Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday slammed the Visva Bharati University authorities for not inscribing the name of Rabindranath Tagore on plaques commemorating the award of ‘World Heritage Site’ by UNESCO at the university in Santiniketan. She advised the Centre to stop display of self exhibitionism and give Tagore the tribute that the country owes to him.
“Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore created a world heritage site (now recognised by UNESCO) at Santiniketan - Visva Bharati, but the current institutional authorities there have arranged site memorial plaques on this occasion which display even the Vice-Chancellor’s name but not the name of Gurudev!! This insults Tagore and belittles the anti-colonial heritage-creating efforts of our Nation’s founding fathers,” Banerjee wrote on X.
Raising her voice for according respect to Tagore she further wrote: “The Central government will be well advised to remove this narcissistic display of arrogant self-exhibitionism forthwith, and to give Gurudev the tribute that the country owes to him.”
At a press conference at her Kalighat residence on Thursday, Banerjee had warned of widespread agitation for not inscribing the name of Rabindranath Tagore on plaques commemorating the award of ‘World Heritage Site’ by UNESCO at Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan.
She had said her party workers would begin agitation if the plaques were not changed by Friday and as per her directions, the sit in demonstration has already begun. A huge controversy triggered after the university authorities put up marble plaques bearing the names of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the chancellor of the varsity and vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty, but did not have any mention of Tagore. On Wednesday, the university had said the plaque was just a temporary structure to demarcate the heritage site.
UNESCO gave credit to “renowned poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore” for setting up of Santiniketan which is uniquely different from the “prevailing British colonial architectural orientations of the early 20th century and of European modernism.”