Visva-Bharati authorities haven’t shown any interest in properly utilising a string of properties received as gifts for purposes of education and research although the central university has sent letters to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen with an accusation that he had grabbed 13 decimal of land.
“This administration cannot properly utilise so many sprawling properties in its possession.... But it’s so proactive to recover 13 decimal land. It’s clear that protecting property is just an excuse, the letters to Professor Sen are a ploy to harass him,” said a senior faculty member.
According to him, there is a long list of properties that are lying either unutilised or in utter neglect on the campus.
“The situation of these properties indicates that the authorities do not care about maintaining properties... Vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty is only interested in creating chaos on the campus and going after dignified people like Professor Sen,” said the source.
Leading the list of donated properties lying in utter neglect and without any proper use is a two-storey house that former Kala Bhavana professor K.G. Subramanyan had gifted the varsity in 2015, a year prior to his death. The renowned artist had donated the property with the intention that the varsity will use it for the purpose of education and research.
“The list of properties, like the one donated by K.G. Subramanyan, is so long that Visva-Bharati can set up dozens of academic centres and hostels utilising those. If the question is, whether they are doing anything to meet that objective, the answer is a resounding No,” said Sabuj Kali Sen, former acting vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati.
The non-utilisation of the gifts has invited further criticism after the varsity administration sent a third letter on the land issue to Sen on Thursday. The letter asked Sen to decide on a suitable date and time for a joint survey of the plot on which the economist’s ancestral home, Pratichi, stands.
In two earlier letters issued on January 24 and 27, respectively, the varsity asked Sen — in whose name the land was mutated in 2006 — to “hand over” the 13-decimal of land at the earliest.
Subramanyan, a 1924-born Indian artist from Kerala, was a student of Visva-Bharati’s art school Kala Bhavana, which Rabindranath Tagore had set up with pioneers of modern Indian art including Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij as teachers.
The former Kala Bhavana student returned to the art school as a professor of painting in 1980. He served the department as professor emeritus till his death in 2016.
Sources said his attachment with the institute was such that he donated the two-storey house built on a leasehold plot owned by Visva-Bharati in Purba Pally with the wish that in his absence it should be used as a centre for research built in the memory of his teacher Benode Behari Mukherjee.
“It was Subramanyan’s wish to use the house for educational purposes and named it after his teacher and famous artist Benode Behari Mukherjee. As per his wish, we contacted the Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation. The foundation gave Visva-Bharati authorities around Rs 2 crore as a corpus to run an archive in the name of Benode Behari. Despite getting the money in 2020, the varsity failed to complete the process to recruit staff to run the archive,” said a senior Kala Bhavana professor.
Sources said officials of the foundation repeatedly communicated with the Visva-Bharati administration to start the archive but even then there has been no progress.
“The foundation has given original artworks by Benode Behari to be kept at the archive. The archive would have been of great benefit to the students but we don’t know when the journey will start,” the professor added.
A varsity official, however, said the interview process to recruit staff for the archive had been completed but the authorities were yet to give their final nod to start the centre.
“The varsity authorities have cited Covid-19 outbreak as the reason for the delay but nothing has happened even after the situation normalised,” said an art connoisseur.
Sources on campus and Visva-Bharati old-timers said Subramanyan’s house was an instance of how properties gifted to Visva-Bharati had been abandoned.
Another such example is a house in Sriniketan which was gifted by a retired high school teacher Supti Roy in 2015. Even though Visva-Bharati is spending money on a caretaker every month, the property remains unutilised.
“Roy wished to see her house as a place of education. However, it has not been utilised so far,” said a varsity official.
He also cited the huge expenses the varsity is incurring in a plethora of court cases, which would have been otherwise used for student welfare or creating more facilities on the campus.
Responding to a query about the varsity not using the properties it received as gifts, Visva-Bharati’s acting public relations officer Mahua Banerjee told The Telegraph: “We are working on the properties gifted or donated to the university.”