The Visva-Bharati university said on Monday that its faculty members will continue to work from home as the situation is still tense to start activities on the campus.
The executive council of the varsity will review the situation on August 31 and a decision will be taken accordingly, it said in a statement.
“It has been unanimously resolved to continue those activities which are for student-benefits and those essential services which are absolutely essential for the university to remain functional,” it said.
“We will continue to work-from-home in regard to these activities since the campus is highly volatile and tense. We will continue all the emergency services relating to students’ interests, including admission, examination (if it is decided), online teaching (where it has already been started) and other emergency services,” it added.
Violence erupted in Visva-Bharati, a Central university in West Bengal, on Monday, August 17, 2020, as locals protesting against the construction of a boundary wall on Poush Mela grounds ransacked the campus.
Poush Mela, the annual winter fair organised by the university, draws thousands of people from the State. The locals were opposed to the the boundary wall construction. Thousands of people led by local Trinamool Congress leaders stopped the construction work, took control of the equipment, including an earthmover and brought down some structures on the campus. Videos of angry mobs ransacking university property were circulated on social media and aired by local television channels
The varsity alleged that its officials were regularly being threatened and subjected to verbal abuse, especially the female staffers, and hence it will not be judicious to ask them to attend office.
The university needs to take care of laboratories in various departments which if vandalised will cause complete disruption to many on-going projects, besides financial loss, it said.
In view of this situation, the teachers concerned agreed to work from home, it said.
Referring to the strong views of a section of ashramites — the residents of the campus and the neighbourhood, including former students and teachers — about fencing the Poush Mela ground, the varsity said, “If those who get emotionally swayed by the ideas of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore take care of the security issues, we will be much obliged.”
”...help us reclaim the illegally captured/ occupied land and also to extend support, both financial and otherwise, to sustain and spread out the rich legacy that Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore left for the posterity,” it urged the ashramites.
“The construction of fence/ barricade/ wall is necessary to protect the university and ensure the security of our students so that nobody is brutally hit/ tortured as it had happened in past when a miscreant came to girls’ hostel and killed an inmate years back,” it said.
However, a member of the Visva Bharati University Faculty Association said the statement is farcical as the varsity did not stop its administrative and academic functioning after the August 17 vandalism.
“The authority has issued such a misleading statement to cover up their mishandling of the Poush Mela ground issue and other things like the expulsion of a student from the hostel in the past,” he said.
The RSS-affiliated ABVP held demonstrations in Kolkata and Shantiniketan against the August 17 vandalisation of property by outsiders over fencing the ground where the famed Poush Mela used to be held, and for a CBI probe into the incident.
