Rabindra Bharati University vice-chancellor Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury resigned on Friday evening after the university landed in a controversy over photos of youngsters with cuss words painted on their bodies during Basanta Utsav on its BT Road campus. The photos were uploaded on social media, reports Times of India.
Education minister Partha Chatterjee, however, said he would not accept the resignation. “The RBU vicechancellor has committed no mistake,” he said. Sources said Chatterjee was trying to reach the VC with a request to withdraw his resignation.
Within hours of the celebrations, photos were uploaded on Facebook and other platforms, where young girls and boys were seen with cuss words-one even distorting a Rabindranath Tagore song-written on their back and body in aabir. A video showing them dancing to a vulgar parody of a Tagore song added to the controversy.
A source said the VC emailed his resignation to Chatterjee following an altercation with other university officials on Friday evening over security lapses during the celebration. Though the university had issued 50,000 passes, a far larger crowd reportedly entered the campus. Matters were compounded when Trinamool students’ and staff union members entered his office and allegedly questioned the university’s decision to lodge an FIR against the students. Earlier in the evening, the VC had said he would place the matter at the executive council meeting to decide whether the university would allow outsiders on the campus from next year or not after RBU students alleged outsiders were involved.
RBU authorities were flooded with complaints on Friday morning, forcing Basu Roy Choudhury to decide to lodge a complaint at the Sinthee police station. RBU registrar Subir Maitra lodged the complaint, detailing the incident and stating how “the miscreants had no respect for Gurudev and his creations” and that the incident was “tantamount to violation of modesty” of other women at Basantotsav. The university, the complaint stated, was ready to help police, even with CCTV footage of campus. “We are trying to check whether the photos are original or morphed. So, we had to file an FIR,” Basu Roy Choudhury said. Joint CP (crime) Murlidhar Sharma confirmed about the RBU complaint and said they were looking at legal angles.
By afternoon, three girls and two boys, all of them from Hooghly, visited the university, claiming the authorities had summoned them. RBU officials and cops, however, remained tight-lipped about their identity, though some claimed they were from Chandernagore, Serampore and Bandel and studied in colleges there. The five, accompanied by their parents, were taken to the Sinthee police station, where their statements were recorded. Sources said while one girl reportedly apologized, another claimed several others were on the spot and that she did not get anything obscene written on her back. One who spoke to media said they were sorry but that several others had obscene words written on their back. “We became viral may be because our photos were shared online. We should not have been singled out,” she said.
Linguist and educationist Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri described it as “an act of perversion”. “This cultural decay is leading to social disintegration. This form of exhibitionism is an insult to our rich culture,” he said. Educationist Amal Mukhopadhyay called the incident unfortunate, especially since it happened during Dol utsav. “They have been disrespectful towards Tagore, who was the founder of Basanta Utsav,” he said.