Disquiet at Santiniketan: protests at Visva-Bharati over eviction notice to Amartya Sen Premium

Disquiet at Santiniketan: protests at Visva-Bharati over eviction notice to Amartya Sen. The controversy surrounding the Nobel laureate's ancestral home is part of a larger ideological battle to claim Bengali culture and politics

Along the western boundary of Santiniketan, on Sriniketan Road, is an ageing white house, its green windows and doors opening into a breezy veranda. Low railings and the grove of trees that lead to the house are a reminder of Rabindranath Tagore’s idea of Visva-Bharati: old-timers say he was against homes being fenced off or hidden behind high boundary walls.

Change has crept into the university town in West Bengal’s Birbhum district, not only in the way  ashramiks (residents) settled on campus have begun to lock their doors, or in the sal trees lost to concrete builds, but also in the presence of a police force. Under a mango tree weighed down by a surfeit of the summer fruit, they sit in a tent day and night, outside Pratichi, the ancestral home of economist Prof. Amartya Sen.

A portion of land on which the house stands has been the centre of controversy since 2020, from the time the university had named Prof. Sen among the list of people holding excess land. But things took a hard turn on April 19, 2023, when Visva-Bharati university authorities issued an eviction notice to Prof. Sen for a part of the property. The six-page notice also added that in the event of “refusal or failure to comply with this order within the period specified”, he “and all persons concerned” were “liable to be evicted from the said premises, if need be, by use of such force as may be necessary”.

For the neighbours, this house has been the subject of reverence and, over the past few months, of curiosity even. Shantabhanu Sen, grandson of Kshitimohan Sen, former Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati and the author of the book  Hinduism, lives in the house next door. Pointing to the signage outside in ornate Bengali script, he talks of Pratichi, meaning west. “Amartya is my cousin. My father and his mother were siblings,” the 70-year-old says. “Whatever is happening around this house is injustice and an attempt to harass someone we all look up to.”

The house stands on 1.38 acres and the dispute is around only 0.13 acres or 13 decimals, about 5,500 square metres. Despite its relatively small area, the dispute has rocked the entire State. There has been anger from the time the university had named Prof. Sen an illegal occupant in the first place.

Prof. Sen, who is abroad, in a letter to the university administration in April 2023 said that the land which the university is claiming to own, is part of the family’s ancestral home, which was in the name of his father, Ashutosh Sen. Any “contrary claim” to the plot couldn’t stand till the expiry of the leasehold rights: the land was leased out in 1943 for a period of 99 years.

The issue made national headlines when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made a dramatic entry to Pratichi on January 30, 2023. Ms. Banerjee backed Prof. Sen’s claim on the land and publicly handed him land documents from the State government.