It is quite a feat. Making Rabindranath Tagore vanish from the astonishing spaces he created for art and learning, where he built a university in which home and world would meet, and for which he struggled to find funds till his health failed cannot be easy. But Bidyut Chakrabarty, the vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, is famous for his many feats that, doomsayers claim, are destroying the institution. Now he has achieved the apparently impossible by placing plaques that celebrate Unesco’s acknowledgment of Santiniketan as a world heritage site with two names on them: the prime minister’s and his own. Mr Chakrabarty’s logic is not famed for being accessible, so why a Unesco world heritage site, awarded the honour specifically because of Tagore’s inimitable creation, should have the name of the chancellor and vice-chancellor of the moment is not clear, let alone why Tagore should not be mentioned at all. Evidently, Mr Chakrabarty feels that these spaces belong to him, or rather, to the chancellor, because Visva-Bharati is under the Centre. This must be true of the whole of Santiniketan, for which the Unesco label was awarded. So he has made the plaques himself, without waiting for anything from Unesco or the Archaeological Survey of India, which has objected to the whimsical placing of the concrete-based plaques that should have been done with the ASI’s selection of suitable spots for them.

Commemorating a Unesco heritage site requires a descriptive plaque about the special qualities of the place and its history and impact. It is not a foundation stone with the name of a politician or official of the time. If it is a bit of a stretch to accept that Mr Chakrabarty believes he, or perhaps Narendra Modi, is founding Tagore’s university anew and Santiniketan with it, then the reason must lie elsewhere. It might be an attempt to please the prime minister and make his own name indelible in the process. But it has to be asked if the prime minister was totally ignorant of the vice-chancellor’s intention. Or if the indulgence extended to Mr Chakrabarty and his many feats also means carte blanche for his actions as long as they honour Mr Modi. There is no place for Tagore among such urgent political transactions, surely? He would not survive in ugliness.