The Bengal governor threw a midnight challenge to the state government on Saturday and the education minister posted on X: “See till midnight, see the action” BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE! New Vampire in the town!
Governor C.V. Ananda Bose, the ex-officio-chancellor of state-aided universities, said while stepping out of a programme in Salt Lake around 11.30am on Saturday: “Wait for the storm of the midnight hour today. You will see what is action.”
Bose, who has been engaged in a tussle with the state education department over the past few months for control of the university education system, said this when he was told that education minister Bratya Basu has equated him with Muhammad bin Tughlaq for his allegedly erratic decisions.
The sultan is legendary for hasty decisions that cost the state dear.
At 2.30pm, Basu wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “See till midnight, see the action” BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE! New Vampire in the town! Citizens please watch yourselves. Eagerly waiting for the “Rakkhas Prahar”, according to Indian Mythology!
Basu declined to comment when The Telegraph asked him what triggered his post.
Manojit Mandal, head of the English department at Jadavpur University, said Basu’s post smacked of a “classic blend of Shakespeare and Indian mythology by a great contemporary playwright”.
“BEWARE reminds one of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In the play, Macbeth approaches the witches to learn how to secure his kingship. In response, they summon for him three apparitions. These apparitions instruct Macbeth to beware of Macduff but reassure him that no man born of woman can harm him,” Mandal said.
“The minister has blended Shakespeare with ‘Rakkhas Prahar’ from Indian mythology. Playwright Girish Ghosh was the master of this blending. While we admire the intellectual exchange between these two (Bose and Basu), the tussle has worsened the state of affairs on campuses,” he said.
On May 9, minister Basu had said the governor was behaving like Macbeth, “guided by extreme ambitions”.
The day before, the governor had suggested he would be no Hamlet, pondering “to be or not be”, if he had to deal with a crisis — whether it was legal, constitutional or political.
Basu and the chancellor have got into a fight over the appointment of officiating vice-chancellors in state-aided universities since June.
The education department has accused the chancellor of handpicking VCs unilaterally.
In a video message on Thursday, chancellor Bose accused the education department of putting “pressure/ intimidation” on five of the VCs handpicked by him,
leading to their resignation “out of fear”.
The fight intensified on Friday when Basu accused the chancellor of “intimidation” so registrars of state-aided universities would abstain from a meeting with the minister.
Only 12 registrars out of 31 attended the meeting on Friday, following which Basu accused the chancellor of intimidation.
“The state government has already filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the chancellor’s authority over appointing VCs without consulting the education department. The next hearing is on September 15,” said a former VC.
On September 5, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said she would hold a sit-in protest in front of Raj Bhavan if the chancellor continued to meddle in the affairs of colleges and universities.