This year, the landmark Visva-Bharati book stall will return to Kolkata Book Fair after having been absent for two years. The publications department of Visva-Bharati university, Visva-Bharati Granthana Vibhaga, is gearing up for the show with portraits of Tagore as a special theme.
But the stall’s absence from the fair also throws light on the current state of the prestigious department, set up by Tagore. The poet had established the Granthana Vibhaga in 1923, two years after the university was founded.
Since then its publications, with their classic yellow ochre covers, elegant and spare, many of them with only the title and the poet’s name written in his own handwriting, have been the foundation of much of Bengali language and culture, and to an extent of other languages and cultures. And at the Book Fair, they were a major attraction.
Yet the stall went missing at the fair in 2022 and 2023 (the fair had not been held in 2021 because of the pandemic) because in these two years, the university, with Bidyut Chakrabarty as vice-chancellor, did not want itself represented at the fair.
This was only one of the inexplicable decisions taken by the university during Chakrabarty’s term; many of his other decisions created outrage.
The publications department suffered in many ways during his term from 2018 to 2023. It became a dumping ground for university employees from other departments who were sent there on “punishment posting”, even as vacancies within the department were not filled, say senior Visva-Bharati faculty members.
The department had already become depleted through the past decades, with few employees, and Chakrabarty’s term could have sounded the death knell for it. “As the shortage of employees with editorial skills increased, there was a surplus of others who knew nothing about the department’s work,” says a Visva-Bharati teacher. “The production section has only two technical professionals. All the rest have retired. There are no proof-readers,” he adds.
In the last five years, 13 books have been published by the department, which is not a high score. Titles have gone missing. Though there is no definitive list, several titles from the 750-odd Visva-Bharati list, of which about half are by Tagore or about him, are out of print.
The publications department faces such a shortage of staff that let alone new books, even new editions of books have not been possible of late. “The biggest shortage is of those who can edit the notations of Tagore songs, published as Swarabitans,” says the Visva-Bharati teacher.
“About 30 out 65 Swarabitans are out of print. The technical staff who could handle notations have retired. This requires special skills,” he adds. The notations were created at Tagore’s initiative to ensure that his songs retained their character and integrity.
Swarabitans are always in high demand, as are Tagore’s books, and they have been a steady source of income. “But we are not sure when they will be printed again,” says the teacher.
There are other gaps in the list. “I have heard from people that many titles are not in print. This is a matter of concern, but more important to me is that as the custodian of Rabindranath’s intellectual legacy, Visva-Bharati is not playing the role it should play in bringing new translations of significant writings that were not translated into English and are thus still unknown to readers and researchers outside Bengal,” says R. Siva Kumar, art historian and former principal of Kala Bhavana at Visva-Bharati.
The department has not had a full-time director, except writer Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay, since the late 90s. The current officiating director is Amrit Sen. Mukhopadhyay, who was director between 2012 and 2017, is writing a history of Granthana Bibhaga, titled “Kabir Chhapakhana, Kabir Prakashana”, to come out at this Book Fair.
The starting point of publishing at Visva-Bharati was a moment of gratitude. Santiniketan got its first printing press in 1917 after Tagore visited the US, he reminds.
At Lincoln, Nebraska, Tagore had delivered his famous speech on Nationalism, and the grateful residents of Lincoln gave him a printing press for Santiniketan, Mukhopadhyay says. Tagore’s Geet Panchashika, a book of songs, and Basanta, his play, were among the first books published by the press, which continued publishing Visva-Bharati journals and papers but was shut down by a central government order in 2019.
The Santiniketan press had led to the establishment of Granthana Vibhaga. Tagore had then been very keen on a Visvavidya (world knowledge) series, which would be an extensive collection of books on every subject, written by the best experts, for the understanding of all, says Mukhopadhyay. This series was brought out much later under the stewardship of Charuchandra Bhattacharya, one of the stalwarts associated with Visva-Bharati publications from the early years.
The first book that was published by this department was Talks in China but Tagore stopped its distribution because the margin was too narrow and the page numbers came within brackets, Mukhopadhyay says, quoting statistician Prasantachandra Mahalanobis.
Tagore had chosen a minimalist style for his books: the yellow ochre cover and the title of the book and the name of the author, in the case of Tagore’s books, both written in his handwriting. Tagore had likened the ideal book cover to a Japanese scabbard: unembellished and plain, but holding a sword within.
Rabindra Rachanabali, the works of Tagore, put together with meticulous care by Pulin Bihari Sen, can perhaps be called the centrepiece of Visva-Bharati publications.
Visva-Bharati books were printed in Kolkata and later, a beautiful, large house was bought on AJC Bose Road that functioned as an office for the Visva-Bharati publications department.
Visva-Bharati books were available there, too. During Chakrabarty’s term the sale of books from this address stopped. The other shop, on Bidhan Sarani, selling Visva-Bharati books has also shut down. Visva-Bharati books in the city are only sold from a College Street store.
The department would generate a lot of profit from publishing textbooks for the West Bengal Higher Secondary board. That, too, stopped a few years ago.
As both the publishing department and its list were getting steadily depleted, lack of funds was an explanation always offered by the authorities. The expiry after 2001 of Visva-Bharati’s copyright over Tagore’s works, which had been extended by 10 years, did not help either.
“We have to remember that the decline did not happen in a day,” says former Kala Bhavana curator Sushovan Adhikari. The publications department had stopped being a priority long ago. In Visva-Bharati’s scheme of things, through the decades, after a robust initial period, Tagore’s ideas, including those on the book, were gradually losing relevance.
Not that Granthana Vibhaga did not try, from time to time. Recently many publications came out during Mukhopadhyay’s tenure. During the period Kumkum Bhattacharya was officiating director of the department — she had been appointed to the post before Mukhopadhyay — about 20 titles were out, including new and old books. These included William Radice’s translation of Post Office and Card Country in a two-volume box edition; The Essential Tagore, edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty; Byahato Sakhya by Bikash Chakraborty; Stray Birds and Other Poems by Rabindranath Tagore, with illustrations by K.G. Subramanyan, and the centenary volume of Jivansmriti with notes collated by Gautam Bhattacharya.
The staff numbered 35 when she joined the department, but she remembers a time when the number was 70 or 80. The department had been financially self-sufficient when she joined, giving out its salaries and also pensions, till the university took these functions over.
“We also stressed on Tagore’s translations, for example in Hindi,” she says.
Starving a department that is profit-making is a paradox, Bhattacharya points out.
It can only happen when books do not matter much, in this case at the very seat of learning that Tagore had established. “Perhaps one day the department itself will be shut down and all its work will be outsourced,” fears a faculty member.
At the same time, many hope that maybe the department will turn around.