Kolkata’s showpiece presidency University — established in 1817 as the Hindoo College by a group of 20 eminent scholars led by the legendary social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) — initiated its big bang bicentenary celebrations on January 5 with seminars in India, Britain and the US. Banners displaying quotations of distinguished Presidency alumni — Aparna Sen, Amartya Sen, Satyajit Ray, J.C. Bose, Nabaneeta Deb Sen, P.C. Mahalanobis, Ashutosh Mukherjee, Subhash Chandra Bose, Satyendranatha Bose, Pramathesh Barua, Prafulla Chandra Roy, Meghnad Saha and Rajendra Prasad during their undergrad years — were plastered across the campus. 

The organisers of Presidency University’s mega bicentenary bash — a seven-member committee comprising the vice chancellor Anuradha Lohia, registrar Dr. Prithul Chakraborty, and Professor Dr. Swapan Chakravorty among others — pulled out all stops to highlight the past glories of PU which has produced three presidents, one prime minister, a Nobel laureate and scores of explorers, inventors and globally respected intellectuals in India and abroad. According to sources within the committee, the subtext of highlighting the university’s past glory was to also advertise how far this once great liberal arts and humanities institution of higher learning has fallen under the rule of the interventionist CPM (Communist Party of India)-led Left Front government which ruled West Bengal uninterruptedly for 34 years (1977-2011), and latterly by the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government now in its second term in office.

In the run-up to the historic assembly election of 2011 in which the CPM was comprehensively routed, a major election plank of TMC chief Mamata Banerjee was to rejuvenate Presidency University and restore its status as a globally-respected centre of academic excellence. True to her promise, one of her first initiatives as chief minister was to appoint a ten-member mentor group, headed by renowned Harvard academic Dr. Sugata Bose and guided by Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen, to suggest ways and means to rejuvenate and revive PU. But that promise was easier made than fulfilled.

Six years since the TMC government took charge of Writers Building, Kolkata, little has changed. Under TMC rule, Presidency University has witnessed as much interference and campus violence as it did under Left Front rule. From its A+ rating of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council of India as a college in 2006, it has suffered a downgrade to plain A status as a university in 2016. The TMC government’s first full budget of 2012-13 made no provision to fund the proposed make-over. It allocated a measly Rs.240 crore for the state’s 18 universities and 374 colleges, provoking widespread cynicism about its proclaimed intent to restore PU to its former glory. 

Subsequently, on April 10, 2013 PU’s Laboratory — established in 1913 by Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose — was vandalised by a posse of TMC cadres. Moreover the West Bengal Council of Higher Education constituted a four-member facts-finding committee to investigate allegations of irregular faculty recruitment by the Presidency Mentor Group (PMG), chaired by Dr. Sugata Bose, and the college campus has suffered rampant violence and infringement of its autonomy during the past six years of TMC rule.

The chief minister’s disenchantment with PU was perceptible during the bicentenary celebrations as she couldn’t find time to attend the star-studded events at which the state government was represented by education minister Partha Chatterjee. Although Chatterjee announced a land grant of 10 acres at Rajarhat, a fast-growing planned satellite town of Kolkata, for a new PU campus and sanctioned Rs.10 crore for the year-long bicentenary celebrations as also Rs.50 crore to renovate the university’s heritage campus on College Street, Dr. Sugata Bose, a PU alum and chairman of the Presidency mentor group, forthrightly said that “an enabling and non-interfering” role of the state is an essential prerequisite for reviving the past glory of West Bengal’s 200-year-old show-piece university. 

“While we celebrate 200 years, we aim to strengthen the legacy of this heritage institution in the future. The institution’s excellence is evident from the huge participation of academics and intelligentsia from across the world. We are committed to make Presidency a centre of excellence and are continuously working towards it,” proclaimed vice chancellor Anuradha Lohia unconvincingly.

But given that a tradition of government interference and infiltration of academia has struck root in West Bengal, translating high-sounding rhetoric into efficient initiatives will take some doing.

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)