CBI office when her cabinet ministers or party leaders were hauled up by the CBI.
Therefore, Mamata’s visit to Sen raised no eyebrows; it was also intended to remind the Center and the centre-run Vishwa Bharati University that she is in charge of her state. The Vice-Chancellor of Vishwa Bharati seems to have been strengthened by the arrest and detention of Birbhum’s TMC strongman, Anubrata Mondal. The VC will brook no interference in the matter pertaining to Sen’s alleged encroachment on the university’s land from anyone in the state, even if it is as high as the Chief Minister.
The CM, who was visiting Sen, handed over copies of the land department record, which seems to state that all the 1.38 acres of land covered by Sen’s ancestral property indeed belong to him. The university has now refuted the state’s claim but did something unthinkable: They went public with a statement, directly accusing the CM and her party of interference and saying that they are a central university with Shri Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, the acharya. The statement goes above and beyond its brief by advising her party’s management to the CM in an unsavoury manner unfit for a university.
In the middle of the melee is an aged Sen, caught in a quagmire due to a fallout with the Center, and thus becoming another opportunity for the State to fire from his ailing shoulders.
Such public spats do not add merit to the university, its current vice chancellor, the Chief Minister, and, to some extent, Prof. Amartya Sen as well.
This also reveals a void among the CM’s coterie of sane minds and sane voices to steer the already embattled CM away from needless additional controversies, which make the state a laughingstock with others.
Tagore would be disgusted by what was going on in Shanti Niketan, also known as the abode of peace.
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
