Visva-Bharati Hosts Amartya Sen, Prabhat Patnaik at Event on Hold Since 2020

New Delhi: Months after Bidyut Chakraborty's controversial term as the vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati University ended, students and faculty members were able to hear from Nobel laureate and renowned alumni Amartya Sen, who the previous VC had allegedly tried to keep away from campus.

Visva-Bharati is the only Central university in West Bengal.

The Department of Economics and Politics on April 10 also hosted Prabhat Patnaik, retired professor of economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, for a talk he was supposed to deliver in 2020. The 2020 lecture had been cancelled allegedly because of Chakraborty.

Sen, speaking online, delivered the opening comments and introduced Patnaik. “Santiniketan is a remarkable town. Not often recognised by vice-chancellors and others... However, for common people, like you and me, it really is a great opportunity to be here. It is a bilingual town. We can talk in Bengali or English or Hindi...” Sen said in his opening remarks, according to The Times of India.

This was the second Ashok Rudra Memorial Lecture, originally planned for 2020 but stalled allegedly due to Chakraborty's interference. Patnaik, who was Sen's student at the Delhi School of Economics, spoke on “Employment and poverty under neo-liberal capitalism".

Sudipta Bhattacharyya, a faculty member in the economics department, told The Telegraph that the university is now working to undo the "damage" done by Chakraborty. “The former VC (Chakrabarty) tried his best to keep Professor Sen away from all our activities.... The fact that the new administration allowed us to hold a programme with him and Professor Patnaik, who is known for his left-of-centre values, bears proof that Visva-Bharati is undoing the damage caused by Chakrabarty in the five years he was at the helm,” he said.

PhD scholar Swapnanil Mukherjee told The Times of India, “Such lectures motivate students to strive for the best. It reflects on VB’s legacy.”

During Chakraborty's tenure, the varsity authorities had attempted to evict Sen from his ancestral house in Santiniketan, claiming that it was an encroachment on university land.

As The Wire has reported, Chakraborty had also been accused of suppressing cases related to sexual harassment and caste discrimination and protecting the perpetrators. Several controversies erupted on campus during his time as VC, including the installation of plaques that named Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chakraborty but not Rabindranath Tagore, the founder of Santiniketan and Visva Bharati.

Professor Sanjoy Mallik is currently serving as interim vice-chancellor of the university.

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